Saturday 12 March 2011
Monday 7 March 2011
The Clock by Crisitan Marclay
Finally I got a chance to see widely-discussed artwork The Clock.
24-hours screening was at Southbank Centre on the last weekend.
"The Clock is a montage of clips from several thousand films, showing scenes featuring clocks and watches, or situations indicating a particular time of day."
My notes:
1. After half a hour you do really feel like sitting and watching it as you know it runs non-stop
2. But, unfortunately, I didn't have longer time to watch it, but I was wondering if to spend there several hours or even 24 hours - it might create some other levels of understanding this work
3. It's a weird to sit some time and watch and, as typical happens in cinema, trying to check the time on your hand but realize that actually it shows you on the screen.
4. I found interesting the the artist tried to make a story, not just cuts with watches and clocks.
5. It's interesting as well as most of scenes from the films have some drama in them. I mean if the time becomes matter in the plot of the movie, there must be some drama about it (someone is late, too early, killed, waiting, threathen etc)
24-hours screening was at Southbank Centre on the last weekend.
"The Clock is a montage of clips from several thousand films, showing scenes featuring clocks and watches, or situations indicating a particular time of day."
My notes:
1. After half a hour you do really feel like sitting and watching it as you know it runs non-stop
2. But, unfortunately, I didn't have longer time to watch it, but I was wondering if to spend there several hours or even 24 hours - it might create some other levels of understanding this work
3. It's a weird to sit some time and watch and, as typical happens in cinema, trying to check the time on your hand but realize that actually it shows you on the screen.
4. I found interesting the the artist tried to make a story, not just cuts with watches and clocks.
5. It's interesting as well as most of scenes from the films have some drama in them. I mean if the time becomes matter in the plot of the movie, there must be some drama about it (someone is late, too early, killed, waiting, threathen etc)
Friday 25 February 2011
E.O. Hoppé - a history of photography in one person
I went to National Portrait Gallery to see the works of E.O. Hoppé (1878-1972):
http://www.npg.org.uk:8080/hoppe/index.html
I have just come back from Berlin, where his works were shown as well in Berlinische Galerie:
http://www.berlinischegalerie.de/index.php?id=1045&L=1
Coinsidence? I don't think so.
The sekections of works were very different in both galleries. Berlin presents more of his type portraits and city landscapes. London shows his work with ballet dancers, portraits of famous people and women and late street photographs.
So, what I found intersting for myself (and that's the reason I have decided to make this post here):
1. What a great photographer he was and how forgotten he is.
2. I never heard of him in context of Djagilev's ballet seasons. He used to work a lot with them and keep taking portraits of leading dancers:
(he even hand-painted some photos!!! - another click with my interests)
2. I loved his not-sharp portraits made in 1900-1920s with large format. You usually expect some certain sharpness from these cameras and even the chemical processes were developed already to achieve stable results. But his photographs somehow look different for me, including series 'fair women':
3. I like the curatorial work on this show - the selection which was made and how it is presented goes through the history or technical progress of photography in 20th century. His early works are all on large format, after you can see he was using medium format and his subjects are now live/work/perform outside of the studio space:
And after 1940s, when 35mm cameras were invented, his angle and subject was radically changed and most of photos started to have a snapshot aesthtics which was inaccessible earlier.
http://www.npg.org.uk:8080/hoppe/index.html
I have just come back from Berlin, where his works were shown as well in Berlinische Galerie:
http://www.berlinischegalerie.de/index.php?id=1045&L=1
Coinsidence? I don't think so.
The sekections of works were very different in both galleries. Berlin presents more of his type portraits and city landscapes. London shows his work with ballet dancers, portraits of famous people and women and late street photographs.
So, what I found intersting for myself (and that's the reason I have decided to make this post here):
1. What a great photographer he was and how forgotten he is.
2. I never heard of him in context of Djagilev's ballet seasons. He used to work a lot with them and keep taking portraits of leading dancers:
(he even hand-painted some photos!!! - another click with my interests)
2. I loved his not-sharp portraits made in 1900-1920s with large format. You usually expect some certain sharpness from these cameras and even the chemical processes were developed already to achieve stable results. But his photographs somehow look different for me, including series 'fair women':
3. I like the curatorial work on this show - the selection which was made and how it is presented goes through the history or technical progress of photography in 20th century. His early works are all on large format, after you can see he was using medium format and his subjects are now live/work/perform outside of the studio space:
And after 1940s, when 35mm cameras were invented, his angle and subject was radically changed and most of photos started to have a snapshot aesthtics which was inaccessible earlier.
