The Flog.

Finally!
Sundance Channel just released Green Porno, the complete series of (very short) films conceived, written, co-directed by and featuring the fabulous Isabella Rossellini to the internet masses. I was reading about it earlier during the Sundance festival and was eager to finally lay my eyes upon these masterpieces.
And these eight pieces clearly solidified my knowledge of critters sexuality in a magical way.
(But really, did Monsieur Lynch make a cameo during the Bee fight?)

(All images from Sundance Channel. Screen captures of Green Porno. Left is Earthworm, right is Bee.)

For this month’s header, I chose LA based artist Pascual Sisto.
The masthead is a still from Sisto’s video No Strings Attached, 2007, currently on view at TELIC Arts Exchange part of the fabulous group exhibition and massive video installation Gravity Art which opened Saturday, March 1st.

From the press release.
__Gravity Art, curated by filmmaker Rene Daalder, is an exhibition that retroactively proposes a genre based on the idea of gravity as a medium. Operating in relation to Daalder’s documentary on Bas Jan Ader, Here is Always Somewhere Else, and his website basjanader.com, this exhibition brings together several generations of conceptual artists through the unlikely, but perfectly obvious conceit of gravity.

(Left image is another still from No Strings Attached. Right image is an installation shot of Gravity Art at TELIC)

Sisto received his MFA from UCLA in 2007 and has shown at the MAK Center and de Soto in LA, Instants Chavirés and the Centre Pompidou in Paris, among other (great) spaces.
I discovered Sisto’s work at TELIC for his first solo show with the space, The Impossibility of th Beach, back in 2006. The work on view Push/Pull (my work is your misfortune) 405, 2006, a large two channel video installation (see the images below) really resonated with my newly-established-in-LA self. This impossible artery of cars driving away and to you was a cruel and accurate representation of the city I had landed in. The piece was mesmerizing and cynical. I felt that the artist was using the video medium for its intrinsic qualities, merging time and space into an surreal representation of a simple event.

(Left and middle images from the artist’s website, video stills from Push/Pull (my work is your misfortune) 405. Right image is an installation shot at TELIC from a previous Flog post)

His work will be on view at the Huntington Beach Art Center starting March 8th part of the group exhibition Obsessive compulsive with Gina Han, Charlotte Smith and Sayon Syprasoeuth.

Corina Gamma: @d.e.n. contemporary art (January 19 - February 23, 2008)

A few days ago, Monsieur Winkleman made a little post about online art medias offering a “TV” feature. I wanted to follow up and add a few websites to his list.

(Left image, screen capture from Cool Hunting, Brooklyn based artist Michael DeLucia in Rivington Arms for his show. Right image, screen capture from artreview, Yves Klein’s symphony “Monoton-Silence“.)

- Artivi
French site started in 2006 by Marc Gusils (the honorable Pierre Bergé is also a partner in the venture)
- watched: French Kissin in the U.S.A, 06:12.
Direct links to videos, comments, RSS and podcasts available.
The resolution is pretty good and I like the aspect ratio of their videos. I found the background music disturbing at times.
Since there are no tags, keywords or whatnot, their search button doesn’t fully function. I typed the name of an artist from the video French Kissin in the USA and the engine didn’t point to the piece.
So far the coverage is mostly of Europe and NY.

- VBS.TV
Vice on TV.
They have a newish program entitled “Art Talk!” where artists discuss their work (from Richard Prince to Misaki Kawai) in their studios. I liked to glimpse at these. The emphasis is clearly on the work itself and the process of making it.
- watched: Art Talk! - Aurel Schmidt Part 1 of 2, 02:50.
Direct links to videos, full screen feature. No RSS feed but each program is linked to a particular blog one can receive announcements from.
The low points come with the short yet loud ads at the beginning of each piece, and yes, the overly NY centric program.

- VernissageTV
One of the first I found. Since the coverage is pretty wide, yet pretty concentrated in Europe, it’s always a good way to see/hear about what is going on, let’s say, in Zurich, or Madrid. I often find the documentaries pretty dull. The editing is at times clearly a disaster, but I would browse a video on mute and get a feel for a show I was intrigued by.
- watched: Allie Bogle, Shana Lutker, Justin Beal and Mateo Tannatt at Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects, 04.51.
What pleasantly differentiate vtv from the other sites, are the tags, which allow you to see everything from, one artist, one city or one fair (LA hasn’t been talked about since last August though.. ouch - vs. NY with 4 entries since the beginning of the year). The videos can be downloaded in quicktime format (nice) and you can subscribe onto your iphones or other apple devices.
Oh and they have a new HD feature (!) with the full lenght version of the documentary film Paul McCarthy Head Shop/Shop Head at SMAK/Gent Belgium by Thom de Bock.

- Cool Hunting Video
Cool Hunting is one of those pop-culture induced website I check regularly as to get a grip on the “mainstream avant-guarde“. Their videos convey the same flair, but they are also one of the best executed ones, with great editing, great camera moves, light and such. Yet, as with often documentaries, the music takes too much space for my liking.
- watched: Michael DeLucia by Ami Kealoha, 03:25
Can download video in QT and can link to it. The search engine combined with a few keywords make the browsing pretty easy.

With these two next sites, we enter the realm of user-generated websites. These provide a great platform for people to post their own art-related documentaries, therefore one can find underrepresented topics or edgy points on view on a more popular issue. Yet, the quality - I am talking technicality here - is often of the YouTube admitted aesthetic.

