Saturday, October 20, 2012

ARTIST RESEARCH: PATTY CHANG

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cosHkYIJy4

eels in the shirt

fountain

in love

http://vimeo.com/35589517

http://vimeo.com/35598930

http://vimeo.com/35595960

http://vimeo.com/26831124

TONY OURSLER

Experimental video artist

It is with great pleasure that Faurschou Beijing presents a solo exhibition by the American video artist Tony Oursler, his first exhibition in China.
Since the mid-1970s Oursler has been a pioneer in New Media Art, and today he is one of the very biggest, most experimental and innovative artists working in the field of the video medium. The exhibition will introduce the Chinese public to a survey of projected pieces from the early 90s to the present that will give a strong impression of this great artist's work.

Unique idiom Tony Oursler has become well known for his unique video and installation works, which combine spoken text, performance, moving images and sculptural objects. Unlike other video artists Oursler does not only project his works on a uniform surface but projects his video images on to dolls, balls, architecture and other surfaces such as treetops and clouds of steam. It has been said that the artist has freed the video image from the "box."

The Human HeadIn this survey of works from the past two decades the curatorial focus is on the head of the human body. All the works in the show are based on the head and the notion of the head as the permeable center of consciousness. The work addresses the ebb and flow of elements such as light, smoke, thoughts, impulses, language, voice, memory, which interact with this central icon.

The Works The viewer is greeted by "Doll", one of Oursler's first breakthrough projections on rag dolls from the early 90s. The classic figurative sculpture is fused with a projected face, forming a hybrid between art and cinema. The little talking figure tests the viewer's empathy by challenging his passive role in art viewing.
Entering the exhibition one has to pass through "Cigarettes" a series of oversized, tubular screens with high-definition projection. The effect is that of a smoldering, virtual forest of various Western brands of cigarettes. The viewer's decision to indulge, or not, in various compulsive activities is called into question. This work also has further philosophical ramifications, including the pros and cons of progress as the columns seem to transform into architecture, or an industrial skyline.
In another installation, "Eyes", large blinking eyeballs are floating like independent planets in the universe. With its point of departure in the history of the camera obscura, first mentioned by the Chinese poet and scientist Shen Kuo (1031-1095), this installation points to the eye as an anatomical analogue of our desire for escapism through technology.
Continuing the exploration of technology, media and the viewer's fantasy, the installation "FX" (the abbreviation for special effects in the movie industry) is a multi-projection of a human head lost in a blaze of flames and explosions. Inspired by blockbuster cinema and terrorist activities, the work begins with an ironic, humorous premise: What would happen if the explosion was extended in time? In this installation something that would take place in a fraction of a second is stretched out in time, and the viewer can enter into a dialogue with an inferno.
Ending the exhibition on a humorous note, Oursler meets the viewer's basic need for companionship with "Classic". A head pieced together as a film collage of eyes and a mouth is uttering absurd sentences and statements. It is very amusing and disturbing too - and points to the way we mould technology to our desires, in the tradition of the "smiley face" and the "avatar" - the 3D representation of the interaction between human and machine.

The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus TwoThe exhibition takes its title from George Miller's classic 1956 paper "The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two" - an essay about the limits on the capacity of human cognition. Psychological experiments have shown that people have a hard time remembering more than about seven unrelated pieces of really dull data all at once. The point of Miller's research is that for human beings to remember large quantities of information they have to associate memory fragments with the various data.

Technology and HumanityTony Oursler's video installations are influenced by exactly this: his interest in our information and media society and its effect on mankind. The uncertainty that many people feel in connection with the constantly growing flow of information, the fragmentation of the world and alienation from our own bodies and society is a conspicuous theme in many of his works.
Oursler is fascinated by the enormous potential of new technologies, especially those which, like video and film, can get close to reality. Oursler uses technology to imitate human and emotional features - and by associating speech, moving images and objects Oursler creates video sculptures and installations that exhibit a humanity that can easily engage us. This visually convincing and humorous way of approaching current important social, psychological and existential subjects has made Tony Oursler one of the most important artists in the world today.

ARTIST RESEARCH: Surrealistic Film

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpZCMmPW_18

L'Âge d'Or (The Golden Age)
1930 surrealist film directed by Luis Buñuel and written by Buñuel and Salvador Dalí.
On 3 December 1930, a group of incensed members of the fascist League of Patriots threw ink at the screen, assaulted members of the audience, and destroyed art works by Dalí, Joan Miró, Man Ray, Yves Tanguy and others on display in the lobby. On 10 December, the Prefect of Police of Paris, Jean Chiappe, arranged to have the film banned after the Board of Censors reviewed the film. A contemporary Spanish newspaper condemned the film as ...the most repulsive corruption of our age... the new poison which judaism, masonry, and rabid, revolutionary sectarianism want to use in order to corrupt the people. The Noailles family pulled the film from distribution for nearly 50 years. In 1933, it was screened at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, but the film did not have its official United States premiere until 1-15 November 1979 at the Roxie Cinema in San Francisco.

Sometimes watching a movie is a bit like being raped - Luis Buñuel

Co-written by Buñuel and Salvador Dali, The Golden Age can arguably be considered a moving manifesto for the ideals of the surrealist movement. At the first screenings of the film, a written manifesto did, in fact, accompany the programme, espousing the importance of love, liberation and warning against censorship and the “bankruptcy” of emotion. The film itself is composed of a serious of dream-like vignettes that focus on the passionate and unconsummated love between a man (Gaston Modot) and a woman (Lys Lys).

The loose narrative is filled with bizarre hallucinatory sequences that align lust with the flushing of an excrement-filled toilet, that display sexual frustration through the act of throwing a burning tree out of a window and that consistently undercut moments of tenderness with unexpected violence. For a contemporary audience that is accustomed to certain ideas of visual eroticism, Buñuel opens up a space for uninhibited madness. Notably, the structure of the film, while reasonably linear, flows from disparate events and subjectivities and effectively utilises montage to create a dream vision. To this end, the imagery is replete with sexual symbolism and incongruity, capturing the vocabulary of Surrealist reverie and l’amour fou (mad love). However, this is clearly a perspective on the dreams of two very strange and, dare I say, disturbed men that has proved too much for some censorship boards.

Of course, just about everyone has either seen or heard of the fabulously grotesque eyeball scene in Un Chien Andalou (1929), but I actually prefer the eccentric charm of The Golden Age. For all its lofty ambitions to undermine convention and the Church, I love this film because it so ridiculous and perverse. I can almost see Buñuel and Dali cackling away as they were writing the outlandish plot, mischievously rubbing their hands together while concocting scenes involving murder, scorpions and odd fetishes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfaByWWLY4U

"Un Chien Andalou" (1929)
"An Andalusian Dog"15 mins - short, fantasyDirector: Luis Bunuel

In a dream-like sequence, a woman's eye is slit open--juxtaposed with a similarly shaped cloud obsucuring the moon moving in the same direction as the knife through the eye--to grab the audience's attention. The French phrase "ants in the palms," (which means that someone is "itching" to kill) is shown literally. A man pulls a piano along with the tablets of the Ten Commandments and a dead donkey towards the woman he's itching to kill. A shot of differently striped objects is repeatedly used to connect scenes.