Stigmart Videofocus Special Issue NFH by Stigmart Artpress

12th Edition STIGMART 10.PRESS

From experimental cinema to fashion videography, fourteen artists breaking the boundaries Since its foundation, Stigmart10 has encouraged a conception of art based on a dynamic dialogue between artists and audience, reflecting the interactive nature of the creative act itself. A winning formula, according to the doubled number of submissions - more than 3000 applicants have submitted their video works and CV in 2014 - and the increasing popularity of our project. We are glad to present this year's edition of Videofocus, our special Stigmart10 review focused on experimental cinema, original fashion videography and courageous documentary. Stigmart10 Team

Jenny Birger & Tamuz Rachman

"Lurking means, among others, to wander around with no apparent reason. The lurker explores the city with eyes wide open, inviting it for a dance. Observing and capturing, following and leading, the city resonates. The dialogue emerges as site-specific movement, city-specific choreography."

Jean-Luc Dang & Marija Linciute

"n his video works "Stories from Mรถnchengladbach" that he fashioned during his stay in said town, the complexity of his sophisticated and carefully crafted works becomes obvious. Their visible surface alone links two perspectives and refers to one of three main themes: the linkage of different - individual - percipience and perspective." (Ulrike Lua)

Delphine Doukhan & Antoine Schmitt

"The generative video installation Fractal Film proceeds to an exhaustion of the view on a given scene : an autonomous programmed camera explores and shows us the same scene indefinitely and always differently. Projected in large format, the short cinematographic scene plays, over and over. "

Pierre Ajavon

"After freely filming and photographing details, fragments of her work and objects surrounding her in her studio, I composed a 15 min piece of music whilst making a sequence of 3 videos, throwing a bridge across both our imaginations, and exploring my perception of her universe through music and images.

Shahar Davis

"Hermeneutic Circle and its breach is a video-art piece created out of the loneliness and frustration caused by the experience of the digital world; It expresses the longing for the reality where the tangibility of the body and the touch exist. This piece combines different images on the media continuum, from computer generated images to actual video"

Nigel Tan

"Cognizance is an exploration of thought as an evolving landscape.The mind is an abstract form that defines our surroundings based on our individual experiences. This perception and rationalization of thought is based on the past, present and future. Cognizance seeks to illuminate this process that begs to question if we are really living in the now."

Eisuke Yanagisawa

"Ferry Passing focuses on the interaction between nature and objects around the small uninhabited island in Japan. All the sounds of this film is unprocessed field recording using Aeolian Harp of my own making which was set up in the island."

Colleen Keough

"In his book "Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man" Marshall McLuhan suggests, like the mythic Narcissus, we've become numbed by our technology. The replicated image takes on its own signification, reminding us of the fabrication of identity and our ability to digitally alter our appearance and personal narrative. We live in the age of the repeated and fragmented. "

Donya Hajizadeh

"The work of Donya Hajizadeh confronts existential themes and the problems of memory and vision. Mainly using video, she pinpoints these issues and explores them through a materic and painterly approach to the medium. We have selected for this Videofocus Edition her video Migration and Other Birth, two different works sharing an unmistakable vision. "

Tzu Huan, Lin

"Rubber duck is a project by Tzu Huan, Lin that deals with the art and it’s authenticity. It proposes that copies of the original can be the new reality of the original art work. Rubber duck suggests a re-direction for the point of authenticity. In the digital area, versions of image exist in the internet and create it’s own reality.”

Thorsten Fleisch

108

"Individual elements from a carrier of visual information have been isolated to construct alternative visual reagents. Repetition (in space and in time [and in moderation]) is administered as a binder to tame the wild particles in motion, evoking a golden ratio of the mind's eye. For this film found Super 8 footage was the source material. "

Ragnheiður Sigurðardóttir Bjarnarson

116

"What is beauty. When dose something become beautiful. Why is something considered beautiful while others aren´t. What is grotesque. A video installation dealing with: Beauty. Beautiful body. Beautiful nature. Sweetness. Starring: The Beauty. "

Kelsey Velez

126

DAIMON is an experiment in choreographing error, and a response to Nick Briz’s “Diamonds” project in which artists were invited to visually interpret Rihanna’s performance on Saturday Night Live.

Julius Richard Tamayo "Triptych of Love Supreme (TDAS) is in fact a Pentaptych wich two first chapters Julius never watch or show. Filmed between october 12 and march 13, TDAS is the narration of an End wich is Two: End of Love and End of World. Escatologicalapocatastatical triptych that follows a visionary discipline: to watch what you have to see. "

134

A still from LURKING

Jenny Birger and Tamuz Rachman "Lurking means, among others, to wander around with no apparent reason. The lurker explores the city with eyes wide open, inviting it for a dance. Observing and capturing, following and leading, the city resonates. The dialogue emerges as site-specific movement, city-specific choreography." Jenny Birger and Tamuz Rachman

An interview with

Jenny Birger and Tamuz Rachman Lurking is a film by Tamuz Rachman and Jenny Birger exploring the relationships between body and the urban landscape. From the first time we watched their work it reminded us of the words by Gilles Deleuze in his famous essay "L'imagemouvement", where he analyzes this concept referring to the practise of "walking" in the films of the Nouvelle Vague and even in the Italian Neorealism. We are pleased to present Tamuz and Jenny's work for this Videofocus Edition. Tamuz and Jenny, we want to take a closer look at the genesis of your film: how did you come up with the idea for Lurking? Jenny: As the genesis of our film is tightly connected with our own encounter, let me start with that. We met at Golda, which is a square situated next to the Tel Aviv museum of Art and the Israeli Opera house. Central and at the same time, quite distant from the crowded areas, it also serves as a ‘pilgrimage’ site for skaters of all ages. The city noise is heard at the background, and yet there is a general silence, occasionally broken by the sound of a skateboard meeting the curb or rolling on the concrete pavement. At the time, I was practicing the art of handstands, stumbling across Golda almost by mistake. As you might guess, the sight of someone standing on her hands might attract the curious, and I wanted to keep a low profile. I would come there, mess around, lie on the grass, and at some point, start my practice until I could barely feel my arms. One day, Tamuz – one of the skaters – noticed me, asking if I minded him taking a photo. I learnt he was a professional photographer, in addition to being a skater, and from then on, we continued seeing each other quite frequently. He would come to test the curbs, and I would come to see the world upside-down. To tell you the truth, I was sometimes secretly looking at the skaters, ‘in between sets’, inspired by their freedom, playfulness and dedication.

Looking at the skaters improvise, try new stuff, fall, try again, fall, try again, laugh, I was inspired to play too. Taking dance and improvisation classes in the morning, I would come later in the day to play around on the soft grass.

Slowly, I realized that this urban paradise was also a possibility for me to try other things.

Around that time, we talked about doing ‘something’ together. It was not really clear

Jenny Birger and Tamuz Rachman

Tamuz Rachman is a long-time skateboarder and a professional photographer (based in TelAviv) for fashion, skateboard & food photography. Likes being out in the sun and watching the city moves. Jenny Birger is a movement researcher and performer (based in Tel-Aviv), inspired equally by the city, the nature, and the enclosed studio space.

what the ‘something’ would be, but we knew that it will involve movement, camera, skateboard, and the city. Tamuz: Just when we started talking about collaborating, I saw Hybridation, which is an experimental skate film by Fred Mortagne (a.k.a French Fred). Everything about it was far from obvious. Unlike other, more mainstream skate films, Hybridation wasn’t just about the skate, wasn’t just about the trick. Through his unusual camera angles, the almost meditative tempo, one could feel the relation between the city and the skaters, their humanity, their loneliness at times, their wandering. The video served as our immediate reference, a bit like a tourist guide – helping us to start, until we drifted away from it. At first, I thought we’d just choose 3-4 spots around Golda, improvise, film, edit, add a music track – and that will be it. Soon enough, it was clear that we both wanted more than just the ready-set-go. We wanted to dig deeper. As we continued to do, the project started emerging a bit on its own, dictating its own speed and directing us more than we were directing it. We chose to listen, and there you go. Lurking was born. Could you describe your collaborative experience? How did you collaborate with each other? Jenny: It is a very interesting question to answer now, looking back at our process and following its development. At the very beginning, our social labels pretty much defined our way of collaborating. Tamuz was the ‘photographer’-‘skater’, and I was the ‘performer’-‘choreographer’. Following these labels, Tamuz would go around the city, skating, and looking for ‘potential spots’. I would see the footage, imagine myself doing ‘something’ there. At the time, it wasn’t yet clear what we were looking for. What was clear is that some spaces invited us to move, to explore and to play around, while others remained distant, hermetic. Once we selected a few spots, we would go there together, equipped with camera, skate, and comfortable (throwable!) clothes, and start playing. We would film a ‘run’ of improvised movement, go home to see how it looks, what it carries, and also see if we want to come back again or to look for other locations. As the project evolved, this clear-cut division of roles became more and more relaxed. We

A still from LURKING

would do more things together. I became much more aware of light, camera movement, POV, allowing myself to be involved in the filming process. Similarly, Tamuz became more aware of my movement preferences, abilities, and interaction with the space, being more involved in the choreographic process. With time, we also understood that we were essentially looking for spatial limitations – like a curb, a bench, a hill. These limitations would suggest some movements, some points of view, while cancelling others. This clarity helped us to refine our process, bringing us to an even closer collaboration. Of course, Tamuz still remained behind the camera, and I would step in front of it, but that’s about it – the rest was done together.

While the term lurker referred to web community has existed since at least the early 2000s, the idea of wandering around with no apparent reason has been fundamental in the history of cinema: it's not by chance that masterpieces of the 60s like Pierrot Le Fou and Breathless were full of characters exploring the urban landscape with eyes wide open and without a precise plot, subverting the cliché of Hollywood cinema where all is predetermined. Could you introduce our readers to this peculiar aspect of your art vision? Jenny and Tamuz: Quite from the start, it was clear that whatever we do, it will have to be tightly connected to the city – and the city,

when you think about it, is quite unpredictable. Even our own encounter was quite unexpected -- we met outside, by chance, allowing this randomness to guide us further in the project. Additionally, as you might guess, there’s a firm link between unpredictability and lack of budget – ‘budget’ as that magic word which allows one to stop traffic, to close locations, to produce the scene according to the plan. Working without any budget makes things a bit less comfortable, but also much more interesting and exciting. It helped us being creative and react to whatever came our way. To give just one example, some locations looked very smooth from the outside, but a more intimate encounter showed us otherwise. The surface was coarse, the body was bruised,

A still from LURKING

the camera was shaking. What we imagined as a dolly-like shot seemed to go against the nature of that particular surface. Instead of trying to conceal this imperfection, we followed it, allowing the camera to wobble – reflecting and celebrating this unexpected discovery. We find impressive the way you explore the relationships between the urban landscape avoiding metaphoric structure, but simply adopting a performative research. What draws you to a particular subject? Jenny and Tamuz: Thank you! Like we mentioned in the previous question, we are both fascinated with the urban experience. The

readers surely know the feeling of going through a new place/town, with ‘tourist’ eyes – fresh, curious, where everything and anything is potentially interesting. Sure enough, it’s more difficult to feel the same way in one’s own area or neighborhood. The streets are familiar, the routes are predetermined, and most of the time, we’re doing our best not to see them. One’s own area of ‘dwelling’, if we can use this term here, becomes invisible. For both of us, it was vital to find this ‘sightseeing’ perspective with respect to the familiar streets of Tel Aviv. The added excitement of re-discovering, turning the invisible into visible, drew us, unconsciously to this project. As artists and art viewers, we’re convinced that art has the possibility to offer a fresh

In your work we can recognize a deep introspection: do you think art’s purpose is simply to provide a platform for an artist’s expression? Do you think that art could play an important role in facing social questions? Could art steer or even change people's behavior? Jenny and Tamuz: Hmm…this is one loaded question! Let’s be simple, then. For us, art can suggest an alternative. Certainly in ‘what is seen’, perhaps also in ‘what is done’. What we mean is that art can suggest different, new ways to look at things. New ways to look at what we see every day – and often cease to see – as well as new ways to look at what we see rarely. Sometimes, art can also suggest new objects of seeing. We use ‘seeing’, of course, in the sense of ‘perceiving’ with all the sensors available at our disposal. Of course, from ‘showing in a new light’ to ‘changing people’s behavior’ there’s quite a gap. But the road is paved, and perhaps it is a bit more lit now. The Tel-Aviv art scene is often underrated, nonetheless we have found it very interesting and rich of young experimental filmmakers, often working with low budget, but with great ideas and results. How did you get started in photography and performance?

perspective, to put light where before there was darkness. Lurking, for us, was a pretext to add some lampposts, first and foremost for us -- and then, hopefully, for the viewers as well. Tamuz: To add on that, I think that we were drawn to the possibility of reinterpreting the urban experience in a different way. By focusing on particular spots, in a very specific light, without people, without bright colors or screaming distractions, we wanted to suggest a calmer, more introspective feeling. Maybe also a feeling that is more universal, as we took care to exclude any visual material which would reveal our location. The coolest part came with friends’ responses, with some of them asking where we filmed the video – some were convinced it was shot abroad!

