murmuration

final cut of murmuration video

research: James Benning

still from video Ten Skies 2004

James Benning now converted to digital until recently known for working in 16mm film
hailed as the cinema's voice of the midwest
raised and studied in Wisconsin US
Policitally awakened during 1960s and participated in civil rights movements, friends drafted and died in vietnam.
This American artists work was suggested to me when I was working on my first project using video.
The timeless, meandering quality appeals. There is no trickery, fancy editing. He is filming what is in real time.
I feel these sorts of video and arts that are more contemplative are reassuring to me. Most of the artists I have been researching based on what their visual imagery is about have ended up being interested in zen, meditation and more calm and tranquil results in their works. This may not be so coincidental after all but it's a stark finding after looking into a number of artists whose biographies and interests stated in interviews raise similar preocupations: Agnes Martin, Ian McKeever, Bill Viola, Tapies etc etc the list goes on.
Part of me wishes I could create more political, engaging, bold, humourous light hearted or innovative work. I appreciate these elements in other peoples but ultimately I seem to return to what I'm drawn to and it's light, calm, abstracted elements that are probably obsessions as a way of coping from the frenetically paced and emotionally draining work that I do when not at college.


Bio:

 His philosophy of “landscape as a function of time,” and “Looking and Listening” (which is also the name of a course taught by Benning) is particularly evident in his films since 1999 in the form of fixed, stable shots


Benning's use of duration reflects his accord with Henry David Thoreau's passage from Walden, “No method nor discipline can supersede the necessity of being forever on the alert. What is a course of history, or philosophy, or poetry, no matter how well selected, or the best society, or the most admirable routine of life, compared with the discipline of looking at what is to be seen?”


Inspiration
artists:

 Bill Traylor, Henry Darger, and Mose Tolliver.

Gallery representation
neugerriemschneider gallery in Berlin


Sources:
http://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/sight-sound-magazine/interviews/sight-sound-interview-james-benning
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWuDiSd09S4

installation: Bill Viola

second attempt to see the Bill Viola installation 'martyrs' in St Pauls was more successful.

At the back of the cathedral above Christopher Wrens tomb are 4 videos on a 7 minute long loop showing 4 martyrs succumbing to 4 elements earth wind fire and water.Different ages, genders all passive and beatific in their trials. The figures are lit in manner consistent in Violas work: spotlight, black background adding contrast and concentrating the gaze.

Viola himself does not adhere to a particular faith and has produced a mesmerising yet uncomfortable piece that will resonate with visitors from any background.

Watching in a troubled time of beheadings, deliberate immolations and migrants drowning, it's impossible to view this piece without these references coming to mind. From an artistic viewpoint, the speed, portrait presentation and silence of the piece all add to it's contemplative qualities. Using reversed footage, lighting and special effects to his advantage Viola has tinkered with reality in a subtle non-showy fashion. On the downside trying to work out how the footage was filmed was a distraction to the piece. It's an illusion thank goodness, there's too much of real life martyring going on, which is maybe what makes the viewing more unsettling, recreating a reality that for others doesn't end when someone shouts "cut" is a gruesome and sobering thought.

research: Sam Taylor-Johnson

STW "I want you, the viewer, to be following a natural progression, a natural course of events. By having the camera as a witness—I’m not tampering. Most of my work isn’t edited. I always think that by editing I’m giving it a lot of narrative, making decisions about how things should then be, or how things should then transpire. Whereas if the camera’s just sitting there, running, it becomes a more natural process."

Sam Taylor-Wood described herself trying to avoid being an artist for as long as possible.

Constance of ideas meant that if she didn't do it she felt like she would go mad.

b.1967 London UK

Graduating from Goldsmiths 1997, now labelled as part of the infamous YBA clan, she works primarily in visual art: film and photography after initially starting out studying sculpture. She describes finding her voice in images and film and her work has a spiritual element although the subject matter is often more full of people with a juxtaposition of silence/music and visible emotion.

She uses multiple screens to engage the viewer, who is likely to want to see a piece more than once to get a fuller feeling what is happening in the work.

She describes work such as 'Wuthering heights' a series of atmosphere landscape stills as trying to find the soul of something.

Having survived 2 types of cancer, divorce and then finding a analysed happiness with someone a lot younger her themes of love loss and interest in things frozen in time has an authentic gravitas to it.

The video series still life confronts the viewer with a staged, old masters style still life which disintegrates unnaturally fast before our eyes. There's a lightness and beauty to the lighting and films despite it's deeper and more haunting metaphors.

Thoughts:

Love the lighting, human transient quality of her work, that is emotive. The videos are things of there time when fashion, props are identifiable. Perhaps why I prefer the subtle 'still life' works that ape old masters in their lighting and composition.

THe lightness and humour to the Bram Stoker series I like. An artist not afraid to put herself in front of the camera and engage with her images in a personal way.

