Jesse Shapins, Johanna Linsley + Glowlab

The Conflux 2007 Film Program

Filed under special events, Film/Video

Curated by Jesse Shapins, Johanna Linsley & GlowlabA UnionDocs & Glowlab ProductionThe Conflux 2007 Film Program at UnionDocs explores psychogeography and the urban condition through a carefully selected collection of rare and surprising film and video works set in cities on six continents from the 19th century through today.———————————————————————————————————————1 pm :: Conflux Works curated by Glowlab2 pm :: CitySeen curated by UnionDocs7:30 pm :: Conflux Works curated by Glowlab———————————————————————————————————————UnionDocs | 322 Union Ave | Williamsburg, Brooklyn———————————————————————————————————————CONFLUX WORKS Curated by Glowlab———————————————————————————————————————DENVER/NYCOf KeepingBy Brian House15 minutesA series of live performances and resulting audio/video pieces that confront the tension between archival footage of a city and an individual’s memory of the same spaces. Throughout the late 1990s, media artist Dwayne Wilson recorded hundreds of hours of video on the streets of Denver and New York during a period of radical change in both cities. His videos, raw material for myriad projects, are spontaneous and unpretentious documentation of the immediate city, with an eye for ephemeral detail and juxtaposition. Each video is a narrative experience. In high school and college, Brian House inhabited these same locations. In Of Keeping, he samples from Wilson’s videos in realtime, assembling audio and video loops to create a new piece over the course of a performance. Having never seen the videos before but being intimately familiar with their subject matter, House’s selection process is a mixture of aesthetic and nostalgic concerns. Particular elements of the urban landscape shown in the videos, though novel at the time of filming, have subsequently taken on great psychological significance in the intervening years. The result is a highly subjective portrait of space informed by the personal relationship of the two artists.The use of two generations of video technology is an important undercurrent in Of Keeping. The original footage was captured on a consumer Hi8 camcorders and dubbed, overdubbed, and otherwise assembled onto VHS tapes. Displayed on a video monitor directly from a VCR, the footage is also piped through a digital converter to a custom software patch written in Max/MSP/Jitter. The new piece is displayed with an LCD projector and simultaneously recorded to quicktime (for archival purposes). The process explicitly explores the nature of the archive as an active medium, a process central to the cultural transformations occurring with internet video sites such as YouTube. These technologies provide a language with which Of Keeping weaves its tapestry of the city, its memory, and its documentation.HO CHI MINH CITY/NYCUrban Attractors Private DistractorsBy Angie Eng15 minsThis project explores the shared psychodynamics that are involved in group boundaries that identifies what is inside (cultural, spiritual, political) and how it is reflected on the outside (architecture, urban planning, symbols, monuments). The separation of stage (public) and home (private) is broken down into a continuum of semi-public, quasi-private, privacy zones (private attractors), exchange centers (urban attractors). Groups in New York City and Ho Chi Minh City (or Singapore) will conduct public action-experiments to observe the current psychogeography and how it reflects the transition from a modern-post-modern place to a new world replete with mobile devices and abstract space. There actions will be documented as video and posted to the vlog.NYCCutUp BillboardsBy Cut-Up Group10 minsOur definition of play is to deliberately break the rules and invent our own, thus freeing creative activity from restrictions, to redesign aesthetic and revolutionary actions that undermine or elude social control. Our belief in utilising existing materials on the street led to ideas of changing posters and objects without adding anything new ñ just recycling what was there already. We see this as moving the pieces around like a giant puzzle, whilst commenting upon the action of reordering. As described by Umberto Eco in Towards a Semiological Guerrilla Warfare, the use of the existing media is the only way to comment upon it or challenge it. We are interested in the idea of the ëstreet as a stageí for intervention or creative activity as determined by Walter Benjamin and later the