Tamuz: I started skateboarding when I was 14, and already then, I was surrounded with skate magazines full of amazing photos. These were mostly skate photos, but some were more general – reflecting the atmosphere, the people, the traveling. Interesting professional skaters, amazing locations, huge budgets for finding the perfect spots – all together certainly form a great recipe for outstanding photos. I think that many skate photographers are influenced by the street photography of the 60s and the 70s, and it definitely influenced my own vision. In addition to the magazines that surrounded me at the time, I stumbled across the film ‘Kids’ by Larry Clark. I read a bit about Larry, and I found out that he was a still photographer before becoming a film director. Following my little research, and inspired with his work, I got a camera – and have been shooting since then. Jenny: I was actually pursuing my master’s in Linguistics at Tel Aviv University, and at the time, I was teaching an introductory course.

A still from

LURKING

A still from LURKING

One of my students had an incredible way of expressing the body. Something in the way he carried his limbs, his spine, the grace of everyday actions. I learned that he was a dancer, and with his kind help I tried my first dancing class at the surprising age of 23. Funnily enough, we went to contact-improvisation, before I even knew what ‘improvisation’ was and how I’ll come to

use it. From there, I was slowly exploring more and more areas of the broad danceperformance-movement spectrum. Ballet, modern dance, physical theatre, improvisation, circus, … The list continues to evolve, the journey becomes more and more exciting with each step.

especially love his focus on textures. I feel that it literally draws the viewers inside, making them feel part of the surroundings. I also love his voyeurism – sometimes he would ‘step away’ from the classical shot, and film through various objects, creating a feeling of hidingand-peeking-through. By focusing on the skaters and the city, Fred’s genius is the ability to create a whole and coherent world, which exists right there, in front of our eyes. French Fred being one particular example, I would like to add that I continue drawing my inspiration from skateboarding, in all its forms and manifestations. Jenny: Inspirations are numerous…To mention just a few, then: Bill Viola, whose retrospective I was lucky enough to visit this year in Paris. Bill Viola paved the way for a whole new medium – video – to enter and alter the artistic practice and discourse, without using complex ‘tricks’ or ‘pyrotechnics’. His works sometimes seem extremely ‘simple’, not in the ‘simplistic’ sense of the word, but in the sense of being distilled, reduced to their essence. The retrospective had a profound impact on me. I was also inspired by Wim Wender’s Lisbon Story and Willi Dorner’s Bodies for Urban Spaces. Both, in their own way and medium, explore the city, suggesting alternatives to the familiar urban experience. And Pina Bausch. ‘Dance, dance, or else we’re lost.’ What’s next for Jenny Birger and Tamuz Rachman? Are there any new collaborations on the horizon?

Let’s speak about influences. Have any videoartists/performers from the older generation inspired you? Tamuz: I mentioned French Fred before, and this is a good place to elaborate a bit further. What I love in his work is the use of graphic forms and textures, looking for – and finding – the perfect composition in every frame. I

Jenny and Tamuz: Well…we still have some footage that didn’t find its way into Lurking. Perhaps it will be ‘resurrected’, perhaps it will suggest another direction for us. Other than that, we’re definitely looking forward to collaborate again. Every project is a pretext to wander around, looking for adventures. As we share the passion for ‘lurking’ as a way of going through life, rather than as a goal-toreach, we’re sure that soon enough, something new and exciting will catch our eye. Stay tuned!

A still from Stories from Mรถnchengladbach

Jean-Luc Dang & Marija Linciute

In his video works "Stories from Mรถnchengladbach" that he fashioned during his stay in said town, the complexity of his sophisticated and carefully crafted works becomes obvious. Their visible surface alone links two perspectives and refers to one of three main themes: the linkage of different - individual - percipience and perspective. The soundtrack in turn not only links the images with the protagonists' stories, but also the memories - the second main theme - of the "actors" with those of the film maker and director. Similar to a field study on interpersonal relations, Dang examines the thesis of memory being a construct. At the same time, he uses low-key, extremely suggestive and mesmerizing images as a means of mirroring and interspacing to illustrate the idea that interpersonal relationships are a construct that can only ever be established in approximations. It's an illusion to believe one gains an insight into Dang's life; much rather does his invitation to partake in his life lead to a conversation in which one of the participants is hidden behind a mirror. Ulrike Lua

An interview with

Jean-Luc Dang & Marija Linciute Jean-Luc Dang and Marija Linciute's labyrinthine film Stories from Mönchengladbach explores the psychological nature of the cinematic image and its relationship to dualism, using the filmmakers' memory of a little German town as the jumping-off point for as a spellbinding meditation on the boundaries between memory and perception. Yet such plot description fail to convey the true strenght of the film, however, which delights in its dyptich formula, an array of genuinely striking images. We are glad to present Jean-Luc and Marija's work for this Videofocus Edition. Jean-Luc and Marija, we want to take a closer look at the genesis of your film: how did you come up with the idea for Stories from Mönchengladbach? JL : I have been selected for an artist residency abroad. It was during that residency in Mönchengladbach (Germany) that I got the idea to make this video. I was completely free to produce what I wanted during the six months of the residency. The only constraints were to produce a catalog and an exhibition at the end of my stay. When browsing previous artist’s catalogs, I have noticed that most of them didn’t make any project linked with the city nor the people of MG. It seemed to me so obvious to do something with them. Until now, I worked only with my daily life and my photographic diary. Diary which is composed by personal images and ordered by year, month and day. It’s a kind of database I feed for more than ten years. This time, I wanted to make something completely different. I was abroad and I had a budget for creating. It was the moment to experiment something new. That’s why I wanted to work with someone else memories. I had the basis. Thanks to a local artist that I could meet people whose make me meet other persons. Most of them were from MG. One day I asked them to tell me a story they experienced here. But something personal and linked with memory. It was the way I could collect several short stories. From all these stories I selected three. For instance, for Andrea, she told me that when she was a little

Jean-Luc Dang & Marija Linciute

girl, she got lost outside and everybody in the city was looking for her. Finally, a teenager found her and took her home. All the local press had talked about it and she even kept newspaper clippings among the pictures of her childhood. M : We regularly kept in touch with Jean-Luc went he went abroad. He was telling me his days and his daily life in MG. He explained to

me his ideas of projects as well and I was giving him my opinion. In my work, I often mix personal images with archive images, so pictures that donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t necessary belong to me. When Jean-Luc was wondering whether it could be interesting to work from others memories, I definitively lead him in that way ! The idea of Stories from MG was born. He asked me to come to help him to make this video. He needed my point of view. So I joined

him in Germany just before the filming. I could meet the people he got acquainted. The same people whose confide him their short and personal stories. Jean-Luc, among your favourite director you say that Chris Marker, Jonas Mekas and Chantal Akerman have deeply influenced your shooting style. From the first time we watched Stories from

A still from Stories from Mรถnchengladbach

Mönchengladbach we were impressed with the way you are able to condense the narrative structure of the three stories, reminding the non-linear devices of the early films by Robbe Grillet, in particular his masterpiece L'homme qui ment. Can you introduce our readers to this aspect of your cinema? Time and rhythm take a big place in our work. All our videos have a length lower than 20 minutes. They are rhythmed by narrative images but also by a voice-over which accompanying them. That’s why we choose a short format. For Stories from MG, we took some aspects of our protocol : a short format, the choice of images, un rhythm editing, and so on. Then we also used digital cameras to be able to play with the depth of field and stay close with photography. It was a project which was built like three independent video installations which would turn loop. But we, in hindsight, decided to regroup all the parts to make a single movie because we thought it was more coherent. Furthermore, we found interesting to put an opening at the end of each part then the spectator could have his own opinion about what would happen next. You adopt a dyptich formula in Stories from Mönchengladbach. Can you comment this peculiar visual aspect of your film? JL : It was during a photographic project that I experimented a dyptich for the first time. I directed characters so the pictures became like movie scenes. The idea was to show the same scene at two different but chronologically close moments. I wanted to give these images that follow themselves another dimension. I worked with still images for years. In my works « the slideshows », each image is important. This dyptich project was an important step before going to moving images. Especially as I had a growing interest in cinema. M : We wanted to experiment a video installation with two screens but especially to make a movie together after visiting Jesper Just’s exhibition at the MacVal museum (Paris) in 2011. In stories from MG, it’s the same moment but from two different point of view. It’s a kind of our vision on a same scene. A personal interpretation of each stories which complete together. it has been a long time we wanted to work together and this project was the occasion.

A still from Stories from Mönchengladbach

You have a peculiar sense of time and rhythm that harkens back to an older tradition of European filmmaking. How did you develop your filmmaking style? JL : I discovered photography at Chalon sur Saône’s art school (France). After many stories in my family (family problems, moving, etc.). I realized that we had no more pictures of our past, no more those ‘‘family album’’ that have been lost over time. After buying a small digital camera I started taking pictures of my everyday life : my family, my friends, or just my life. When I discover Jonas Mekas’s (filmed diary), I really realized the importance of these images from my daily life. My obsessive practice of photography, which creates a huge

database of images, quickly leads me to design a video work often taking as slideshow format. In my work ‘‘the slideshows’’, my videos combine in a documentary style, the images from my photographic diary to the sound of my voice telling in hindsight, a personal experience or based on real facts. Placing the public in a state of immersion, my work lead us into my daily life and the complexity of the differences, more or less obvious, that govern our relations with others.

international artists as Sophie Calle or Sylvie Blocher. What in the beginning started as a simple experiment (color photography), became later a huge part of my work. After moving to France, I was drawn back to my country and it’s history through a new point of view. I started creating around this theme because I was able to re-evaluate my memories after some time of reflection. Then I made a video called CCCP which takes the form of a video that mixes personal and archives images.

M : I was trained to black and white photography at Vilnius Academy of Fine Arts. I went to l’École Supérieure d'Art de Grenoble in France to continues my studies. Then I discovered color photography and

Currently, we work together on video and installation projects where we use the language of cinema. Through our work we question this language through the

A still from Stories from Mรถnchengladbach

A still from Stories from Mönchengladbach

manipulation of the traditional rules and conventions in film. What was the most challenging thing about making this film? We had the opportunity to work with a TV crew thanks to the help of the Kulturbüro of Mönchengladbach but we refused. The process was as important as the idea. That’s why it was so obvious for us to invite some people from MG to participate to the filming. It was a real challenge because most of them had no technical skills. In fact, organizing a filming is really complicated especially when this is the first time ! We had a lot a problem with the logistic and the weather for instance.

Audio has a huge importance in your works. The exquisite soundscape composed by Kevin Gironnay is in the same manner as the pictures a mix of fragments, different speeds playing directions and places. How did you collaborate with him on this film? M : The first version of the video had JeanLuc’s voice-over for each part. He was telling the stories the characters confide him. At the moment, he wasn’t entirely satisfied with the result because he was too close from his works of slideshows. For this project we wanted something different in terme of image but in terme of sound as well. That’s why we decided to contact a friend who is contemporary music

videos with no rules for the music, I thought I really had to do it instinctly and to focus on what I felt. In the first two videos, you meet the characters from the start and you follow them. Then, stories come to your head. I felt like I had to accompany the spectator in this slow exploration of the characters. For Alexander & Christian, the two main characters are in two different places : here, the diptych becomes a way to make them communicate. A kind of visual dialog between the two appears, a complex tension is growing and I needed to compose much more precisely for this one, trying to underline this tension and the video editing. We have previously quoted Alain Robbe Grillet and Chantal Akerman, even though your filmmaking style is very far from what is generally considered 'academic'. Who among international artists and directors influenced your work? They are many artists and directors whose work we admire and it will be maybe too long to name them all. We are fascinated with the concept of daily life and intimacy which you can naturally find in our work. We also remain very sensitive to the work of Sophie Calle for the narration and the ambiguous reality fiction. We really enjoyed Jesper Just’s work for his staging and the narrative side of his video installations. composer. We sent him the images without sound and without any peculiar indications to not influence him. We didn’t know at all what would be the result and it was surprising ! Could you describe your process?

Thanks for sharing your time, Jean-Luc Dang and Marija Linciute, we wish you all the best with your filmmaker career. What's next for you? Have you a particular film in mind?

For the 3 vidéos, I used two different ways of composing. For the first two videos, I really improvised while watching the screen : I used a midi controller to manipulate a drone (Andrea - first video) or to do a very subtle mix between a lot of static sounds (Wolfram & Constanz - second video). At the opposite, I did a more detailed work of electroacoustic music, with sound composing and editing on the last one. When Jean-Luc and Marija sent me the

We planned to develop the concept we used for Stories from Mönchengladbach but elsewhere. We really enjoyed that experience. That’s why we are looking for new places but we mainly need a reason to go there. Besides, we have projects of another kinds than video art. We plan, for instance, to organize soon a filming of a Short-Film !

