Sixth Annual Video Marathon

• 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM
  Art in General Education Program Video Works
• 1:00 PM to 1:30 PM
  Best of Transmediale.03 Video Selection
• 1:30 PM to 3:30 PM
  New Russian Video
• 3:30 PM to 4:30 PM
  Pushing Paper
• 4:30 PM to 5:30 PM
  Joan Jonas Presentation and Discussion
• 6:00 PM to 6:30 PM
  Dinner Break
• 6:30 PM to 8:00 PM
  Homeland Insecurity and 15 Minutes of Hate
• 8:00 PM to 9:15 PM
  Art in General Submissions: Program I
• 9:15 PM to 10:30 PM
  Art in General Submissions: Program II
• 10:00 PM to 12:00 AM
  DJ Hot Pocket will spin and show ambient work for the closing party.
• 12:00 PM to 12:00 AM
  Video(Por)Traits

In the spring of 2003, Art in General produced a video project as part of its In-School Contemporary Art Program with M.S. 131 (Dr. Sun Yat Sen Intermediate School). This project was the result of a direct collaboration between teaching video artist Wayne Hodge and 802, an eight-grade earth science class taught by Mr. Gene De Castro.

As a class they had examined geological forces (earthquakes, volcanoes, etc.) in an attempt to determine the constructive and destructive aspects of geological phenomena. Taking this concept of construction/deconstruction as the basis for a video project, the students, teacher, and artist worked together to explore these notions in the context of their everyday struggles as young people. The class divided into four production groups, each producing a video that reflected a different view of that concept.

Vambush
A politically charged satire on the wars in Iraq.
By Big Apple Corp: Eric Fong, Debbie Lee, Anita Li, Jansen Li, Alice Moy, Annie Tan, Nicole Wells, and Jennifer Zhang

If Only You Knew
A look at school life from the perspective of an abused child.
By M.T.O.A (Misunderstood Teens Of America): Diane Huang, Amy Lau, Kathy Lee, Jennifer Mei, Massiel Ramos, Kenny Siu, Liyu (Philip) Wu, and Jing Zheng

Pushed Too Far
A video that tackles the issue of popularity and teen suicide.
By The Anthem: Mei Zhen Chan, Esmeralda Fortune, Amy Li, Dan Liu, Sandy Tun, Sheng Weng Wei, Linny Yang, and Tracey Zen

Dreams Can Become Reality
This horro-inspired comedy involves a group of teens in detention.
By E.N.V. (Epyon Neo Vision): Julie Huang, Shi Jie Huang, Carmen Huynh, Kristi Lee, Winnie Lei, Kenny wang, Zeus Wu, and Alan Zeng

Selections from Transmediale International Media Art Festival, Berlin is a compilation of ten of the best international videos from Transmediale ’03. Transmediale is a platform for artistic and critical reflection on the role of digital technologies in present-day society. The festival provides a forum for communication between artists, those working in the media and a wide range of experts and offers a stimulating environment for the presentation of major new digital culture projects.
www.transmediale.de

Bull.Miletic, WHIR, (2002, 12:00 min., US)
The city is no longer a clearly localizable spatial unit, but has transformed itself into an “urban field,” a collection of activities instead of a material structure. It is in a state of continuous decomposition, but is also continually reorganizing and rearranging itself, expanding and shrinking. An encounter with the extraordinary, which is at the core of our downtown life, travels through this video as an undercurrent–and is transferred to the viewer as an experience for the senses.

Gabriela Golder, Cows, (2002, 4:30 min., Argentina)
March 25th, 2002. Rosario, Argentina. About 400 people slaughtered cows that some minutes before had spread on the asphalt when the truck transporting them fell down.

Mark Boswell, Agent Orange, (2002, 5:00 min., US)
“The effects are only superficial”— Agent Orange is a toxic pesticide used during the Vietn Nam War in order to prevent the enemy from hiding. The end result was that both Vietnamese and American soldiers and civilians were permanently exposed to this lethal agent causing death and/or lifelong sickness. Agent Orange uses the political backdrop of the sixties as well as the cinematic avant-garde of the same period—–the toxic consequence of which is the current political crisis, brought to a head by the liquidation of the twin towers.

Ximenia Cuevas, La Tombola, (2001, 7:00 min. Mexico)
This video shows Ximena Cuevas’s infiltration of a hilarious live TV talk show. The artist is an unlikely (and uncooperative?) guest.

Lotte Schreiber, Quadro, (2002, 10:00 min., Austria)
Quadro (Italian for square, picture, frame) is a film portrait of a monumental 1960s apartment block built in the Italian coastal city of Trieste. Resembling a fortress, this imposing structure, laid out in the shape of a square, floats on top of a hill overlooking the city. This edifice embodies its period’s ideas of a social utopia in a bold concrete structure without any scale.

