This compilation features 11 of Jem Cohen's collaborations with musicians. Made on 16mm, Super 8 and Video, the works include the music of R.E.M., Gil Shaham and the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Void, Elliot Smith, Jonathan Richman, Miracle Legion and Olivier Messiaen.
Nightswimming
Musica Electronica Viva at Baggie’s is a quintessential Videofreex work in its documentation style and explicit discussion of the Videofreex project. The video is a live recording of an experimental music performance, Musica Electronica Viva, at a recording space and venue in New York City. The video documents the performance in its entirety, examining the experimental instruments filling the performance space and filming the crowd’s interactions with various modules of the work.
Film time takes on book time. An homage to a Bette J. Davis’ illustrated text, itself an homage to the small music makers of the insect world.
Camera, edit, sound design: Deborah Stratman
Music: Fontanelle
Nebula is a hallucinogenically immersive spectacle: a complex, long-form audio-visual composition, which pays playful homage to science fiction fantasies. Captured for video by means of stop-motion photography, objects made of glass, glitter and tulle, are nestled within a kaleidoscopic flow of computer-generated imagery. Drawing from Thomas Wilfred's Clavilux color organs as well as experimental abstract filmmakers such as Mary Ellen Bute, and James and John Whitney, Nebula also recalls liquid light shows and the marvelous sightings of the Hubble Space Telescope.
Nebula is a hallucinogenically immersive spectacle: a complex, long-form audio-visual composition, which pays playful homage to science fiction fantasies. Captured for video by means of stop-motion photography, objects made of glass, glitter and tulle, are nestled within a kaleidoscopic flow of computer-generated imagery. Drawing from Thomas Wilfred's Clavilux color organs as well as experimental abstract filmmakers such as Mary Ellen Bute, and James and John Whitney, Nebula also recalls liquid light shows and the marvelous sightings of the Hubble Space Telescope.
A combination of experimental and narrative approaches which explore the commodification of rebellion as it is marketed to youth culture, through the eyes of two drug-dealing, teenage girls from Brooklyn who "accidentally" kill and mutilate their favorite alternative rock star. Their obsession with murders and makeovers and their confusion between fashion and transgression lead these girls into a world where nihilism is bought and sold, and rebellion is impossible.
Using a pulsing rock soundtrack and music video-style editing, X-PRZ combines archival footage of Malcolm X, advertisements, and corporate logos in No Sell Out to provide a scathing commentary on commodity culture.
Using a pulsing rock soundtrack and music video-style editing, X-PRZ combines archival footage of Malcolm X, advertisements, and corporate logos in No Sell Out to provide a scathing commentary on commodity culture.
A short story about new bodies, the power of denial, and a state of no sunshine. Two infantile bodies float in a cyberspace ball, connected by two subconscious bodies in the background. The attempt at unification and metamorphosis is interrupted by one part as the other is liberated. A glance over the shoulder means destruction.
The sources for the soundtrack are fragments of the childish voices of early Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder songs.
Performed by Bjørn and Roald Melhus.
“I fear nomads. I am afraid of them and afraid for them too.”
—Jane Bowles, “Camp Cataract” in My Sister’s Hand in Mine (New York: Ecco Press, 1978)
A structure of Lawrence Weiner. Based upon the LP Niets Aan Verloren (1976) and the performance tape Niets Aan Verloren (1984).
Players: Alice Zimmerman, Sophie Calle, Peter Gordon, Kim Gordon, and Kirsten Vibeke Thueson; Still photography: Alice Zimmerman; Photography: Moved Pictures; Computer editing: K. Hassett; Voices: Coosje Van Bruggen and Lawrence Weiner
This title is also available on Lawrence Weiner: There are Things that Move Outside of Motion.
On the Way to the Moon, We Discovered the Earth is a short film that remixes archival material from a prominent mainstream newspaper printed during the New York City Blackout in July 1977. The 1977 New York City Blackout is cited as the official birth of hip-hop, wherein looters took equipment that allowed them to formalize and professionalize hip-hop. Titled after a quote by an astronomer looking back at the Earth during the Apollo space mission, this kaleidoscopic film hints at a cultural moment of rupture and reinvention that transcends resilience.