Delphine Doukhan Fractal Film, 2013 Synopsis The generative video installation Fractal Film proceeds to an exhaustion of the view on a given scene : an autonomous programmed camera explores and shows us the same scene indefinitely and always differently. Projected in large format, the short cinematographic scene plays, over and over. Although in a loop, it is never seen with the same angle, the same camera position, movement and

behavior. The scene, written and shot by Delphine Doukhan, is a short but complex drama with multiple plot levels, a wordless burlesque huis clos involving six characters during a troubled reception with a sense of tacit ritual. This very precisely choreographed scene was shot in very high definition (5K) at eight different angles. At exhibition time, a software-based camera, designed and written by

& Antoine Schmitt Antoine Schmitt, navigates by zooming inside this source video material to explore and display of the scene in infinitely various ways. To do so, it follows written rules of movement, defined by the authors, and drawn from cinema language, from animal behavior, from mathematics and physics. Some of these rules explicitly leave freedom of movement to the camera, within certain limits. At each scene

occurrence, the camera chooses one rule at random and follows it. The result is an infinitely variable way of looking at a given scene. Fractal Film articulates the concepts of generative art with the language of cinema. It is a collaboration between video artist Delphine Doukhan and generative artist Antoine Schmitt.

An interview with

Daniel Cortés Fractal Film , generative video installation, is the result of the stunning collaboration between Delphine Doukhan, video artist and photographer, and Antoine Schmitt, visual artist. Delphine & Antoine, how did you come up with the idea for this immersive installation experience? A: At the beginning, Delphine proposed me to work on a very large and complex photograph that she had made, with the idea of zooming into it with an automatic process. This proposal reminded me of an idea that I wanted to explore, of a camera that would explore a given video scene. This concept came to me after the reading of "La invención de Morel" (The Invention of Morel), a novel by Adolpho Bioy Casares, in which a scene has been fully recorded with a (science-fictional) 3D hologram-based system and is discovered by the main character who explores it over and over, through all possible different angles. I proposed Delphine to work on a new project, where the autonomous camera would explore endlessly a given cinematographic scene. Delphine liked the idea and we started the adventure ! D : Exactly, I came to Antoine with this first idea of an alternative way of editing my piece “transports collectifs” or “public transports”, that I finally edited with conventional tools, because they were actually more appropriate for this piece. And this idea of an autonomous and endless exploration, a concept by itself, needed a new support, a specific project. I was very happy about this proposition. Schmitt's artistic research focuses on the inner nature of movement: Antoine, could you better introduce our readers to this fundamental aspect of your art practice which has been no doubt a starting point of Fractal Film? A: my work deals with the processes of movement : why does it move, how does it

Delphine Doukhan

moves ? I guess that all artists address the issues that touch them most at a personal level. I have always been interested in movements and its causes. Why do things move ? Why do I move ? What are the reasons for going from stillness to movement ? What are the causes and how do these causes translate into a certain quality of movement. In the art world, movement as such has been addressed mainly by choreography, which deals with the movement of human bodies. In visual arts, movement has been addressed by very few artists : Tinguely, and Calder are the most known. They are sculptors and have addressed the movement of material bodies, with their constraints and their spatial or mechanical properties. I am interested in movement as such, and I mainly address it using an immaterial matter : light and programs. This allows me to focus on the movement itself. I tend to re-create the causes for movement, and let these causes do their job : they cause movement. I am interested in delicate situations, where various forces are in tension, and lead to special movements. These movements may be similar to real-life movements, or totally unreal. In the case of Fractal Film, I was interested in the "point of view" as a cause for movement. What if a camera was free to look at a scene

in a same place where they can see each other constantly ( except one who doesn’t want to see)...Ok, we zoom, but the characters are linked to each other and always doing something. Will this link be broken by the program? What will we see then? What will we understand of the story? I wanted a form made for the idea and against it at the same time. It was kind of a challenge. The story tells us how, inside a small hierarchical and caricatural community with dominants and agreed dominated people, a frivolous sulk can monopolise the attention and how this little shake-up make the agreed dominated ones manipulate a stupid scapegoat ( the one who doesn’t want to see) in order to come back to a stable state. We had an 8 days rehearsal period with the dancers (contemporary and ball room dancers) to finalize the scene, that would be at the end, known by heart, in order to be repeated 8 times, exactly in the same way, for the filming process.

Antoine Schmitt

the way it wanted ? How would it move ? What are all the possible ways of looking at a scene ? What about exhausting all the possible ways ? Delphine, you have realized highly layered shots in this film revealing a keatonesque feel: could you take us through your creative process for this project? D : for this project, I wanted to go on with the idea of a stage narrative situation recording, mainly involving physical behaviors liable (by themselves) to tell a story. Also, even before writing the scene, we thought with Antoine about a way to film that would prepare the final feeling we wanted : an “excess of reality” for the viewer. Therefore, we thought about a scene, seen and filmed, from every side. The circular Elizabethan stage, visible from everywhere was our inspiration for the filming process. Knowing also that the program would explore the scene by zooming in it, (the scene will never entirely be seen at the end), I thought about a story with several characters reacting to each other, like in a ping-pong game (for 6), inside a global level of collective action : they are all busy dancing, linked by a same rhythm

I came to the dancers with a precise storyboard that gave key elements of the narration, 9 accents of the sequence-shot with precise placements, postures and expressions. I also had a film with lindy hop steps to help building the gestures. The work with the dancers consisted to make the scene fluent, to find the appropriate rhythms, displacements, gestures, looks, starting from those articulation points. A specific mood or tone came during the work, located in between the characters and the personalities. The body speaks, for sure in a way, for you. The work, for a large part, was to find this in-between, while being precisely faithful to the narration. Also, I chose a lindy hop basis of move to give a light and intimate tone to the whole. The idea of a song, whispered by one of the dominants, came late during the rehearsal, to reinforce the global link. In your film are present rules of movement drawn from different sensibilities, like cinema language, animal behavior, physics. How did you put together these apparently different worlds? A: The same scene plays over and over again. Each time it plays, at exhibition time, the virtual camera picks a rule of movement, and executes this rule for the whole duration of the scene. Then at the next play of the scene, it picks another rule at random, and so on. So

A still from Fractal Film, 2013 Generative video installation Specific program, computer, videoprojector Duration : infinite

each vision of a scene has its own consistency. There is a pool of about 20 rules, some of which leave room for freedom to the camera. For example, with the rule "pick a character's head and follow it slowly", the camera is "free" to pick any head. Here are some examples of rules : Examples of rules: - chose a character's head and follow it closely - find the strongest sound source - jump from head to head at random and stay between 2 and 8 seconds on each - cross the scene slowly - etc.. At the beginning, we started with many more rules, and we picked the ones that worked best with the existing scene, the ones that had a relationship with the scene, its space, its dynamics, its narrative lines. Fractal Film shows us the same scene always differently reminding us of the cubist decomposition of space in the films by Carmelo Bene, like his famous art-film SalomĂ¨. Could you introduce our readers to this peculiar eight-angles technique? A : The filming setup is a compromise. In an ideal world, we would have liked to be able to see the scene from all possible angles, including from above, from under, etc.. But this is not possible. So we devised a solution where there would be a very large variation of points of view, and we ended up with eight points of views. Then to make things less obvious for a viewer, we decided to have the camera turn around the scene, so that the shooting angle would slowly change. D : Although this compromise had good points. Thanks to it, the actors acted 8 times the same sequence, and this repetition occurred some very little variations for more intensity in the acting. And also, it made us turn around the scene, while filming, occurring a series of slow and smooth camera sequence-shots, like slow processions in harmony each time with the acting.

A still from Fractal Film, 2013 Generative video installation Specific program, computer, videoprojector Duration : infinite

Fractal film has been shot in 5K. Why did you use this extreme high definition format? The shooting camera captured the whole scene space, in very high definition (5K). This allows the software camera to zoom into the source film, and still produce a full-HD quality movie in the end.

We have previously quoted the great actor and director Carmelo Bene in this interview. Can you tell us your biggest influences in art and how they have affected your work?

from Adolfo Bioy Casares. In general, I have been very much influenced by writers like Philip K. Dick, or Jose Luis Borgès, who both deal with parallel universes, potential reality, etc..

A: As I said, the initial inspiration for the idea to exhaust the views on one recorded scene came from the book "La invención de Morel"

D : For this project, I’ve been inspired by a mix of operas from the composer Rameau and some lindy hop atmosphere.

A still from Fractal Film, 2013 Generative video installation Specific program, computer, videoprojector Duration : infinite

In general, Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve been influenced in my work by some of the â&#x20AC;&#x153;nouvelle vagueâ&#x20AC;? cinema, their references in Cinema, and especially the freedom of filming they pointed out because my work has been first about an immersive attitude in the environment ; therefore, street photographer like Diane Arbus has also been very inspiring, as well as the photographer Cindy Sherman, for the multi identities she proposed ( another kind of inner immersion). Dance and performing art have been also very important because of the large space those arts give to the body, as well as some expressionist or burlesque silent movies. In these last years we have seen that the frontier between Video Art and Cinema is

growing more and more vague:Fractal Film seems to confirm this trend, Do you think that this "frontier" will exists longer? A : The movie theater setup is very strong and I think that it will remain this way for a long time. People like to be physically passive while watching a linear movie that tells a story. But on the other hand, the language of cinema now has a long history and a widespread acceptance, so it is a very rich language against which to confront new languages, especially generativity and interactivity. This may allow for new forms of cinema, enriched by these new languages.

D : Yes, one of the specificities of the Cinema is in this set-up that describes Antoine. And you can find it also in some theaters, concerts, operas set-up, in all those collective shows where everybody is physically passive, comfortable sat in the dark. And this collective sharing that wants to be at a same objective dream level can be also used in video art, or not. In this case, is Video art less directly collective (or in another way), more real ? Anyway, those confrontations Antoine is talking about are very interesting for both video art and cinema because they open to exciting new fields about the use of them.

Thanks for sharing your time and thoughts, Delphine and Antoine. What's next for you? Have you a particular collaboration in mind ? A : Delphine and I are currently thinking of a few ideas for a future collaboration, again at the crossing of cinema and programming... On my side, I continue to confront the language of generatively and programming to other well established artistic languages. D : beside these collaboration idea with Antoine, I work on a photographic project, a series of portraits.

A still from Entre les lignes

Pierre Ajavon An artist's statement

“Between the lines – Prologue” is the fruit of my meeting with Kitty Sabatier, a contemporary calligrapher. After freely filming and photographing details, fragments of her work and objects surrounding her in her studio, I composed a 15 min piece of music whilst making a sequence of 3 videos, throwing a bridge across both our imaginations, and exploring my perception of her universe through music and images. “Between the lines” is the prologue of a series of 3 videos including “Between the lines – prologue”, “Line(s)” and “Between the lines – epilogue”. The musical theme is fragmented and repetitive; the images of the “journey” (Line(s)) appear in a kaleidoscopic form and precede the narrative of the journey itself. The lines come alive in aquatic weightlessness and hallucinogenic languor. My design is to combine, to superimpose imagination and reality to have dreamlike reality emerge from the unconscious, feelings embodied by psychedelic flashes, by recomposed film shots of varying lengths, always borne by music and rhythm… Images, colours and sounds offer a view of what esthetical perception can create. “Between the lines – prologue” is the prelude to a road movie which travels across the realm of our feelings and experiences through different stages of a sensorial journey beyond the lines. Pierre Ajavon

An interview with

Pierre Ajavon The creation of soundscapes related with the video aesthetics is fundamental in your artistic research; however, it would be more appropriate in your case to say that the starting point is not music itself, but musical thinking, which is at the same time gestural, philosophical and architectonic. Pierre, how did you get started in music and video art? First, I’m a musician by training, multiinstrumentalist, composer / arranger and a sound engineer. I took part in many musical projects, within bands or studio sessions (as a composer, guitarist or bassist), composing for theater, publishing or documentaries, while studying Sociology (working on a comprehensive term paper unveiling the influence of the psychedelic movement on modern day culture), and subsequently throughout my journey. The guitar, bass and keyboards are my instruments of choice. I especially love to work with instruments imbued with their own distinct sound ident like Rickenbacker or 12 strings Danelectro guitars, Höfner violin bass, and keyboards like the Mellotron, the Chamberlin or other Moog’s. I consistently aim to reflect an universe or a specific mood full of imagery with my musical compositions. It all depends of the sound recording, the musical instruments’ character, the sound texture being used and especially the way you consider and devise a musical aesthetic. I also regard the mixing as a creative process in its own right during which sounds can be fiddled with or transformed like a raw material. I add the sound effects during that step as well. After a stay in New York for a sound engineer course I paradoxically decided on including video art into my artistic process on par with my music or my sound effects. I first used video to broaden my musical field of expression. It soon went to be an aesthetic and introspective tool I couldn’t work without.