Linda Wallace, Eurovision, (2001, 19:30 min., Australia)
Glamour and kitsch are the main components of the Eurovision Song Contest, but underneath this thick layer of make-up we also recognize a 1950s interpretation of the ‘European idea’. Eurovision, a video interactive, also shown as a single screen work, is investigating the compositional variety that multiple streaming video feeds could can take into a single frame. In terms of its subject matter, Eurovision deals with the kind of legacy left by global European cultural and science/technology media exports from the late fifties to the late sixties.

Andrea Walter, Video Poem 2909, (2001/2002, 1:43 min., Germany)
As the artist states, “Can 103 seconds really show a person? On my research on logic, I asked a professor of logics about emotions. His unwillingness to talk about this topic lead to the creation of Video Poem 2909. From logic professor John N. Crossley of the Institute of Computer Science and Software Engineering at Monash University in Melbourne, I hoped to receive some practical information for uses of logic in daily life. Does logic help in love?–Does logic help to find a parking place? –Can I order more easily at a restaurant using logic? At the editing table, I condensed 21 hours of documentation together with excerpts of TV commercials into the Video Poem 2909 –- a poem about logic and love."

242.pilots live@podewil, (2002, 6:30 min., excerpt from a live video performance)
Utilizing their own custom software, 242.pilots expressively improvise rich, layered video works in real-time (both as a trio, and as soloists). The performance software created by Gilje, Lysakowski, and Ralske allows video to be controlled on-the-fly in a fluid and expressive manner. Improvising as a group, the three artists respond to and interact with each other’s images in a subtle and intuitive way. Images are layered, contrasted, merged, and transformed. The degree of interplay and unspoken communication between the artists is akin to the best free jazz ensembles. The end product is a complex visual conversation: a quasi-narrative exploring degrees of abstraction. Or: a mesmerizing, immersive journey through diverse landscapes.

Maria Cañas & Juan Francisco Romero, Places without Engine, (2001, 3:34 min., Spain)
A selection of two different animation clips belonging to a lengthy series that attempts to draw a geography, both funny and disturbing, of neurosis, apathy, problems, and desire. A neurotic narrative of discontinuity, mapped out through an accelerated editing, with systematic repetitions and reiterations that are , displayed as “frozen feeling-layers” and that can be endlessly replicated, morphed, and mutated, reflecting on the possibility for narration and stylistic experimentation that the software represents.

Chris Bowman, afterlife, (2002, 10:00 min., UK)
afterlife consists of one photograph, three octaves, and ten notes of organized sound. Everything generates from the original image and resolves in it; afterlife is a journey from chaos to a resolution that comes almost too late. The accompanying sound has already climaxed and started its descent towards silence, a metaphor for the lag between experience and perception that aptly applies to the video--an apt metaphor concerning the death of people you love: sometimes you don´t understand what you had until it´s almost gone.

CEC International Partners, the National Contemporary Art Centers of the Russian Federation, PRO-ARTE, and Art in General developed a collaborative project to bring the work of emerging Russian video artists to U. S. audiences for the first time.

Viktor Davydov, The Americanizer, (2001, 1:00 min., Zarechny)
This tape introduces a new method of learning how to be happy, with the help of an absurd device—the “Americanizer.” Modeled on orthodontic prosthetics, the “Americanizer” artificially corrects the “wrong” expression of your face by stretching it into a smile, creating the ideal Western image.

*Natalia Pershina and Olga Egorova, Triumph of Fragility, (2002, 4:40 min., St. Petersburg)
Working together under the cover of the “FFC” (the Factory of Found Clothes), Gluklya and Tzaplya address the issues of vulnerability in modern society and male/female interactions in contemporary Russian society. One can easily sense nostalgia for the ideal community of the past, which seems to be irrevocably lost. The sailors who appear in the film are actual students of the St. Petersburg naval academy. It has become a usual practice for the FFC to involve people from outside the art community.

Andrei Ustinov, Expulsion from Paradise, (2002, 2:00 min., Luga)
This project originates from a live performance that happened in a McDonalds restaurant in Saint Petersburg in May, 2002.

Maxim Iliukhin, The Tunnel (or Escape from Shawshank ), (2001, 4:00 min., Moscow)
In this performance, based on the Hollywood movie The Shawshank Redemption, the main character succeeds in breaking out of prison through a tunnel. The moments in the Hollywood film in which the actor is crawling through the underground tunnel are not shown, so the artist decided to shoot this missing episode himself. It is an attempt to convey the desire of man to come out of darkness into light.

Elena Sharova, Murka’s song, (2003, 0:38 min., Ekaterinburg)
The artist and her cat sing a popular Russian folk song.

