bagger

Christian Skeel

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 20:30:06 PST

Christian Skeel’s paintings deal with different corners of the worlds’ visual presence on a scale from open winter landscapes, waves and tree trunks to other artists’ pictures and film stills. The paintings have in common that they all lead the familiar and intimate, originally photographed, space out to the border where it partly breaks down in visual paradoxes.
source: tomchristoffersen

(loop)
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Pioneering Artist Mike Kelley Has Died at 58

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 12:47:36 PST

Mike Kelley, one of the most critically acclaimed artists of his generation, has died at the age of 58. According to several sources close to the artist that The Observer has spoken with the cause of death was suicide.
source: galleristny

Mike Kelley - What’s In My Bag? (06:25)
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Joshua Heineman - Stereogranimator

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 20:30:05 PST

Like is often the case, it was dumb luck that changed my private interest into a years-long art project that captivated the Internet (as much as such a thing can happen) & made this NYPL application possible.
One evening in my final year of college, I was downloading digital snapshots to my laptop when I got a fleeting sense of 3D as the preview screen flicked quickly between two similar shots. I located the individual photos & flipped back & forth between them continually. The parallax effect of minor changes between the two perspectives created a sustained sense of dimension that approximated the effect of stereo viewing. When I realized how the effect was working, I set about discovering if I could capture the same illusion by layering both sides of an old stereograph in Photoshop & displaying the result as an animated gif. The effect was more jarring than through a stereoscope but no less magic
source: Joshua Heineman - Stereogranimator

Christian Marclay - Telephones, 1995

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 20:30:05 PST

Christian Marclay’s “Telephones” (1995), a 7 1/2-minute compilation of brief Hollywood film clips that creates a narrative of its own. These linked-together snippets of scenes involve innumerable well-known actors such as Cary Grant, Tippi Hedren, Ray Milland, Humphrey Bogart and Meg Ryan, who dial, pick up the receiver, converse, react, say good-bye and hang up. In doing so, they express a multitude of emotions—surprise, desire, anger, disbelief, excitement, boredom—ultimately leaving the impression that they are all part of one big conversation.

The piece moves easily back and forth in time, as well as between color and black-and-white, aided by Marclay’s whimsical notions of continuity. A shot of a woman decked out in ’70s tiger-patterned clothing is followed by one of Whoopi Goldberg talking on a zebra-striped phone. A man saying “I haven’t been able to think or concentrate on anything but you” segues to another man’s perplexed reaction: “I see,” he says. The individual soundtracks are surprisingly successful in setting a mood even in such minute segments, and Marclay uses them, along with other inherent effect—dialing, ringing, beeping, voices, the receiver being dropped or slammed down—to create a rhythmic tone poem.
source: Carol Diehl

paulacoopergallery

Telephones, 1995 - Christian Marclay (07:17)
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Christoph Schäfer

Sun, 29 Jan 2012 20:30:05 PST

skug: Du bist als embedded artist bezeichnet worden, als Künstler-Aktivist, der an sozialen Bewegungen, wie etwa in Hamburg bei stadträumlichen Auseinandersetzungen, von »Park Fiction« bis »Recht auf Stadt« teilnimmt. Wie stellst du diese Verbindung her?

Christoph Schäfer: Embedded, Künstler und Aktivist – diese Begriffe sind Fallen. Mir geht es um Aneignungsprozesse, um eine totalisierte Wunschproduktion, in der sich diese Identitäten auflösen. Manchmal gelingt es, dass künstlerische Mittel in einer Bewegung eine Funktion übernehmen können – oder eine ungewohnte Perspektive eröffnen. Wenn man dem Stadttheoretiker Henri Lefebvre folgt, werden wir alle im Verlauf der »urbanen Revolution« unser Alltagsleben in Dichtung verwandeln. Das bedeutet für mich auch, dass man auf die eigene Gelangweiltheit mit Umständen, Politsprachen und bürokratischen Bedenken reagiert, und sich immer wieder neue Herangehensweisen, Formen, Fluchten und Finten überlegt und sich in andere Milieus hineinbewegt.
source: skug: Die Rückkehr der verratenen Versprechen