This synesthesic approach states my willingness to create a complete work of art, a soundscape aesthetically merging senses while being a mirror where the audience may lost itself in and discover its own subjectivity at the same time. Your work reveals a highly original and consistent synesthetic approach. Could you introduce our readers to the multidisciplinary nature of your art? The music and pictures of my creations work with a lot of rhythmic or aesthetic analogies and links. Music and pictures communicate. The music becomes a dream upon which introspection and video art bestow a sensory and pictorial dimension. During the creation process, composing, performing, programing all the instruments and finally mixing the music all by myself involves a total immersion at all levels of composition’s production, be it both harmonic and structural. My perception of the musical part differs if I play bass of if I create an arrangement with a Dubreq stylophone for the same piece. In the former case, I feel and devise rhythmic and « instinctual » patterns. In the latter case, I delve into the harmonic aspects and the sonic textures of the composition. By then, I journey at the heart of the musical composition and I end up with a global perception of it, both at the development and the realization stage. There’s something deeply introspective with that kind of approach. You grasp music like a layout projecting mental pictures that I depict with a series of animated shots, with landscapes linked together whose behaviors shift as the music flows enabling the whole to function as a single entity. I film and photograph many situations and details catching my eye in my everyday life. As a result, I have hours of video and many pictures files that I draw on like raw material to be used as a graphical database to develop my videos. The meticulous image processing and editing takes place during mixing, both potentially able to interact until the music’ finalization in a studio. My approach aims to depict a musical imagery while producing a perceptive and sensitive experience through sensory fusion. We have selected for this Videofocus Edition your video Between the lines – Prologue, a journey into your kaleidoscopic imagery. Figures in Between

Pierre Ajavon

A still from Entre les lignes

the lines appear and disappear in a gentle flow, sometimes moving the story forward, sometimes backward. You seem to take at heart Harry Smith's teachings "Film frames are hieroglyphs, even when they look like actuality. How did you come up with the idea for this experimental film? After the shootings (both video and photo) in calligrapher Kitty Sabatier’s studio while she was working on an upcoming exhibition, I composed a 15 mn musical piece with 2 main themes and produced a sound evocation (sound effects) interacting and developing with or alongside each other. Then, I realised 2 videos, «Entre les Lignes – Prologue »( Between the Lines – Prolog) and « Ligne(s) » (Line(s) ) by expanding the concept of the line crossing and going all over Kitty Sabatier’s work. I pulled that guideline, that road to me and followed its path. By then, a dreamlike narrative made of musical landscapes, aesthetic breaks and visual leitmotivs unravel along that line. These 3 videos work as follow: «Entre les Lignes – Prologue » (Between the Lines – Prolog) is the prelude to an aesthetic journey, then comes «Ligne» (Line) and «Entre les Lignes – Épilogue» (Between the Lines – Epilog) concludes it. «Entre les Lignes – Épilogue » (Between the Lines – Epilog) was filmed during the exhibition’s opening and displays the different ways one can grasp art. This experimental triptych is a psychedelic chronicle of the creation process starting from the studio to the very opening of the exhibition. The « Ligne(s) » (Line(s) ) video was screened for a whole month at the very heart of the exhibition. As for the «Entre les Lignes – Prologue » (Between the Lines – Prolog) video, it was screened before the exhibition, like an invitation to a « Magical Mystery Tour ». Could you describe your collaborative experience with the contemporary calligrapher Kitty Sabatier? At first, we started to collaborate after one of my musical compositions had drawn Kitty Sabatier’s attention. So I offered her to use this music to realise the “De vous à moi “(As I say to you) video, working on the feelings I derived from her aesthetic universe. To this end, she entrusted me with a number of

A still from Entre les lignes

personal documents (work and workshop pictures…) which I used to realise the « picture layout ». We chose a different approach for Lignes (Lines) because I laid a shooting groundwork prior to beginning the project and the musical composition. I have known Kitty Sabatier for some years now and we keep on working together despite the distance between us (Kitty Sabatier lives in Toulouse while I live in Paris.) We regularly meet through artistic projects. In fact, we currently work on a new project to be completed by the end of 2015.

Your visual imagery is psychedelic and at the same time highly precise: you work like a jeweler, carefully carving out incisive, measured rhythms and structures. What is the role of improvisation in your art? Improvisation holds a fundamental role in my work for I favor an intuitive kind of video editing technic – by superimposing printings or association of ideas – akin to automatic writing. Each animated shot pertains to a specific composition (figures, colors, images superimposition, motion change…etc…) making it unique and linking it with the next to form the narrative. The animated combinations

of shots appear at the whim of the musical story like fleeting thoughts you must catch before they vanish when they come across reality. When I’m editing, I as accurately as practicably possible strive to relay through colors and forms processing the emotions aroused by music. The resulting shots may bear the tinge of memories, conscious or unconscious images, recollection… As far as music is concerned, my relationship with improvisation operates on a different level. While I attach a great deal of rigor in composing and recording, spontaneity and speed always prevail for the interpretation of different instruments. That’s the reason I

A still from Entre les lignes

record very few takes. Some instruments like the bass or the guitar usually get only one shot at the mic. Here again I want to keep hold of the immediacy and the elusive nature of emotions. How long does it usually take to finish a piece? You must start with a tedious mental mapping of the music before composing, and further it up to the performance conceptualization. After you have settled on that abstract but vital framework, realising the musical part, recording and arranging happen quickly enough. Once youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve settled with the shootings and the pictures of choice, you might spend a couple of weeks on video editing but it will vary depending on the project's requirements.

Finally, you mix and master the music in a studio, before completing the video. I usually need 1 or 2 month to finalize a creation. The rhythmical element is extremely important in Between the lines. By definition cinema is rhythm and movement, gesture and continuity, however rarely in mainstream or narrative cinema we assist to such a spectacular dance like in your films. How do you conceive the rhythm of your works? I share a very strong and rhythmic relationship with video editing. That kind of work sharpens or reduces the impact the pictures will have and alters the idea of their perception. My relationship with animated pictures rests upon a

beat which causes the visual emotions to appear and disappear. It’s kind of a cinematic expressiveness without real participants. The participants become figures, lines and overlapped images coming to life with a musical background. The 5/8 rhythmic pattern is a bit odd in Between the lines – Prolog. It’s an asymmetrical bar whose syncopated and « erratic » characteristic gives a sense of a repetitive pulse on which a melody line lays itself on, while seemingly incomplete and interrupted by the strong beat. The pulse of this disrupted rhythm seems to follow an eerie cycle and brings us backward. In this case, the rhythm establishes the spatiotemporal framework enabling an animated soundscape creation.

Thanks for sharing your time and thoughts, PIerre. What's next for Pierre Ajavon? Have you a particular project in mind ? Like I already said, I’m currently working with Kitty Sabatier on a new project called Festin Nu (Naked lunch). It involves calligraphy, drawing, video, photography and music for an exhibition to be held in Paris at the end of 2015 to the beginning of 2016. Websites: http://vimeo.com/rueedgarpoe http://www.pierreajavon.com

Shahar Davis Hermeneutic circle and its breach

Hermeneutic Circle and its breach is a video-art piece created out of the loneliness and frustration caused by the experience of the digital world; It expresses the longing for the reality where the tangibility of the body and the touch exist. This piece combines different images on the media continuum, from computer generated images to actual video, such as:

screen captures of a 3d animation program interface, geometric animation created in a 3d program, stop-motion animation of a body, manipulated video footages, and an actual video of a dance scene. The piece aspires to delve into the experience of the digital-virtual existence which is characterized by an unbearable gap between representation and reality. This gap is demonstrated in the first part of the piece by the display of the failure of a virtual-reality

A still from Hermeneutic circle and its breach 2014,17min, CGI, Stop-motion and Video

computer program in representing a pure mathematical circle on a finite grid of pixels.

words. This is expressed in the second part of the piece by an outdoor dance scene

The suggested solution is to abandon representation completely and to enable an emergence of a reality in an experience which cannot be reduced; a sublime experience of reality which may be called love. This love may find its expression in countless forms in the material of nature; Forms which exist independently from perception, analysis and

In the transition between the two extremes; the images produced exclusively inside the computer and the photography of human movement and its sensuality, there is an expression of the spirit of distress and a longing of our generation. Shahar Davis

An interview with

Shahar Davis We want to take a closer look at the genesis of your film: how did you come up with the idea for A Hermeneutic Circle and its Breach? The piece has never been conceived as an idea in a specific moment in time but rather was the result of my personal life history and the kind of creative process which I have adopted. I have been doing 3D animation since I was a teenager . After finishing high school, in 1997, I decided that I didn't want to spend my life in front of a computer screen so I left home to become a contemporary dancer. This became the basis for my personal mind-body dichotomy. In addition, I started working on the film after a breakup. I felt lonely and alienated and that there was some aspect of existence, which cannot be expressed in words, that I wanted to grasp. At that time I was a student at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design and had developed my creative process. It involves quickly executing various small ideas as part of a larger research so that I end up with a wide pool of different footages. The footages could be visually very diverse but all stemming from the same motivation. In the end I make a synthesis of the footages in which I allow myself to combine anything and everything, creating a free and diverse collage like a Google image search result. The result is a process alternating between intuition and reflection. More specifically, the different parts of the film were created for various courses at Bezalel. The first part was for a course taught by artistphilosopher Aim Deuelle Luski who introduced me to Walead Beshty’s works. Beshty,is a photographer who makes photographic prints displaying the effects of the printing process. He presents the material of the photograph as opposed to depicting images. This relates to Deleuzian ideas of new materialism that had a great effect on me. The transition footages were created during my experimental-

animation course taught by animator Rony Oren, and the synthesis of the footages was for yet another course which required making a personal film, guided by Prof. DuduMezach. Stylistically, the second part of the film owes more to the surreal fantasy world of Jean Cocteau than to the expressionism of James Whale. We have been deeply impressed with the way you highlight the limits of the body, reminding us of the impossible actions of Carmelo Bene's cinema, just think of A Hamlet Less. Can you introduce our readers to this peculiar aspect of your work? In the second part of the video I appear dancing freestyle in an outdoor scene. Originally, the dance scene was shot without relation to the final piece. It was a shooting for an Israeli version of the Will Pharell "Happy” music video. I decided to use the action of coming out of a dumpster and dancing as a metaphor for optimism. Later I combined this footage into the film as a presentation of the body and of nature without words. It was supposed to be an anti-thesis of representation. In that way, the dance scene is repeating the theme of presentation of the material of the medium from the first part of the film; In the first part of the movie the material is pixels and in the second part it is the body. Of course this is problematic because it isn't a body but rather a depiction, a video of a body. In addition, the surreal symbol of coming out of the dark dumpster found its way into the materialist piece. So what was supposed to be a piece purely about the impossibility of representing reality was inevitably altered by my subjectivity. I think this was a rightful outcome because my motivation for creating is not merely philosophical but deeper than that, an existential motivation. I wanted to grasp something of existence which I couldn't express but felt that was there. This feeling and the wish to touch existence, as a sublime thing, are subjective issues that are reasons for the philosophical discussion. In that sense, the transition from inside (the dumpster) to outside and from rational thinking to dance is an expression of the desire of a subject to come out of itself.

Shahar Davis

Shahar Davis, b 1978 in Jerusalem, has been creating 3D animation since 1993. From 1997 he trained to be a professional dancer for nearly four years, in Israel and at the Rotterdam Dance Academy in The Netherlands. After returning to Israel, he started his own 3D animation company, creating commercials for the Israeli TV industry. He then went on to complete a BA in Finance and Management at IDC Herzeliya, graduating first in his class. In 2011 he began a degree in experimental animation at Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design Jerusalem.

A still from Hermeneutic circle and its breach 2014,17min, CGI, Stop-motion and Video

In your film you explore the themes of virtuality and alienation,Â&#x20AC;yet watching your video art production we had the impression that there's a subtle irony as well as a strong sense of absurd. Do you agree with this interpretation of your work? It is very possible to interpret the action of throwing garbage out of a dumpster as criticism of the long, rational blabber that precedes it in voice-over. I have already used this contrast between rationality and dance in a previous experiment which also had a two part structure; In the first part I explained the economic theory of rational expectation and in the second part I surprisingly performed a belly-dance. But in A Hermeneutic Circle and its Breach, this contrast is used not just to critic the false assumption that people behave rationally, but to claim the absolute limit of the intellect, to claim that there is an unbridgeable gap between representation and reality. Let's explore now your latest animation filmÂ&#x20AC;co-directed with Tal-Kantor, Into Being. From the first scene we have been impressed with your sapient use of light and stop-motion technique through which you depicts emotions and feelings in places where dialogue could not even scratch the surface. Can you introduce our readers to this project? Into Being is a six-minute experimental animation film that combines stop-motion techniques, 3D animation and video. The plot focuses on a lonely man who follows a friendly cockroach out the corner of his bedroom and into a surreal desert that stretches infinitely on the other side of the room. The man and the cockroach play a peek-a-boo game and dance together at the climax of the film. In similarity to Hermeneutic Circle and Its Breach, the film expresses the existential theme of the desire to break out of the limits of the mind and connect directly with reality. At the story-level, the cockroach, as a metaphor

A still from Hermeneutic circle and its breach 2014,17min, CGI, Stop-motion and Video

for the other, is acting as a catalyzing agent that releases the main character from the tangle of his own mind. As the plot advances, the characters and the environment are being deconstructed to show their material and expose the how they were made. This is done by various means: the use of macro lenses to show the fiber texture of the cardboard that makes the character; showing

the mechanism on the back of the puppet; shooting the character from angles that show its flatness; gradually exposing the distorted angles of the set design; and lastly, using music made with a prepared piano - A piano in which objects placed between the strings alter the sound and accentuate its materiality (inspired by John Cage, music composed by Shira Legmann).

