Fail-Safe

Charlie Chaplin - The Great Dictator's globe dance

2010-11-29T22:23:00.000-08:00

2010-10-07T08:59:00.000-07:00

Jonas Mekas

2009-08-07T10:24:00.000-07:00

Seminal filmmaker Jonas Mekas on 'changing one's mind'. This is an excerpt from his 365 Films project, dated June 17, 2007. His website is pretty great, though downloads aren't free. (Look for the Tarkovski Out takes)
Thanks Microcinema International.

2009-07-24T10:18:00.000-07:00

David Horvitz has a show at 2nd Cannon Publications in LA - centered on a video titled Rarely Seen Bas Jan Ader Film.

In 2007 a video of a few second black and white film was uploaded to Youtube with the title, "Rarely Seen Bas Jan Ader Film." The black and white film depicted a figure biking into the ocean. The posting claimed that the film was found in Ader's locker at UC Irvine after his disappearance at sea in 1975, and that the film was assumed unusable because it abruptly runs out just as the figure enters the water. Responding to a complaint by a thirdparty, Youtube deleted the posted video, saying that "this material is infringing."

The best part is that the video was presumably pulled because Horvitz's post claimed association with (and therefore the blessings of) Patrick Painter Gallery, which represents Ader's estate. A bold inclusion that supported the film's claims of authenticity.
Horvitz's 5+ second film is a grainy, cutting-room-floor clip of a lanky figure on a bicycle pedaling into the surf, instantly succumbing to the difficulty of aqua-dynamics. It's long enough to see that the effort is futile, but short enough to leave the viewer wanting to see how far he gets.

The video's text:

A newly rediscovered film by artist, Bas Jan Ader. This was found at UC Irvine where he was teaching. It is believed this work was disregarded by the artist because the film runs out just as he enters the ocean. A new official limited edition of this piece will be available soon.

So the very question of 'authenticity' is a huge facet of Ader's work - i.e. authenticity of visual signifiers (emotion) - in this case, questions are raised about all the posthumous editioning of work previously unreleased. Most of Patrick Painter's BJA offerings carry the suspicious '/' - like, "EDITION OF 3 (1973/2005)". It's kind of a shame, the posthumously-editioned works seem to echo BJA's contemporaries' work - neons or repetitive-action films (Naumann and McCarthy) - and really just seem like filler next to his seminal film works and installations that are so seductive.

I say that like they're not still awesome.

2nd Cannon website - Thanks Bert!

2009-07-09T14:16:00.000-07:00

Instant nostalgia:

We have hundreds of digitals pics that we don't know what to do with, and now that Polaroid is a thing of the past, why not go for the washed-out, greenish Polaroid look, sans the waving, rubbing and otherwise useless efforts to get the thing to develop.
Now we can get our fix at Poladroid, a new site dedicated to turning all your pristine digital photographs into terrible-looking, but nostalgic versions of their former selves.

Flickr albums here.

Bas Jan Ader documentary on DVD

2009-07-03T11:24:00.000-07:00

I just received my copy of Bas Jan Ader's documentary from AgitPop (!)-

Cult Epics and Agitpop Media proudly present Here Is Always Somewhere Else, the critically acclaimed documentary about enigmatic Dutch/Californian artist Bas Jan Ader (1942-1975), whose daring conceptual performances culminated in his mysterious disappearance at sea.

Film about the life and work of Dutch/Californian conceptual artist Bas Jan Ader, who in 1975 disappeared under mysterious circumstances at sea in the smallest boat ever to cross the Atlantic. As seen through the eyes of fellow emigrant filmmaker Rene Daalder, the picture becomes a sweeping overview of contemporary art films as well as an epic saga of the transformative powers of the ocean. Featuring artists Tacita Dean, Rodney Graham, Marcel Broodthaers, Ger van Elk, Charles Ray, Wim T. Schippers, Chris Burden, Fiona Tan, Pipilotti Rist and many others.

Brian Ulrich

2009-06-17T19:21:00.000-07:00

Ulrich's Copia series involves a typical rhetoric of 'consumer waste' and abandoned buildings, but they really have an unexpected drama. The candid thrift store shots are lit suspiciously well and the store buildings particularly remind me of my own hometown. They're not overly political, some are even sort of sweet. Thrift store portraits are really great.

He says:

Through large scale photographs taken within both the big-box retail stores, and the thrift shops that house our recycled goods, Copia explores not only the everyday activities of shopping, but the economic, cultural, social, and political implications of commercialism and the roles we play in self-destruction, over consumption, and as targets of marketing and advertising. By scrutinizing these rituals and their environments, I hope that viewers will evaluate the increasing complexities of the modern world and their role within it.