Lecture Series: Christoph Schaefer - Factory City

Notizen zur Roten Ruhr Armee 1 (07:19)
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Notizen zur Roten Ruhr Armee 2 (06:07)
youtube

Ein kurze Geschichte der Roten Ruhr Armee, erzählt in einem Zeichnungsfilm von Christoph Schäfer.
Mehr Informationen zu der Arbeit, die im Kontext von “Auslaufendes Rot - Anti-Monument für die Rote Ruhr Armee” in Essen 2010 entstanden ist: saloon-la-realidad

Hintergrundmusik ist ein Pobetape des Schwabinggrad Balletts

John Carpenter's They Live

Sat, 28 Jan 2012 20:30:00 PST

They Live should be embraced as a true work of science fiction. The fact that it uses the context of an exciting story of aliens, gunfights and action to disguise the subtext of angry political outrage is the very essence of what sci-fi should be. As an audience, we shouldn’t be surprised when we pick at the surface of the plethora of blockbusters released every year to find they are trying to tell us something more
source: denofgeek

Shepard Fairey

They live (1988) The sunglasses ‘Obey’ ‘This is your god’ (05:48)
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Full Movie

IMDb

Hans Lannér

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 20:30:05 PST

Hans Lannér works with images from various origins – moments from journeys, everyday life compositions, abstract thoughts and fading memories. He works in a dissolved but yet precise manner, where each smear of colour is both body and content. Where the motif is both simple and inscrutable.

There is a timeless fateful quality in Lannér’s work that Ulf Linde described in catalogue text: “…When our own species has died out the earth will continue to spin without us. The horizon will continue to be horizontal, weights will continue to fall straigt downwards, night will continue to follow on day: everything that the man crossing the road never needs to think about but takes for granted. This is what Hans Lannér gives expression to in his little, etched hymns.”
(from the book “Hans Lannér”, Carlsson bokförlag, 2008)
source: gallerimagnuskarlsson - Care

svenskakonstnarer

Bel Linquist - Patch A Signal (interactive video)

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 20:30:05 PST

Bel Linquist doesn’t like the term “artist.” She prefers “psychic alchemist.”
But after you’ve created paintings that brainwash their viewers and sold customized lo-fi love songs, you can pretty much call yourself whatever you want. Bel wanted to prove that the everyday didn’t have to be ordinary.

So she took an Xperia and toured Paris for a few days, collecting the sort of sounds people rarely pay attention to. Then she turned them into something extraordinary: a unique song built from common sound samples.
She says all her songs are love songs. But this is the first love song she’s composed using the sounds of the City of Lights.
source: xperiastudio

Patch A Signal (interactive video)
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Do enjoy fullscreen !!

Jasch - Optical Identity (2007)

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 20:30:06 PST

Artistic Director Cathie Boyd aims to blast open the frontiers of musical performance, and present it as a more intoxicating experience illuminated by visual and theatrical interpretation.
Using sculptural sets by internationally-renowned designer Jason Ong, costumes by Singapore fashion designer BAYLENE and visuals created by Swiss digital artist Jasch, she has succeeded brilliantly. Optical Identity immerses its audience in a sensory world of escape from the moment the T’ang Quartet emerge from the dark and, dressed in striking white costumes, begin their intense, high energy performance, playing their instruments off score with passion and tremendous skill, in a series of choregraphed movements.
source: tuneup.org (PDF)

Optical Identity (2007) (08:45)
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Daniele Del Nero

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 20:30:05 PST

Daniele Del Nero creates architectural scale models of buildings with a domestic look to them. He then dampens the exterior of the structure and applies a thin dusting of flour. The model is then placed into a transparent plexiglass case. Mould starts to grow after a couple of days and dies within two weeks, leaving behind what Del Nero describes as “a dusty spider-web which covers the model like a rambler plant”.
source: wired

scomparire 2008 (02:07)
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Gabriela Fridriksdottir

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 20:31:06 PST

Gabriela Fridriksdottir’s approach is characterized by the use of a variety of media: drawings, paintings, photographs, and sculptures figure as prominently as installations and performances.