Your video production is very miscellanous: how has your production processes changed over the years? The most significant change is that I don't plan as much and try spending more time of the production creating playful and intuitive experiments. It also means that I leave a lot of the creative process to the editing phase. This

A still from Into Being

change is a result of gaining confidence and becoming skillful in various techniques. But it's also a result of my need to keep myself interested by being inventive and learning new things. My animation teacher, Rony Oren, helped me explore this curiosity. For a weekly exercise, he had us take a camera outside and search for new materials to animate. An example of such an experiment is the short animation The Sun, Glenn Gould and I, available on my vimeo page, in which I presumably animate the sun by moving the position of the camera in relation to it and to objects that block its light.

How did you get started in animation and experimental filmmaking? Both my parents are artists and I think I have always been visually sensitive to form and movement. So it was a natural development. At age of 10 I went to my first animation course for which we made drawn and plasticine animations and shot them on 8mm film. As a teenager I taught myself to use 3D animation software and made my first film. I was never very interested in making narrative films so creating experimental visual research was almost an imperative.

Tzara quote: "We demand the right to piss in different colors".

Thanks for sharing your time, Shahar, we wish you all the best with your filmmaker career. What's next for you? Have you a particular film in mind?

I am now beginning working on my diploma film. It is in very early stages of development. The starting point is to explore how things transform between mediums and what characteristics they retain. For example, when an apple becomes a photo of an apple it retains the signification that refers to it. But when this photo is processed in a software to become sound it is reduced to a pattern of an electric signal. It is a diversion from dealing with the gap between representation and reality and staying only in the realms of different forms of representations.

Letâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s speak about influences. Have any artists from the older generation inspired you?Â&#x20AC; I remember when I was first introduced to Marcel Duchamp ready-mades and the idea that art happens in the mind. I think this idea had a profound effect on me. It got me fascinated but I also stayed perplexed by it for many years and thought it was outrageous. Later, in high-school I wrote a paper about Dadaist ideas of absurdity and rebellion. It stuck with me and I still remember the Tristan

A still from Cognizance

Nigel Tan An artist's statement

Cognizance is an exploration of thought as an evolving landscape. The mind is an abstract form that defines our surroundings based on our individual experiences. This perception and rationalization of thought is based on the past, present and future. Cognizance seeks to illuminate this process that begs to question if we are really living in the now.

An interview with

Nigel Tan Nigel Tan clearly demonstrates the association between minimalist reductionism and self-expression. His sense of juxaposition give his films and music a playful subversive sensibility. We are glad to present for this Videofocus edition Cognizance, a work focusing on the tensions between perception, space and subjectivity. Nigel, we want to take a closer look at the genesis of your film: how did you come up with the idea for Cognizance? Most of my work often starts off with either a theme or a topic that is rather open. I then delve into it further as it develops into something more concrete and substantial, this is what grounds me as an artist. For Cognizance, the theme explored is “thought”, as general as it sounds, it gave me a lot of room to expand and start focusing on various aspects I wished to convey. Since my work revolves around daily living, I wanted thought to be more than just thinking, I wanted it to be a connection of senses. That was how I came up with thought as an evolving landscape. We are constantly shaped and influenced by our environment be it past or present through daily interaction and occurrences which makes use of all our senses. I always picture the mind as a vast landscape that is like a sponge which constantly absorbs and shapes itself, sort of like a warped colourful black hole. As abstract as it may seem, this is how I perceive our minds to be if you are able to look at it as a whole. Cognizance is my own personal interpretation of this evolving landscape that features a lot of what I see, hear and do in my daily life and not just a collage randomly pieced together. I was also inspired by stories of schizophrenics and how they perceived the world around them. This was one of the fundamental inspirations for both the score and the film and it ultimately influenced the flow of this piece. Contemporary music is fundamental in your artistic research. We dare say that

the starting point of your art is not music itself, but musical thinking, which is at the same time philosophical and architectonic. Could you introduce our readers to the multidisciplinary nature of your art? Growing up I have always been big on music, dabbling with various instruments and bands as well as writing my own music in Singapore. After years of being stifled in a stagnant almost non existent music scene, I moved to Melbourne, Australia about four years ago to study music, interactive composition to be exact, at the Victorian College of the Arts. This really opened up my mind not just compositionally but artistically as well. With guidance from inspiring mentors and likeminded peers, I dare say the change was drastic as I grew to appreciate the need for new innovative approaches toward my craft. Music has always been the cornerstone of my work. I believe that the act of composition is ultimately more significant than the composition itself. This means the rituals I put myself through during the developmental process be it cognitively or physically, is more important that the end product. I want

Nigel is a composer, sound and video artist who works conceptually with various mediums bearing the weight of unorthodox structure with the blend of electroacoustic aberrant sound. He explores the basis of music through different styles and history bearing in mind the importance of the process within layers of texture. Influenced by experimentalist of film and music from both the eastern and western culture, the pieces churned out are intertwined randomly to reflect change which in turn motivates a purpose. He engages in various forms of mixed media, primarily in the film and visual aspect marrying sight with sound through the blend of the abstract and narrative. Nigel graduated with a diploma in Film, Sound and Video from Singapore’s Ngee Ann Polytechnic in 2009 and is currently concluding his Bachelor of Fine Arts in Contemporary Music majoring in Interactive Composition from University Of Melbourne’s Victorian College of the Arts. His work includes audiovisual installations and site-specific compositions that have been exhibited at the Ian Potter Museum of Art, Instinc Gallery Singapore, The Arts Centre Melbourne, Brunswick Street Gallery, Melbourne Zoo and The George Paton Gallery. In addition to this, he actively writes music for film/television, mixed media and performance art.

Nigel Tan

A still from Cognizance

audiences to experience this through my work, which is always open to interpretation and come up with their own personal ending. This is what makes the work truly unique. The intertwining of other disciplines mainly video and film is an extension of my music, where it is not just used as accompaniment but also as a structural tool in expanding the realm of sound. I like that I am able to change perception and experiences just by using sound and sight. This is something I have been exploring for awhile now and did a piece two years ago titled “The In and Out”, based on that. I have since been trying to push my artistic capabilities by exploring other disciplines including sculpture and interactive mediums. How did you get started in filmmaking? I studied film for three years back in 2006 at Singapore’s Ngee Ann Polytechnic and learnt most of my filmmaking there. Mostly picking up all the technical skills and knowledge that has aided in my craft. It was a pretty straight and generic course, much like most of the film schools then but it was still pretty insightful and I gained quite a lot. One great thing is the amount of contacts you make and since I’m a composer now I frequently collaborate with the filmmakers who were in the same course. The film industry isn’t big in Singapore so everyone practically knows each other, which is a good thing. Your film reveals a meticulous use of montage techniques: how did you develop your editing style? I believe it was influenced by my own style of composition which is mainly collage based. I’ve always looked up to artists like Christian Marclay, Otomo Yoshide and Naim Jun Paik that make use of such techniques. The main influence however has got to be Musique Concrete and how they piece together diverse sounds to create a story. The works of Pierre Schaeffer are evident of this technique and it is very stimulating to see how something so random can still be organic and flow flawlessly. By understanding this technique in music, I have also put it to use in film. I like how in film it is even clearer as you are able to see the contrast and juxtaposition, while in music it is much harder especially to the untrained ear.

A still from Cognizance

For example in Cognizance, I made use of some stock footage taken from the early 1900s of schizophrenic patients behaviours paired together with new footage I shot to create this tension which defies age and time. I think that is the beauty of filmmaking, that you are able to draw different connections that bring you multiple experiences in a short amount of time. Your audiovisual language is rich of layers of texture, a technique developed by Gyorgy Ligeti and Penderecki in the 60s: could you introduce our readers to this concept? Texture and form are the most fundamental for me in composition. I see music as blocks of

sound, which you take and either lay them next to each other or build them atop one another. If you observe the score for Pendercki’s “Therondy For The Victims of Hiroshima”, it works in that format, which transits almost arubptly through blocks of sound. It is the epitome of texture and form. Same goes with Ligeti’s “Volumina”. It’s kind of a coincidence that you would bring both composers up as I look up to them quite a bit for their sound mass compositions. Their pieces often feature large instrumental forces which are responsible for the textural colour of the piece. The timbral exploration of each individual instrument blended together as a whole is what makes these pieces so radical.

The textures form into gigantic soundscapes resulting in a wall of sound or a sound mass. Textures build tension and is especially important when you want audiences to feel uneasy or uncomfortable due to the chaotic characteristic of dissonance. This is particularly evident in Threnody. I recently wrote a piece titled “Dyad” which is a very much focused on texture. I went into the studio and recorded different improvised sound textures/samples of a string quartet individually and then pieced them together after to create a full piece. This layering process brings about what I was talking about with the blocks. I was able to grab individual lines and connect them in any way or form to

A still from Cognizance

create vast spatial movements. The textural form of this piece is what makes it effective. I always believe in the nature of balance like chaos and structure and yin and yang. It acts as a sort of frame for my work and is often a recurring subtextual theme. It helps during the writing phase where I figure out instrumentation, textures and motifs. Balance is the backbone of my craft and is especially helpful during the more spontaneous, chance oriented pieces. It is even more essential in my art where there are more elements to deal with. We find that your art is rich of references: we have previously mentioned the

Hungarian composer Ligeti. Can you tell us your biggest influences in art and how they have affected your work? Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve looked up to many composers, artists and composers but what really inspires and affects my work directly are the things I see and hear daily. I draw on personal experiences as a form of inspiration that leads to the themes I come up with. I am particularly interested in the way we think and how abstract the mind really is. I am inspired by things that are often unseen, unheard and ignored. That being said, Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve always looked up to composers like Stockhausen, Cage, Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Luc Ferrari, Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Pierre Schaeffer and of course Penderecki and Ligeti

compositional process that I am able to connect with. How long does it usually take to finish a piece? An audiovisual piece like Cognizance took roughly two to three weeks to shoot, compose and edit. I then leave the piece alone to incubate for a week or so before revisiting it again and make changes. This buffer period clears both my mind and ears. Some pieces take a lot faster, like when I was writing the music for my project “#30”, where each piece was exactly a minute long. Most of them were improvisations so it barely took five minutes to record. The editing process I would say is the longest and needs a lot more time. As I said before, the process is a more important part of the work so I tend to spend a fairly long time in the developmental stage, putting myself through certain rituals in relation to the theme and topic. Thanks for sharing your time, Nigel , we wish you all the best with your filmmaker and composer career. What's next for you? Have you a particular art project in mind?

to name a few. It’s a pretty vast list but I have always looked up to experimental composers especially. For the film side, I’ve always liked the style of Fellini, Godard, the films of Kurosawa and Naim Jun Paik. If I had to pick one then it would have to been John Cage. His philosophy and musical understanding has inspired the way I live and compose my work. His compositions are meticulous and carefully planned with each detail as important as the next. His approach and thinking toward composition has influenced both my filmmaking and music. I am most inspired by his indeterminate and chance pieces that often reveal a deep

Thanks. I am really glad to be part of this issue of Stigmart10. Other than starting my Masters of Fine Arts in March, I’ll be having my first solo exhibition in CASPA Gallery in Castlemaine, Melbourne Australia in July. Before that I’ll be exhibiting a new collaborative work titled “Tethered” as part of “The Internet is a Cultural Object” group exhibition at Brunswick Street Gallery in Melbourne. In May, I’ll be exhibiting a new work for the Zentai Art Festival in Singapore. Hopefully I’ll churn out some more new and exciting work this year so stay tuned to my website and Vimeo page for new stuff.