Situationists. Although we put work up in the street we do not define ourselves purely as ëstreet artists, rather artists working in urban intervention. We aim to introduce elements of disquiet into the urban everyday and comment on the existing systems and structures that determine our existence in the modern metropolis. For the Conflux festival we will create a series of new billboards constructed from existing New York advertisements. Imagery for the new posters will be created using pre-existing patterns in the urban environment to create new formulas for image making i.e. transcribing urban sounds to musical score and using this pattern to create new work. All of the individual pieces of the billboard are numbered so working to a code is an essential part of our practice. Different to our previous work, we intend to create far more abstracted imagery for Conflux. To view construction of our previous work look at the following link:http://www.niubcn.com/galeries/galeria_cutup_cat.htmNYCAfter You LeaveBy Molly Schwartz?We thought the conflict of the neighborhood only existed in the realm of gentrification, construction, rent increases and population explosion, but there is another battle underwayÖthe mute struggle of the linden, maple, ash, gingko and serviceberry. This project documents a silent war, the war of the trees of Williamsburg/Greenpoint against the dominating infrastructureñthe treesí stoic refusal to submit to the aggressive constriction and unremitting subjugation by the sidewalks, fences, decorative brick borders and buildings in this green battlezone.Part 1. Short (15-20 sec) animated video chapters recreating and documenting the aftermath of notable skirmishes. Each chapter will be a digital collage, animated from drawings, photos.Part 2. Online site, for participants to submit their own photographic and written observations of the struggle.Part 3. Map to guide participants to key locations. Each animated video chapter will also be available for mobile and online viewing, so that observers can watch the battle at the actual location here in the neighborhood.There seems to be something quietly and very, very slowly pushing back. Vive la treesistance!NYCThe Colors of New YorkStadtblind NYC5 minutesToo often the city is perceived without senses. Inspired by this motto, The Colors of New York presents the city in a new way through colors, photographs, texts, sounds, maps and tags. The project builds off the Stadtblind work The Colors of Berlin, which was published by Prestel in 2005 and presented at Van Alen Institute in Manhattan, Deutsches Architektur Zentrum in Berlin and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver. For Conflux, Stadtblind present a short experimental film emerging from the color and sound palette of NYC’s streets today.Stadtblind is an international non-profit art, design and planning collective dedicated to transforming the perception of urban experience. Jesse Shapins, Philipp Schwarz and Celia di Pauli founded the group in Berlin in 2002, and it has since grown to include Kara Oehler, Gesa Henselmanns, Susanne Vollmar, James Reeves and Stephen Baker as core collaborators.MANCHESTERIn PassingBy The Light Surgeons6 minsThis digital short was commissioned for the Bigger Picture project in conjunction with the BBC in Manchester, and shown on a public screen in the centre of the city. The fi lm explores the psycho-geography of the city through the experiences of a local woman who is partially blind. It was fi lmed in Manchester around the location of the public screen. it was created to be displayed on digital cameras and night vision security cameras. The fi lm approaches documentary fi lming making from a unique angle, bringing together live action and animation to portray the city from the perspective of a person that has heightened senses from their lack of vision. The fi lm comments on the issues surrounding disability, our judgement of other people in the city, and our common and shared understanding of public space.The Light Surgeons are Directors: Christopher Thomas Allen, Robert Pyedroft-Rainbow; Producers: Christopher Thomas Allen, Alice Ceresole; Voice: Joe Welbon———————————————————————————————————————CITYSEEN Curated by UnionDocs———————————————————————————————————————THEORYSociety of the Spectacle (1973)By Guy Debord90 minutesLa Société du spectacle (Society of the Spectacle) is a 1973 film by Situationist Guy Debord based on the 1967 book of the same title. It was Debord’s first feature-length film.The film took a year to make and