Parakino: Blanca De La Torre Garcia - Some Politics Of Appropriation

15 May 2009, at. 6 p.m.
Centrum Sztuki Współczesnej Łaźnia
ul. Jaskółcza 1, 80-767 Gdańsk - Poland

The term appropriation art came into common use in the 1980s with artists such as Sherrie Levine, who addressed the act of appropriating itself as a theme in art. Challenging ideas of originality, drawing attention to relations between power, gender and creativity, the social sources and uses of art, Levine plays with the theme of "almost same".

Aspects of appropriation appear in all areas of visual art history if one considers the basic act of making art as the borrowing of images or concepts from the surrounding world and re-interpreting them as art.
Some even might classify Leonardo da Vinci as an appropriation artist, because he used recombinant methods of appropriation, borrowing from sources as diverse as biology, mathematics, engineering and art, and then synthesizing them into inventions and artworks. Duchamp also went so far as to use existing art in his work, appropriating an apparent copy of the Mona Lisa into his piece, L.H.O.O.Q. What would our culture be without borrowing, adaptation and derivatives? In the area of visual art, such a question has taken on additional relevance given the extent to which appropriation and the recycling of pre-existing materials have become crucial factors in contemporary practice.

The following artists utilize methods of pseudoappropriation taking some classic subjects in the History of Art and using them as starting point of their videos, establishing an iconographic bridge between video and history of art, in an attempt to mixtify and enhance both traditions.  In order to illustrate this point, artist Evaristo Benítez in D Apres Courbet tells a story using a succession of gripping abstract images and Andreas Berzotti Death of Arts  reinterpretes Hitchcock s psycho s death as some kind of Arthur Danto s death of Art. While Luis Bezeta creates a moving painting in Moviecuadro, Julia Oschatz evokes the XIX  century romantic experience of the Sublime (Between Caspar, David and Friedrich). Antonia Fritche (Bump), films with a mobilephone a very impressionist aesthetic valued with the choice of a full screen, enlarging pixelisation and so picture decomposition. In her videos, Sabine Gross refers to popular works of art history, such as The Scream, by Edvard Munch, or Happy Tears, by Roy Lichtenstein. Through computer animations, Gross amplifies the intense emotional quality inherent to these pictures, allowing such very distinct aspects to dissociate themselves from their source and become independent. Andreas Sachsenmaier s L Ultima cena shows an apparent image of The Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci where female figures are sitting and standing at a long table, all well-known prototypes, which we can see daily in the media. Inspired by a painting by Jan Vermeer, in Mariana Vassileva s video The Milkmaid the motif becomes transformed, not only into our present but also into a virtual spaceless and timeless sphere. As she remains motionless and only the milk flows one could say that in this work, photography, video and sculpture unite in one medium. In Where to Sleep, Goya, Eugenio Ampudia spends the night sleeping inside the Prado Museum and under The Executions Of The Rebels of the 3rd of May by Francisco de Goya, raising questions regarding the construction of the social space and the struggle against conventions. Cristina Lucas (Talk), strikes and questions Michelangelo s sculpture Moses, as, according to the legend,  its creator did when it finished, and Lucas tries to find the truth about it.

Have these pieces some aura of the originals? Is to carve tombstones for the past the only way left to be original?
All the works could be seen as as a head-on confrontation with the anxiety of influence, and this creates the possibility of an allegorical reading of the work.

Together, these videos restate the history of art on an original point of view, miming moving image and enigmatic art history stereotypes with a strange blend of camp and genuine feeling. In creating such compilation, I try to pay homage to classics of Art History while at the same time asserting that there is some threadline that has been continued  along history, and not necessary a breaking point, a before and an after marked by the born of Video Art.
Therefore, the margins, the sites, the question of concept versus the whole panorama or the medium of video have to be reevaluated and brought into a different kind of discourse.

http://laznia.pl
http://video-art.pl/
http://postvideoart.wordpress.com/
http://groups.google.com/group/video-art

The Images Festival announces 2009 Awards!

