Pierre Huyghe - Third Memory

The Third Memory

 from: http://www.egs.edu/

"Pierre Huyghe, French artist and filmmaker speaking about reality and virtuality, narrative, projection and memory in a free and open video lecture for the students and faculty at European Graduate School Media and Communication studies department program in Saas-Fee, Switzerland 2008. Pierre Huyghe.

...His two-channel video The Third Memory (1999), first exhibited in a museum context at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris and The Renaissance Society in Chicago, takes as its starting point Sidney Lumet's 1975 film Dog Day Afternoon, starring Al Pacino in the role of the bank robber John Wojtowicz. Huyghe's video reconstructs the set of Lumet's film, but he allows Wojtowicz himself, now a few dozen years older and out of jail, to tell the story of the robbery. Huyghe juxtaposes images from the reconstruction with footage from Dog Day Afternoon, demonstrating that Wojtowicz's memory has been irrevocably altered by the film about his life."

Pierre Huyghe. Narrative, Projection and Memory. 2008. 1/7:

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Geography of the Body - Willard Maas - 1943

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Chris Marker - Second Life Interview

from:

http://www.criterion.com/current/posts/1143-chris-markers-second-life

"

Chris Marker's Second Life

t doesn’t really come as a surprise that Chris Marker is a devoted inhabitant of the virtual world Second Life. After all, one could call the playful French filmmaker and multimedia artist’s kitty—and alter ego—Guillaume-en-Egypt a trailblazing avatar (when asked for pictures of himself, he offers images of the cat instead). Now Marker, who rarely interacts with the public, will give a live guided tour of his Second Life archipelago, Ouvroir, and museum, in a special event at theHarvard Film Archive this Saturday, May 16. Of course, Marker will appear only in the form of his Second Life avatar, who will meet and converse with moderating avatars Haden Guest, the director of the archives, and Naomi Yang, of Exact Change Press (publishers of Marker’s important CD-ROM Immemory). At the end of the tour, he will also take questions from an audience avatar. The interaction will be screened live at the archive’s theater, and the event also includes projections of other Marker video and film pieces.

You can get a taste of what’s in store with these clips from Ouvroir (parts one, two, and three) and the spectacular, spectral museum. And to understand (a little!) better what Marker’s motivations were in getting involved with Second Life, read this interview with him, which appeared in the April 22–28, 2008, issue of the French weekly Les inrockuptibles, here for the first time in English. At eighty-seven, the editors wrote in the introduction to the piece, Marker “agreed to the rare interview on the condition it be conducted on Second Life, a screen rendezvous, complete with pseudonyms and avatars, for a political and poetic discussion.” There, Marker calls himself Sergei Murasaki, and the interviewers—Julien Gester and Serge Kaganski—Iggy Atlas. The latter add: “Through the intermediary of keyboards and screens, our conversation required unusual agility. The pace might make some replies seem a little short, but the process also shed light on the quasi-instantaneous crystallizations of an infinitely nimble and mischievous mind.” Translated by Dorna Khazeni.