Viktor Davydov, Dunia-the-fine-spinner, (1997, 2:38 min., Zarechny)
This is a video illustration of a Russian folk song performed by Shaliapin. The film visualizes the fable of Dunia and his domestic life and mixes it with the artist’s personal observations.

Dmitri Bulnygin, Georgian songs, (2002-2003, 5:00 min., Novosibirsk)
Part documentary, part slapstick, this footage was filmed during a journey to Georgia in the fall of 2002. A character with a big, false nose and mustache represents stereotypes that Georgians are often labeled with – an importunate type, always singing, dancing, and speaking with a harsh accent. At the same time, this image foregrounds images of authentic Georgian life, more in line with the style of a documentary. The work was made in collaboration with Arkasha Khlobystov, a professional musician from the Novosibirsk band “Nuclear Los.”

Elena Sharova, The Year 2094, (2003, 2:07 min., Ekaterinburg)
In early spring, two friends set out to hunt mushrooms, because in spring, when the snow begins to melt, mushrooms have more flesh …and can run really fast.

Valerii Shablovskii, Solo for Excavator, (2003, 5:50 min., St. Petersburg)
The viewer sees two screens, one inside the other: the video screen and the shadows projected onto the wall, which serves as a screen itself. It is as if one illusion created the other—a film inside a film. The main subject of this video work is a kind of “theater of shadows.” In the first part, the moving machines and people absorbed by shadows intermingle in a mysterious interaction, which further develops as a dream within a dream. In the second part, one of the shadows breaks free. This is the shadow of the rapidly moving excavator, which has the voice of a roaring animal and becomes a dominating “living” object—aggressive and threatening.

Evgenii Palamarchuk, To Alice, (2002, 1:08 min., Kaliningrad)
Palamarchuk presents a brief, lyrical story about human relationships in the era of technocracy. A music-box, which seems like a useless piece of antiquity, symbolizes the human soul and its limitations.

Viktor Alimpiev and Sergei Vishnevskii, Rock Music, (2003, 7 min., Moscow)
A group of schoolboys listening to their teacher playing the guitar serves as an analysis of the mythology surrounding juvenile ideas about masculine training.

Arsenii Sergeev and Zasada Tsetkin Group, Temporary/Permanent, (2003, 5:00 min. excerpt, Ekaterinburg)
The theme of this project is the interplay between two notions: the permanent and the temporary. The video features a walk around two cities—Ekaterinburg and Amsterdam. By combining frame-by-frame photography and “live” video, the artists make set in motion that which, in real life, appears to be still and immovable. The standard, similar, regular details are shot at different locations and during different time periods and become animated, beginning to “move” and “breathe.” Things that would ordinarily move are transformed into “constant noise.” At the same time, the transition from one city to the other is almost imperceptible to viewer.

Evgenii Palamarchuk, Half Kampf, (2002, 1:12 min., Kaliningrad)
The narrative of this video work is based on the history of Kaliningrad as a former German territory before World War II. Stylized black and white images, the abandoned shell of the House of Soviets built on the site of the destroyed Royal Palace, and Adolf Hitler’s voice create an atmosphere of totalitarianism that describe the strange circumstances of the region of Kaliningrad.

Galina Myznikova and Sergei Provorov, Alternative Play Station, (2003, 2:40 min., Nizhny Novgorod)
The camera captures children playing an odd game of hide-and-seek, creating a different psychological dimension to the game. The children are posing—sometimes establishing contact with the camera; at other times, camera-shy. They confront a serious “adult” dilemma: to play with their friends or to “play” for the camera. During the game, each of them makes his/her own choice. The camera does not simply record the game and the children playing it—its presence indirectly stimulates an unusual development of the situation.

Anna Kolossova, Invisibility Zone, (2002, 3:37 min., St. Petersburg)
This video is based on sketches made by some members of the Moscow conceptualist group of the 1970s and depicts the performances organized by this group. The artist has digitized and animated these hand-made drawings in order to re-invent and revive these activities in a contemporary media context.

*Dmitri Samsankov, Infantile, (2003, 1:37 min., Moscow)
This video work approaches the most tender and delicate part of what once was and is now non-existent in the post-Soviet space. Samsankov balances minimalism, conceptualism, and traditional forms of the much cherished conventions and nostalgia for the past. The artist combines his love for old Soviet films with visions of a new utopia and the new Russian reality, with its lack of direction and initiative.

*Natalia Mali, The People and the State Together Create an Image of the New Russia, (2003, 7:22 min., Moscow)
Two characters act as representatives of the people and the state respectively. They are engaged in the process of turning an amorphous substance into a well-formed image of a New Russia.