Eisuke Yanagis Ferry Passing focuses on the interaction between nature and objects around the small

uninhabited island in Japan. All the sounds of this film is unprocessed field recording using Aeolian Harp of my own making which was set up in the island.

awa A still from Ferry Passing

An interview with

Eisuke Yanagisawa Eisuke Yanagisawa makes his own deeply personal films that often use specific locations as inspiration for larger emotional andÂ&#x20AC; philosophical inquires. We have selected for this year's Videofocus Edition his film Ferry Passing, a one shot film exploring the relationships between subjects and nature in a small uninhabited island in Japan. Eisuke, could you tell us a particular episode who has helped the birth of this project, or simply an epiphany, a sudden illumination? My audiovisual works are based on observation in the field with/without the aid of recording equipment. Recently, my focus is on the interaction between nature, objects and human that is usually obscure and unnoticed. This time I went to the small uninhabited island to record the sounds of Aeolian Harp I made with my partner. Aeolian Harp (also called Wind Harp) is a string instrument that is played by the winds. They sounds like layered feedback sounds or drone with rich harmonic texture that will change continuously according to the wind strength and consistency. I sometimes bring it for field recording as it can resonate with the surrounding environment that is differ from place to place. In a way, I use the harp as a kind of transducer as well as sounding body to interact with the environment by the forces of winds. What's fascinating to me is that the recording result will inevitably include environmental sounds near and far that is condensed and modulated by the harp. I set up the harp on the seashore where stiff winds blew intermittently. I put the two lavalier microphones into the each hole of the harp so that I could record the tiny resonate sounds clearly without much wind effects. While recoding, I was wandering around the shore, taking pictures, and watching the sea blankly. Soon I found small ships and ferries went by off the island and it hit me that it can be an interesting idea to shoot the scenery. Unfortunately I had only one tripod with me at that time and I was already using it for recording the harp so I had to find something to raise and fix my camera. There were lots of

Eisuke Yanagisawa

castaway on the shore and I found the broken plastic bucket, wooden block and board that can be usable for the purpose. Then I shot with a fixed camera and edited into this one short film. That is how the work was born. So this work was produced from an epiphany in the field. That way I don't usually have specific idea what the work will be like beforehand. I may have a vague idea about the subject of recording and/or shooting that determines the

place to go and equipment I bring. I try to reveal something intriguing or 'beautiful' in the field that is difficult to predict in advance. Sound is never a secondary aspect in your works. You have used an Aeolian Harp of your own making for the soundtrack of Ferry Passing: in this sense, your choice is no doubt a synesthetic one. Would you introduce our readers to this fundamental aspect of your art practice?

In film making, regardless of the genre, sound is usually considered to be of secondary importance to image. I take different approach to each work but sound is always crucial. I usually try to start making film on the basis of 'acoustic experience' in the field. The 'acoustic experience' is not the same as 'aural experience'. It is more physical, sensuous, immersive and synesthetic experience and that even includes the sounds or vibration beyond human audible range. We just call only a

limited range of certain vibration as 'sound' within a much more diverse vibration world in nature. And I like to observe and record those outside human range sounds or vibrations using some particular microphones. In my previous work called "Scapes Series" consisting of a series of short experimental films that deal with the acoustic environment in Kyoto. And one of those films called "UltrasonicScapes" focuses on the ultrasound in Kyoto where I live. All the sounds of the film are ultrasound captured and real-time converted by bat detector and those converted sounds are recorded simultaneously with images. So I used a bat detector as microphone to capture the ultrasound. Thus all the strange diversified sounds (even if they are converted) in the film are actually resounding in the environment but they can't be heard at all by human. That way I try to represent the perspective beyond human sensory scale and I use microphones as the key to open the door and experiment with. For "Ferry Passing", I think 'one shot' is an interesting strategy as soundtrack have to be continuous and uninterrupted all the way toward the end so that audience can be more immersed in the recorded sounds. I also prefer the fact that it can reject the conventional narrative produced by montage editing. How did you get started in experimental filmmaking? I'm not sure how I started. I started shooting the environment around 2007 while I record sounds in the field. Thanks to the technological development during the last decade, it has become easy to record high quality image and sound with portable equipment and to edit them in laptop computer, that is a significant change for me. And as Bill Viola noted, video camera has close relation to microphone as both can convert physical energy into electrical impulses, so basically I'm doing the same thing in the field with different equipment. And now I am more and more interested in how the field recording resonance, dissonance, interact with image in particular place and how other new meaning can be produced that is difficult to be transcribed in language or written words.

filmmakers from the older generation in spired you?

I think I know little about video art and film in Your refined cinematography and composition reminds us of Wes Anderson's films: have any videoartists and

general. And I'm not interested in Wes Anderson's film if I remember right.

My first encounter with experimental film is

images of manual labor. Recently I watched a

probably "The movement of people working"

few works of James Benning and found his

by minimalist composer Phill

sense of capturing the world

Niblock. I was impressed with how the roaring

visually and acoustically quite inspiring. Also I

yet delicately layered drone sounds can

was impressed by the recent works of Sensory

interact with apparently unrelated

Ethnography Lab at

Harvard such as 'Leviathan' and 'Manakamana'. I prefer the works that refuse to follow the conventional documentary/ethnographic film narrative that tends to center too much on humanity. I like the work that relativize or marginalize human and see it in much more broader context such as material, natural, ecological and meteorological framework. In what manner your work as ethnographer and phonographer influences your filmmaking? I don't know how my ethnographic and field recording practices influence my film making. They have a different purpose and approach. For the ethnographic filming, my purpose is to document the sound/music culture of minority people in the highlands of Vietnam and its adjacent areas that is disappearing and transforming quickly due to modernization and globalization. And in my ethnographic films, I tried to represent the aesthetics of their performance such as gong playing, tuning and dancing in their sociocultural and spiritual context. For the experimental film, as previously noted, my approach is on the basis of observation in the field and paying attention to the environmental sounds there. And I am wondering if I can adopt latter approach to ethnographic film making so that I can represent their sound culture from a different perspective. Could you take us through your creative process when starting a new project? I think I've already answered this question. Thanks for sharing your time, Eisuke, we wish you all the best with your artist career. What's next for Eisuke Yanagisawa? Have you a particular film project in mind? This work is my first film with this style and concept. So I just want to try to continue it to develop to the project. And a few audiovisual releases are coming hopefully this year for field recording and ethnographic materials that includes collaborative ones. Thank you for your insightful questions.

Colleen Keough An artist's statement In his book "Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man" Marshall McLuhan suggests, like the mythic Narcissus, we've become numbed by our technology. The replicated image

takes on its own signification, reminding us of the fabrication of identity and our ability to digitally alter our appearance and personal narrative. We live in the age of the repeated and fragmented. We gaze at our Other selves with the same starry eyed hypnosis Narcissus

A still from Through the oceans of space and time I: Hey Bro 2014

A still from iLook experienced when consumed by his own reflection. This Other has a life of its own, its own identity, function, and destiny. "iLook" explores the notion of looking and psycho-feedback through a series of digital collages. The image of the artist distorts and

multiplies creating an imaginative space where copies of copies mingle, co-exist and create new forms and curiosities. The video moves slowly allowing the viewer to luxuriate in the act of looking with the added dimension of being conscious of their voyeurism.

An interview with

Colleen Keough Colleen Keough's work explores the hidden nature of the act of looking. The starting point of her artistic research for her experimental video is the myth of Narcissus, or to be more precise, the interpretation that the Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan suggests of the ancient myth. Colleen, could you introduce our readers to your experimental film? How did you come up with the idea for iLook? Investigating identity through the lens of pop culture started early on in my practice. I've used photos and video recordings of myself, and recordings of my voice, as a way to explore autobiography and experimental narrative. With iLook, I was working with a piece of footage and taking it through multiple processes. I began fragmenting and duplicating these images over and over. This process lead me to thinking about personal media, our compulsion to document ourselves in daily life, and repetition in the mechanical and now digital age. McLuhan suggests that all technology is an extension of our bodies and central nervous systems. This is quite a provocative notion, and inspired me to imagine the images I was working with having a life and consciousness of their own. I realized I wanted the video to move very slowly. Rather than be assaulted with lots of quick cutting, fast motion and sound; I wanted the viewer to be active in looking at the work, and thus aware of their voyeurism. The act of looking in the digital era, the age of the repeated and fragmented as you say, has assumed considerable importance. The fabrication of identity has dramatically changed in the last ten years: could you comment this fundamental aspect of your art research? The idea of the lens being an extension of our eyes fascinates me. Our use of photography and video as tools for documentation and communication has become ritualistic. We photograph and record multiple daily moments and events. Not only do we record them, but we share these images, and

Colleen Keough

A still from iLook videos almost instantaneously. Social media has had a huge impact on how we communicate and represent ourselves. We build virtual identities through photos, videos and curating content. The â&#x20AC;&#x153;selfieâ&#x20AC;? communicates a variety of information about us. We can change our appearance through

multiple types of software and filters. We also have the power to fabricate events and alter history by removing or adding people to our photos, altering colors, slimming body parts, and constructing environments.

In iLook, I am working with video footage and still images of my own face. I've taken the imagery through multiple processes. By distorting and replicating the face, amping up the color, and constructing a fantasy space; I reveal the fabrication and fiction of identity, and how it

influences imagination and perception. These new identities take on a life of their own as they move through virtual space.

A still from iLook Your aim in iLook is to create psychofeedbacks through a series of collages. Can you describe this artistical device? I came up with the term psycho-feedback to describe the trance like state we experience when gazing at content on our media devices, computers, and televisions. Feedback is an

electrical phenomenon related to video in which the live camera is turned toward the television monitor, creating a feedback loop of replicated images. I applied this same concept to the digital footage and still images I was working with in iLook.

A still from Through the oceans of space and time I: Hey Bro 2014

Narcissus was stuck in such a feedback loop. He became so absorbed with his own reflection, he couldn't look away. Narcissus was so entranced, he eventually withered away and perished by the water's edge. We can compare this to gamers that have actually died from long hours of video gaming without sleeping, eating, or drinking.

I think it's important to develop an awareness around uses of technology, and how it's impacting the way we live, think, and behave. The â&#x20AC;&#x153;numbingâ&#x20AC;? mechanism of our technology is in full effect. I don't want to be misunderstood here. I love technology for creative production, and all the miraculous comforts and well-being we enjoy because of it. I'm interested in the research that is

now starting to emerge in relation to our physical and psychic merging with machines. I think it's an area that needs to be discussed and investigated in depth. We have previously mentioned McLuhan: his essay "Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man" has deeply influenced your work. Can you tell us your biggest influences in art and how they have affected your work? Music has always been major influence of mine. David Bowie had a profound impact on me as a teen. Bowie is someone who understands the malleable space of identity, and was highly successful in creating personas and musical environments, which explored pop culture, art, and technology. He's also an artist that transcends artistic disciplines and genres, which is something I am also very interested in. Experiencing his work gave me license to continually push the envelope in my own work. Laurie Anderson is someone I discovered later on. Her storytelling and use of voice and electronics exposed me to another dimension of performance and experimentation. The Dada and Surrealist movements are an obvious influence, as are the Video Art, and Fluxus and Performance Art movements of the sixties and seventies. Science Fiction literature and films are another significant influence of mine. My favorite film of all time is Stanley Kubrick's â&#x20AC;&#x153;2001: A Space Odysseyâ&#x20AC;?. Too many other influences to name, but those are the major ones. How did you get started in experimental cinema? I started making video art as an undergraduate student in the early nineties at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, MA. Video was still a relatively new medium at that time, and I remember there being much discussion about video as a legitimate high art form. There was a spirit of rebellion associated with the medium which drew me in. It also allowed me to incorporate other interests, poetry, creative writing, performance, installation, sound and electronic music. Those early years making video, sound, and performance work laid the foundation for my current practice. Several years ago I received my MFA in Electronic Integrated Arts from Alfred University, in New York. Their experimental video program is one of the oldest and most developed in the country. At Alfred I was able to focus on integrating mediums and pushing my work in new directions.

A still from iLook

Your use of color is not merely aimed at achieving extremely refined composition: your cinematography seems to be deeply influenced by the emotional potential of color: could you better explain this aspect of your shooting style? I wanted the colors to drench the screen. The colors aren't organic or realistic. I'm highlighting the artifice of the digital space. Some of the colors border on florescent and neon, which suggests light and color produced by electricity. The vibrant color adds to the eroticism and pace of the work. The viewer is forced to slow down, and spend time contemplating what they are seeing. There's a sense of investment and engaged looking involved. The two dimensional image becomes three dimensional through

repetition. Biomorphic forms emerge. Faces become Butterflies and serpents, lips morph into snakes and lotus petals. Sensual forms become abject as the piece moves along. The face tears, revealing multiple layers. Lips are parted, eyes half closed. These signifiers remind us of the sexualization of the female image and the voyeurism attached to it. Thanks for sharing your time and thoughts, Colleen. What's next for Colleen Keough? Are there any film projects on the horizon? I'm looking forward to working on a couple new performance and video works this summer. One of the performances will be adapted from a story I wrote. The theme of the work deals with our dwindling natural resources. The story takes place in the future. It hasn't rained for several

years. A crew is lost at sea, aboard a ship that can't be navigated. Onboard the ship are a host of unusual characters: the nymph Echo from the Narcissus and Echo myth, a Robot who is also a poet, an expert Botanist, a time traveler, and the ship's captain. I'm not sure of the specific shape the work will take yet, but I'm excited to see how it develops.

A still from Migration

Donya Hajizadeh "I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have any desire towards; Love, Wish, Sin, Pain and sunshine. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s too late for you to be able to decrease from all my sadness."