Introduces the audience to the rockin' talkin' pony, who provides musical accompaniment for a series of Texas country-dance lessons.
This title is also available on Ben Coonley: Trick Pony Trilogy.
In this diptych, Yi-Ching Chen plays the lowest possible sound on her tuba and Magenheimer's own electronically synthesized voice sings a letter that Ada Byron, the world's first computer programmer, wrote to her mother. In the letter she describes what it felt like to discover the extraordinary power of her own vast intellect.
Text excerpted from a letter Ada Byron wrote to her mother.
Starting with an activity as basic as four hands clapping, Landry composes an arresting visual documentation of the fundamentals of music through a play of visual and sonic rhythms. Landry considers these movements “imaginary hand exercises for beginning drummers.” As disembodied hands swim through shallow space, a strobe light freezes them in the process of clapping, creating a mesmerizing play of eye-ear coordination.
This title was part of the original Castelli-Sonnabend video art collection.
Mr. Thomas is in the back garden, performing his new moves in the glorious sunlight, making things happen. Somewhere between ritual, a white suburban war dance and 1970's "keep fit" exercise to lovely music, Mr. Thomas tries to coordinate with the Black Blob, that persistently undermines the nature of his representational space...
And the song goes:
We've only just begun to live
White lace and promises
A kiss for luck and we're on our way...
A drummer and guitarist on a rooftop high above New York City. A beat, a song, a trance, or just a celebration…?
The film is a durational performance document, direct but mysterious.
The Double are Jim White and Emmett Kelly. Jim is an Australian drummer known for his work with Dirty Three, Xylouris White, Cat Power, Bill Callahan, and many others. Emmett Kelly is an American guitarist known for his band, The Cairo Gang, and his work with Will Oldham, Ty Segall, and many others.
A video work that documents the annual orchid show at the New York Botanic Garden, Orchid Show critically observes notions of spectacle, gender and beauty as a query into the staging and imaging of nature. For the audio, the sounds of the garden fold into a classical composition for piano, Kaleidoscopic Changes on an Original Theme, Ending with a Fugue (1924) by Ruth Crawford Seeger, one of the few celebrated female composers of the early 20th century.
By subjecting fragments from the Akira Kurosawa’s film Rashomon to a mirror effect, Provost creates a hallucinatory scene of a woman’s reverse chrysalis into an imploding butterfly. This physical audiovisual experience produces skewed reflections upon Love, its lyrical monstrosities, and a wounded act of disappearance.
A high and low fidelity record of obsessions past and present. A hooded man named Cobra Commander (drawn naked) and a boy with black glasses. A fanged woman named Shadow-La and a girl in a rose colored wig. Belinda (Heaven on Earth), Madonna (Live to Tell), and headphones (worn naked). An airport terminal. Home. The Montgomery Ward catalog circa 1980. That orange bedspread, that red flowered couch.
A whimsical science fiction comedy with a soundtrack of pop music and experimental electronica. File under experimental. Play at maximum volume.
In this early Tom Rubnitz, Barbara Lipp and Tom Koken collaboration, "Frieda" performs her rap song with a bevy of dolls as back-up singers and dancers. Features rock-bottom production values and song lyrics by Barbara Lipp and Tom Koken.
In this early Tom Rubnitz, Barbara Lipp and Tom Koken collaboration, "Frieda" performs her rap song with a bevy of dolls as back-up singers and dancers. Features rock-bottom production values and song lyrics by Barbara Lipp and Tom Koken.
In this early Tom Rubnitz, Barbara Lipp and Tom Koken collaboration, "Frieda" performs her rap song with a bevy of dolls as back-up singers and dancers. Features rock-bottom production values and song lyrics by Barbara Lipp and Tom Koken.
Plowman's Lunch is called a documentary because its intent was to explore actual occurrences—be these the building of the work, or what befalls the players. It still uses an open form, but the characters are more developed; they have "names," and some of the scenes were truly dangerous for them to produce. As in the other films (with the exception of Done To) there is a nucleus of three characters—two women (Boris and Jamiee), and one man (Steentje, a tranvestite/hermaphrodite). The music, composed expressly for the piece, is harmonious with its developments.