Mischel Marshmallow Test

2009-05-30T15:43:00.000-07:00

Heard this on the RadioLab podcast. Wish I could find footage of the original, but this is a reenactment of the Walter Mischel experiment. Kinda sounds mean and awesome. I think it shows greed more than self-restraint. 'Bird in hand...'

'Mr. Meany-Face' himself, after suckering some other kids into good behavior.

Big Gay Mayor

2009-05-26T10:44:00.000-07:00

I think it's kinda sweet.

SAN ANGELO, Texas — The mayor of a West Texas city abruptly resigned Wednesday, picking love over his love of office.

J.W. Lown told the San Angelo Standard-Times in a telephone interview from Mexico that he was involved in a relationship with a man who does not have legal status in the United States.

Lown, 32, said he didn't want to take the oath of office knowing he was "aiding and assisting" someone who is not a U.S. citizen. He was to be sworn in Tuesday but did not show up for the ceremony.

"We had to do the right thing and come to Mexico and wait in line for a visa," Lown said.

The job of San Angelo mayor pays $600 annually. The mayor is elected at-large, serves a two-year term and has no additional power beyond that of other city council members.
More.

Edward Gorey - The Hapless Child

2009-05-22T10:37:00.000-07:00

The best children's story ever.

If you haven't seen Gorey's Tarot Cards - 'The Fantod Deck', here they are.

Valerie Hegarty

2009-05-15T13:00:00.000-07:00

Niagara Falls (2007) Foamcore, paper, paint, wood, glue, gel medium

Valerie Hegarty is destroying some things we think we cherish. Mostly, she asks what happens when ‘beautiful’ objects are destroyed by forces of nature that those very objects represent and/or exalt. Her works bulge with the irony of their supposed destruction: a painting about the infinite meditative sublime seems to have been through a great flood itself. But it's different than, say slashing the Mona Lisa, maybe because these things are distinctly 'American' or that I saw them as a kid at antique shops - they're a different kind of precious.

Renovation (2002) paper, cardboard, paste, paint, 8' x 14' x 14'

Or maybe it's about entropy, and shelf lives of ideals. It's all well and good to revere the natural world until you're attacked by a swarm of beavers. See more here and here.

Kate Gilmore

2009-05-13T12:21:00.000-07:00

I saw Kate Gilmore's work at Catherine Clark Gallery in SF - the video, Anything, showing her piling a bunch of chairs together and tying them with dangerously loose twine to reach the camera. The actions are ridiculous and a little unlady-like. There is an element of danger, but the kind that adolescents get in to - like if an eight-year-old did these things and hurt themselves, the parent would ask, 'did you really think this through??'. But Gilmore's actions are thought through, and that preposterous-ness is exactly what makes them great.

In “Blood From a Stone” Kate Gilmore, dressed like a suburban housewife in a cardigan and knee-length skirt, lifts 10 one-foot cubes of solid plaster one by one onto shoulder-high shelves. The blocks weigh 75 pounds apiece, and as Ms. Gilmore manages to heave each into place, wet paint on the shelf splatters and drips down the wall.
The videos make us question our capacity to watch them happen, I was uncomfortable during it and wanted to somehow help her out - she seems to be struggling. Then I wonder if that's chauvinistic or not? Any-hoo, they're definitely worth a look.

WIkipedia as a journalism source

2009-05-12T10:40:00.000-07:00

After the recent death of composer Maurice Jarre, an Irish student posted a corny but poetic quote on Wikipedia. Scrambling journalists lifted it as a reliable attribution.

Irish student hoaxes world's media with fake quote-

"I was really shocked at the results from the experiment," Fitzgerald, 22, said Monday in an interview a week after one newspaper at fault, The Guardian of Britain, became the first to admit its obituarist lifted material straight from Wikipedia. -Shawn Pogatchnik, Associated Press Writer

Daniel Bozhkov

2009-05-11T22:42:00.000-07:00

Daniel Bozhkov’s works wavers between irony and sincerity while taking a more proactive, optimistic view of failure. The Ukrainian-born artist uses grand gestures towards unglamorous subjects or contexts that are largely overlooked. In a way, Bozhkov tries to rectify some failures by immersing himself in them at their sources. Cantata for Twelve Choirs and Several Salamanders (2006), features documentation of a session with local choral ensembles at Barton Springs in Austin, Texas singing "Wade in the Water" – a particular song from the genre of African-American spiritual hymns. The performance was centered on an endangered species of water salamander unique to the springs.

