30 May 2012

Pipilotti Rist - Ever is over all 1997



1997, av installation, 2 projections overlapping 
Sound by Anders Guggisberg & P. Rist

I liked this article: http://artintelligence.net/review/?p=443

27 May 2012

Pipilotti Rist - I´m not the girl who misses much 1986

In I'm Not The Girl Who Misses Much (1986) Rist dances before a camera in a black dress with uncovered breasts. The images are often monochromatic and fuzzy Rist repeatedly sings "I'm not the girl who misses much," a reference to the first line of the song "Happiness is a Warm Gun" by the Beatles. As the video approaches its end, the image becomes increasingly blue and fuzzy and the sound stops.

26 May 2012

Hannah Höch - German Dada




Cut with the Dada Kitchen Knife through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch in Germany


Höch was a pioneer of the art form that became known as photomontage. Many of her pieces sardonically critique the mass culture beauty industry, at the time gaining significant momentum in mass media through the rise of fashion and advertising photography. Her works from 1926 to 1935 often depicted same sex couples, and women were once again a central theme in her work from 1963 to 1973. Höch also made strong statements on racial discrimination. Her most famous piece is Schnitt mit dem Küchenmesser DADA durch die letzte weimarer Bierbauchkulturepoche Deutschlands ("Cut with the Dada Kitchen Knife through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch in Germany"), a critique of Weimar Germany in 1919. This piece combines images from newspapers of the time re-created to make a new statement about life and art in the Dada movement.

25 May 2012

Shirin Neshat - Women without men

WOMEN WITHOUT MEN is Shirin Neshat's independent film adaptation of Shahrnush Parsipur's magic realist novel. The story chronicles the intertwining lives of four Women in Iran during the summer of 1953; a thriller that that addresses themes such as human rights and women, women voting rights, and the womans rights movement, a cataclysmic moment in Iranian history and Muslim women rights when an American led, British backed coup d'état brought down the democratically elected Prime Minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, and reinstalled the Shah to power.

24 May 2012

Shirin Neshat - Turbulent 1998

Shirin Neshat - Turbulent 1998

In Turbulent, Neshat's 1998 two-screen video installation, two singers (Shoja Azari playing the role of the male and Iranian Vocalist and composer Sussan Deyhim as the female) create a powerful musical metaphor for the complexity of gender roles and cultural power within the framework of ancient Persian music and poetry.

23 May 2012

Maya Deren - The Divine Horsemen: the living gods of Haiti

Maya Deren - The Divine Horsemen: the living gods of Haiti


Maya Deren, Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti, Documentext/Mc Pherson & Co.: New York, 1983

Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti (1985) is a black-and-white documentary film about dance and possession in Haitian vodou that was shot by experimental filmmaker Maya Deren between 1947 and 1954.

21 May 2012

Maya Deren Meshes of the Afternoon (1943)

Maya Deren Meshes of the Afternoon (1943)




From Senses of Cinema (http://sensesofcinema.com/2002/great-directors/deren-2/)

Thomas Schatz points to Meshes as the best known experimental film of the decade. He categorizes it as the first example of “the poetic psychodrama”, films bearing the impression of art cinema which were seen as “scandalous and radically artistic.”  He writes that the poetic psychodrama “emphasized a dreamlike quality, tackled questions of sexual identity, featured taboo or shocking images, and used editing to liberate spatio-temporal logic from the conventions of Hollywood realism.” 
Rhythm also impacts significantly on spectatorship. The rhythm of the sound, movement and editing conspire to produce the effect of a trance film. Meshes of the Afternoon‘s dream-like mise-en-scène, illogical narrative trajectory, fluid movement and ambient soundtrack invite a type of contemplative, perhaps even transcendental, involvement for the spectator.