Iggy Atlas: Why is this conversation on SL [Second Life] rather than in RL [real life]?
Sergei Murasaki: I hope it’ll go faster.
IA: How did you come to have an exhibition on SL?
SM: Curiosity at first. Then it becomes addictive.
IA: How so?
SM: Have you read Adolfo Bioy Casares’s The Invention of Morel?
IA: No, neither of us have read it. Shame on us?
SM: Well, it’s nothing to be proud of. In any event, it’s exactly the world of that masterpiece that I came to find in SL.
IA: Can you describe it for us?
SM: A dream state. The sense of porousness between the real and the virtual.
IA: Actually, what has your experience been in this virtual world?
SM: An example: when Serge told me there’d be two of you, my REFLEX was, “We’ll need a third chair.” Which in reality would be stupid, but isn’t here.
IA: This island, the objects that are here, the Museum . . . Are you their creator and owner?
SM: No, I’ve never been the owner of anything. Some Viennese friends took care of putting it all together. They’re pretty neat folks.
IA: How much time do you spend on SL?
SM: Not an enormous amount, because I still have LOTS of work in RL. But if I could . . . 
IA: If you could?
SM: I would retire here for good. Like Brando in Tahiti. There’d be fewer worries in terms of maintenance.
IA: How do you perceive the way in which this virtual space and its users have invented a life, an economy, a virtual commerce of things and monies?
SM: The whole commerce aspect of it I find just as boring as I do in real life. Besides, I don’t understand it at all. But then again, I don’t understand the economy of the real world to begin with . . .
IA: How does SL fit into the context of your artistic preoccupations?
SM: I don’t believe I’ve ever had “artistic preoccupations.” I’m a cobbler. This is supercobbling.
IA: What you’ve managed to cobble to date, when it was made, seems to have prophesized today’s technologies, almost as if it was conjuring them, don’t you think? 
SM: You really ought to lighten up your vocabulary. “Artistic,” “prophesize.” None of this is like me in the least. I think I’ll stick to cobbling, with all that’s inherently honorable in artisanal undertakings.
IA: Doesn’t SL, and don’t all these new ways of communicating, let you indulge your proclivity for secrecy and mystery? 
SM: It would seem if you’re not on TV all the time, then you have a proclivity for mystery. Let’s just leave it at that. Though I did like that a critic, who wrote about the Zurich exhibition, said I was “born to be an avatar.”
IA: Precisely. The choice of a pseudonym, your absence from the media, make so much sense in this enterprise, and the adopting of a new virtual avatar. 
SM: Are there any real avatars?
IA: Masks?
SM: Ah, that’s something else altogether. Max Jacob used to tell the story of two Masks who made a rendezvous, having never seen each other, naturally. And when they removed their masks, surprise: “It was neither one nor the other.”
IA: Is an avatar or a pseudonym a mask for you? A way of creating a partition between your cobbling and what the rest of the world calls “a work,” “of art” . . . ?
SM: I’m much more pragmatic than that. I chose a pseudonym, Chris Marker, that is easy to pronounce in most languages because I intended to travel. You need search no further than that.
IA: But since then, you’ve created a character that’s universally considered to be an artist.
SM: I never much worried about how I was considered.
IA: The delocalized exhibition on SL is entitled “A Farewell to the Movies.” How should this farewell be interpreted?
SM: Please . . . It’s “A Farewell TO Movies.” An homage to Hemingway. A way of saying farewell to cinema, undoubtedly, but without exaggerating. The constitutional right to contradict oneself was inscribed in the charter Baudelaire drew up.
IA: From a farewell to arms to a farewell to films . . . Should we consider that film is an arm?
SM: Of course not. That’s simply a euphonic correspondance. You must never attribute so much intentionality to me.
IA: So . . . does cinema belong to the past?
SM: One can play with that idea. Godard does it very well. But he is a filmmaker.
IA: Have you never considered yourself a filmmaker?
SM: Ne-ver.
IA: What label would you prefer, then? Multimedia cobbler?
SM: Cobbler, definitely. Multimedia . . . well, that belongs to contemporary jargon.
IA: Will new technologies in some way modify your relationship to images, to sounds, and what you do with them?
SM: Of course. To be able to make a whole film, The Case of the Grinning Cat [2004], with my own ten fingers, without any external support or intervention . . . and to then go sell the DVDs I’d burned myself at the Saint-Blaise market . . . I confess, I felt triumphant. From producer to consumer, directly. No surplus value. Marx’s dream come true.
IA: Speaking of which, the exhibition mixes portraits of artists, images from older and more recent demonstrations, photos of political personalities. How would you define the relationship between your cobbling and what is commonly called ideology?
SM: I’m afraid what is commonly called ideology no longer has any relationship at all with its original defintion. To begin with, it was a ruse of war. Today, it’s merely a substitute for a war that doesn’t exist. But we could go on about this at length . . . 
IA: Hasn’t your work always had a political dimension?
SM: It has been said to. Myself, to put it in a nutshell, I’ve always said that politics, which is the art of compromise—and thank goodness for that—in no way interests me. What does interest me is history. I would add: “Politics interests me to the extent it cuts a slice into history.” But I hate repeating myself.
IA: In films such as 2084, your work outlined a hypothetical future. Today, there’s talk of the end of ideologies, you’re saying farewell to films, Godard talks about the death of cinema, the real is no longer all there is . . . What has been eclipsed for you, even as other things have been born?
SM: Malraux had a wonderful formula, which curiously no one has taken up: “The thing that is born where values die, and that does not replace them.” The difficulty of these times is that before bringing in new ideas, we’d have to destroy all the simulacra that the century and its favorite instrument, television, have generated to replace everything that has disappeared. This is why I’m passionate about the new information grid, the Internet, blogs, etc. Inevitably, there’s some slag, but a new culture will be born of it. 
IA: And what is the culture you see born of it?
SM: Our grandchildren will decide. All one can say is that “something” exists. And for now, that’s something. To say more would be fortune-telling, or politics.
IA: You were saying that SL recaptured the spirit of The Invention of Morel for you. What part of your films does SL recapture for you?
SM: The presence of Guillaume the cat, anyhow. Did you notice how he’s made himself entirely at home over here?
IA: Haven’t you played a part in that?
SM: That’s a common error. It’s difficult to explain it to anyone who hasn’t been a cat in a past life, as is my case. Guillaume’s personality imposed itself on my Viennese accomplices without my ever having to ask. You can ask them yourself. Cats, you know, have certain powers.