incorporates footage from The Battleship Potemkin, October, New Babylon, Shanghai Gesture, For Whom the Bell Tolls, Rio Grande, The Charge of the Light Brigade, Johnny Guitar, and Confidential Report, as well as Soviet and Polish films, industrial films, American Westerns, soft-core porn films, news footage, advertisements, and many still photographs. Events such as the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald (who assassinated U.S. President John F. Kennedy in 1963), the revolutions in Spain in 1936, Hungary in 1956 and in Paris in 1968, and people such as Mao Tse Tung, Richard Nixon, and the Spanish Anarchist Durruti are represented. Throughout the movie, there is both a voiceover (of Debord) and inter-titles from “Society of the Spectacle” but also texts from the Committee of Occupation of the Sorbonne, Machiavelli, Marx, Tocqueville, Emile Pouget, and Soloviev.NYCNo Damage (2002)By Caspar Starcke12 minutesNO DAMAGE is a composition made out of fragments from over 80 different feature and documentary films that show the architecture of New York City. The work investigates a number of cinematic clichéss of architectural presence captured on film. The failure of the camera eye to grasp these high risen structures in its entireness produces distorded views, such as steep camera angles, fish eye distortion and fast zooms and pans. Especially when lifted out of its original context, these scenes reveal their emotional implications: grandeur, glamour, the wake of modernism during the 60s, post-modernism (Eighties and Nineties) but also menace, superiority and anonymity. In-between these extreme positions emerges a new form sentimentalism that is funneled by the tragic events of September 11.One of the most important messages of this work is a call to establish a new relationship with the rapid changing landscape of urban environments. The questioning and investigation of architectural damage establishes an antidote to emotional reaction on absence.With this mind set a new awareness for urban architecture has emerged. People might see their surounding buildings as life forms that they watch every day. Their coming of age shows in cosmetic surgery and reparations, and finally a -possible- demolition or destruction. Buildings disappear for different reasons. They pulverize, the particles move, constant damage causes constant transformation. Only in an elapsed time view this tragic transformations appear like a insignificantfriction within Manhattan’s architectural mass, that moves ahead - like a glacier.http://www.videokasbah.net/nodamage.htmlFollowed by video conference with filmmaker from KoreaNEW YORK, BERLIN, MOSCOW & HAVANACity Symphonies :: Selected Movements50 minutes of excerptsCity Symphonies are motion pictures that capture the spirit and uniqueness of a city by assembling images of everyday life in that city. The classic City Symphony genre was a silent, black and white, avant-garde documentary that first appeared in the 1920s. As in a symphony, they have movements that vary in pace and intensity. These movies bombard our sight with images of a city (images that often are quite surrealistic) in order to capture its heartbeat and expose its soul. This style of film, exemplified by experimental filmmakers such as Dziga Vertov and Walter Ruttmann, was a perfect marriage of the medium of filmmaking and the subject matter of cities, since both were products of a 19th century modernity that peaked in the 1920s.This selection features excerpts from four city symphonies, three from the 1920s and a fourth recent experiment in the form from Havana, Cuba.Excerpted from:Manhatta (1921)By Charles Sheeler and Paul StrandThe first “city symphony” film, completed in 1921. Morning reveals New York harbour, the wharves, the Brooklyn Bridge. A ferry boat docks, disgorging its huddled mass. People move briskly along Wall St. or stroll more languorously through a cemetery. Ranks of skyscrapers extrude columns of smoke and steam. In plain view. Or framed, as through a balustrade. A crane promotes the city’s upward progress, as an ironworker balances on a high beam. A locomotive in a railway yard prepares to depart, while an arriving ocean liner jostles with attentive tugboats. Fading sunlight is reflected in the waters of the harbour… The imagery is interspersed with quotations from a poet who is left unnamed.Berlin: Symphony Of a Great City (1927)By Walter RuttmannA train speeds through the country on its way to Berlin, then gradually slows down as it pulls into the station. It is very