Second Annual Video Marathon

• 12:00 PM
  Children’s Program
• 2:00 PM
  From Art in General’s Submission Program
• 3:30 PM
  American Psychodrama: Sigmund Freud vs. Henry Ford
• 4:50 PM
  
• 6:50 PM
  One on One
• 8:30 PM
  
• 9:40 PM
  Art in General’s Submission

Maria Fernanda Cardosa and Ross Harley, Cardoso Flea Circus (1997, 9:00 min.)
Marvel at Brutus, the strongest flea on earth, pull a locomotive that weighs 160,000 times his own weight. See the flea ballerinas dressed in micro-tutus, dance to the rhythms of Tango! Hold your breath as the highwire artists defy gravity on the tightrope and swing precariously on a miniature trapeze. Tremble as Fearless Alfredo risks his life at the High dive! And much more!

Microcosmos (20:00 min. excerpt )
A very close look at the wonderful life of insects.

Nara Garber, Pas de Deux (1999, 18:35 min.)
A short black and white film about an unlikely meeting of two mitsfits: a dancer who can_t laugh until he meets the mime…

The Wrong Trousers (24:00 min.)
A suspenseful claymation about a brave and faithful dog saving his silly master from a wicked penguin.

Heather Freeman, auf Himmel jungen Glucks or the First Clouds in the skies of Youthful Happiness (1999, 1:52 min.)
A portrait of the emotional state of jealousy, using Das Eiifersuchstduett (the jealousy Duet) from Kurt Weill’s Die Dreigroschenoper (The ThreePenny Opera) as a springboard, the artist digitally manipulates both the song and images of herself to accentuate the competitive and self-devouring nature of violent jealousy.

Masayuki Kawai, Time Study #1 (1998, 1:20 min.)
Interested in the discourse formed by repetition, the artist uses the simple device of a speaking alarm clock to disrupt our understood systems of time and recollection thereof.

Joel Baird, The Living (1999, 6:13 min.)
A woman’s nocturnal discoveries told by the glow of flashlight.

Ji-Hoon Park, Making Sculpture with a Substance in It (1999, 1:40 min.)
The title tells it all

Maria Mencia, The Tongue (1996, 4:14 min.)
Animation of a graphic image portraying the tongue and mouth. Each movement represents an English phonetic sound which can be heard on the film at different speeds in relation to the appearance of the image.

Neils Neilsen, The Gods of Beauty (1995, 29:18 min.)
Mona Webb, protégé of Aldous Huxley now at almost 80 years old, is a fascinating outsider visionary artist who takes the filmmakers on a tour of her home in Madison, Wisconsin.

Masayuki Kawai, Time Study #2 (1998, 1:20 min.)
Again, the artist investigates systems formed by repetition, layering the speaking alarm clock to further confuse and disrupt the viewer.

Jeanine Oleson, Mini-Movie (1998, 3:30 min.)
A tongue and cheek rescue story depicting the love between a woman and her horse.

Debra Bosio Riley, Silent Blue Soap and Intermission (1998, 9:30 min. excerpt)
People as puppets or puppets as people. This use of soap opera images begs the questions.

Adriana Arenas, Sweet Illusion (1997, 2:13 min.)
The artist takes a cotton candy machine to the top of a mountain. There, oversize cotton candy sticks were continuously wound and stocked on the mountain until the moisture caused the rapid decay of the sweet web leaving a bamboo stick and some beautiful imagery.

Heather Freeman, 3 Corner Wall (1999, 4:47 min.)
Using both her own and footage from Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker (1993), Freeman creates a synesthetic environment, evoking femaleness, isolation, distance and amnesia.

Chris Stansfield, The Big Drive Bye (1998, 4:52 min.)
Realistic albeit bleak stab at the war on drugs in South Central.

Keith Sanborn, Mirror (1999, 6:00 min.)
An attempt to reach Joan of Arc in her final moments as she beholds the beatific vision. The title was suggested by Hildegard von Bingen’s “O Felix Anima”, which is used as part of the soundtrack.

