"I don't put myself into my movies because that would be too much--my pictures reflect my own feelings. So hopefully it's entertaining. Otherwise I can't bear looking at them, ha ha!"
–– Mike Kuchar
These are the ghosts of a haunted civilization, a culture of progress that hides the social and political horror behind the streets. These are the haunted figures in the Capitalocene era. A sinister dance of macabre abstraction.
Appropriated network-TV footage of Jimmy Carter’s "I see risk" speech from the 1980 Democratic Convention meets Reagan’s gloomy inaugural ride through D.C.: "If you succumb to a dream world, you’ll wake up to a nightmare."
In this video, Glennda Orgasm and Jackie Offie attend Lollapalooza '95 on Randall's Island, New York.
Arguably, the most successful of the four “Gerald Ford’s America” shows was “Chic To Sheik,” a TVTV tour of the private culture of the official Washington.
An Unangam Tunuu elder describes cliffs and summits, drifting birds, and deserted shores. A group of students and teachers play and invent games revitalizing their language. A visitor wanders in a quixotic chronicling of earthly and supernal terrain.
Live in San Diego is my first live performance. David Antin, my mentor when I was a graduate student at the University of California at San Diego, encouraged me to perform in front of an audience. Why?
The Greek island of Syros is visited by a series of unexpected guests. Immutable forms, outside of time, aloof observants to our human condition.
This video was produced as a part of Eiko & Koma's exhibition Time is not Even, Space is not Empty which opened at the Zilkha Gallery in Wesleyan University in the fall of 2009.
An experimental documentary that asks “What is Hip Hop?” Media Assassin deals with popular magazine coverage of the black music scene and efforts to define the new musical forms emerging since the late 80s.
75 people speak 50 languages sometimes simultaneously.
Employing the 'case studies' of Helen Keller, Genie the 'wild child' and Angel at My Table author Janet Frame, Goss's extraordinary video contemplates the struggle to be heard, to break free from the prison of the incommunicable self.
Sister City channels moments of paradoxical experience — of being a superhero or being for sale — into reverberant conduits, articulating a nature divided by panes of glass or suspended in watery solitudes.
"There are three scenes in this work, all reflecting a changing sense of time. Each has a voiceover soundtrack with a similar structure, but with different information.
A voyage through a California Christmas that begins in the turd-smeared streets of San Francisco and ends in a botanical wonder of ethnic endurance and faith. A journey that incorporates pelicans, palaces, and platters of plenty.
Provincetown, Cape Cod.
A reconstructed 'landscape' inspired by a drive down 6A. The norm when driving of watching the landscape approaching and receding, and the side-show of dioramas.
–– Ken Kobland
Europlex tracks distinct cross-border activities through the Spanish Moroccan borderlands and seeks to make these obscure paths visible.
In her overt challenge to conventional modes of femininity and sexuality, Hester Scheurwater confronts the viewer with her own body.
Though difficult at times to understand what is happening due to audio damage, this tape provides rich historical documentation of a protest on Wall Street in May of 1971.
This video is about two fictional characters, as in letters, and two fictional characters, as in anthropomorphized mice, falling in love.
A massive video drama made with my students at the San Francisco Art Institute that chronicles a man and wife parting ways amid the clatter of dice in a gambling resort on a painted desert of painted women and panting men.
We asked 12 people to walk 4 identical routes through the course of a day and a night, always attempting to repeat the manner of the first time.
A vain, self centered mother competes with her daughter in the world of carnivorous men and sleazy movies.
Between basement and stoop, PBRs and politics, two bros discuss rock music history, protest, incarcerated relatives, fine cheese, the book plot of Bridge to Terabithia, and lesbian girlfriends.
The Erosions series develops the concepts of oxidation, wear and entropy from an audiovisual and cinematographic perspective. This is Barranca (Canyon).
To counteract the talkie I had done with graduate student the day before, this undergrad project has no dialogue but just a steady stream of images we dreamed up on the spot.
The artist follows the British government's advice while self-isolating at home during the COVID-19 lockdown.