Many thanks to our 2009 Jury: Arjon Dunnewind (Director, Impakt Festival, Utrecht, the Netherlands), Kari McQueen (Program Director, EMMEDIA, Calgary) and Dean Otto (Assistant Film/Video Curator, Walker Arts Center, Minneapolis)

Images Prize:
Presented and sponsored by the Images Festival, this is the grand prize of the festival, awarded in recognition of the Best Canadian Media Artwork in the festival. The recipient receives a $500 cash prize.
Steve Reinke (Chicago) for Boy/Analysis: An Abridgement of Melanie Klein's 'Narrative of a Child Analysis

National Film Board of Canada Award:
This prize is awarded by the NFB to the Best Emerging or Mid-career Canadian Film or Video artist in the festival. The winner receives $5,000 in services through the NFB's Filmmaker Assistance Program:
Joshua Bonnetta (Toronto) for Parting [on view at Harbourfront's York Quay Galleries through May 3]

Technicolor Cinematic Vision Award:
This prize is sponsored by Technicolor and honours excellence and innovation in the visual realization of a work by a Canadian film or video artist. The recipient receives $2,500 worth of any services in the Toronto office donated by Technicolor:
Amy Bodman (Toronto) for The Limits of What We Know

Best International On Screen (Film) Award:
Presented and sponsored by the Images Festival, this award honours the strongest new international film in the festival. The recipient receives a $300 cash prize:
Deborah Stratman (Chicago) for O'er the Land

Best International On Screen (Video) Award:
Presented and sponsored by the Images Festival, this award honours the strongest new international video in the festival.  The recipient receives a $300 cash prize:
Duncan Campbell (Glasgow) for Bernadette

OCAD Off Screen Award:
Sponsored by the Ontario College of Art and Design (OCAD), this award honours the strongest new Canadian or international installation or new media work in the festival. The recipient receives a $300 cash prize:
Pedro Paiva & Joao Maria Gusmao (Lisbon, Portugal) for the exhibition Magnetic resonance on abissologic experiments [On view at Mercer Union until April 18]

Steam Whistle Homebrew Award:
Presented by Steam Whistle Brewing, this award honours excellence and promise in a local artist. The recipient receives a $500 cash prize & Steam Whistle prize pack.
Oliver Husain (Toronto) for Mount Shasta

Overkill Award:
This award was established by the Images Festival in 2000 to honour former Executive Director Deirdre Logue, (1996 through 1999 festivals) and is presented annually to a film, video or installation artist whose work approaches extremes of incorrigibility through form and/or content and challenges our notions of edgy, experimental practice. Sponsored by an anonymous donor, the recipient receives a $300 cash prize.
Ben Russell (Chicago) for The Black and White Gods

Marian McMahon Award:
Presented and sponsored by the Images Festival with generous support from Kodak Canada, this award is given to a woman filmmaker each year to honour strong work in autobiography, the complexity of "subject" and the spirit of Marian McMahon. The recipient is invited to attend the Independent Imaging filmmaking retreat, held every each June in Mount Forest, Ontario facilitated by Philip Hoffman:
Naomi Uman (Los Angeles) for Kalendar

York University Award for Best Student Film:
Presented and sponsored by York University's Department of Film and Video, the recipient receives a $300 cash award generously donated by the Department of Film and Video, a Gulf Islands Film and Television School scholarship covering tuition for any one-week Media Intensive Program of their choice and $250 worth of Super-8 to video transfer services from Frame Discreet. The recipient is determined by audience vote:
Daniel McIntyre (York University, Toronto) for It only hurts when I cry

Vtape Award for Best Student Video:
This longstanding award is presented by Vtape, Toronto's video art distributor and includes a $300 cash prize generously donated by Vtape, and $250 worth of Super-8 to video transfer services from Frame Discreet. The recipient is determined by audience vote:
Pouyan Jafarizadeh Dezfoulian (York University, Toronto) for Morning Will Come

Ryerson University Award for Best Emerging Canadian Film/Videomaker from the Greater Toronto Area (GTA): In its second year, this award provides the recipient with a continuing education course (valued at $500) in the Chang School's Film Studies program at Ryerson University.
Lesley Loksi Chan (Toronto) for Curse Cures

Tom Berner Award: This award, sponsored by LIFT, (The Liaison of Independent Filmmakers of Toronto) commemorates the late Tom Berner, who for many years supported and nurtured Canadian filmmakers. The award is presented annually to an individual who has provided extraordinary support to the cause of independent filmmaking in Toronto:
The 2009 Tom Berner Award goes to Mike Hoolboom.

