Video Art Deviations

Gogol is a touchstone for the modern ideas of existence, reality and absurd. "The Nose", one of his core tales, explores the idea of self and belonging as well as the relationship between the body and the state.

Alexander Alexeieff and Claire Parker’s animation technique (called "pinscreen animation") and its application to Gogol's narrative has it all: the form of a shadow theater, the rhythm of an hectic child book, an aesthetic that reminds both Edvard Munch and the late soviet constructivism, fascinating narrative resources and a strange, phantasmagorical appeal.

It was 1963 and the technique by itself was remarkable. Ian Lumsden at Animation Blog describes Alexeieff and Parker’s particular method as a form of “shadow animation in effect whereby Alexander works on the positive side of a large black canvas full of pins and Claire on the negative side; the more the flat headed pins are pushed in the lighter is the effect, creating the look of mezzotint with its textured shades of grey.” Lumsden adds that he “can scarcely conceive of a more labor intensive form of animation particularly given that pins numbered in their hundreds of thousands are used.”

"Found Animation" is a concept involving the usage of none rendered 3d and 2d footage, mainly related to either projections or light interventions, accidental or premeditated.

In the case of Kazuhiro Goshima's "Shadowland" (2012-2013) the 3d environments are provoked by the interaction of solid bodies and diverse light sources, both static or in movement, in the Tokyo urban landscape.  The result is filled with both beautiful images and an inner poetic insight into cities' geometry and rhythm.

Technology as a goal have been the core narrative of modernity and the deconstruction of that narrative have been central for the notion of post-modernity, specially for what's being already characterized as "post technological art". Tech boundaries seem to be pushed far in unexpected directions within the limits of the physical/digital dialog but, is there anything more than a dance that could be the actual outcome of that dialog? Is a dancing 3d cinema actually as exciting as to deserve all the time and resources invested? Is there anything else to say with this kind of quests other than the amusement of "how well things fit"?

"Box" (2013) is a 3d mapping/robotic/human interaction multimedia performance, designed by Bot & Dolly studio. Everything in the video was recorded as-is by the camera, with no post-production whatsoever.

The literal content, the so called "linear" content of images have been both condemned and celebrated as "a fact". "A picture is worth a thousand words" is not only a cultural value of modernity -even stressed as a political agenda- but a tragic commonplace. It leaves the image into the grounds of what's unquestionable, it encloses it in a cage of non resemantization or interpretability. Perhaps the "democratization" of cameras have brought a new input to that certainty. What was once an exclusive possibility for the mainstream to produce contents, has become a true war of semantic odds.

Vivian Maier's huge collection of photography was founded at a local thrift auction house on Chicago’s Northwest Side. She used to be a nanny and photography was some sort of a side activity. She's now celebrated as one of the main photographers of America's 20th Century.

Poetics are nothing but a conspiracy. An unexpected equation whose variables are as whimsical as unpredictable. The poetic memento may not last but is vibrant through time; it has the perdurable nature of memories, unsolved questions, first kisses, massive storm clouds and, at the same time, the monumental nature of great art.

Simone Massi's "Dell'Ammazzare Il Maiale" ("About Killing The Pig") is radically powerful as an unfinished, fragmented journey of a condemned animal to its final destiny. Weather it is a rational journey of human need and fulfillment or an uncontrolled glimpse to the life of a butcher, the concatenation of images and sounds brings an hypnotic and emotional portrait of both the animal point of view and the human nature. The animation technique is solid and exquisite.

Warning: heavy use of flickering lights. Safer on full screen and if you keep the sight in the middle of the screen.

Geometry as in a mathematical concern for "order" and "perspective" is dull, boring. It has to do nothing with art but with reason, science, linear thought, dissection. Although the idea of pure lines and curves dwells on the basis of almost any art theory, there is in the practice of art a major need to confront and subvert the methodical, rhetorical and ontological analysis of itself.

Morgan Beringer's geometrical chaos for the music video "Fix my life" (2013) bring a fantastic up raise of questions about geometry's perception and its inherit sense of order. Even when it resembles the plain images of the visual generators that accompany most sound players in modern computers (such as winamp or wmp), this patterns and its evolution are as frenetic as captivating.

Is life susceptible of being portrayed as it is while being filtered through the camera lens? One of the central questions about moving images (and one that has been pushed as a core worry for video-art) is the one that tries to explore the possibilities of the technical devices (cameras, audio recorders) to capture the immediacy of life, to portrait people being themselves, to document life, history, the passage of time. Is the camera nothing but an obstacle between reality and the public? Is it possible to just grab a camera, follow the action and give the public the feeling of "being there"? Is the camera an extension of the eye or is it a weapon? Is it a mirror or is it a monster?

Social change has been stressed as a "necessary" issue for art to seek and confront. In a historical moment in which protests are worldwide covered on social networks and their results are less meaningful than ever, art makes its way through both cliche and archetype, pose and embracement, fashion and identity, ideological confusion and the summary of action in wide spread meaningless slogans.

There's something deep and atavistic in the idea of reflection. From Aristotle to Borges, the mirror and the nature of its intervention in reality is one main subject for art as it is for science and religion. Reflection as a continuum, as a core extension of what "is" in reality; but also as the main territory for deformation, for an unexpected parallel, for ghosts.

Bill Viola's The Reflecting Pool was created from 1977 to 1979. It was described by Viola as "a collection of five independent works which, taken as a whole, describe the stages of a personal journey using images of transition — from day to night, motion to stillness, time to timelessness, etc. Each work explores specific video techniques and technologies, in combination with the spatial potentials of stereo sound."

Television as an object -a cultural object- is both rejected and configured as a main subject for contemporary visual art. Since Nam June Paik's "Electronic Superhighway" television cases are the most recurrent "physical" representation of the video flux and of its inherent tendency to kitsch and cliche.

In A Space Exodus, Larissa Sansour quirkily sets up an adapted stretch of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey in a Middle Eastern context.

Directed by Matt Lambert in the context of a fashion brand, "Umasan In Transition" is a powerful combination of meticulous choreography and vibrant edition. The story line is beautifuly consistant with the sense of progression and evolution pursued by the film.

Jørgen Leth (born in 1937) is a controversial Danish poet and film director, often considered a main figure in experimental documentary film making. His views have been considered severely politically incorrect although his methods and aesthetic approaches are deeply influential.

A small preview of the Pipilotti Rist retrospective "Eyeball Massage", now being exhibited at the Southbank Centre, London (28 september 2011 - 8 january 2012).