Jesse Walker | July 10, 2008, 8:30am
The great beatnik filmmaker Bruce Conner has died at age 74. No director has surpassed Conner’s ability to assemble preexisting found footage into something entirely new; in experimental movies rangling from his Zapruder-meets-Owsley short Television Assassination to his Devo video Mongoloid to his haunting dream-film Valse Triste, he laid the groundwork for the current explosion of remixes and mash-ups.
This should not stop you from taking the 5:10 to Dreamland…
Since the first time I saw a Bruce Conner film, I have been haunted by the images he produced. I am sure that I am not the only one. In fact, I am almost sure that the Science fiction writer William Gibson was haunted by Bruce Conner’s films when he wrote the book Pattern Recognition. If he wasn’t, I was.
This is one of the paintings I like of Martin. The colours and objects are simple. But the way he presents it is very impressive. This is a painting I have seen in London last year. The work that he got on his website is different. (check his website: http://www.michaelcraig-martin.com/) In this painting the use of colour is strong, the colour of the other paintings are bland. But still he uses everyday objects.
One art pieces that I really love is by the artist Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba.
I saw some of his work on Malmö Konsthall in Sweden 2005.
“Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba is a Vietnam-based artist who works with film, photography, conceptual objects and installations. In a long series of works he has used Vietnam’s complex history as a starting point and created “alternative histories” and “memorial projects”. Since 2001 he has produced a series of four films recorded in water.”
/ Malmö Konsthal - http://www.konsthall.malmo.se/
The films show different things, all under water. In one of them you see young men struggling with getting their bike taxis (and if I remember also wheelchairs further and further out into the sea, dragging them along the sea floor. In another of the films white “tents” are set up on the sea floor. In yet another balls of colour are realized from a “machine” places on the sea floor whilst a huge asian dragon is moveing around in the water above.
The films are totally capturing. It is something with this pointless struggle in the films that is so beautiful, and bizarre. Also the total tranquility is amazing.
I later read that the film title, In Memorial Project Nha Trang, Vietnam: Towards the Complex – For the Courageous, the Curious and the Cowards, was a tribute to the millions of boat people who entrusted their fate to the waves, and that Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba wanted to show the suffering and struggle for survival which has plagued the Vietnamese people both during and after the war with the United States.
I personally like the work better without that explanation. It is truly beautiful in itself.
In class I also mentioned Wanås sculpturepark (http://www.wanas.se/). Kind of crappy webpage but fantastic park with works by Dan Graham, Jenny Holzer, Charlotte Gyllenhammar and many more.
My favorite thing at this moment is music. The tracks I listen the most now are from Sunn O)))& Boris from the album Altar. What can I say about it. They make use of long dark tones in combination with a kind of improvisating drums and piano. In some songs is a singer, which sings for me in an innocent way. Together gives an optimistic and dramatic effect on me.
it’s a book…with pictures from the police archive 1965-1985
the first time i saw a picture from the book…not to long ago…i thought it was staged…theater but my friend told me it was real.
the picture i saw had a woman in it…she was all dressed up to go to a party…make up and everything…on her way to the party she got hit by TWO cars…the police first on the scene took the picture…the dressed up woman folded over a lamppost…looking in the camera…dead.
absolute horror if you know the story but beautiful picture…
This is the painting on which I had the most moving reaction. I saw it in London and it moved me because the way he painted his parents remindes me of my own parents. The mother is painted as a person that is alway listening and beining there for you and the father sitting and doing his own thing a little bit in the background. And I love the way he painted it and the use of colors.
Reposting my response to Tori’s message, since for some reason my reply doesn’t show up….
As I was saying, reading the earlier post, the phrase ‘being moved by a language not understood’ somehow immediately made me think of one of my all time favorite films, Orson Welle’s interpretation of Kafka’s novel, The Trial - in my opinion a great masterpiece which puts in pictures the unexplainable and some of the absurdities of reality …
For some reason this is not liking my youtube embed link? :
Here are some paintings by Cy twombley. The collection of four pieces. “the four seasons” i saw three times in three different musea i really really love them. I cannot take my eyes away from it.
this is the jewish museum in berlin, it’s a beautiful building made by Daniel Libeskind.The museum is really impressive and some spaces were almost making me cry. You totally loose your orientation because the building has so many weird spaces and in a way it feels like your al the time not walking straight, especially in the garden. If you are going to berlin don’t miss this museum but be prepared because it totally knocked me of my feet.