The artist assembles different cultural, religious, and psychological elements to unfold a unique aesthetical canon of signs, forms, and meanings. This becomes particularly evident in her videos whose surreal scenarios, which abandon all classical narrative patterns, confront the viewer with wondrous worlds: dream images interweave with stories from Norse mythology, elements of sexual psychology are associated with the sphere of spiritual exercises, things of the past merge with the present. In the work Gabríela Friðriksdóttir is conceiving for the SCHIRN, original medieval manuscripts of Icelandic sagas combine with the artist’s mysterious system of signs and a new film to a fantastic universe of its own. Curator: Matthias Wagner K, Berlin
source: Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt

cuetoproject

youtube: Tetralogia vs Slayer - Gabriela Fridriksdottir (04:16)

Agustina Woodgate - Poetry Bombing 2011

Sun, 22 Jan 2012 21:07:05 PST

Agustina Woodgate looks anxiously over her shoulder before passing her needle through another pair of brown trousers. The tag she sews into the waistband reads, “Life is a huge dream/ Why work so hard?” Hiding among the racks in a thrift store in Hialeah’s Flamingo Plaza, she sews as many poetry tags as she can into secondhand clothes before she gets kicked out.

Prevalent in Woodgate’s art is the idea of displacement. When she positions something like poetry in an unexpected place such as inside clothing, people can’t help but confront the often-overlooked genre.
source: miaminewtimes

O, Miami: Poetry tags (04:34)
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“Places and Objects are alive, we make them alive, they tell our stories and tales.
Sewing poems in clothes in a way is giving the garments a voice.”

Poetry Bombing

Daniel Grabner - Hashish (2002)

Sat, 21 Jan 2012 20:31:05 PST

Daniel Grabner’s documentary Haschich is a fascinating look into the world of hashish artisans living in Ketama, Morocco. Simple yet filled with detail, the film reveals the daily rituals revolving around the production and business of hash and the centuries-old society of the men who make it. For many of us, hashish evokes a certain exotic mystique, but Grabner’s film shows us that the production of hashish is as ordinary as the work clothes worn by its producers. The end result may be something sought out by connoisseurs of mind-altering smoke willing to spend hundreds of dollars on a finger-sized chunk of Moroccan Caramello, but the process of its creation is far less romantic than the dreams that smoke will generate. Beautifully photographed and with a lovely soundtrack of traditional Moroccan music, Haschich is so intimate that you can practically smell and taste the sweetness of its subject.
source: dangerousminds

previous on Bagger the Opium Museum

Hashish (1:16:16)
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fullscreen possible !

An American Language 2012

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 20:31:05 PST

Guerrero Gallery is pleased to present its January show,
“An American Language”, featuring the works of 12 traditional American sign painters.

An extension to the gallery’s show last year with San Francisco’s own, New Bohemia Signs, this month’s exhibition brings together artists from across the country who have built a livelihood through the language of sign painting. For them, sign painting is a trade, a means to support themselves, an outlet for creativity, and simply a way of life. These painters exemplify the core tradition of a studied practice that has had a significant impact in the history of art and communication. Expressing a myriad of messages to people, hand lettered signs represent a language that has crossed over into the world of fine art. These 12 American sign painters are more than tradesmen within the culture; Through their work, they push the boundaries of how the art & language of sign painting is viewed, understood, and appreciated.
source: a href=”http://guerrerogallery.com/” target=”_blank”>Guerrero Gallery

Julian Palacz - algorithmic search for love 2010

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 20:31:05 PST

Who doesn’t love a good supercut?
And no, we’re not referring to the budget hair salon, but rather to the obsessive fan-created video montages that string together isolated scenes from movies, TV shows and other video content to create an all-encompassing sequence of usually hilarious proportions. The genre has given birth to such instant classics as “Every Single Dude,” a supercut of scenes from The Big Lebowski and this gem of “Nicolas Cage Losing His Shit.” Supercuts are fun to watch, but incredibly tedious to create. You’ve got to slog through all that footage and painstakingly mark and grab every scene.