Viktor Alimpiev and Marian Zhunin, Ode, (2001, 34:30 min., Moscow)
How do you captivate people’s minds by delight? In the words of the artists, “To captivate. To convince—through a shout, to seduce—through a norm, to entertain—through boredom. To re-invent our nice habits. To cross a desert—to find surrogate delight, already eternal, as eidetic coffee from chicory.”

Vladimir Seleznev, A Visualization of Domestication, (2003, 3:28 min., Nizhny Tagil)
The artist made three self-portraits using sunflower seeds on the surface of the white snow. Birds were then filmed coming to peck at them, eating up the images and, in turn, the artist. The actions of the immediate spectators present art as consumer entertainment, as a gastronomical pleasure, and as the devouring of the artist by a public seeking entertainment.

New works curated from submissions that address the current political situation.

Mathieu Borysevicz, Focus Group 1 and 2, (2002, 1:20 min., NY)
Focus Group 1 and 2 were pilfered from actual corporate focus group videos. In these instances, it is a production company’s marketing forum and a car manufacturer’s discussion on financing. These pieces are intended to examine utterances and outtakes of speech in a manner that reveals the psychology of discussion or conversation. Even though communication is reduced to a primal level, not only are the traces of patronization, arrogance, and the usual hierarchical dynamics of dialogue present, but also, the conundrum of late capital corporate rhetoric inadvertently booms forth as well.

Damian Catera, Shock and Awe, (2003, 8:30 min., NJ)
Catera offers a re-examination of the September 11th attacks that functions as a critique of the official narrative. Utilizing footage of the attack in combination with information from both mainstream and not-so-mainstream sources, this piece leads towards a re-evaluation of the event within the larger context of US foreign policy and geopolitical strategy.

SunTek Chung, Paper Push, (2002, o:43 min., NY)
Chung uses the public arena for inserting an adjacent occurrence of time and space.

The Speculative Archives, It’s Not My Memory of It, (2003, 24:00 min., CA)
It’s Not My Memory of It is a documentary about secrecy, memory, and documents. Mobilizing specific historical records as memories that flash up in moments of danger, the tape addresses the expansion and intensification of secrecy practices in the current climate of heightened security. A former CIA source recounts his disappearance through shredded classified documents that were painstakingly reassembled by radical fundamentalist students in Iran in 1979. A CIA film, recorded in 1974 but unacknowledged until 1992, documents the burial at sea of six Soviet sailors, in a ceremony which collapses Cold War antagonisms in a moment of death and honor. Images pertaining to a publicly acknowledged, but top-secret, U.S. missile strike in Yemen in 2002 are the source of a concluding reflection on the role of the documents in the constitution of the dynamic of knowing and not knowing. These records are punctuated by fragments of interviews with information management officials from various federal agencies, who distinguish between ‘real’ and ‘protocol’ secrets, explain what it means to ‘neither confirm nor deny’ the existence of records on a given subject, and clarify the process of separating classified from unclassified information. It’s not my memory of it is a project of The Speculative Archive, coordinated by Julia Meltzer and David Thorne.

Mark Kenneth Woods, 6 PM In America, (2003, 4:00 min., Canada)
In a parody of CNN, anchors Brenda Heshe and Mario Faglioni explore and expose the racist and heterosexist rhetoric of North American broadcast news.

Jessica Glass and Paul Caro, 1984/2003, (2003, 5:00 min., NY)
1984/2003 is a an ode to George Orwell’s prescient novel 1984, written in 1949. Collaging audio clips from a variety of recent remarks by President Bush, original music composition, and video footage of communications in New York City, the piece riffs on Big Brother’s three haunting phrases, “‘Ignorance is Strength” , “War is Peace,” and “Freedom is Slavery.”

Missile Dick Chicks, Bechtel Footage, (2003, 6:20 min., TX)
On March 24th, the MDC presented the first annual Golden Richard award for war profiteering to the good people at Bechtel, Inc. This footage features us them performing Shop! in the Name of War and Oil in front of the New York Public Library and the presentation of the award to the employees of Bechtel.

Keith Sanborn, Operation Double Trouble, (2003, 10:15 min., NY)
In the words of the artist, “a detourned version of a propaganda film jointly produced by the US Marine Corps and the US Navy which was brought to my attention by Peggy Ahwesh. I downloaded the original from a military website, converted it to dv codec then reworked it. The original was intended to give the military “a human face.” This version is intended to expose the manipulations of the original at a critical moment in the historical evolution of the role of the US military in US politics. Titles were added at the head and tail and each shot is seen exactly twice. The effect produced is reminiscent of the experience of making a long distance phone call where in which by accident every word you say is echoed after a short delay. It’s what I call Brechtian hiccoughs. This work is dedicated to Len Lye (maker of Lambeth Walk, Nazi Style) and Les LeVeque (maker of Backwards Birth of a Nation among others). As Von Clausewitz says, ‘"War is the continuation of Politics by other means.’" This work is intended to inflect the history of information warfare.”

