December 2008

A couple of upcoming projects:

This month I will be showing at TELIC Arts Exchange's Distributed Gallery, in Los Angeles. The opening is scheduled for December 6 (details to follow). I am showing four videos, single animation loops converted from GIFs, on screens in different locations in LA's Chinatown neighborhood. TELIC is also publishing a booklet with an interview I did with artist and curator Sean Dockray. Here is a description of the project:

The Distributed Gallery, opening October 3, begins as a network of four video monitors in locations in and around Chinatown’s West and Central Plazas. Monitors will be located at Fong’s, Via Cafe, Ooga Booga, and the Public School. Each month someone new will curate or create an exhibition, accompanied by a small publication. Upcoming shows include: DIY, Tom Leeser, Geoff Manaugh, Tom Moody, the Public School, Annie Shaw, James Merle Thomas, and Wendy Yao.

On December 7, at 5 pm, several of my animated GIFs will be screened with piano accompaniment (yes!) at a Chicago space called the Nightingale, along with the work of other artists. The event is "The Web of Cokaygne; Candle and Bell," and the animated GIF screening is curated by Dain Oh:

"The Web of Cokaygne; Candle and Bell" is a three part screening. In a traditional sense it maintains a beginning, a middle and an end. The first section is 0P3NFR4M3W0RK, an open DIY digital art exhibition initiated by Jon Satrom, instantiated by Dain Oh for the "Web of Cokaygne; Candle and Bell" and previously at (A) r4WB1t5 micro.Fest (initiated by jonCates and jon.satrom). The second portion is 787 Cliparts, by Oliver Laric. A video in which he displays hand-selected clip art that he has found on the Internet in a manner that suggest continuity in motion and the persistence of vision. The third and final section of WoC is a selection of animated GIFs by both artists and non-artists working with the Internet. The artists include Petra Cortright, Olia Lialina + Dragan Espenschied, Guthrie Lonergan, Tom Moody, Jon Satrom and Paul Slocum. The selected GIF's are important examples to reflect the history of the moving image. Examples are gif versions of: a goat found on a bowl from Iran's Burnt City, Muybridge's horse, then moving to commercial cartoons, video games and finally, new media and www gif's. The screening will be executed in real time and accompanied by a live piano performance.

ish I could be there for both of these events ("W" is from the latter's website). More on them soon.
(Will also slip in here that Nasty Nets is doing something at the 2009 Sundance. More on that soon also.)

From IMDb:

Catherine E. Coulson began her professional association with director David Lynch when she worked as assistant director on Lynch's legendary feature debut Eraserhead (1977). This is when the two began discussing the idea of a woman who carried a log around with her. Coulson spent much of her career working behind-the-scenes before finally bringing the Log Lady to life on Lynch's [and Mark Frost's] cult TV series Twin Peaks (1990). The Log Lady was one of the most puzzling and emblematic of the show's characters, and she has ensured Coulson a permanent place in the hearts of cult TV fans.

Log Lady (and Bob Dylan) photo-tribute.

Recently saw David Lynch's short film The Amputee (1974). A rather self-absorbed woman, played by Coulson, writes an overwrought letter about a lover or ex-lover. She is in a hospital and missing both legs--the letter has nothing to do with this, she writes as if she had never been injured. A doctor or medical technician enters the room and begins fussing with the surgical dressing on one of her stumps. The routine procedure goes horribly wrong, and as blood (or some kind of blood-like fluid) spurts out Coulson continues calmly writing and reading the letter aloud (in voiceover). Then the entire scene repeats. The whole thing is shot with grainy video stock. The body horror and obsession with texture is classically Lynchian, but Coulson's "Virginia Woolf in existential hell" narration puts it over the top. Unlike Woolf her recounting of the minutiae of relationships eludes our attention, partly because it is so banal but partly because the gore makes it impossible to focus on what she is saying.

Excerpt from a Mike Kelley/Glenn O'Brien conversation, via NEWSgrist:

GO: I've remembered an event and thought I'd said something when actually it was somebody else who said it or vice versa. I think, especially in writing, so much of plagiarism is completely unconscious.

MK: I have experienced that often. I've stolen ideas, and people have stolen from me. I'm all for it. That's the way things get created. That's how culture grows. When there's an amazing idea, you take it and run with it. I mean, you're going to take it someplace else than the source anyway. There are a lot of artists who've worked at that specifically. One of my favorite writers is the Comte de Lautréamont, and much of his writing is constructed from plagiarized texts. Who would claim that his work is no different than what he plagiarized?

GO: One thing that the Internet seems to be doing is eroding the idea of copyright and originality. People are just taking bits of things and using them in a very free way.

MK: That's great. And the corporate entertainment industry is trying to stop it from happening. Think about it: Andy Warhol could not have a career now. He would be sued every two seconds.

GO: It's given a lot of work to the lawyers.

MK: Copyright laws are terrible for culture. It's illegal to respond to the imagery that surrounds you; you're bombarded every minute of the day with mass-media sludge. It should be the opposite: Everybody should have to respond to it. This is what should be taught in the public school system.

William S. Burroughs should be a major role model: All students should be given tape recorders and cameras to constantly record the gray veil that surrounds them, so that they can recognize that it's even there--and manipulate it. Most people are not aware of the white noise they exist in. Tape recording and photography allowed people to become aware of what was invisible to them for the first time. We're surrounded by invisibility. That's what I think art can do--make things visible.

The part in boldface should be repeated like a catechism when you go to sleep at night, to counteract the endless media sludge of your day, for example, what I just heard on the radio at the deli against my will: "The NY Times magazine has two different covers this week, one with Tom Cruise and..." Who gives a flip about that? Really.