Performance

A desktop video in five parts that modestly propose ways of existing with or against history and politics.

... part Bronx reminiscence, part landscape fantasy; part morality play, part melodrama. A film in many parts with monologue segments written by James Strahs for Willem Dafoe, Spalding Gray, Ron Vawter, Peyton Smith and Luche Sacker.

Featuring actors from the Wooster Group.

–– Ken Kobland

75 people speak 50 languages sometimes simultaneously.

This title is also available on Sympathetic Vibrations: The Videoworks of Paul Kos.

There is no need to "sin" because Hell is here, just go to the window and peek out…. It’s next door and is on display in this movie.

… See the poet tumble down a flight of stairs as he avoids the clutches of a behemoth babe who practices witchcraft and carries plastic flowers.

Designed as the centerpiece of Eiko & Koma’s three-year Retrospective Project, Raven is a radically scalable work. It can be performed in a theater, a gallery, outdoors, or at any other special site, and its length can vary depending on the context of the presentation. Raven’s genesis is in the concept underlying Eiko & Koma’s 1991 Land. The earth is precious in part because it can be unyielding. The landscape does not squander its riches on us; we have to negotiate our survival.

In i am wise enough to die things go (2023), Syms explores the idea of psychosis through an unnamed protagonist reciting a monologue. Responding to the work of iconic animator Chuck Jones, Syms transfers the form and narrative structure of an animated short into live-action. Working with the inherent challenges and restrictions brought about by this sort of translation, she delves into both the breaking up of images and the breakdown of the psyche.

"One of Baldessari’s most ambitious and risky efforts. Seated and holding a sheaf of papers, he proceeds to sing each of Sol LeWitt’s 35 conceptual statements to a different pop tune, after the model of Ella Fitzgerald Sings Cole Porter. What initially presents itself as humorous gradually becomes a struggle to convey Lewitt’s statements through this arbitrary means."

—Helene Winer, “Scenarios/Documents/Images,” Art in America 61 (March 1973)

Love is in the air as newlyweds chomp on cake, brides marry werewolves, and hatchets fall on adulterous heads. Amid the real-life romance is mixed the real-life business of directing my film students in a tale of run-away passions for the silver screen. 

The works on Reel 3 were produced during 1972-73, and re-mastered in 2005 when several newly available titles were added. The focus here is on social relationships and attaining the perfect life, be it through making the right decision, getting something for nothing, or just having it all. Many of the comic skits parody television ads and infomercials, and Man Ray has to make some consumer choices.

Four tales about cannibal monsters narrated and performed by the Waiãpi Indians. “We have made the video,” say the Waiãpi, “to teach people to be more careful with monsters they never heard about. Even a white man can be eaten as he goes into the forest.”

Directed by Vincent Carelli and Dominique Gallois.

Edited by Tutu Nunes.

In Waiãpi with English subtitles.

Interrupting the nightly news in an act of guerrilla television, Gómez-Peña returns to the persona of a Chicano-Aztec veejay—"The Mexican who talks back, the illegal Mexican performance artist with state of the art technology"—to elaborate the complications of American identity. This post-NAFTA Cyber Aztec pirate commandeers the television signal from his underground "Vato bunker", where virtual reality meets Aztec ritual. Gómez-Peña embodies the doubly radical Chicano performance artist, delivering radical ideas through a radical form of entertainment.

Swamp Swamp and Wurmburth are each comprised of a series of tightly cropped shots of small, hand-made table-top sculptures or "sets".  Paint and many other materials that behave like paint (i.e. lotion, shampoo, foodstuffs) are blown through these environments with plastic tubing and forced air.  Each edited collection of shots makes an endless cycle of primal sludge and rupturing goo.

This strange, lyrical performance video diary is a millennial reflection on the impossibility to "reveal" one’s self in stormy times such as ours. The piece is also about the intricate connections between performance and everyday life; about language, identity, love, nostalgia and activism amidst the California apocalypse.