An acclaimed multi-media performance artist, Joan Jonas is also a major figure in video art. From her seminal performance-based exercises of the 1970s to her later televisual narratives, Jonas’ elusive theatrical portrayal of female identity is a unique and intriguing inquiry.
http://www.eai.org/eai/

Good Night Good Morning, (1976, 11:38 min.)
In Good Night Good Morning, Jonas uses video as a diaristic construct to chart the passing of personal time through quotidian ritual. Over three different periods in new York and Nova Scotia, she videotaped herself every day, briefly addressing the camera upon waking in the morning abd before going to bed at night: “Good Morning.” “Good Night.” This journal evolves into a self-portrait that is at once distanced and intimate, public and private. Observing herself as the viewer observes her, Jonas addresses the mirror of video as a vehicle for monitoring identity and change in time. Though her minimalist adherence to a controlled system of documentation is a rigorous conceptual conceit, Jonas’ repetitive salutations are performed with more than a touch of irony. this tape was designed to be viewed on a monitor set on its side, which recreates a mirror-like space.

Disturbances, (1974, 11:00 min.)
Disturbances extends Jonas’ investigation of mirrored surfaces and spaces, as she explores reflections of movement and images in water. The tape begins with Jonas, like Narcissus, leaning over a reflecting pool. Throughout this formal yet lyrical exercise, the viewer sees only reflected images and inversions--shimmers, upside down and backwards, shadowy figures move underwater and swim through the pool as in a choreographed dance. This simply rendered, evocative work is a phenomenological study of reflection as Jonas draws a parallel between the spatial and mirroring effects of water and video.

I Want to Live in the Country (And Other Romances), (1979, 24:06 min.)
Loss, displacement, time, and memory permeate this haunting nonlinear narrative, which unfolds like a dream in the process of telling itself. Jonas is seen watching video images shot in a New York studio and in rural Nova Scotia--that metaphorically relate to the dreams, reveries, and memories that she is heard reading from her journal. The studio space, which is filled with complex “still life” composition of archetypal objects, is intercut with Super-8 film footage that nostalgically evokes the quotidian rhythm of the country--the pastoral Nova Scotia landscape, the ocean, a farmhouse. Throughout, Jonas constructs a layered formal structure of time and space, a theater of mediation that reveals frames within frames, monitors within monitors. The poetic journal text and images represent conscious memory; I Want to Live the the Country is a story of the unconscious.

Curated by Ed Marszewski, Select-Media, 75 min., Chicago, IL
An assembly of work that is as unrelenting as it is refreshing in its criticism of the current administration with regards to Terror, Iraq and Infowars. The program includes:

Haik Hoisington, At Home and Abroad, (2003, 3:00 min.)
Flash re-animation of a speech by President Bush.

Bryan Boyce, State of the Union, (2001, 2:00 min.)
Baby Bush meets Tubby-land. Completed in August 2001, this project was initially just a simple comic skewering of George W. Bush and his defense policies-but after September 11th, it took on a whole new meaning. State of the Union now has a surreal documentary quality that is genuinely disturbing.–Video Data Bank

Bryan Boyce, 2 Minutes of Hate, (2003, 2:00 min.)
A brand new video from the maker of State of The Union, Election Collectibles, and World’s Fair World. “It’s a combination fox news slam/Orwell centenary celebration.”–Bryan Boyce

Mike Nourse, Terror Iraq Weapons, (2002, 4:00 min.)
This is not a re-mix. This is a summary. No words have been repeated, and all instances appear in chronological order, taken from a 30- minute speech given by President George W. Bush. Scary isn’t it?–Balagan Festival

Jason Archer, State of the Union, (2002, 4:00 min.)
The Prez’s popular State of the Union speech detourned via rotoscoping and nice edits.

GNN and Stephen Marshall, S/11 REDUX, (2001, 12:00 min.)
This sound-bite blitzkrieg challenges the messages we have been fed from our mainstream media and the government it serves. www.gnn.tv

Davy Force!, MF-47 NETWORK–ALIENS, (2001, 4:00 min.)
They are here on CNN MSNBCIA! A MuthaFucka 47 newscast lead by Ashcroft and friends.

Chinese Johnny, Bush’s Aladdin (Arabian Nights), (2003, 4:00 min.)
Did the Bush Administration use this Hanna Barberra Arabian Nights cartoon as a template to invade and occupy Iraq?

Jan van Neunen, Seeing Bush Through through the Trees, (2003, 2:00 min.)
McBush. A soon to be classic homage tot the puppet.

DAF, Der Sheriff, (2003, 4:00 min.)
Oil..… sweet elixir.