Daniel Bozhkov’s work shows a sort of dedication, taking an impractical approach to an inane goal. He sometimes tends to incorporate a benevolent, communal approach, in other cases, he takes on failure directly, attempting to rectify or subvert human shortcomings by commemoration. Darth Vader Tries to Clean the Black Sea with a Brita Filter (2000) is maybe the easiest to illustrate a sort of 'habitation' of failure, depicting the Star Wars villain pouring purified water into a plastic jug. Not only is the task impossible, but also the situation itself is ridiculous. At the very least, the Sith Lord is entirely overdressed.

Trickster Tales

2009-05-09T11:27:00.000-07:00

I'm a latecomer to Lewis Hyde's book, 'Trickster Makes This World' - it was first published in 1998. I haven't read his newer one, 'The Gift' yet, but this was a free gift I got at an art fair last year and it's one the best books I've ever read. I'm a big fan of traditional tales anyway. Hyde draws a thread between Norse, native American, African traditions of legend and myth - specifically those that involve duplicity and cunning as a productive force in the natural world. Some serve as morality tales or reminders of one's place in society or the food chain. Here's a chapter excerpt on the NY Times site.

And a great story:

As Fox went on his way he met Kingfisher, Kêt-la'-i-le-ti, whom he accompanied to his home. Kingfisher said that he had no food to offer his visitor, so he would go and catch some fish for Fox.

He broke through six inches of ice on the river and caught two fish, which he cooked and set before his guest.

Fox was pleased with his entertainment, and invited the Kingfisher to return the call. In due time the Kingfisher came to the home of the Fox, who said, " I have no food to offer you;" then he went down to the river, thinking to secure fish in the same manner as the Kingfisher had done.

Fox leaped from the high bank, but instead of breaking through the ice he broke his head and killed himself. Kingfisher went to him, caught him up by the tail, and swung Fox around to the right four times, thereby restoring him to life. Kingfisher caught some fish, and they ate together.

Safety Gear for Small Animals - Bill Burns

2009-05-08T10:28:00.000-07:00

In ‘Our Early Days’, the first chapter of his book, Safety Gear for Small Animals, Bill Burns recalls the growth of his life-long project. He describes, in really humorous prose, his childhood during the Cuban Missile Crisis and the end of the Cold War as one of constant fear of apocalypse and regular tests and drills in case the big one came. He and his brothers realized that in the event of nuclear winter, the little animals he saw in Saskatchewan would never be as prepared as the Burns’ were. This inspired a series of experiments and fittings for groundhogs, chipmunks or whatever he could safely trap.

The collection consists of tiny gas masks, work gloves, life vests and hard hats; a one-quarter scale set up of the provisions one receives as a guest at the American prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; and another with an assortment of prosthetic animal parts, mainly eyes and dentures. The last, Burns’ told me, helps in readjusting traumatized animals back into their social structures, because of the important role of physical attraction in mating.

The start-up company itself is documented through a display of letters and notes, often on SGSA’s letterhead, to heads of state requesting their support in a project to save small animals from the trials of urban dwelling by outfitting them with tiny reflective vests, hard hats, leather gloves or whatever their respective situations call for.
Here is his site and his show at ICA in London.

Oldboy - Park Chan Wook

2009-05-07T10:38:00.000-07:00

Oldboy is one of my favorite movies ever and it needs to be here for sure. The original Korean film, directed by Park Chan Wook is a vicious story of vengeance and determination. Like the rest of his ‘Vengeance Trilogy’ [Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002), Oldboy (2003) and Lady Vengeance (2005)], it epitomizes a great deal of what this blog is trying to tease out - pathos, vulnerability, perserverance, etc. And this is the BEST fight scene ever.

We meet the central character, Oh Dae-su, as a drunken and disorderly man in a police station waiting area for someone to pick him up and take him home to his family. He is not an extraordinary man, and except for a drunkard’s charm, largely uninteresting. But, for seemingly no reason, he is abducted and imprisoned by unknown captors for fifteen years. At the end of his captivity, he is released to begin the journey of finding his captor. The story now is one of revenge and we follow Dae-su and Mi-do – a sympathetic sushi chef with whom he falls in love - on a trail of clues to a final climax when the hero learns of his oppressor and the reason for his imprisonment- no spoilers.

Apparently, a new version is going ahead by Steven Spielberg that adapts the story from the original manga comic, not the Wook film. That may be the big failure part.

'American Old Boy won't be offending anybody and will instead be a pretty standard noir/revenge story where Will Smith has to track down the guys who done him wrong, and we never have to worry that he's going to do something really terrible like ____ his ________ or ___ ___ his own ______. America, you're safe.' - Chud.com

Fill in the blanks after you see it... ;)

The Wild Man's Pedigree - 1758

2009-05-06T11:50:00.000-07:00

The Wild Man's Pedigree is a text that is called on in a few different treatises on post-colonialism. It has always struck me as amazing in its specificity and seems so distant now. Most notably, it was used in Ania Loomba's book, Colonialism/Postcolonialism.