An interview with

Donya Hajizadeh The work of Donya Hajizadeh confronts existential themes and the problems of memory and vision. Mainly using video, she pinpoints these issues and explores them through a materic and painterly approach to the medium. We have selected for this Videofocus Edition her video Migration and Other Birth, two different works sharing an unmistakable vision. Donya, could you introduce our readers to the painterly imagery of Migrations? It is with no doubt that in-depth thinking and analysis are the basics of success; and an artist steps on the same path to transform an idea to an artwork which would satisfy their need and intention. Processing an idea which involves visual and conceptual sensitivity is understood and developed through imagination and illusion. The world leaves unique effects on every individual’s emotion and these results in creating artworks with unique approaches. This is how every single spectator perceives a unique meaning of the same artwork based on their psychological status. In composition of Migration which is a reflection of introverted thoughts, the feelings of solitude and sorrow are easily perceivable and each element carries a specific concept. Water is the symbol of material and spirit purification, mirror represents reflection, and blood stands for death. A such personal work demonstrates that you truly believe that there is a powerful dimension to art, which pukes at all that is profane and uncertain. Tell us a little bit about your creative process. Migration speaks for an ancient reality; the reality of hardship of life which affects every personkind, and the affected person creates their own stage to express this challenge. To me this stage appears with hours under the shower, looking to myself in the hallow mirror, talking, laughing, falling in and out of love, or finding myself all alone. This is a repetitive

process which leads to unrepeatable innovations. The reality of an artwork may be born in a second of pure emotion, right at a time you are standing in front of the hallow mirror and talking to your own silence. The only being then is the mirror who is all ears and tears, and this is the only part which happens in reality. The cry of the mirror is then stimulated by appearing the blood drops which show the emotion is right on the brink of death, and to reflect this mirror cries blood. We want to take a closer look at the genesis of your film: how did you come up with the idea for this work? The idea rose short after the demise of my dad, when the bathroom door opened and I faced my dad’s body under the shower in the hallow mirror. Bathroom became a more suffocating place for me after then, and thinking of “losing” could easily drive me crazy, a reality which was retold and retold by those walls and the mirror into which I gazed for hours; the mirror which cried with me. To me it is all about suffocating atmospheres which can invade a person’s soul to lead to innovation. I must now confess the fact of such atmospheres having led to this art work. In your video Migration you play on the painterly qualities of images in an area between the abstract painting and video, reminding us of Sergej Parajanov's film The color of pomegranates. How did you develop your style? There are visual and sensational characteristics which give meaning to this work. The relations between scenes, though not many, imply a meaningful concept which has enriched the work. I wish to develop a correct understanding of the primary artworks which are naturally full of mistakes. Watching Other Birth, we realize that it would be hard to find anyone else who creates images in such a complex and refined form as you do in this video installation. Could you introduce our readers to this work? As the first experience, it was indeed challenging for me to make a video art based on correct understanding of a poem, selecting pictures in harmony with space, sound, silence, and colors and to mix them all. The content of

Donya Hajizadeh

A still from Migration

the work was recorded and edited after installation and composition of the work. The big picture is presentable in both doubled and single screen. All scenes are a reflection of daily life, though distorted in some parts. Silence which is the main element in this artwork has been subtly

and intentionally used in special cases. Black and which pictures have been used to best express an atmosphere full of tension and suffocation and to stimulate same feelings in spectators.

honest emotions and thinking-worth details. I chose this poem as my thesis to work on illustration of adult literature in the form of video art. As I have always been interested in learning more and more about contemporary and conceptual art, I decided to work on a revised presentation of the same video art. Considering stressful atmosphere in the literature, all scenes were selected in harmony with it to best express personkindâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s concerns. The tension between the space and mind is depicted through black and which pictures, and a rare beam of color. Why did you choose the diptych form for this video installation? The reason to choose a diptych format was the scenes and pictures which are related to each other in two screens. These pictures could be reflected on one another and spin a new yarn. According to the selected poem which tells the story of life in different conditions, presenting the events in separate and completing screens has helped with the whole work. Â&#x20AC; Thanks for sharing your time, Donya, we wish you all the best with your experimental filmmaker career. What's next for you? Have you a particular film in mind? Innovation is the nature of every person with a taste of art including me. I wish for constant opportunity for every single artist to flourish influential artworks. Thank you very much indeed.

In Other Bird you focus on the tensions between perception, space and subjectivity: can you better explain this aspect of your art research? Another Birth is the name of a poem by a contemporary poet which is full of pure and

Tzu Huan, Lin An artist's statement

Rubber duck is a project by Tzu Huan, Lin that deals with the art and itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s authenticity. It proposes that copies of the original can be the new reality of the original art work. Rubber duck suggests a re-direction for the point of authenticity. In the digital area, versions of image exist in the internet and create itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s own reality. Rubber duck uses the internet language remix, hybrid, revision, cut and copy to describe the

phenomena. The video function as kind of story book that tells the story and the possible implication behind it. Rubber duck is made up of a collection of related images that appropriate from internet. A situations in which footages are altered or detached from their natural function. By applying specific combinations and certain manipulations, different functions and/or contexts are created. The video deals with the documentation of events and the question of how they can be presented. The work tries to express this with the help of physics and

A still from Rubber duck

technology, but not by telling a story or creating a metaphor. His works are an investigation into representations of (seemingly) concrete ages and situations as well as depictions and ideas that can only be realized in video. In 2013 September, the huge rubber duck by Florentijn Hofman exhibited in Kaohsiung Taiwan. The rubber duck successfully attracted more than 3.9 million people to visit. Hofmanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Duck is the copy of original Rubber Duck. Versions of copies float all over the China. I use narration and video image to explain how this

happened and what I think about this phenomenon. It's a way of narration about my personal perspective of daily life. To fiction the real relationship between each objects creates a system that can be apply to anyone with their own experiences. I assume there's a system that can be used to explain everything that you want to believe or understand. The system that is made up in human brain, because everything is connected when you want to believe. Tzu Huan, Lin

A still from Rubber duck

An interview with

Tzu Huan Lin Tzu Huan, Lin's works result from the processes of reflection that reveal the psychology of objects and the psychology of our understanding of culture. In his project Rubber Duck he focuses on the “aura” and “authenticity” of art, reminding us of Walter Benjamin's essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. Lin, we want to take a closer look at the genesis of your project: how did you come up with the idea for Rubber Duck? I think I came up with it during a shower with the Rubber Duck. Just kidding! No, I came from a culture that is full of Shanzhai products. However, I wasn't in Taiwan during Florentijn Hofman’s Rubber Duck tour. It’s a internet generation and information travel fast. Suddenly my Facebook page has been flooded with Rubber Duck selfies. Those pictures look like the same image but photoshoped with different faces. It suddenly creates multiple realities of the original work. During that time, I was obsessed with a Japanese comic called “Ghost in the Shell”. My curiosity to the ghost or authenticity leads me to this project. Remix is no doubt a fundamental element of you cinematographic language. How did you develop your editing style? My editing style was developed as a result of staying on the Internet all the time… found commercial youtube footages always become the nutrition of my work. I use Internet language such as remix, hybrid, revision, copy and paste. as my communication symbols, then find the relationship between each symbol and follow my instinct to control the detail.

I also believed the most important element of a narrative video is the rhythm. I spent much time on editing audio than footages. I won't say I nailed it perfectly but with a good rhyme you can always cheat a little bit. In your artist's statement you refer to a "system that can be used to explain everything that you want to believe or understand" : can you introduce our readers to this concept?. It’s a system which never exists. It’s the void of knowledge to this world. It’s the respect to the god. It’s the secret of life. I am trying to refer it in materialism way. But it’s more like a ghost to me, something beyond our understanding, beyond this planet. It spoke the same universal language. Even the images were being distorted, detached and shifted, it still connected us deep into our heart In the Rubber Duck I address this concept as two parts, an invisible system that can fulfill everyone’s imagination and the multiply of the authenticity. The numerous clones of Rubber Duck on the Internet create it’s own parallel realities. Those copies exist online as one perspective for audiences through different portals. The viewership has been shift from white box to black mirror. It’s a re-direction for the point of authenticity. Human experience is often the starting point of your filmmaking. What draws you to a particular subject? These always came from my life experience but were shifted in different way. My art practice was a path to finding myself. I think that’s why everything was traced back to human experience. In “Talking Us”, I addressed the feeling of love and loneliness with machine voiceover. In “What do you said by saying so” series, I played puns and foreign language as a foreigner.

A still from Rubber duck

More than fifty years have passed since the International "Situationist" pamphlet by Guy Debord: the manipulation of mainstream movingimages had a remarkable political aim for the French philosopher, while nowadays artists seem to be attracted by found footage manipulation in order to explore deep psychological issue. In your works, you success in

mixing these two aspects. Could you take us through your creative process when starting a new project? Yes, I think nowadays artist transcended the Avant-gardeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s influence in many ways. The image is more appealing and readable at first look, but also obscure. I think the process is very intuitive. I spent tons of time on Internet to find everything I need.

I like to combine different ideas with images to explore the possibility of symbols. It’s a really long process like putting a puzzle together. I don’t think this process is efficient, but it is what it is for now. Your filmmaking style is very far from what is generally considered 'academic'. Who among international artists and directors influenced your work? Camille Henrot and Wolfgang Tillmans How did you ges started in experimental cinema and visual arts? I had a bachelor of marketing but ended up with MFA at Pratt Institute. I was in an uncertain condition, without knowing what I should do and whom I will be. That was really important to feel in crisis every moment. Even now I feel that kind of atmosphere was still expressed through my works. Thanks for sharing your time, Lin, we wish you all the best with your artist career. What's next for Lin Tzu Huan? Have you a particular film in mind?

But all the visual parts are based on the narrative, which is also the hardest part. Most of the points come from a book or talking to friends. Sometimes I spent whole day with a book or a comic to dig ideas from the text or black and white images.

I am currently working on a project inspired by Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives”. He had an unique point of view toward ghost and after life.

Thorsten Fleisch An artist's statement Individual elements from a carrier of visual information have been isolated to construct

alternative visual reagents. Repetition (in space and in time [and in moderation]) is administered as a binder to tame the wild particles in motion, evoking a golden ratio of the mind's eye. For this

A still from Picture Particles

film found Super 8 footage was the source material. It was cut to small pieces and investigated further with other film formats (16 mm & 35 mm) by means of optical printing and

reshooting the projected material. After applying this analogue feedback loop for a while the result has been transferred to video and edited further.

An interview with

Thorsten Fleisch Thorsten's vision is at the same time molecular and cosmogonic: his approach to old analog media like 16mm is absolutely unique. Images are treated in his work not according a metaphoric vision, but following a metonymic approach envolving the nature itself of cinema: a rare reflection upon the concept of the space, and even about the cinematographic concept itself of "frame", which can reveal itself as infinite or claustrophobic. For this Videofocus Edition we have selected his work Picture Particles, a complex and higly layered video.Thorsten, could you introduce our readers to this experimental work? The origins of 'Picture Particles' go back to the days when I was still a studend of Peter Kubelka in the late 90s. The film I made then wasn't received well by Kubelka and I was discouraged to continue working on it. Some of the material stayed in my mind for many years though and I finally revisited it and completely reworked it to what it is now. The starting point was the very materiality of analogue film which is manipulated and blown up in order to break it down to the building blocks of the moving image, going deeper and deeper into the fabric of film. Although I like to be inspired by an almost scientific approach every once in a while the results are actually more sensual and less scientific, especially in the way I organize and compose the film. Personally I like the tension between a sober scientific methodology and an artistic expression.

Some of the video I refilmed with 16 mm from a TV screen. The 16 mm material I then also cut to pieces taking macro stills with my still camera on 35 mm slide film. The slide film was also partly cut to pieces and partly perforated with a 16 mm splicer so it could run through a 16 mm projector. All different results were compiled on a 16 mm reel and projected in order to film it again with video. The final video which documents all the other manipulations I further edited digitally. I also used scanned fragments of some of the 35 mm slide film for the digital editing. With these very diverse forms of image manipulation I tried to find some order in the chaotic stream of pictures. How did you get started into experimental filmmaking? I started with my dad's Super 8 camera. Very early on single-frame exposure fascinated me. Later at film school I was also using 16 mm and secretly video (video was a no-no in film class). I was and still am very fascinated by the materiality of film but also by the temporal succession of images in general, be it film or video, animated or real-time. The structural aspect but also the psychological impact it has on the human mind and on society. The concept of repetition in space and in time is fundamental for your art research. Could you introduce our readers to this idea?

From a technical point of view, the main techniqueÂ&#x20AC; you adopt in Picture Particles consists in the optical printing and reshooting the projected material. Could you describe this process?

With 'Gestalt' and 'Dromosphere' I explored space and time and spacetime. Both films explore ideas of four-dimensionality in different ways relating to time. In 'Picture Particles' I focus more on repetition. Spatial repetition resulting in kaleidoscopic effects and temporal repetition with looping techniques. For 'Picture Particles' it was interesting for me to break the illusion of three-dimensional spatiality by the rapid succession of the images as with the singleframe image assault the screen becomes very flat. I then tried to give it a bit more depth by organizing the images due to color and brightness.

I had a Super 8 film that I bought at a flea market as source material. I cut this film to smaller pieces and glued them to 16 mm film. Also I was damaging the Super 8 film and projected it until it broke, this I filmed with video (some of this material is also used in another film of mine called 'Wound Footage').