Guy Ben Ner, Berkeley’s Island (1999, 16:45 min.)
“To the Child who steals and the child who masturbates, to exist is to be seen by adults, and since these secret activities take place in solitude, they do not exist.” J.P. Sartre/Saint Genet

Wayne Hodge, Print Club version 1.0 (1999, 2:53 min.)
This quirky short reveals an unexpected patron in the photo booth “Print Club”.

Gentry Fry, Ruth Ann’s Etiquette (1999, 23:00 min.)
Based on a true story, this short film covers a day in the lives of a newly released convict and a savvy male prostitute. The convict finds that with nowhere to go, his new freedom is an illusion. The prostitute, who has developed a complicated set of signals for regular customers, believes he is immune from danger. The two cross paths in a comedy of errors that changes both of their lives forever.

Organized by Nelson Henricks (Video Data Bank, Chicago)
This humorous selection of performance-oriented videos maps a trajectory between consumer society and the psychoanalytic confession.

Animal Charm, Stuffing (1998, 3:30 min.)
The Videoworks of Animal Charm-Volume One. Animal Charm is a collaborative project of Rich Bott and Jim Fetterly. Through appropriation and re-assemblage, these intriguing works upset the hypnotic spectacle of TV viewing by displacing its logic and inviting viewers to make new connections among its codes and conventions. While this disruption is playful, it also reveals the tragic underbelly of corporate message-making-the way it appropriates and suppresses nature and “unpredictability”, the way it preys on human vulnerability, and the way it shamelessly celebrates mediocrity and distraction.

Halflifers, Control Corridors (1997, 11:00 min.)
In a fictional conduit space, language and function are recontextualized as two navigators struggle to re-assess the nature of their mission while engaged in an eternal cycle of maintenance and communication routines.

Joe Gibbons and Emily Breer, The Phony Trilogy (Caddy, Pool Boy, The Horror) (1997, 3:15 min.)
A real-time video-meets-digital-animation trilogy of shorts featuring the highly excited and mildly delusional Joe Gibbons. As the Phony, Gibbons recounts his influence among rock legends Iggy Pop and Brian Wilson. Brilliant computer animation superimpositions by Emily Breer provide a additional layer of biting commentary.

Anne McGuire, I’m Crazy and You’re Not Wrong (1997, 11:00 min.)
A wonderfully witty work about nostalgia and desperation. Ann McGuire portrays a Kennedy-era singer performing in the space where theater meets television. McGuire’s Garlandesque gestures provide both a sense of tragedy and humor. I’m Crazy and You’re Not Wrong weaves narrative, performance, memory and history into an ironic and haunting work of unique proportions.

Animal Charm, Ashley (1997, 9:00 min.)

Halflifers, Actions in Action (1997, 10:30 min.)
The first work in the new Action series plunges into a world of frantic heroes trapped in a continual crisis of dissolution and reification. An ordinary domestic setting is recast as a psychoactive landscape in which the concept of function becomes situational and fluid. Only through the strategic application of organic and inorganic “devices” can this zone be successfully navigated and the mission be saved?

Anne McGuire, The Telling (1998, 3:00 min.)
McGuire employs genre conventions derived from popular culture (the variety show, the talk show and the rock video); her presence as a performer amplifies the sense of strangeness that lies at the heart of the familiar, creating a vertigo between form and content.

Joe Gibbons, Multiple Barbie (1998, 10:00 min.)
Part of Gibbons’ series of tapes on Barbie and Ken and shot in pixelvision, Multiple Barbie features the artist as a smooth talking psychoanalyst imploring the silent doll to explore her multiple personalities in order to purge their power from her psyche.

Maria Fernanda Cardosa and Ross Harley, Cardoso Flea Circus (1997, 9:00 min.)
The flea circus exists! It’s for real! In a world of internet and high technology, there still remains something so arcane, so simple and extraordinary, so absolutely incredible as a circus of educated fleas. Marvel at the powerful Brutus, the strongest flea on earth, pull a locomotive that weighs 160,000 times his own weight. See the flea ballerinas dressed in micro-tutus, dance to the rhythms of Tango! Hold your breath as the high wire artists defy gravity on the tightrope and swing precariously on a miniature trapeze. Tremble as Fearless Alfredo risks his life at the High dive! And much more! Nobody believed it was possible to train fleas. But Maria Fernanda Cardoso has proven them wrong.