Nine Hamlet RGB engages a simple algorithm to destabilize the timing of the red, green and blue frame sequential display system while incorporating fragmented, appropriated “to be or not to be” excerpts from nine Hamlet films.
Touch Parade is a 5-channel HD video installation consisting of crush (9:22 min. loop,) squeeze-2-pop (5:49 min. loop,) wading (3:41 min. loop,) glove love (6:58 min.
Dear features the interior world of two teenage Chinese girls in New York City, whose diary entries reveal their concerns related to growing up as immigrants amidst the ever-gentrifying landscape of Chinatown.
High Water was filmed in post-Katrina New Orleans and the surrounding Louisiana wetlands, one of the fastest disappearing coastal areas on the planet.
In Final Exit, an aged one is confronted with his options in blunt terms. Does he want to drag out his existence, increasingly infirm and a burden to his caretakers, or go quietly before resentment overwhelms sentiment?
Thai conceptual performance video artist Kamin Lertchaiprasert (b.1964) anchors his work through a commitment to the core principles of Buddhism and his definitive goal to create “life-specific” rather than “site-specific” art. For Lertchaiprasert, the purpose of art is to reclaim the meaningfulness of human activities and collaboration. The artist describes how his techniques of production and his choice of medium ranges from environmental works, to formal sculptures made from recycled materials, to the use of relational aesthetics in the creation of collaborative workshops. With reference to cultural and religious differences between East and West, Lertchaiprasert also posits how the philosophy of art under Buddhist ideals can be a matter of survival, helping us to better understand the essence of being alive. -Faye Gleisser
You live somewhere, walk down the same street 50, 100, 10,000 times, each time taking in fragments, but never fully registering THE PLACE. Years, decades go by and you continue, unseeing, possibly unseen.
Kuyenda N’kubvina looks at how thought and culture propagate in the slender nation of Malawi.
This is the invocation to the gods, the incense to the gods. A kinetic dance to the gods.
A soft-focus close-up of mouth and lips is set to the sounds of lovemaking. A soft-porn video on how easy it is to get porn.
“Mining an ironic vein by turning technology against itself, AlienNATION undercuts the sociological ramifications of modern living.
This video focuses on the troubles at a large hospital beset with calamity and vice. We meet the doctors and nurses and get a glimpse of their personal traumas.
Benning gives a chronology of her crushes and kisses, tracing the development of her nascent sexuality.
A silent, moving poem, this video incorporates the “voices” of a wide variety of text sources into one scrolling script.
This tape deviates from the more purely formal investigations of Snyder’s earlier work; it has no soundtrack and uses camera images exclusively.
In imaginary landscapes where trees talk and frogs turn to handsome princes, Pizzly Bear is a story of a cross between a Grizzly and Polar Bear.
A Two Spirited woman surrounded by spy signals and psychiatric walls attempts to make sense of love, global paranoia, and her place in the history of colonialism.
Made with my students at the San Francisco Art Institute, this video drama explores the thrills and terrors of the Big Top as a travelling circus comes to town bringing with it the promise of cotton candy, eternal youth, and high-flying beefcake.
The title implies a relationship between the two persons in the frame of the image. The woman in the foreground appears somewhat sad, the man in the background concerned.
Dad’s Stick features three objects that my father showed me shortly before he died. Two of these were so well-used that their original forms and functions were almost completely obscured. The third object seemed to be instantly recognizable, but it turned out to be something else entirely.
Rong Xiang is a work on architectural replicas, piracy and its consequences. It is a comparison of LeCorbusier's chapel Notre Dame Du Hautin Ronchamp, France with its exact replica in Zhengzhou, Henan province East China.
This is an edited excerpt of Eiko and Iris McCloughan's experiment working over Zoom on May 5, 2020 as a part of Eiko's Virtual Creative Residency hosted by Wesleyan University.
A bruise on her face. The woman has white makeup, bright red lips and dark-rimmed eyes, which are largely covered by her hair. Without uttering a word, she hits her face, head and upper body.