Still Life
2001
Duration: 3 minutes 44 seconds
35mm film/DVD

Gallery representation:

White Cube London

references:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzuWjwcqTcs

http://whitecube.com/artists/sam_taylor-johnson/

http://bombmagazine.org/article/2170/sam-taylor-wood

christian marclay

Exhibition review:

Christian Marclay

White cube Gallery

Christian Marclay an ex-DJ Amercian artist came to wider attention with his widely acclaimed video pieces “clocks” in .

The public now has the chance to see his latest work reflecting his on going fascination with the relationship between image and sound.

The exhibition takes up the long central white walled concrete floored space in the gallery. 3 further room spaces house a black carpeted walled silent cinema space to show one his larger scale video pieces. An animation using computer manipulated images of recognisable comic book onomatopoeas. The Vinyl Factory Press Another 2 show firstly, works on paper based again on his preoccupation with snappy bright onomatopeas and a third larger gallery space with 8 works of screenprints hung on 4 walls. The large space is divided with a central division behind which at various time intervals the sinfonietta perform in a room with walls lined at bar height with over a differing size and shaped beer glasses. The performance was recorded live then pressed onto a ‘retro’ one-off vinyl record for purchasing. 
My favourite parts were the ‘bar crawl’ video installation. Lining the entrance corridor, videos at floorlevel project images onto the opposite corridor wall forming a bright animated noisy walkway. The videos are out of synch and show from a hand held point of view shoes of someone walking, stopping and tapping or crunching underfoot various remnants of someones boozy night out. A pen taps beer bottles resonating a distinctive ring, whilst other footages have more jarring noises of beer cans collapsing underfoot, or bottles rolling on the pavement. The height of the projection means that the viewers lower legs enter the video as we walk along, adding to the vertiginous feel of the footage.

The main room, square, black carpeted with people sat randomly was another pleasing piece. Soundless, colourful, dizzying and eye catching, edited isolated words from comics jumped along the walls, ‘whizz’ whizzing around on repeat, ‘bang’ exploding outwards at varying heights. The primary coloured visual display was hynotic and humourous and worked well in the space. I found myself like other watching the loop on repeat catching different aspects each time.

More muted were the paintings, browns on peppermints, the same words from themain video replicated one per paper. Obvioius watery dashes of paint to try and match words like woosh. They seemed to dull and almost like a collection of experimental artists proofs rather than being able to stand up in their own right.

For my first visit to the cube I enjoyed the works and location and was definitely not disappointed with being able to experience some of Marclays’ work in-situ rather than reading on-line and on you tube.

The use of space and perspective of the projections were inspiring.

Christian Marclay

28 January – 12 April 2015

North Galleries, 9 x 9 x 9 and South Galleries, Bermondsey

Referencees:

http://whitecube.com/exhibitions/christian_marclay_bermondsey_2015/

28 January – 12 April 2015

North Galleries, South Galleries and 9 x 9 x 9, Bermondsey

http://whitecube.com/exhibitions/christian_marclay_bermondsey_2015/

video research

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwGLdhuD1lQ

Bill Viola

Watched a video of the artist talking about his inspiration on Tate shorts

Liked the fact that he didn’t for ages realize he was referencing a childhood experience and that this impact on him, a near death experience, flavours his work with a spiritual element which adds more depth to an already beautiful an eery approach to his work.

I particularly liked

Bill Viola - Tristan's Ascension – 2005

The theatrical lighting gives this a sense of immediacy or a live performance, which is then blurred and confused as the viewer struggles to understand what is happening and how the video is filmed,

It shows a body prone, covered in white, suggesting a death shroud, water in larger and larger quantities seems to travel upwards from the figure giving the film a sense of movement and ascension of the body, as the water density increases, so does the light intensity, albeit obliterating the previously visible body, adding to the sense of ‘ascension’.

Unsettling, dramatic and impactful.

Anna Franceschini - Laws of Attraction

video artist
impressions:
random, liked the use of light, tension, little sound to distract-muted low growl-like bass notes that may or may not have been the sound slowed down.
Slightly haunting location for a film anyway, the ghost ride, haunted house, all forced fear, jumpy laughs and old-school nostalgia.
Something hypnotic and nauseating about watching the images of the big dipper and rides.
Eery sense of being left there at night, abandoned as there are no other visible people.
Jarring more lengthy shots of a pair of legs in manicles shaking in a fitting fashion as if on an electric chair.
How we are appalled by murders and gruesome images in the news, but crime dramas and getting thrills on rides remain an unchanging pasttime however civilised we like to think we're becoming.....
Liked the use of hanging screens with noisy old school projection and shuddering images on a loop. Again,making the viewer feel unsettled and wondering if you're the hunter or hunted.
Sensual piece of video showing hands moving under material with holes of light.