"The Flag is the second part of a video series about the state-controlled national day ceremonies of the Turkish Republic. Shot during the April 23rd Children’s Day celebrations, which mark the establishment of the new Turkish Parliament, and hence the official demise of the Ottoman Empire back in 1920, this split screen film documents a pompous patriotic performance devised by elders to be performed by children.
On a gradually inclined plane, attempts are made to scale the rise, and rubber shoe marks leave evidence of the point where all of humanity fails.
This title is also available on Sympathetic Vibrations: The Videoworks of Paul Kos.
Performing artist Neil Bartlett plays a gay lecturer whose attempt to go back into the closet is betrayed by the contents of his briefcase. In reaction to Section 28, the law that forbids the “promotion” of homosexuality in schools in the U.K., Pedagogue satirizes the upstanding instructor’s dramatic influence on his students.
A HalfLifers journey to a lush interior landscape where some domestic chores and an unexpected encounter provoke a crisis at Mission Control, paving the way for a seasonal reflection upon the meaning of "home."
This title is also available on HalfLifers: The Complete History.
In a series of 1992 performances, Coco Fusco and performance co-creator Guillermo Gómez-Peña decked themselves out in primitive costumes and appeared before the public as “undiscovered AmerIndians” locked in a golden cage — an exercise in faux anthropology based on racist images of natives. Presented eight times in four different countries, these simple performances evoked various responses, the most startling being the huge numbers of people who didn’t find the idea of “natives” locked in a cage objectionable.
They just flew in from New York, and boy, are their arms tired... Out in the Nevada desert, against the windblown backdrop of Air Force bomber training sites, artists Hajoe Moderegger and Franziska Lamprecht — better known as eteam — gathered testimonials of stranded passengers, crew members, and local residents to recall an episode in the lost annals of American aviation: the 2006 "unscheduled layover" at International Airport Montello (IAM). Truth in Transit reaches beyond simple documentation.
John Malpede is a performance artist and Director of the Los Angeles Poverty Department (LAPD), a performance art and theater group whose members include the city’s homeless. Through LAPD, Malpede provides an opportunity for homeless people to articulate the reality of their lives for themselves and audiences. Malpede was well known for his collaboration with performer Gill Gordh as Dead Dog and Lonely Horse. In one performance he took on the role of a street person, contrasting the wealth and excess of the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles with the city’s struggle against homelessness.
Eiko performed unannounced in the Cathedral of St. John Divine, New York City as an artist in residence in 2016-2018.
Camera by Alexis Moh.
This real-time video-meets-digital-animation trilogy of shorts features the highly excited and mildly delusional Joe Gibbons, whose springboard becomes a surfboard as he fantasizes about his days as a lifeguard in 1963, when the young Brian Wilson would sit and jot down the songs he would sing while saving lives.
Chris Burden came into prominence in the late 1960s, but unlike many of the performance artists of his generation, Burden was interested in empirical and scientific investigations. His goal was to return the control of art making to the artist and to question the relevancy of more established art practices. In this documentary Burden talks about his hard-hitting performances in the ’70s that took a jaded art world by surprise and continues on to discuss the sculptural and installation works of the ’80s.
Eiko Otake’s I Invited Myself is a multi-volume installation which features choreography of place, movements of both performer and viewers, along with projections of selected video and film works created by Eiko over the last 40 years.
Unlike audiences to cinema, literature, music, and visual art works, the audience to contemporary performance work often experiences one newly created evening-length piece. Those audiences who saw the artist’s earlier works have an understanding of her trajectory, but younger or new audiences might not.
Grace + Gravity is a choreographed performance that reflects on Simone Weil’s poetic and profound writing entitled Gravity and Grace.
Director: Cynthia Madansky
Dancer: Idil Kemer
Voice: Lara Baladi
Cinematographer: Meryem Yavus
Sound: Zeena Parkins
Nauman is seen standing and leaning back in a corner of his studio. Just as he bounces back to a standing position, his body falls again, momentarily collapsing, only to spring forward once more. This action places his body in an intermittent space, occupying a position halfway between standing and leaning, halfway between the wall and the room.
This title was in the original Castelli-Sonnabend video art collection.