IA: The real occupies a preponderant place in some of your films, from Sans Soleil [1982] toGrin Without a Cat [1977]. When you’re here, don’t you miss it?
SM: I wouldn’t have described Sans Soleil as a film that was particularly subjugated to the real. But if you say so . . . 
IA: We didn’t say “subjugated” . . .
SM: When the real is truly present, it has a tendency to subjugate everything else . . .
IA: What in the RL preoccupies you today?
SM: If you mean “truly today,” I find the adventures of the Olympic torch fascinating. The skit in San Francisco was the most magnificent piece of slapstick I’ve seen in a long, long time.
IA: And more generally?
SM: Well, when one hears that a fellow, John Paulson, made three billion dollars on the stock market, and that four hours away by plane, in Haiti, there are food riots, it yanks you back to harsh reality.
IA: How do you get your information these days?
SM: International press publications online, CNN and Al Jazeera in English, and my favorite channel, the Russian RTR Planeta. And I have my informants here and there. There’s also the twentieth arrondissement’s blackbird, who gives me updates on all the neighborhood gossip at five every morning. 
IA: What is it that keeps you so interested in the world’s movements? So acutely alert to it all?
SM: Curiosity. That’s all. I’ve never felt much of anything else.
IA: What kind of film viewer are you today?
SM: Alas, alas, alas . . . 
IA: Alas?
SM: I’d always professed that cinema was to be seen only in a movie theater, that television was to be used as a memory aid only. Shamefully, I have perjured myself, simply because I no longer have the time.
IA: What films do you watch?
SM: It’s pretty anarchic. I really like great American television series. You mentioned politics. Has there been anything as good as The West Wing?
IA: How about The Wire?
SM: I was going to mention it next. But there I’d say sociology rather than politics. Only, they should have English subtitles.
IA: What, apart from politics and sociology, fascinates you in the proliferation of these series today?
SM: First their actual cinematic quality. It’s where all the innovation and invention is taking place. On every level: the story, the editing, the casting, the sound . . . They’re ahead of Hollywood.
IA: It seems you share this passion for American TV series with one of your friends, Alain Resnais. Is it something you two have discussed?
SM: I suppose it goes back to our passion for comic strips.
IA: Do you continue to follow the work of your old acquaintances, such as Alain Resnais, Agnès Varda, Jean-Luc Godard . . .
SM: Of course. Agnès is in the process of recording an interview with Guillaume . . . See what I told you?
IA: How would you present your life’s work, the sum of your cobbling, to a young person who didn’t know Chris Marker?
SM: I’d tell them to read The Invention of Morel.