early in the morning, about 5:00 AM, and the great city is mostly quiet. But before long there are some signs of activity, and a few early risers are to be seen on the streets. Soon the new day is well underway - it’s just a typical day in Berlin, but a day full of life and energy.Man with a Movie Camera (1929)By Dziga VertovMan with a Movie Camera, is an experimental 1929 silent documentary film by Russian director Dziga Vertov.Vertov’s feature film, presents urban life in Ukraine and other Soviet cities. From dawn to dusk Soviet citizens are shown at work and at play, and interacting with the machinery of modern life.Suite Habana (2003)By Fernando PérezA poetic homage to the city of Havana. A loving and melancholic picture over a 24 hour period of life of this city, the film follows ten ordinary Habaneros as they go about their daily routine. There is no dialogue and no need for it either; music and natural sound accompany the multiplicity of images that weave a unique and intimate picture of a city full of contradictions and contrasts, a city of accomplished and frustrated dreams. Edited like a musical composition, Suite Habana oscillates between documentary and fiction. The ten characters range from ages 10 to 97, and represent the diversity of groups that form the city’s social fabric. Each of them follows a narrative, and we follow their transformations as the workday ends and they prepare themselves to welcome the night, which brings about the daily renewal of the city.NYC PAUSEThe Trellis - Work of Sunshine and Shade10 secondsHONG KONGNil (2001)By Nose Chan Chui-hing10 minutesTime is just like a cycle around which all lives find their trajectory. For some, the repletion simply goes on. However, for others it would be a lifetime to meet again at the starting point.Nose Chan was born in Hong Kong and graduated from University of Hong Kong in Biology. He began making video in 1998, and regularly screens his work locally and abroad. In 2000, he won the Distinguished Award in the 6th Hong Kong Independent Short Film and Video Award for his piece Well. In 2003, he participated in the 1st Berlinale Talent Campus in The Berlin International film Festival. Chan also participates in many theatre and independent film productions.NYC PAUSEConey Island At Night (1905)By Edwin S. Porter3 minutesA panorama of Coney Island, taken at night: the camera sweeps across the scene from a vantage point well above the area. It then moves in for closer views of Dreamland and Luna Park.VIENNAWorst Case Scenario (2003)By John Smith18 minutes”This new work by John Smith looks down onto a busy Viennese intersection and a corner bakery. Constructed from hundreds of still images, it presents situations in a stilted motion, often with sinister undertones. Through this technique we’re made aware of our intrinsic capacity for creating continuity, and fragments of narrative, from potentially (no doubt actually) unconnected events.”-Mark Webber, London Film Festival (2003)http://www.vdb.org/smackn.acgi$tapedetail?WORSTCASESNYCThe Blizzard (1899)By creator unknown for American Mutoscope & Biograph Co.2 minutesPORTLANDThe Subconscious Art of Graffiti Removal (2001)By Matt McCormick17 minutesGraffiti removal: the act of removing tags and graffiti by painting over them.Subconscious art: a product of artistic merit that was created without conscious artistic intentions.It is no coincidence that funding for “anti-graffiti” campaigns often outweighs funding for the arts. Graffiti removal has subverted the common obstacles blocking creative expression and become one of the more intriguing and important art movements of our time. Emerging from the human psyche and showing characteristics of abstract expressionism, minimalism and Russian constructivism, graffiti removal has secured its place in the history of modern art while being created by artists who are unconscious of their artistic achievements.http://www.rodeofilmco.com/films/graffiti_removal.phpNYC PAUSEInterior N.Y. SubwayBy G.W. “Billy” Bitzer1 minutesStarting at Union Square, we are taken for an underground excursion, following the path of a subway train as it makes its way through New York City subway tunnels on its journey to the old Grand Central Station.PARISCleo from 5 to 7 (1961)By Agnès Varda20 minute excerptCléo from 5 to 7 is a 1961 French New Wave film by Agnès Varda. It depicts two hours in the life of a young pop singer (in real-time), Cléo (played by Corinne Marchand), who wanders around Paris while she awaits her biopsy results. As Cléo readies