In New Report, Wynne Greenwood and K8 Hardy are reporters at WKRH - the feminist news station that is "pregnant with information." As Henry Irigaray (Hardy) and Henry Stein-Acker-Hill (Greenwood), these two lesbian feminist artists stage reports on and with their friends, their social herstories, their nerves, and their bodies. It is urgently broadcast live to the newsroom and out to their studio audience.

Produced in 1974, and restaged in 2002, near Pilot Butte in southwestern Wyoming.

The artist makes a pilot light using ice, which he has fashioned into a magnifying lens to start a small fire.

This piece was originally shot using 1/2" open reel video and later incorporates edits from DV video.

In a fusion of text and image, Rosler re-presents the NBC Nightly News and other broadcast reports to analyze their deceptive syntax and capture the confusion intentionally inserted into the news script. The artist addresses the fallibility of electronic transmission by emphasizing the distortion and absurdities that occur as a result of technical interference. Stressing the fact that there's never a straight story, Rosler asserts her presence in a character-generated text that rolls over the randomly erased images, isolating excerpts from the broadcast sources.

This structurally simple video, shot through Benglis's apartment window, contains a, "distinct disjuncture between the visual and aural components of the work. The viewer, initially presented with a contemplative view of nature, is frequently distracted by the chatter of a radio. As the camera zooms in and out, it establishes a dichotomy: indoors and outdoors, the man-made and the natural.

Making himself into a “minimalist” prop sculpture in the manner of Richard Serra, Nauman moves through various poses in realtion to the floor and wall. While other sculptors were using wood planks, pieces of lead, or sheets of steel, Nauman uses his body to explore the space of the room, turning it into a sort of yardstick to investigate and measure the dimensions of the space. This title was in the original Castelli-Sonnabend video art collection.

A three-day teleplay done at CalArts takes a sordid behind-the-scenes look at an art school professor’s life.

Adapted from their performance work Fur Seal (1977), this video is the first and only outdoor work Eiko & Koma created for video. The piece was filmed at Pt. Reyes, California in November 1983. Eiko & Koma were very cold because of the water and wind–so were the film crew! Eiko edited the piece with the help of Jeff Bush.

This work was originally designed with no sound and was 19 minutes long but in this shorter version, Eiko added the sound of sea waves.

Burns and Discenza continue to battle invisible forces with the use of various children’s toys, cars and a mechanical digger, a paddling pool, rubber rings and ladders. Eventually they escape the scene of their distress in a hatchback car.

This title is also available on HalfLifers: Rescue Series and HalfLifers: The Complete History.

Joan Logue cuts down considerably Andy Warhol’s projection of fifteen minutes of fame, with this compilation of 30-Second Spots. Produced to be broadcast as individual, mini-documentaries on the included artists and their work, Logue’s short interpretive video pieces feature a prime time selection of over twenty New York performance artists, composers, dancers and writers, including Maryanne Amacher, Robert Ashley, David Behrman, John Cage, Lucinda Childs, Douglas Ewart, Simone Forti, Jon Gibson, Philip Glass, Spalding Gray, Joan Jonas, Bill T.

"The video Emission found its origin in three performances which I wrote between 1988 and 1991. In their original form, the performances dealt with sex, romance, and communication technologies. The video elaborates upon these themes to speak of how human beings exist in a margin between nature and technology, and works towards confounding any simplified analysis of this worn-out duality.

Originally part of a larger sculptural installation using prospector's tools, this tape reenacts the search for "Olga," a miner's wife who disappeared on her honeymoon in 1936. As Paul and Marlene Kos call out, "Olga... Olga...", the camera scans the Wyoming wilderness, and their search becomes ritualistic, the repetitive calls building in intensity and breaking down into chanted moans.

In Mondo Toronto, Glennda travels to Toronto to visit Liza LaBruce (Bruce LaBruce). Liza gives Glennda a tour of the city's public parks, with specific reference to their role in gay culture. Following this, Glennda attends a party that LaBruce is hosting and interviews partygoers, including Scott Thompson from The Kids in the Hall and Amy Nitrate.