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Richard Billingham - Fishtank [00:46:40 1998]

"It's not my intention to shock, to offend, sensationalise, be political or whatever; only to make work that is as spiritually meaningful as I can make it—whatever the medium."

—Richard Billingham

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Alfred Hitchcock Interview - On the Superfluousness of Actors, Tension, Relief & Humour

If someone could tell me the name of the the Russian film-maker / film mentioned at the beginning of this clip, I would be very grateful.

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Chris Marker - Junkopia [UbuWeb]

http://www.ubu.com/film/marker_junkopia.html

“Chris Marker, John Chapman & Frank Simeone (1981, 6 min)

One day, at the stroke of evening, on Emeryville beach in San Francisco, where unidentified artists, leave, without anyone knowing, sculptures manufactured with items that have washed ashore from the sea.

This includes a short introduction by arte, approx. 1:12 secs long, with the film being around 6 minutes itself....there are 2 intertitles in the film itself, giving the latitudanal and longitudanal co-ordinates of the beach. No subtitles required.”

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'The Last Advertising Agency on Earth' [Saatchi & Saatchi]

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Four Lions Trailer

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Chris Petit - Content

 

from Channel4:

"Thirty years ago, Chris Petit directed Radio On, now considered a road movie cult classic which caught the zeitgeist of the Britain of the time.

Now showing in the True Stories strand, Content is described by Petit as, "an ambient 21st century road movie", a meditative essay inspired by the almost trancelike state the act of driving can bring.

With the narrative provided by Hanns Zischler, the film is variously about memories of other journeys from Texas through to Poland, the impact of modern technology and the rise of the huge impersonal factory sheds which now line roads throughout the world."

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London in the Raw

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"Gloomy Octopus" and HD TV

“Gloomy octopuses (Octopus tetricus) reacted to films shown on liquid crystal high definition television (HDTV) as if they were seeing the real thing, according to a new study by Renata Pronk at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, and colleagues. "They lunge forwards to attack crabs and back off from other octopuses, much as they do in the wild," says Hanlon

…Previous attempts to get octopuses to respond to videos failed, probably because they used CRT, which displays footage at a rate of 24 frames per second – too slowly for their sophisticated eyes. "The images that they see on CRT screens are incomplete and probably incoherent," says Hanlon”

From new Scientist, Full article:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18640-gloomy-octopus-is-moody-octopus.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=online-news

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Yukio Mishima - On Boredom & Death [English Subtitles]

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Waterbed Landscaped [Porn Landscaped] [Porn Negative Space]

• Video: Edited clip of "Waterbed Amateur Fuck" via Fleshbot
• Text: Copy and paste from Myfreecams chatroom hosted by "KimYi"
• Audio:  "Waves On Pebble Beach.wav" field recording uploaded by Benboncan found on the Creative Commons Freesound project website
• Link to Audio: http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=88575

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Airport Smoking Room Flower

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Live Jasmine - Depressing Conversation #1 [Porn Negative Space]

• Text: A copy/paste from a Live Jasmine chat, mostly between YouWithMe the "host" and aks000.
• Video: Peripheries of user YouWithMe's adult webcam show hosted by Live Jasmine.
• Audio: Techno/trance-type song playing in background, recorded and molested.
• Sofa: Abstract Expressionist Ikea

Porn Copyright Violation [Porn Negative Space]

Television and fan playing hide and seek.
Text-to-Speech taken from advert posted on Freelancer.com requesting someone to monitor illegal uploads and filesharing of porn.
Video: Porn Negative Space of clip entitled "5062_Von_Halbschwester_entjungfert"

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Maya Deren - Meditation on Violence (1948)

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Crash: Homage to JG Ballard - Gagosian Gallery London

Crash: Homage to JG Ballard

Author: Simon Sellars • Feb 12th, 2010 •

Ed Ruscha. Fountain of Crystal, 2009. Acrylic on canvas. 30 1/8 x 36 1/8 inches (76.5 x 91.8 cm).