Anne McGuire, When I Was a Monster (1996, 5:00 min.)
A performance about the artist’s experience in the aftermath of an accident.

Animal Charm, Lightfoot Fever (1996, 2:00 min.)
Animal Charm’s interventions in this program are homemade commercials and info-mercials, sampled from a reservoir of neglected or useless images.

Video & New Technologies: Challenges for Contemporary Cuban Art
Video & Nuevas Technologias: Desafios de la Arte Cubana Contemporanea
This program was developed under the curatorial direction of Ivan Giroud, Director of the Festival of New Latin American Film, Sara Vega, Specialist of the Cinematica de Cuba, and Luisa Marisy, Curator and Specialist of the Ludwig Foundation of Cuba for the event, Tiempo & Espacio: desafios de la contemporaneidad, presented in April 1999. The selection is of works realized in video; works which represent the field of experimentation and video-creation representing a range from sophisticated experiments to simple forms of narration.

Enrique Alvarez, Espectador (The Spectator) (1989, 6:00 min.)
This film represents a trap for the spectator; trapped in the nets of a television world, totally absorbed and held prisoner by his own fears.

Enrique Alvarez, Amor y Dolor (Love and Pain) (1990, 6:00 min.)
Based on the poem by Jaques Prevert, “El Desayuno” (“The Breakfast”)a story line is constructed about the falling out of love and the frustration between two people.

Pável Giroud, SPOT (1997, 5:00 min.)
Four stories about encounters, where the suit and the name of the author are the true protagonists.

Pável Giroud, Recuerdo de mi Boda (Memory of my Wedding) (1997, 7:00 min.)
A story based on home videos of a wedding

Pável Giroud, 5-rrring (1998, 3:15 min.)
While sleeping with his lover, a man receives an enigmatic phone call.

Raúl Cordero, Mambo in Miami (1998, 5:00 min.)

Raúl Cordero, Kilometro (1998, 1:00 min.)
An automobile drives a kilometer on the National Highway

Luisa Marisy, Cruzando la Puerta (Crossing the Door) (1997, 7:00 min.)
Self-Portrait. Based on photographic clips and the repeated closings of doors, we delve into the intimate world of this woman.

René de Jesús Peña González, Autorretrato, la version conveniente (Self-Portrait.The convenient version) (1997, 4:00 min.)
An imaginary construction based on the artist’s body and family photos.

Juan C. Alom, El Metodo Moderno (The Modern Method) (1999, 5:00 min.)
Constructed history based on the basic texts of an English lesson.

Tania Bruguera, Cabeza Abajo (Upside down) (1997, 10:00 min.)
A work realized from a performance which took place at The Western Front, Vancouver. Contraposition of images, and sound based on the music of the Cuban Nueva Trova.

Cuba/Canada Intervideo, El Camello (The Camel) (1998, 2:00 min.)
Cuba’s popular mass transit bus system, named El Camello (the Camel) during one of its routes through the streets of Havana.

Cuba/Canada Intervideo, Portazos Arritmicos (The Arrhythmic Slamming of Doors) (1998, 1:45 min.)
Doors, which act a limits or borders, put a stop to human curiosity.

Cuba/Canada Intervideo, Cooking Show (1998, 1:30 min.)
A woman prepares dinner for her two guests.

Felipez Dulzaides, 3 OJ’s (Tres naranjas) (Three oranges) (1999, 5:00 min.)
A work in progress based on the luck of three oranges which the artist rolls through the streets.

Juan C. Alom and Cirenaica Moreira, Una Harley Recorre la Habana (A Harley Davidson motorcycle journeys through Havana) (1998, 37:00 min.)
The history of a Harley Davidson in Cuba, told by the protagonists.