Haik Hoisington, Lies Lies Lies, (2003, 2:00 min.)
Flash animation exercise in outing ONE of the lies of the Bush administration.

Paul Beck and Jason Archer, Homeland Hoedown, (2003, 4:00 min.)
The second riposte in the trilogy of Bushwhacking.

Indymedia Mohawk, Public Media in a Time of War, (2003, 30:00 min.)
Part scathing critique, part call to action, Independent Mediaymedia Mohawk’s Public Media in a Time Of War argues that dialogue is vital to a healthy democracy. Independent media has a crucial responsibility to “go to where the silence is,” says narrator Amy Goodman, to represent the diverse voices of people engaged in dissent. She makes a compelling argument that the news media have failed to represent “the true face of war.” Goodman criticizes the refusal to report civilian war casualties during the 2003 Iraq invasion and the new phenomenon of “embedded reporters,” as examples of a pro-military bias in the corporate media.

GNN, White America, (2002, 4:00 min.)
A Web-based video that GNN made for Eminem which received voluminous downloads and a great deal of controversy.

CELL Media, Little Brother Gets Busted, (2001, 8:00 min.)
In this lively and engaging tale, a naive young robot runs afoul of the law…–and wacky hijinks ensue! Through the trials and tribulations of our protagonist, we discover the nuances of U.S. drug enforcement policy and learn valuable lessons including proper procedures for handling police interrogations and hiding contraband in one’s anal cavity. Stars “Little Brother” (widely acclaimed robotic spokesman for the Institute for Applied Autonomy) with an international cast. Originally released as a filmstrip, Little Brother Gets Busted is now available in a range of formats, including VHS, Shockwave, MPEG, and self-running PowerPoint presentation.

Joe Sola, Riding with Adult Video Performers, (2002, 1:25 min.)
Working with David Forest Entertainment (the Heidi Fleish of the gay world) the artist found two male porn stars who looked like Hollywood action heroes to ride a wooden roller coaster with him at Six Flags/Great Adventure in Valencia, CA.

Ulrike Kubatta, Speed Queen, (5:00 min.)
Speed Queen is player number 13. Dressed in a self-assembled uniform, she sets out to face her opponents, the fierce women of the San Francisco Bay City Bombers as well as a leather clad motorcyclist. The video weaves both encounters into a poetic choreography of physical skill, fighting spirit, and gang mentality. Music by Mary Hansen. Edited by Enric Junoy. Sound Mix by Martin Pavey

Lowell Brown, Jungle Train, (2002, 3:23 min.)
John Cage once said that if you want to see good theater, you need only to hold a frame in front of your face. In the style of the Lumière Brothers, Jungle Train is a single, continuous take from a fixed camera on a downtown A train in New York.

Julieta Aranda, Study for Color Bars, (2003, 2:15 min., loop, no sound)
On this monitor piece, the familiar pattern of color bars slowly fades into an extreme close-up of a Mexican Blanket. Both textures are graphically similar, yet their symbolic values vary greatly. The video exhibits a play in balance and addresses how to position and reinvent cultural identity.

Bibi Calderaro, Acts of Faith, (2001-2003, 2:27 min.)

Shelley Niro, The Shirt, (2003, 5:55 min.)
Niro’s work is a straight forward narrative chronicling the effects of colonialism on native people in North America via t-shirt texts.

Derek Jackson, Cruiser, (2003, 5:00 min.)
The maker wears a wire while cruising the Prospect Park Rambles.

Martha Garzon, Video Diary: 03/03, (2003, 2:46 min.)
Divided into five chapters, this video diary reflects an intimate portrait of the artist’s life, feelings, and dreams during the month of March 2003. Presented in a beautiful book format, this piece combines imagery and poetry that point to the psyche and the fragility of human existence.

Philip Hackworth Ashley, Demonhutch, (2003, 4:00 min.)
In Hackworth’s continuing saga of animations, he deals with the crazy world of images pertaining specifically to Beyonce Knowles.

Bernd Behr, Cargo Fever, (2001, 1:16 min.)
Cargo Fever sets up a space of anticipation and relief where the boundaries between events and non-events become blurred. An event suddenly delivers more than what was bargained for, destabilizing the very basis of spatial comprehension.

Jason Ebanks, Eleven/11, (2002, 5:30 min.)
11 different ideas.
11 short films.
11 seconds each.

Linda Ford, Marked, (2001, 1:56 min.)
Marked documents a five-minute performance in which Ford sat watching an audience watch her. A live feed camera transmitted footage of her neck to a monitor next to her. Meanwhile, her neck slowly became covered in hives.

Vlatka Horvat, Restless, (2002, 8:00 min.)
A lone figure enters an empty auditorium and proceeds to shift seats as if seeking the perfect vantage point. Removed from the everyday context and unfolding in real time, the activity in front of the camera is fraught with a sense of failure, the experience of which can be both humorous and unsettling.