Tuesday 22 February 2011
A bit music for today
Old school:
Bill Evans - American jazz pianist (1929-1980)
and New school:
Tigran Hamasyan - Armenian pianist, born in 1987.
his website:
http://www.tigranhamasyan.com/
I hope he will come to UK one day with a concert.
Bill Evans - American jazz pianist (1929-1980)
and New school:
Tigran Hamasyan - Armenian pianist, born in 1987.
his website:
http://www.tigranhamasyan.com/
I hope he will come to UK one day with a concert.
Friday 18 February 2011
Thursday 17 February 2011
William E. Jones: The fall of Communism as seen in gay pornography
My new discovery for today: William E Jones: filmmaker, artist
THE FALL OF COMMUNISM AS SEEN IN GAY PORNOGRAPHY (1998)
Every image in The Fall of Communism as Seen in Gay Pornography comes from gay erotic videos produced in Eastern Europe since the introduction of capitalism. The video provides a glimpse of young men responding to the pressures of an unfamiliar world, one in which money, power and sex are now connected.
Watch the film online here:
http://www.williamejones.com/collections/view/6/
video, color, 19 minutes
There are lots of other interesting works on the website
THE FALL OF COMMUNISM AS SEEN IN GAY PORNOGRAPHY (1998)
Every image in The Fall of Communism as Seen in Gay Pornography comes from gay erotic videos produced in Eastern Europe since the introduction of capitalism. The video provides a glimpse of young men responding to the pressures of an unfamiliar world, one in which money, power and sex are now connected.
Watch the film online here:
http://www.williamejones.com/collections/view/6/
video, color, 19 minutes
There are lots of other interesting works on the website
Saturday 12 February 2011
Anuschka Blommers & Niels Schumm
Being in Berlin, I visited a studio of photographer Jan von Holleben.
He showed a one book on one page of which my brains blew up.
That's the image on the page how it supposed to be seen:
But what is good thing about books: despite of some very heavy and huge sizes, books are easy to turn around and look at content as you want. So, of course, this page provokes you to turn it up side down:
So, let me introduce Anuschka Blommers and Niels Schumm who work together and produce such kind of blow-up-minds-images:
(common, turn ur laptop or head!)
They are commercila photographers working on commissions. But I like how they are doing it. So, I am checking some other their works on the web:
http://www.blommers-schumm.com/polaroids.php
He showed a one book on one page of which my brains blew up.
That's the image on the page how it supposed to be seen:
But what is good thing about books: despite of some very heavy and huge sizes, books are easy to turn around and look at content as you want. So, of course, this page provokes you to turn it up side down:
So, let me introduce Anuschka Blommers and Niels Schumm who work together and produce such kind of blow-up-minds-images:
(common, turn ur laptop or head!)
They are commercila photographers working on commissions. But I like how they are doing it. So, I am checking some other their works on the web:
http://www.blommers-schumm.com/polaroids.php
Thursday 3 February 2011
Nick Veasey - X-Rays
Interesting artist was featured today in BJP.
Nick Veasey who is obsessed with image, X-Ray and internal beauty of objects.
It's interesting on his website to read about the process.
http://www.nickveasey.com/
I will keep an eye on him - let's see if he starts to do something more than just medical research of animals and objects which look nice but...I like more his installations with machines and people - crazy hard work.
Tuesday 1 February 2011
Philippe Parreno and Paul Fusco
Coming back to my post about Philippe Parreno's exhibition in Serpentine Gallery
http://mariakapajeva2.blogspot.com/2011/01/philippe-parreno.html
I wanted to make one more post about one of his video presented there called
June 8, 1968
There are some images of Magnum photographer Paul Fusco, based on whose photographs, Parreno produced his movie.
The whole Fusco's photo essay is here:
http://www.magnumphotos.com/Archive/C.aspx?VP3=ViewBox&ALID=29YL534JKT9L&IT=ThumbImage01_VForm&CT=Album
http://mariakapajeva2.blogspot.com/2011/01/philippe-parreno.html
I wanted to make one more post about one of his video presented there called
June 8, 1968
There are some images of Magnum photographer Paul Fusco, based on whose photographs, Parreno produced his movie.
The whole Fusco's photo essay is here:
http://www.magnumphotos.com/Archive/C.aspx?VP3=ViewBox&ALID=29YL534JKT9L&IT=ThumbImage01_VForm&CT=Album
Tuesday 25 January 2011
Animation - Sita Sings The Blues
Thanks to my friends who introduce me to this animated film.
It's a story based on Indian epic Ramayana entirely animated (directed and written) by American animator Nina Paley.The songs were taken from old records of Annette Hanshaw who was the famous singer in the beginning of 20th century.