Organized by Euridice Arratia
Examining and eavesdropping on everyday interactions between people has been one of the favorite subjects of video art from its very origins. And within human relationships, what can be more visually alluring, more exciting to explore and dissect than the dynamics of a couple? One on One is a selection of video works that take a direct or oblique look at different aspects and rituals of relationships; from their quasi-comic absurdity to their moments of sadness; from their intense eroticism to their occasionally predatory violence.

Tom Kalin, Darling Child (1993, 1:45 min.)
A visual poem where Kalin uses an economy of means – spare visuals of an interior space and minimalist music – to create an evocative, metaphoric interpretation of a text by Truman Capote.

Amy Jenkins, Closures (1996, 2: 30 min.)
The work moves in and out of a world simultaneously Lilliputian and magnified. The landscape of the home as viewed by the adolescent—its illusion of stability, its memories, including the first sexual encounter, and the inevitable departure, unfold before us.

Bonita Makuch, Oh Beautiful (1999, 6:00 min.)
A meditation on a collective fantasy that addresses our culture’s moral preoccupation with sex as well as the extent to which we are titillated by public probing into private spaces.

Alix Pearlstein, Partners (1998, 16.40 min.)
Pearlstein uses an action figure and a paper cutout as surrogate performance partners to explore a wide range of identities. She interacts with these partners in a series of attempts to connect with an ‘other,’ physically, psychologically and emotionally."

Raul Cordero, Reportage (1998, 7:00 min.)
The surreptitious videotaping of a couple having a heated argument on a street in Havana, Cuba, serves as a point of departure for a commentary about the blurred boundaries of documentary and fiction, art and reportage.

Ximena Cuevas, Paper Bodies (1998, 7:00 min.)
The videomaker playfully draws from Mexican popular culture and autobiographical elements to tell a story of love, jealousy and breakup against a backdrop of a sentimental romantic ballad.

Shelly Silver, Small Lies, Big Truth (1999, 18:48 min.)
Within the rather recent genre of the sensationalized Congressional testimony of Monica Lewinsky comes this commentary on morality, voyeurism and the joys and banality of sex in the late 20th century.

Ken Feingold and Nora Fisch, La vida es una herida absurda (1993, 3:00 min.)
The juxtaposition of moving image and song (a tango) is used to explore the unexpected humor and pathos that can emerge from the process of translation.

Rea Tajiri, Little Murders (1998, 19:44 min.)
An other-worldly and often dark musical and dance piece about the complex relationship between two members of an Asian-American family.

Vito Acconci, Remote Control (1971, 62:00 min.)
The two-channel piece is an exercise in manipulation and control between artist and subject, male and female. On separate channels, the viewer sees. Acconci and Katy Dillon sitting alone in wooden boxes in different rooms, each facing a static camera. The isolation and displacement of the couple, and the viewer’s voyeuristic position, serve to heighten the undercurrent of dominance and submission.

Neil Goldberg, My Parents Read Dreams I’ve Had About Them (1998, 8:30 min.)

Brock Enright, Killers (1999, 8:00 min)
an interview with a young man who killed his three friends

Brock Enright, Stickers on Their Ass (1999, 2:00 min.)
A boy, bananas, sparks, and Tom Selleck

Brock Enright, Cats on the Couch (1999, 0:40 min.)
Peeny Pea Remembers What it is like to be in Love

Brock Enright, Fruit Bats (1999, 1:00 min.)
Hungry Boys and a Dog

La Vista, The Downtown Cinema Club
Presents a full program of motion pictures, pearls from 1947 through 1990 drawn from the generous public archive at the Donnell Media Center of the New York Public Library. Over the past 2 years we have delved into the murky depths of the world’s greatest 16mm public film collection and are very excited to present some of our most outstanding discoveries. Titles for the evening include:

The Reality of Karel Appel (1962, 13:00 min.)

Your Closest Neighbor (1971, 7:00 min.)

The Way of a Trout (1970, 25:00 min.)

Plant a Seed (1975, 3:00 min.)

Les Maitres Fou (1955, 30:00 min.)

Un Chant D’Amour (1947, 20:00 min.)

Cosmic Ray (1961, 4:00 min.)

Rehearsals for Extinct Anatomies (1988, 14:00 min.)