From the performance by the same name, by Suzanne Lacy, Stan Hebert, Councilwoman Sheila Jordan, Frank Williams, Officer Terrance West, Mike Shaw, and Annice Jacoby, Oakland, 1995-6. Suzanne Lacy worked alongside youth activists, city council members and the mayor’s office to draft a Youth Policy Initiative that would create a dedicated stream of funding to serve youth needs. In the spring of that year, No Blood/No Foul was a performance on the eve of the Policy’s vote by the Oakland City Council, with Mayor, Council members and a large audience in attendance.
As if trapped inside a nightmare, the main protagonist of Poster Girl is haunted by disturbing visions, thoughts and fantasies, which the viewer is privy to. She is joined at various points in the video by another woman, whose role in the narrative remains unclear – is she meant to function as a guardian or a demon? The video further complicates the matter by representing both women as simultaneously wounded and wounding, inviting and threatening, vulnerable and menacing.
"I, Soldier is the first part of a video series in which I am dealing with the state-controlled ceremonies for the national days of the Turkish Republic. The nationalistic attributes attached to these large-scale ceremonies are underlined in a non-descriptive and almost voyeuristic point of view. I, Soldier was shot at the National Day for Youth and Sports; the day that marks the start of the independence war of the Turkish public under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, against the Allied Forces back in 1919.
Distracted Blueberry follows a performance art band through a series of poetic encounters. Masculine tropes are undone to form a relationship between male sexuality and the human death drive. The body, violence and humour are positioned in the larger context of nothingness and somethingness, bridging a tension between externalized anxieties and the terrors of nature. Evocative of inner emotional states, strange landscapes exist as reflections of our shared dreams and nightmares.
Viewer discretion advised
In Wigstock ’94, Glennda and her friend Bobra attend Lady Bunny’s Wigstock festival. Following the event’s move from the East to the West Village, they explore the changing dynamics and configurations of queer culture in New York. The pair interview other drag queens, members of the local community, and passersby to get a sense of how an event like Wigstock is received by the city.
An episode of Glennda and Friends, hosted by Glennda Orgasm and Bobra. Featuring Jackie Beat, Joan Crawford, Jackie O., Sherry Vine, Nona Vulva, Wendy Wild, and Yumi.
Shot in December 1969, this video documents a live performance by the Incredible String Band at the Fillmore East, NYC. Beginning with footage of people waiting in line at the doors before the show begins, the video goes on to record the performance itself. Early on, the band experiences some audio problems, before settling down to play. We witness the band talking, tuning their instruments and playing.
Filmed by Jingqiu Guan on November 7, 2022 at Royce Hall Rehearsal Room during the creative residency sponsored by UCLA Center for the Art of Performance (CAP). This video was used for the performance on November 20, 2022 at UCLA.
Performed by Eiko Otake
Edited by Eiko Otake, assisted by Jingqiu Guan
Pochonovela is a bilingual, bicultural blend of Latin America’s and the United States’ most popular television genres—the telenovela and the sitcom, respectively. The humor and madness of life in East Los Angeles are captured here in performances by members of the Los Angeles-based comedy troupe, Chicano Secret Service, and other U.S. Latino actors. This provocative comedy touches on political, social, cultural, linguistic, and family issues attendent to the cross cultural life of Mexican Americans living near or on the border—both psychologically and geographically.
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.
Benglis uses the video format as a metaphor for other types of limiting conditions or limited realities. "The constant motion of Benglis's hand-held camera (scanning her studio and two television sets) calls attention to the limits of the camera's field of vision: the walls of the studio are the ultimate 'enclosure' of the camera's eye. The open window and the sound of children (from the street) seem to suggest release; yet the confines of the studio are never truly broken."
Shot by Mary Curtis Ratclif at the O.K. Harris Gallery on Prince and Green Streets, New York, this tape focuses on performer “Ricky Jay” as he performs card tricks at his magic table for an enthusiastic audience.
During a video workshop, the Ikpeng community decides to act out the myth of the origin of the tattooing ceremony. The mythical hero, Maragareum, dreams about the collective death of the villagers of his friend’s Eptxum’s village. Arriving in this village, he finds, in fact, that everyone is dead. As night falls, he hides in the hut, and observes and learns the Moyngo ceremony from the spirits of the dead.
Directed and photographed by Karané, Kumaré, and Natuyu Ikpeng; edited by Leonardo Sette.
In Ikpeng with English subtitles.