Eunjung Hwang, Fate (knocking on the door), (2002, 5:30 min.)
Following the ambiguous logic from the world of dreams, this animation unfolds a series of narratives from infancy to death using a mixed style of character drawings and live action.

Noah Klersfeld, Attention Span, (2001, 2:00 min.)
Attention Span is a spatial mapping of a single-square area showing and compressing visual and non-visual fields respectively. The piece was filmed using five different three camera shoots with the cameras placed at a fixed distance apart. The top row demonstrates where the three cameras’ cones of vision intersect, allowing the man to walk continuously across. In each subsequent row, the man gets two feet closer to the cameras.

Wago Kreider, Marvelous Creatures, (2003, 3:20 min.)
Marvelous Creatures is an experimental video that explores the uncanny correlation of erotic and destructive impulses. From the taxidermied bestiary of a natural history museum to the life-like waxworks that haunt our pop culture memories, the convulsive beauty of animals oscillates between plenitude and punishment, attraction and repulsion, life and death. In a series of photographic shocks that flash an image of the fixed-explosive, they bear witness to a primordial trauma, a confusion between the animate and the inanimate, the biological and the mechanical, Eros and Thanatos.

David Phillips and Paul Rowley, _Condensate, (2003, 1:30 min.)
Excerpts from a 1970s educational film titled Your Chance to Live are re-edited and composited with corroded 35mm slides. This short work contemplates ideas of lifespan and finality, as images of children sheltered from a tornado are distressed and obscured by decay.

Rudy Shepherd, Based on a True Story, (2003, 1:29 min.)
Based on a True Story is about rooting for the underdog, about the demonization of black men in the media, and about prejudice towards the poor. The artist reminisces about being chased from drunken bacchanals by the cops during his high school years.

Liselot van der Heijden, Nature, (5:00 min.)
Nature was videotaped in the Rocky Mountain National Park and documents an elk grazing. What follows is the spectacle of tourists looking at, photographing, and videotaping the animal, while the elk continues eating, indifferent to the surrounding commotion. The artist points out that ideas and attitudes towards nature reveal more about human beings and culture than about nature itself.

Marcella Vanzo, Raid, (1999, 3:00 min.)
“When I first visited Walter de Maria’s Earth Room in NYC, a sudden sadness invaded me: all that earth wasting there…I felt so sorry for the entire room, I had to do something. So I bought some seeds and went back to throw them in.”–Marcella Vanzo

Matt Wolf, Smalltown Boys, (2003, 21:00 min.)
Smalltown Boys imagines the historical relationship between AIDS activist artist David Wojnarowicz and Sarah Rosenburg, a teenage lesbian on the Upper West Side in 1994. In a “fake documentary” story, Sarah fights to save the television show My So-Called Life from cancellation on ABC in 1994. David is dying in the face of culture wars and an aggressive AIDS activist movement during the late eighties and early nineties. The collision of biographical fantasy and historical fiction calls the efficiency of contemporary modes of political protest into question. Wojnarowicz spreads his seed—in a lineage of political rebellion through different cultural times—like a disease. Smalltown Boys addresses a precarious generational transition and the shifting fantasies of aesthetic and political liberation.

Harry Dodge, The Fudgesicle, (2003, 10:00 min.)
Dressed as a fudgesicle, the artist fields questions from an unheard, off-camera interrogator. Dodge offers a bittersweet take on being looked at, poked, and prodded.

Katrina Fullman and “Tony” Denise Conca, Refuse and Refashion, (2003, 8:00 min.)
Artist, writer, and collector “Tony” Denise Conca takes viewers on a tour of her workplace, Chicago’s Brown Elephant Thrift Store. Along the way, she offers up a primer on commodity fetishism, queer fashion, and the, “waste stream of capitalism.” The video concludes with a homespun “re-fashion” show.

Dawn Kasper, Evil Series #10, ‘Deer Creek Road‚’ (2003, 3:18 min.)
Evil Series #10 ‘Deer Creek Road’ is a study in love and evil. Two different, nonspecific characters explore the idea of love gone wrong. Within the disparate narrative, the two characters signify two separate emotions, two separate people, and two separate concepts.

Alix Pearlstein, Forsaken, (2003, 10:45 min.)
Forsaken presents the dynamics of a group of six characters, one of whom appears to be the center of attention. This character seems a combination of celebrity, guru, teacher, leader, boss, and provider. The others appear to be fans, devotees, constituents, employees, caretakers, and dependent relations. The first three scenes depict this hierarchy while revealing the tensions that lead to the cathartic undoing of this codependent power structure. The group forsakes, humiliates and discards him. Their abandonment serves as a respite rather than a renewal, as the status quo is reinstated and the cycle begins again.