Videos - artreview.com.
The British magazine evolved from a regular paper-based publication to offering its full content online. With this next step, they opened their doors to the hordes of web browsers slash critics, slash artists, slash art lovers to freely absorb and generate content to their new publishing platform. Think myspace/facebook for the art community, without the hassle of a bad code/design job. (Yes, we are talking to you Saatchi Gallery.)
- watched: Matthew Barney press briefing at the Serpentine, 02:07.
- watched: Yves Klein, Symphonie “Monoton-Silence” (1947-61), 10:00.
I picked 2 videos. One uploaded by artreview, one uploaded by one of its users. The press briefing of Matthew Barney’s show at Serpentine was quite terrible: shaky camera, ugly sound, and overall, boring video. It raises the question as to whether or not, all content should be available on a video format. (I vote for not) If I was curious to know about the curator’s view on the show, I’d rather read the full press release than go through these 2 min.
As for the second video, the appeal is greatly different. Here we watch, without a movement the performance of Yves Klein infamous piece of “silence-après” [afterwards silence]. Although the sound isn’t at its finest, the video plays the role of a lucky witness, recording a special and isolated occurrence.

- CultureTV
The interface is pretty bad for streaming the videos and the quality of each piece also varies greatly. RSS feed available. Link to each video.
Finding videos is a real hassle, no info, no tags, no dates.

(Left image, screen capture from artivi, view of the installation of Jean-François Moriceau and Petra Mrzyk. Right image, screen capture from VBS, Brooklyn based artist Aurel Schmidt in her studio.)

Finally, here is a list of brilliant web platforms for video works and films, as opposed to art documentaries.

- tank.tv (One need to subscribe, which is free, to access their archives.)
- UBUWEB (check for example the works available from Gordon Matta-Clark.)
- Perpetual Art Machine
- Video Pool (A real treasure. As with UBU, one can easily get lost in the hours spent watching all the gems available)

Cathy Akers gave me the heads up on this upcoming show, The Collective Body, curated by Kristen Raizada, which opens October 6th at Galerie Califa (Horaždovice, South Bohemia, Czech Republic) and will gather a great amount of LA based artists.
The curator’s statement gives you a good insight on the themes carrying the show together.

Galeria Califa was opened last June by California-born artist Barbara Benish in the town’s chateau (!). Really, in Europe, where else would you want to have a show/open a gallery!?

The participating artists are Cathy Akers, CamLab, Jocelyn Foye, Eva Kotatkova, Dominik Lang, Elana Mann, Jeff Ostergren, Rafani, Jean Robison, Tomas Svoboda, and Sayon Syprasoeuth.

(All images from The Collective Body, left is Jean Robison, middle is Cathy Akers and right is Jocelyn Foye)

Stephen G. Rhodes: Ruined Dualisms @Overduin and Kite (September 6 - October 17, 2007)

Working late tonight and downloading some lovely tunes from this heaven of a website. elbo.ws. So very good.

Came across this book while browsing the net: The Bearded Lady by Henrik Drescher & Duudle.dk, 34 pages, signed by both artists, 23 euros (and they ship worldwide) (All images from The Bearded Lady). Looks charmingly busy.

This weekend, a friend of mine directed me to this magnificent website (online since 1996!) UbuWeb, an independent archive for "visual, concrete and, sound poetry. Over the years, UbuWeb has embraced all forms of the avant-garde and beyond." The richness of this place is so amazing that you should simply see it by yourself without further descriptions.

On Sunday, Matthew and I entered yet another intriguing and fascinating realm, Théâtre.
I was invited to attend one representation of a new play making its first marks here in the city, The Tragical Comedy or Comical Tragedy of Mr. Punch, adapted from the Ô so delightful and magical graphic novel from Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean. Being a dedicated admirer of Monsieur McKean since a tender age, I was certainly very intrigued by this new oeuvre. The labor that was putting this play together took nearly two years for the troupe. By using various mode of representation, from live video, puppetry, projections to masks and intricate decors, the play really capture the dark, cynical and fantastic essence that is the graphic novel. Such twisted materials must have been overwhelming to digest, yet the result on stage conveys the finest from both the writing and the visual. The baroque of McKean, the wittiness of Gaiman.
Please, go attend this play, support the troupe, and absorb the magic that live performances unveil. It will only stay a month. Act fast!

The Tragical Comedy or Comical Tragedy of Mr. Punch - directed by Sean T. Cawelti, produced by Rogue Artists Ensemble @Theatre/Theater (April 27 - May 27, 2007)

This morning, I checked Fecal Face and saw a link to this music video by Encyclopedia Pictura for the band Seventeen Evergreen.
Oh surprise when, at about half of the video, all this jelly-fleshy pink turned into shiny spikes! Which then reminded me of Sachiko Kodama & Minako Takeno’s piece “Protrude, Flow” I saw at TELIC few weeks ago.
I guess this all this separated at birth thing always depends on what you saw first. I don’t simply imply that one artist “copied” the other one, yet, I fancy similarities in aesthetics. I like to think that similar rhetoric can take place at the same given time.

(Left image is a screen capture from Kodama & Takeno’s video, from Kodama’s website. Right image is a screen capture from Encyclopedia Pictura’s website)

Russell Dudley: Finding Russel Dudley - Selected works, 1986-2007 @Treehouse Gallery (March 16 - April 18, 2007)