From Loomba:

Ideologies of racial difference were intensified by their incorporation into the discourse of science, whibh intensified the supposed connection between the biological features of each group and its psychological and social attributes. By 1758, (Homo sapiens) had been further bifurcated in John Burke's The Wild Man's Pedigree into the following:

A. Wild Man. Four footed, mute hairy.

B. American. Copper coloured, choleric erect. Hair black, straight, thick; nostrils wide; face harsh; beard scanty; obstinate, content, free. Paints himself with fine red lines. Regulated by customs.

C. European. Fair, sanguine, brawny; hair yellow, brown, flowing; eyes blue; gentle, acute, inventive. Covered with close vestments. Governed by laws.

D. Asiatic. Sooty, melancholy, rigid. Hair black; eyes dark; severe, haughty, covetous. Covered with loose garments. Governed by opinions.

E. African. black, phlegmatic, relaxed. Hair black, frizzled; skin silky; note flat, lips tumid; crafty, indolent, negligent. Annoints himself with grease. Governed by caprice

Antti Laitinen

2009-05-05T14:41:00.000-07:00

The Finnish artist, Antti Laitinen’s performances are exhaustive and very impractical, considering their final outcomes. They examine the role of the artist-hero with simple but repetitive works that culminate in modest or impermanent objects, or only in documentation.

In Bare Necessities, Antti lived in the forest for four days without food, clothes or water and documented his experience. The venture is reminiscent of Walden, which ended abruptly as Thoreau found that the reality of a minimal life in the woods did not completely agree with his idealistic expectations. In Laitinen’s work, though, the ideals of going ‘back to nature’ are childish, but not naïve.

In the video component to It's My Island, the artist is knocked about by waves as he drags and places the sandbags in a pile to form a personal patch of land in the sea. The task, reminiscent of Sisyphus’ punishment, is monumental and oppressive, but Laitinen excruciatingly hauls some two hundred bags into the water to form the mound by his own volition to make his own ‘land’. With the use of a wooden plank, presumably, the bags could be floated and levered into place much easier. It's a Buster Keaton-like slapstick to the tune of a none-too-subtle commentary on nationality and citizenship. Here is his website, and Nettie Horn gallery's.

Bad Science

2009-05-04T11:06:00.000-07:00

A concerted attempt to not fill children's heads with nonsense about warm air 'wanting' to rise or any other sillly anthropomorphisms: raindrops are not tear-shaped, etc.. Not terribly exciting page, but very passionate... Bad Astronomy, Bad Meteorology, Bad Chemistry.

Bad Science abounds and comes in many guises. This page sets out to attack only one brand: well understood phenomena which are persistently presented incorrectly by teachers and writers, presumably because they either do not know any better or because they don't really care enough to get it correct.

Sam Dargan

2009-05-03T08:35:00.000-07:00

The March of the Abysmal - 2006

Sam Dargan is an artist I became familiar with at Rokeby Gallery in London. His paintings first struck me as simple and delicate and sometimes really funny despite their, 'we're gonna die
anyway' mood. A Bad Year for People and his last exhibition, Burth of a Nayshun create an entire vocabulary of the apathetic and the failed within contemporary reality. In his paintings, failure is wallowed in, and used as an equalizer from which no one is free. The failures within daily existence are commonplace, unimpressive and unavoidable. He's also published a really great graphic novel called The Neverlutionary.

Heroes and Villains of Future Generic Socialist Republic: Local Branch, 4 - 2008

The world Dargan depicts is filtered through a lens of disappointment, its defeat has been painstakingly stitched into it. This is a land fractured by the sneering contempt of the pub cynic, the mournful ruminations of the old soldier and the more than my jobsworth attitude of the bloke at work. The psychology of disillusionment forms a complex circuitry throughout Dargan’s oeuvre; the idea of being resigned to a life half lived and the striving to achieve a ‘dream’ that leads only to boredom, becomes a recurring motif. But this work does not represent a retreat from political engagement, more it is a subjective mapping, an attempt to seek out a new space. Dargan assumes the role of working class intellectual plundering the history books in the municipal library, nostalgia in his hands becomes a weapon of revenge. These paintings are pathological, angry, and resentful. Yes we want something else the forlorn subjects seem to be saying, but where lies the alternative?

Taken from text by artist and writer Laura Oldfield Ford.