It's interesting that Sita's story is not the main line in Ramyana but Nina Paley has made it the main in her animation.
Nina Paley is against the idea of copyright. So, you can watch the film online here:
http://www.sitasingstheblues.com/watch.html
Moreover, I recommend to read FAQ section where she answered on some questions regarding the animation, process and her personal experience in it.
It's a story based on Indian epic Ramayana entirely animated (directed and written) by American animator Nina Paley.The songs were taken from old records of Annette Hanshaw who was the famous singer in the beginning of 20th century.
It's interesting that Sita's story is not the main line in Ramyana but Nina Paley has made it the main in her animation.
Nina Paley is against the idea of copyright. So, you can watch the film online here:
http://www.sitasingstheblues.com/watch.html
Moreover, I recommend to read FAQ section where she answered on some questions regarding the animation, process and her personal experience in it.
Sunday 23 January 2011
Clay Ketter: Gulf Coast Slabs
New name for me I got from London Art Fair
In Gulf Coast Slabs (2007) photographic objects show traces of homes swept away by the hurricane Katrina that hit the American Gulf Coast in 2006. The series develop in his aesthetic somewhere between abstraction and realism or even fake ready-mades, both brutal and poetic. The traces of architecture are this time also loaded with morally more difficult content than in his earlier works (from Bartha Contemporary web)
short article about this piece of work:
http://www.coolhunting.com/archives/2008/03/clay-ketter-gulf-coast.php
In Gulf Coast Slabs (2007) photographic objects show traces of homes swept away by the hurricane Katrina that hit the American Gulf Coast in 2006. The series develop in his aesthetic somewhere between abstraction and realism or even fake ready-mades, both brutal and poetic. The traces of architecture are this time also loaded with morally more difficult content than in his earlier works (from Bartha Contemporary web)
short article about this piece of work:
http://www.coolhunting.com/archives/2008/03/clay-ketter-gulf-coast.php
Friday 21 January 2011
Gerhard Richter - Overpainted photographs
Photography altered ways of seeing and thinking. Photographs were regarded as true, paintings as artificial. The painted picture was no longer credible; its representation froze into immobility, because it was not authentic but invented (Richter, 1964)
I want to leave everything as it is. I therefore neither plan nor invent; I add nothing and omit nothing. At the same time, I know that I inevitably shall plan, invent, alter, make and manipulate. But I don't know that (Richter, 1964).
http://www.gerhard-richter.com/art/overpainted-photographs/
Tuesday 18 January 2011
Philippe Parreno
I would say that was one of the best art work I have seen in the last months.
I would recommend to go to the gallery and have a look on it first without any prereading about what he is showing there. That's the way you get the most from it.
Serpentine Gallery:
http://www.serpentinegallery.org/2010/11/philippe_parreno_25_november_1_1.html
http://www.airdeparis.com/parreno.htm
In his interview in Guardian he says: "I devise my exhibitions like a film," he says. "I think about sequences, about the rhythm of the experience for the visitor. Or like music: my exhibitions often unfold like a musical score. They unfold in time."
(http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2010/nov/15/philippe-parreno-interview-serpentine)
Friday 14 January 2011
Vivian Maier - rare discovery
It happens so rare in nowadays that some old-new name appears in photography or art world. Welcome to Vivian Maier's work!
Vivian's work was discovered at an auction here in Chicago where she resided most of her life. Her discovered work includes over 100,000 mostly medium format negatives, thousands of prints, and a ton of undeveloped rolls of film. I have approximately 90-95% of the work.
There is a blog dedicated to her works and her discovery for the all world.
http://vivianmaier.blogspot.com/
Vivian's work was discovered at an auction here in Chicago where she resided most of her life. Her discovered work includes over 100,000 mostly medium format negatives, thousands of prints, and a ton of undeveloped rolls of film. I have approximately 90-95% of the work.
There is a blog dedicated to her works and her discovery for the all world.
http://vivianmaier.blogspot.com/
Saturday 8 January 2011
James Elkins.
I went on his talk at KUMU (Tallinn, Estonia) in September 2010.
He talked about his book in progress What Photography Is, a book written against Roland Barthes’s Camera Lucida.
http://www.jameselkins.com/#page26
I found interesting some of his ideas. Looking forward to read this book when it will be published.
extract from his book:
7. So now as I write my answer to Camera Lucida, twenty-five years too late, I
think again of the fact that so many writers take it, and in particular the
punctum, as a touchstone. Especially those who would not normally propose
such personal concepts, so detached from history and close to solipsism.