Light Reading Series 9
Graham Ellard & Stephen Johnstone With Mike Sperlinger
London Light Reading
Wednesday 29 April 2009, at 7pm

Light Reading’s ninth series continues with a dialogue between artists Graham Ellard and Stephen Johnstone and writer and assistant director of the LUX, Mike Sperlinger. Ellard and Johnstone will also present one recent work PROPOSAL FOR AN UNMADE FILM (SET IN THE FUTURE) (2007) and a new work in progress, MACHINE ON BLACK GROUND (2009).

Ellard and Johnstone’s collaborative practice is a particular and highly subjective method of investigation into the conventions and effects of the representation of space in cinema. Their recent films start from stories or alibis they tell themselves about the buildings they encounter. Or sometimes the films start from a simple but perhaps far fetched or intuitive formal analogy of some kind that intimates another kind of use or function for the building entirely. These stories, alibis and analogies then form the basis of a kind of shooting and editing script in which a poetic movement from one image to another is as important as any sense of narrative development.

Part of a trilogy, MACHINE ON BLACK GROUND employs archival as well as original footage, combining images from early 1960s industrial documentaries, a concert by Tangerine Dream at Coventry Cathedral and recently shot abstract material of modernist stained glass architecture to suggest a utopian architectural project viewed from an “imagined subterranean space or vantage point.” In so doing, the film proposes two simultaneous formal analogies which suggest that different elements that make up an architectural structure can also be seen to act as a priori structural frameworks for the cinematic event; i.e. stained glass as filmstrip and the modernist cathedral as projector of light.

PROPOSAL FOR AN UNMADE FILM (SET IN THE FUTURE) explores the representation of architectural space whilst playing on a set of material and experiential dichotomies. The idea of a “proposal” stands for elements of pre-production; source material and audition footage, whilst simultaneously projecting itself into a retrospective state of discovery and its viewing as archival material. The film is set in the volcanic landscape of the Timonfaya National Park and intertwines shots of the utopian architecture of Cesar Manrique. The narrative that emerges is one that utilises cinematic convention and quotation in order to question the possibility of an objective placement of the work in time and the experience of architectural space it creates as a result.

Graham Ellard and Stephen Johnstone have collaborated since 1993. They are currently included in the group show “In Search of the Unknown” at Montevideo/Netherlands Media Art Institute, Amsterdam. Other recent screenings and exhibitions include International Film Festival Rotterdam, Filmwinter Stuttgart, Oberhausen Short Film Festival, BFI Southbank, Cleveland Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland and the Chicago Architectural Foundation. www.ellardjohnstone.com

Mike Sperlinger is assistant director of LUX and a freelance writer. He is the author of two books including “Afterthought: New Writing on Conceptual Art” (Rachmaninoff’s, 2005) and “Kinomuseum: Towards an Artist’s Cinema” (Kurzefilmtage Oberhausen, 2008). www.lux.org,uk

Light Reading is an ongoing series of critical dialogues that engage artists, writers and curators around a selected artist’s body of work. To book or to be included on the mailing list for future events, please contact .

at

Light Reading
3rd Floor, 316-318 Bethnal Green Road, London, E2 0AG
Nearest Tube / Train: Bethnal Green

Tickets: £5 door / £4 advance
Telephone: 020 7729 4494
Email: [email protected]
Places are limited so booking is essential

www.no-w-here.org.uk

Garden Pieces
London BFI Southbank
14-28 April 2009

From flowers to trees, backyards to gardeners’ gardens, this series of three programmes of archive and artists’ films presents a rare opportunity to see, experience and reflect on the garden. With works from Kenneth Anger, Ute Aurand & Baerbel Freund, Bruce Baillie, Robert Beavers, Stan Brakhage, Rose Lowder, Marie Menken, Percy Smith, John Smith & Ian Bourn, and Margaret Tait amongst others. Curated and introduced by Peter Todd.