herself to meet with her doctor at 7 o’clock, she meets with several friends and strangers while trying to grapple with mortality.NYC PAUSEBuilding Up and Demolishing the Star TheatreBy Frederick S. Armitage3 minutesThis film shows the demolition of the historic Star Theatre building (formerly Wallack’s) at the corner of Broadway and 13th Street, New York. To secure this unique picture a Biograph camera was kept constantly at work by specially devised electric apparatus for weeks, during which time exposures were made every four minutes, 8 hours a day. Before the contractors began their work of tearing down and after the last vestige of the building had been removed, 15 seconds of exposure at normal speed were made. Thus in the finished positive one views at first the old Star Theatre standing as it had for years looking down with serenity upon the bustle of Broadway traffic. Then as if struck by a tornado of supernatural strength, the building begins to crumble. Chimneys totters, walls cave in, and whole stories vanish, until at last the site shows only a cellar excavation; and the Broadway cars with the sidewalk procession continue as if nothing unusual had happened.MEXICO CITYA Lock to Close Your MouthBy Verbobala10 minutesAn experimental motion video using exclusively still photography and composed field recordings, the viewer travels on public transit from Cuernavaca, on the southern edge of Mexico City through el D.F.’s downtown and out the other side.NYC PAUSEAerial View of Sixth Ave Train at 28th, 26th, 24th20 secondsDAKARTouki BoukiBy Djibril Diop Mambéty20 minute excerptMory, a cowherd who rides a motorcycle mounted with a cow’s skull, and Anta, a university student, have met in Dakar, Senegal’s capital. Alienated and disaffected with Senegal and Africa, they long to go to Paris and work up different con schemes to raise the money. Mory steals clothing and money from a wealthy gay man who had brought him home, and he and Anta book passage on a ship to France. One of the most important, engaged and fascinating movies from Africa - selected for the documenta 2007.NYC/BERLINARISE! Walk Dog Eat Donut29 minutesFilm- and videomaker Ken Kobland returns to the urban landscapes he filmed 20 years previously, such as the New York subway and the S-Bahn in Berlin. We leave, we travel, but it’s always the same images that we are drawn to. A moving road movie about eternal departure and arrival.”A melancholy, semi-abstract video poem made up largely of blurred images shot from moving subway and elevated cars in New York City and Berlin. Woven into the film are fragments of a diary (despairing epigrams like Ôall meaning evaporates’) and a Russian ballad. Repetitive without becoming monotonous, the video evokes an urban sadness that is so insistent it becomes a whole philosophy of loss and resignation.”—Stephen Holden, “A Thematic Feast of Avant-Garde Videos,” The New York Times (16 July 1999)http://www.vdb.org/smackn.acgi$tapedetail?ARISEWALKDLONDONLondon OrbitalBy Christopher Petit & Iain Sinclair20 minute excerptLondon Orbital is an extraordinary and visionary film by Chris Petit and Iain Sinclair about the world’s largest by-pass, the M25. London Orbital is a road movie, a cinematic excursion into the futuristic literature of a century past, and a film dialogue between two writers who are also filmmakers (and vice versa).London Orbital is, among other things, a meditation on the difference between driving and walking. On Bram Stoker’s “undead”, on H.G. Wells and J.G. Ballard. On time and memory. On the difference between film and tape, sound and image. On trance states and the terror that lies beyond boredom; on shopping and terrorism; on Kabul and the leisure mall. On the invisible triangle of Thatcherism (covert arms deals, Essex gangsters, and drug dealing). On Pinochet and Thatcher as vampire lovers.Iain Sinclair is the author of London Orbital, a book about his walk around the 120-mile road. Chris Petit elected not to make ‘the film of the book’ and chose instead to drive, and to capture in images the peculiar hallucinatory state that driving provokes.’Maverick British director Chris Petit has produced one of this year’s eeriest and most haunting films, London Orbital, a threnody to the M25.’ Sunday Telegraph’It is a mediation on the M25 and gives an intriguing history of the occult archaeology of London that the ring-road discloses … Petit has witty and playful apercus for every mile he covers.’ The Guardianhttp://www.illuminationsmedia.co.uk/ourfilms/product/8/london_orbital.html