Writers who would not allow themselves to reason with such a breathtaking
absence of scholarly support. It is as if that book, perhaps the least scholarly of
the central texts of visual studies, has protected itself by shrinking away from
the glare of criticism, shriveling to a point-like punctum of its own.
Camera Lucida has no footnotes, and the English translation has no list of
sources: omissions that simultaneously declare ‘Barthes’s’ independence and
leave readers stranded on the text as on an island, with few other writers’ voices
in earshot and no escape from the peculiarities of the author’s memory. (This
book strikes a compromise in that regard. The abbreviated references in
parentheses should be enough to allow readers to navigate from this book to
the many that address Camera Lucida.)
It is clear that a full answer to Camera Lucida cannot be an academic essay
in an academic journal: two decades of scholarship have not yet produced such
an answer. The only way to reply to a book as strange as Barthes’s is to write
another even stranger.
He talked about his book in progress What Photography Is, a book written against Roland Barthes’s Camera Lucida.
http://www.jameselkins.com/#page26
I found interesting some of his ideas. Looking forward to read this book when it will be published.
extract from his book:
7. So now as I write my answer to Camera Lucida, twenty-five years too late, I
think again of the fact that so many writers take it, and in particular the
punctum, as a touchstone. Especially those who would not normally propose
such personal concepts, so detached from history and close to solipsism.
Writers who would not allow themselves to reason with such a breathtaking
absence of scholarly support. It is as if that book, perhaps the least scholarly of
the central texts of visual studies, has protected itself by shrinking away from
the glare of criticism, shriveling to a point-like punctum of its own.
Camera Lucida has no footnotes, and the English translation has no list of
sources: omissions that simultaneously declare ‘Barthes’s’ independence and
leave readers stranded on the text as on an island, with few other writers’ voices
in earshot and no escape from the peculiarities of the author’s memory. (This
book strikes a compromise in that regard. The abbreviated references in
parentheses should be enough to allow readers to navigate from this book to
the many that address Camera Lucida.)
It is clear that a full answer to Camera Lucida cannot be an academic essay
in an academic journal: two decades of scholarship have not yet produced such
an answer. The only way to reply to a book as strange as Barthes’s is to write
another even stranger.
Wednesday 5 January 2011
Shaun Tan. Eric. and others.
I got one small book of Shaun Tan as a gift:
It's a story about an exhange student.
From my first sight, I felt in love with Eric and his creator.
So I found Shaun Tan's website and now I am exploring it:
http://www.shauntan.net/
It's a story about an exhange student.
From my first sight, I felt in love with Eric and his creator.
So I found Shaun Tan's website and now I am exploring it:
http://www.shauntan.net/
Christian von Borries. The Dubai im Me.
90min film
all 9 parts are on youtube
the website of the film:
http://masseundmacht.com/dubai/frameset.htmn
all 9 parts are on youtube
the website of the film:
http://masseundmacht.com/dubai/frameset.htmn
Luke Fowler. A Grammar for Listening
This piece of work I watched in Nottingham on British Art Show.
Luke Fowler:Screening of A Grammar for Listening, Parts 1 – 3
Nottingham Castle Museum & Art Gallery
In film, sound is usually incidental; an accompaniment for visual images. Luke Fowler reverses that equation: in A Grammar for Listening (Parts 1- 3) the subject is sound. Collaborating with sound artist Lee Patterson, whose environmental recordings capture sounds that are usually unheard: recordings of underwater life, the pulsations of neon lights and the explosions of burning walnuts to produce a dialogue between looking and listening.
(http://www.britishartshow.co.uk/events/nottingham)
Luke Fowler:Screening of A Grammar for Listening, Parts 1 – 3
Nottingham Castle Museum & Art Gallery
In film, sound is usually incidental; an accompaniment for visual images. Luke Fowler reverses that equation: in A Grammar for Listening (Parts 1- 3) the subject is sound. Collaborating with sound artist Lee Patterson, whose environmental recordings capture sounds that are usually unheard: recordings of underwater life, the pulsations of neon lights and the explosions of burning walnuts to produce a dialogue between looking and listening.
(http://www.britishartshow.co.uk/events/nottingham)
Chris Marker. La Jetée. 1962
My 2010 year finished with new discovery - Chris Marker.
His book with the same title says about it:
Chris Marker is filmmaker, photographer, traveler, and he likes cats.
His film La Jetée(1962) is on youtube:
His book with the same title says about it:
Chris Marker is filmmaker, photographer, traveler, and he likes cats.
His film La Jetée(1962) is on youtube:
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)