But that’s all about to change thanks to Austrian new media artist Julian Palacz, whose graduation project Algorithmic Search For Love indexes all the captioned videos of his personal film collection and algorithmically searches the text search engine to automatically locate scenes associated with a specific keyword or phrase.
source: thecreatorsproject

Julian Palacz / algorithmic search for love / 2010 (01:47)
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Veronica Ranner - Biophilia 2011

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 20:30:06 PST

Current sciences progress at an exponential pace – my practise aims therefore to mediate the intersection of emerging technology, science, society and design. Using a wide range of media such as objects, illustrations, video as well as artistic and scientific collaborations, I hope to encourage the public to question and re-assess their relationship towards technology.
source: Veronica Ranner

[ FF — Phase 4 ] — Fertilised Futures (02:58)
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Mike Lash

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 20:30:05 PST

Mike Lash - LIES FOR LEO LIES FOR US

‘Elephants are afraid of mice.’
‘Rabbits like carrots best.’
‘The earth is round.’
‘The sky is blue.’
‘This is a green balloon.’

From myth to philosophy, New York artist Mike Lash recorded a series of ‘lies’ (mainly composed of common-world perceptions) his neighbour Tim told his son Leo. Lash then created a series of oil paintings and a book called ‘Lies for Leo’ based on them, portraying the fact that adults pass on their half-truths (which eventually turned into lies) to their children.
source: think-silly

galeriedujour

intuoutsiderart

mikesmuseum.net

“I make stuff, mostly stuff that has no real reason to exist, but now, they do exist. Sometimes people like them. I hope you like them.”

Dot Samsen - Coin Flipper

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 20:30:05 PST

Randomness and fate are usually used as decision making for us. Some decisions are so hard, we leave the responsibility to fate or randomness, coin flipping is one of those methods. Whether it makes us feel less guilty or believe it is the right decision. What about our true intention behind decisions? The Coin flipper aims to challenge the randomness to reveal the true intention. I’m trying to create the working prototype of the ‘controllable’ coin flipper.
source: Dot Samsen

Coin Flipper (04:29)
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Alessandro Zuek Simonetti - Fetish Meetings (2008)

Sun, 15 Jan 2012 20:30:06 PST

On digital versus analog…

Alessandro Zuek Simonetti: Digital was not present when I was a teenager. I started taking pictures around [the age of] 17, when I was [interested in] graffiti and the skate culture. We were spending our days at train stations, waiting for the trains to arrive and to paint [them]. I’m not against “digital.” It’s just a different approach… I shoot in film, but basically I believe in the power of the image, not in the media that you’re using. You know, you can do an amazing movie with a professional video camera, but some of the best work can also be done with a mobile phone. And yes, I like the analogic way of shooting. I find it’s a completely different attitude. I like to wait a few days to see the pictures—this is probably because I’ve grown up with film.
source: Elisa Simi in Conversation with Alessandro Zuek Simonetti

encuentros (youtube spanish)

Chris Marker - La Jetée (1962)

Sat, 14 Jan 2012 20:30:05 PST

Chris Marker - La Jetee is almost totally composed of individual frozen pictures, since it is a photo-montage with sparse narration. Set in the near future, the Earth has barely survived an all encompassing nuclear holocaust, which has driven the remnants of humanity underground. The division between victor and vanquished is rather meaningless under these circumstances, yet there are those who subjugate others. With minimal resources, scientists entombed beneath the ruins of Paris are searching for salvation through the single avenue left open
source: film.u-net

IMDb

La Jetée (1962) (26:37)
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