1976 Swine Flu Propaganda

2009-05-02T09:36:00.000-07:00

...too soon? (thanks Julie)

If you listen with the right set of ears, it could also be a warning against some type of herpes. Joe really screwed it up for everyone by sleeping with his secretary.

AND.. here is the inevitable conspiracy theory.

FILM - Buster Keaton and Samuel Beckett

2009-05-01T11:11:00.000-07:00

'Film' is a twenty-minute, almost totally silent film (no dialogue or music, one 'shhh!') in which Buster Keaton attempts to evade observation by an all-seeing eye. But, as the film is based around Bishop Berkeley's principle 'esse est percipi' (to be is to be perceived), Keaton's very existence conspires against his efforts. Get the whole thing here.

Samuel Beckett’s only venture into the medium of cinema, Film was written in 1963 and filmed in New York in the summer of 1964, directed by Alan Schneider and featuring Buster Keaton. For the shooting Mr. Beckett made his only trip to America. The film, which has no dialogue, takes its basis Berkeley’s theory Esse est percepti, that is “to be is to be perceived”: even after all outside perception -- be it animal, human or divine -- has been suppressed, self perception remains.

Bas Jan Ader

2009-04-30T08:53:00.001-07:00

I couldn't think of a better way, personally or logically to start this text off than with Bas Jan Ader. His work is largely overlooked, even still today. Here is an excerpt from a piece I wrote last year:

The trouble with being a martyr, in the classical sense, other than dying, is that one’s life is so closely associated with one’s death. Before Sebastian was pierced with innumerable arrows or Joan perished in a pyre, the narratives of their lives are filled with divine communication and lucid movements toward their own demise.

So the ‘chosen’ ones can't really be separated from their suffering - it irrevocably constitutes their mythic persona in a historical context. If the term ‘martyr’ is not too specific and over-aggrandizing, you could also talk of certain artists whose untimely deaths play heavily into the posthumous readings of their works. Like Eva Hesse and Blinky Palermo - or more recently, Jeremy Blake - some have been spoken of in terms of their prolific and prodigal youth, but in a bigger way, what they could have done if they had not prematurely perished; what they might have become. As a qualifier, they seem to have been taken down by the very attributes that set them apart. The James Deans (Jane Dean?) of Modernism - is that silly?

Ader’s biography figures into much of contemporary interpretations of his work. No event more so than his death in 1975. In July he set out to cross the Atlantic in a twelve-and-a-half foot sailboat called The Ocean Wave in 67 days – a record for such a small vessel. The feat was to be the second part of a triptych titled In Search of the Miraculous. Three weeks into the voyage, radio contact was lost and the boat wouldn’t be found for another year, drifting off the coast of Ireland. Official reports of the craft’s retrieval estimate that the boat had been capsized for around six months. His body was never found, and initially his closest friends believed that Bas Jan had planned the whole thing.

This final work would remain unfinished and is now considered his tragic ‘opus’, ironically ending a career that explored the same notions of falling, failing and disappearing. It is no wonder that his death at sea has engendered such difficulty to separate the man from the work. In many ways, the reading (or misreading) of Ader has informed the practice of artists in the last decade and the contemporary dialogue around sincerity and a return to a humanist sentiment in art. His oeuvre and biography make it so easy to discuss him in sentimental terms of sadness in the face of the sublime. While sentiment and the sublime are rampant in his work, they are elements Ader consciously and consistently used to call into question kitsch, sincerity and the very role of the artist himself.

The OG Post

2009-04-30T08:42:00.000-07:00

The idea of ‘failure’ is confusing. The term defines a negative outcome, but here sometimes attempts to describe a positive, actively produced phenomenon. Can a work be about failure? If an attempt at failure falls short, is it rather a success?

The discussion of Failure is full of problems and paradoxes. After all, how does one actively seek failure? The proposition itself is illogical and its completion immeasurable. The most literal interpretation of ‘failure’ – describing an attempted action that proves unfruitful – is absolutely necessary, but it is also important to consider its other manifestations.

Our vocabulary of failure should expand to include words like ‘pathos’ (and its derivatives apathy and pathetic), sincerity, the abject and the anti-heroic. Failure is not often explicitly addressed, but more typically implied through the use of such signifiers: exhaustion, collapse, surrender and falling, impracticality, persistence or stubbornness. These terms refer to each other and deal with genres that overlap while remaining autonomous.

Our vision should include the recognition of failure beyond the literal definition and closer sometimes to a sort of occupation of failure. Consider also, the original anti-heroes of Greek tragedies, Caesar’s Brutus, Sisyphus, Icarus, et al. whose best intentions ended in great cost and suffering.