CRASH: HOMAGE TO JG BALLARD

Press Release
Gagosian Gallery
6-24 Britannia St London WC1X 9JD
t. 020.7841.9960 f. 020.7841.9961

Gallery hours: Tue – Sat: 10:00am– 6:00pm

Thursday, 11 February – Thursday, 1 April 2010

Opening reception: Thursday, February 11th from 6 to 8pm

I have used the car not only as a sexual image, but as a total metaphor for man’s life in today’s society.

JG Ballard

Gagosian Gallery London will present “Crash,” a major group exhibition opening on 11 February 2010, which takes its title from the famous novel by JG Ballard.

Ballard’s novels stand among the most visionary, provocative literature of the twentieth century, with his ominous predictions regarding the fate of Western culture and his insights into the dark psychopathology of the human race. This exhibition is a response to the enormous impact and enduring cultural significance of his work, following his death in spring 2009. Highlighting Ballard’s great passion for the surreal and his engagement with the artists of his own generation, “Crash” includes examples of his specific inspirations as well as works by contemporary artists who have, in turn, been inspired by his vision.

Ballard’s first published short story “Prima Belladonna” appeared in 1956, the same year as the celebrated Independent Group’s exhibition “This is Tomorrow” at the Whitechapel Gallery, which marked the birth of Pop Art in Britain. It was here, and in the work of Surrealists such as Salvador Dali and Paul Delvaux, that Ballard found the seeds of what he called a “fiction for the present day”. With its dystopian depictions of the present and future, its bleak, man-made landscapes and the recounting of the psychological effects of technological, social and environmental developments on humans, his work has resonated strongly among other writers, filmmakers and visual artists. The exhibition “Crash” brings together works by artists tuned to the Ballardian universe, from his contemporaries such as Ed Ruscha, Richard Hamilton, Andy Warhol and Helmut Newton, to younger artists such as Tacita Dean, Jenny Saville, Glenn Brown and Mike Nelson.

The exhibition is organised in association with the Estate of JG Ballard.

List of artists: Richard Artschwager, Francis Bacon, JG Ballard, Hans Bellmer, Glenn Brown, Chris Burden, Jake & Dinos Chapman, John Currin, Salvador Dalí, Giorgio de Chirico, Tacita Dean, Jeremy Deller, Paul Delvaux, Cyprien Gaillard, Douglas Gordon, Loris Gréaud, Richard Hamilton, John Hilliard and Jemima Stehli, Roger Hiorns, Damien Hirst, Dan Holdsworth, Carsten Höller, Edward Hopper, Allen Jones, Mike Kelley, Jeff Koons, Roy Lichtenstein, Vera Lutter, Florian Maier-Aichen, Paul McCarthy, Adam McEwen, Dan Mitchell, Malcolm Morley, Mike Nelson, Helmut Newton, Cady Noland, Claes Oldenburg, Eduardo Paolozzi, Steven Parrino, Richard Prince, Robert Rauschenberg, Gerhard Richter, Ed Ruscha, Jenny Saville, George Shaw, Cindy Sherman, Piotr Uklański, Andy Warhol, Rachel Whiteread, Christopher Williams, Jane and Louise Wilson, Christopher Wool and Cerith Wyn Evans.

For further inquiries please contact the gallery at london@gagosian.com or at +44.207.841.9960.

More information here.

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Martin Creed - Sick Film

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We Live in Public [Trailer]

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