Steve Reinke, Anal Masturbation and Object Loss, (2002, 6:00 min.)
The artist decides to found his own art school and begins by assembling materials for the library. Finding too many words are available, he glues together the unnecessary pages of books.

Liss Platt, 49 Days in Motion, (2003, 15:00 min.)
In an abstract, visual charting of her body in motion over a 49-day period, the artist explores her relationship to movement and physicality. Themes of power, physical prowess, a need for mobility, and fear of the body’s fragility are accessed through personal accounts of ball games, rocking horses, fierce competition, and Platt’s terminally ill sister.

Eva Sno, Aquaminae, (2003, 4:18 min.)
Aqueminae depicts a sensory underwater journey in which time, gravity, and boundaries dissipate. The undulating interplay of light and water, orchestrated to electronic pulses and melody, lulls the viewer into a lyrical dreamscape.

Emily Vey Duke and Cooper Battersby, Curious about Existence, (2003, 11:00 min.)
Curious about Existence is collection of short episodes that incorporate music, animation, and live action. It employs a deft combination of humor and humanism to maintain the engagement of the viewer as s/he is drawn through a number of divergent narrative worlds. The thread that holds these worlds together is a persistent curiosity about the spiritual and material world and its inhabitants: humans, animals, the laws of nature, and so on.

Erika Yeomans, Chubby Buddy, (2003, 13:00 min.)
Chubby Buddy is an experimental, short narrative about the life of Francis Howard, a New York publisher, who gives up a career and marriage in order to act upon his impulses. These include pretend commuting, voyeurism, and, eventually, toy theft.

DJ Hot Pocket, of the Mad Clams party fame at the Hole, will spin and show her “Exercise Your Clam” videos inspired by ‘80’s aerobics tapes as well as a really strong urge to have fun. The project was created by the Mad Clam Crew: Kim Ann Foxman, Jackie Werner, Hollipops, Nicky Mao, Chuck, and friends. Edited by: Francesca Nocera.

Video program in street-level Project Space
Curated by Jeffrey Walkowiak, Director, Henry Urbach Architecture
This program brings together a selection of artists who work within and go beyond the standard conventions of the video medium to construct various forms of portraiture. Video’s prominent role in contemporary art has provided artists a viable means of exploring and furthering its history. The original intent of video to convey and record information has developed into an array of dynamic options for the production of the moving image. From the more direct and traditional structure of documentary to savvy editing techniques, artists and film makers have only begun to explore a portion of technology’s ability to mutate and transform recorded information. The artists in this program all use the medium as means of portraying themselves or their chosen subjects.

Ian Cooper, I’ll Be Her, (2001, 1:30 min.)
Ian Cooper edits an entire film to a minute and a half by selecting scenes that focus only on one minor character. By making her the star, he highlights her benign life cycle and loops it to repeat continuously. The title, I’ll Be Her, refers to role playing in childhood when children dissect a film, cartoon, or television show by assuming/claiming the identity of principle characters. Cooper links this role playing to identifying with social categories during maturity.

Joanna Malinowska, First Session, (2003, 16:00 min.)
Joanna Mailinowska ‘s video documentation of her session with a hypnotist is an attempt to capture herself in an uninhibited semi-conscious state. This hypnotic session, complete with soothing audio sounds of chirping birds and bubbling brooks, is one in a series of works that deal directly with the artists’ obsession with Adrien Brody. The footage fades in and out of clarity to illustrate the artist’s’ portrayal of a desire she can’t quite understand.

Connie Walsh
1. How to Communicate
2. How to Construct
3. How to Call,
(2001-2003, 5:22 min. each) (three excerpts from five-channel video installation)
Connie Walsh’s series of informational videos of obscure activities become portraits of individuals whose obsessive behavior expose their hidden personalities. The profiles are edited in such a way to reveal and construct the gestures of the roles these people have assumed. These three works are excerpts from a larger five-channel video installation.

Trent Harris, Beaver Kid from The Beaver Trilogy, (2001, 30 min.)
Beaver Kid is one of three short films that comprise Trent Harris’s acclaimed Beaver Trilogy. The three shorts are about the same subject, a young man from a Beaver, Utah who is obsessed with Olivia Newton John. This first piece, a documentary filmed in the late 1970’s, takes a candid look at a unique individual who longs for fame and who adapts a variety personas as a means of achieving recognition. What culminates is a startling portrait of a young man striving to be something more than who he is.

Anthony Discenza, Heads, (2003, running time variable)
Anthony Discenza pushes the medium of video by manipulating both sound an image. Heads is a look at the familiar faces of television newscasters. By layering and manipulating the profiles of well-known personalities, Discenza turns the familiar into obscure and frightening portraits.