In your statement you say "Using historical imagery on a historical film carrier as the building blocks for an alternate reality, the influence conserved history has in building our present and thus the future is suggested." We have been impressed by this aspect of your

Thorsten Fleisch

A still from Picture Particles

filmmaking revealing sort of coexistence between past and present in imagination and perception. Can you comment it? Images are like memory, never accurate, never true, always deceiving. Once something becomes an image or a memory it is vulnerable for interpretation and manipulation, conscious or unconscious. It is fascinating that images have this authority, same as memory has. In that way images can be a sort of externalized memory. Of course we are motivated and driven by memory. In positive as well as in negative ways. Another thought is that history has first been compiled verbally, then written down, photographed and now filmed. All this evaluated data makes how we perceive

ourselves historically. It could be totally different though if some other data had survived from our past. It is all constructed from what's left and thus keeps on changing according to ideologies that may change or new artefacts from the past that might be found. A constant dialectic of of material and its interpretation. Can you describe your encounter with old analog media that inspired much of your cinematography? There is a particular reason linked to the ephemeral qualitities of rare format like 16mm today? I started with Super 8 and 16 mm because at that time it was the most beautiful way to

acquire moving images with a low budget. I didn't like the look of consumer video at all. Now however I think video looks pretty good. I embrace the video workflow, the means for image manipulation are sheer endless in video and also more comfortable. I do miss the material quality of film though, it's awesome that you see the actual images in the film strip or the mechanical workings of an analogue film camera like the Bolex H16. That's a problem I have with modern technology in general, it's all black boxes with multiple purposes. The most popular tool for moving image acquisition now is actually a smart phone, this shiny black box with a big screen can do everything: telephone, surf the internet, aquire and manipulate images, listen to music,

play games, navigate via GPS... and so on. It's crazy! Thanks for sharing your time and thoughts, Thorsten. What's next for Thorsten Fleisch? Are there any film projects on the horizon? There's 'Teslapunk' a video game I've been working on the last two years. It will come out for Nintendo Wii-U and hopefully also Xbox One next year. Filmwise I'm working on a small animated film, collage animation using vintage photos as source material. A surreal story with some abstract elements and the mandatory flickering included as well. Also I'm trying to get funding for a feature film.

RagnheiĂ°ur SigurĂ°a An artist's statement

What is beauty. When dose something become beautiful. Why is something considered beautiful while others arenÂ´t. What is grotesque. A video installation dealing with: Beauty. Beautiful body. Beautiful nature. Sweetness. Starring: The Beauty. Description. A video work projected on a knitted woollen wall that the artist herself has knitted with her hands. It is her embroidery, it is her seduction the audiences are under. Sound

installation is worked from the great ballet Swan Lake but all girls look up to the beautiful ballerinas. A performance where the artist knits with the audiences. They share stories, memories and eat beautiful sweet cakes together. In the end the knitted material will be either part of the installation or a independent artwork that audiences takes with them. Knitted wool leaking down the walls. Sugar on your hands. Disturbing video. Tasteful cakes. Wool to knit. Real live performance. Beautiful video. Audience, artist interaction. A dream world that

rdóttir Bjarnarson you will not want to wake up from. Knit and eat the cake. In addition to the exhibition the artist intents to be present in the exhibition space in form of a performance, knitting, baking and enjoying time with the audiences. It´s totally conversational with the venue when or how long this performance will take place and I don´t want to make any decision at this point. Live performances are delicate and needs to be worked with the society and the culture rhythm. Aim: To get people to stop and stay with the artwork not only just walk pass it like every

other shop window on the street. To able the audiences to be part of the artwork see the slow changes and the quality the artwork has to offer. By this the artwork will smooth itself under the audiences skin and be received fully into the audiences body. The video is still in making but here is a link to a demo of the video.

Ragnheiður Sigurðardóttir Bjarnarson

An interview with

Ragnheiður Sigurðardóttir Bjarnarson Ragnheiður Bjarnarson' s complex, labyrinthine work offers a heady mix of mythology, pop culture an the filmmaker's personal obsessions. Her cinema plays on the originality and power of dreamlike images: fragmentary echoes from different cultures and languages participate in the semantic organization of refined films like So Sweet it Hurts. We are glad to present Ragnheiður's work for this Videofocus Edition. Ragnheiður, your film presents a multilevel context and at the same it offers an immersive installation experience. How did you get started in experimental filmmaking? It was at a period where I thought of myself more as a dancer than anything else. I was studying dance and choreography at the Icelandic academy of arts and was coming from a very traditional background. I had started in ballet at a very young age, then switched to contemporary dance in high school always with a very fixed idea of me as a dancer. But in a course called “Dance for camera” I fell in love with the medium. Our teacher, Helena Jónsdóttir, was a choreographer that turned to filmmaking or filming choreography, and her way of thinking inspired me. I came to realize that in making choreography I was not just limited to a scene or physical space, editing was another way of arranging movements. In the beginning I used to record my performances and tried to stay as faithful to the performance as possible, sometimes editing them into shorter films or trailers, really. Then gradually over the years I started filming other things, because I simply enjoyed being behind the camera. I like this way of communication, which in many ways is more direct than actually physically performing for somebody. Somehow it is more personal to me. I am a lot more nervous about showing a video I made to somebody than say, rolling around naked on the floor in front of a theatre-audience. Finally I realized that performing on stage was not that interesting to me any more. My previous work with dancecompanies like Samsteypan (Icelandic move-

ment corporation) were no longer speaking to me like they did before. It felt repetitive. I am not saying that it is boring, or that theatre is a dead art form like the Bauhaus artists concluded in the 30s, but for me currently the screen is much more important. We are always in front of a screen these days, the amount of video information we receive over the day, through Youtube, through downloaded episodes, films in cinema or TV-news, advertisements, and then finally games on tablets and phones has changed the way we think and perceive. Certainly for me. Last year I have found more and more the need of for finding my own voice and get distance from the previous performative elements in my work. I am looking for other ways to translate the ideas in my head. I guess my big breakthrough, in terms of my personal thinking came when I stayed in Tokyo. I did a performance in a gallery called XYZ, in a suburb between Yokohama and Tokyo, and after performing a dance on mirrors

that I had covered with cake-frosting I realized I would much rather have done a video, using similar kinds of aesthetics. I guess you can say that many elements of Frosting are still apparent in So Sweet It Hurts. But at the time I started working on film involving pandas lost in the urban jungle, that I am still working on today and might never finish. We want to take a closer look at the genesis of your work: how did you come up with the idea for So Sweet it Hurts? The idea of beauty has fascinated me for a long time. I guess it is the ballerina in me. After staying for three months in Tokyo I moved to Sweden to study performance art in public space at the university of Gothenburg. I have been working with the element of beauty for a long time now but recently I finished a two years of research process where I was trying to find my fantasy body or bodies. I call them

Hyper bodies. These bodies are imaginary bodies that do not exist but feel real. They are how we perceive our bodies, how we wish them to be, our bodily ideals or nightmares. Our bodies are fantasies, how we experience them is not always real. For example the teenage girl experiencing first stages of anorexia, her experience of her body, her imagined body, has nothing to do with the one she actually has. And her ideal body, the body she desires, has nothing to do with reality either of course. But this is an extreme example. What I mean to say is that none of us really sees in the mirror what is actually there. It is something that is constantly on my mind but I actually started working on the video without a concept or even a clear image in mind. Sometimes you just happen to really need to create even if there is nothing in particular you are thinking of. I usually donÂ´t work like that. The modern artist first makes an application

for a grant to do a research in a residency and if he doesn´t get that he goes out to work on his network. I say this half-jokingly. Of course we create because of a need to create, otherwise we would not have chosen to do art. But that is not a method, and I think I and most successful artist usually come to the table more organized than organic. This was one rare occasion where I started without knowing what I wanted and it felt good so I continued. It was basically just knitting. I knew I was knitting something, but not sure what. Two friends of mine, Helena Persson and David Sabel, swedish composers from Gothenburg that work with electronic sounds and installation, really wanted to visit Iceland. Since we had been talking for a long time about a collaboration I suggested we would go there and work, create something and go on a tour around the countryside. We stayed for a while on the southeast coast, in a small fishing village isolated by black sands, glaciers and sea, to say it is isolated is perhaps an exaggeration. Höfn is surrounded by a national park, and it is many hours of drive to the next village, but it is also a bit of a tourist attraction due to the lobsters and Jökulsárlón. We were welcomed in the local gallery, and since we had no budget, just a car that I had borrowed from my family, the restaurants offered us free lobster soups and other delicacies in return for creating the show. I ended up using my knitting for the scenography, while Helena and David worked on the sounds. Then we drove north and performed in another village. In the meanwhile we found ways to make sounds by using the knitted materials, mixing together prerecorded material and the screeching of microphones moving through knitted landscapes. The knitting was inspired by the glacier at first I think. It is amazing to wake up, look out through the window and see hundreds of thousands of tons, sliding at a paleontological pace down from the mountains and into the ocean. This is a choreography that takes thousands of years. On the way home we stopped by one of the most beautiful waterfalls in Iceland. Well, beauty is subjective isn´t it? Dettifoss is considered extremely beautiful but was not always perceived that way. It´s the most voluminous waterfall in Iceland and the water runs from the north of Vatnajökull (the biggest glacier in Europe). The water in it is not drinkable, it is not useful and when it floods it is dangerous, so obviously the farmers in the neighborhood did not like it. When the romantic movement

discovered Dettifoss in search of national symbols and powerful images it started to be perceived very differently. Now it is of course a tourist attraction, like everything else in Iceland. Everyday this half frozen glacial waterfall drops thousands of liters, slowly drilling away landmass under it, like an avalanche of sugary sweets erodes away the teethes of modern Icelanders. (Iceland actually has the highest ratio of cavities in Europe). It was very touching. I truly felt it was beautiful. (But then I was also taught in school that it was beautiful, when we read poetry about how beautiful Iceland was). After we finished our small tour, I decided to continue knitting and while thinking about the waterfall and the glacier the idea of an installation came to me. I was the lady behind the waterfall, a kind of a water goddess like Lady of the Lake that gives Arthur his sword, (another poetic, romantic and nationalistic cliche). I was knitting the waterfall. That was all I knew

when I came back home to Brussels. For a long while I knitted until I had created a wall of fabric. For some reason I started recording it. And then I realized that perhaps what would be really nice to merge the video I had made of the waterfall, taken on my iphone, onto the fabric. The knitting woman is of course another poetic and nationalistic clichĂŠ. The ideal woman knits. But can she be as beautiful as the landscape she is knitting? The concept of beauty is one of the most deeply ingrained and naturalized cultural notions. Your cinema discuss the concept of what is beauty in our culture and how our society shapes those values. Could you introduce our readers to this fundamental idea behind So sweet it Hurts? Beauty is a social construction. It changes with, fashion, it is influenced by politics, philosophy and the needs, or perhaps desires of society all around it. I find it interesting how it

connects to the freedom of women, sometimes you could even think of the demands of the beauty-industrial-complex as a reaction or a punishments for the victories feminism has won over the years. What I think is fundamental to my take on it is my frustration and my own issues with my own beauty complexes. My relation to the idealized demands pushed on me day in and day out. I come from a background of dance where I learned at a young age how to look at my own body, criticize it and always be unhappy about how I look -wanting something more beautiful, more perfect. In my teen years I created a image in my head of how I wanted my body to be. I wanted so badly to look like that image that I still believe that the image is my real body and are always disappointed when I see my reflection. I think I am not the only woman with body issues, nor the only person as itÂ´s not only gender related. I think many can relate to my corrupted beauty ideas and that the society is just getting more extreme.

We want beauty but we can never really decide once and for all what beauty is. Beauty is perhaps what we cannot have. That would explain the need to constantly photoshop and retouch even those women who are considered most beautiful. Sometimes I think it is easier simply to be a waterfall. Nature doesn´t criticize itself. It´s power simply demands our admiration, like the poet said. Your cinematography reveals a strong sense of frontality, reminding us of the paintings of the Renaissance. How did you develop your visual imagery? I am constantly fascinated by fairytales and mythology. While not necessarily aiming for a mystic atmosphere my works tend to reflect those interests. My imagery is often unclear for me in the beginning though I am often driven by a desire to create something “beautiful” or at least something that makes us wonder: is

this beautiful? During the process of So Sweet it Hurts I had an image of a body knitting projected on the knitted wall, the aspect of show the hands behind the work while it is made. I also was and still am very preoccupied by the nature of sugar. I find sugar beautiful, but it is the enemy of anyone who wants control over their body or even just a healthy lifestyle. Some say it is more addictive than heroin. It surely has taken more lives. Just think of all the slaves in the caribbean at the beginning of colonization that died. Workers at the early plantations suffered, the sugary fluids ripped their skins, holed their teeth, and the average lifespan was very short. Most slaves only survived a few years. And the economic aspect is fascinating. Because of the low price and addictive nature it becomes tempting to put it into all food. It simply sells better and is cheaper to make. The result is a population that grows increasingly fatter and unhappier. But back to the beauty

like a hypnotism. I wanted to recreate another waterfall to match it and the easiest material was sugar. I guess sand might have worked, but for me sugar is intrinsically connected to our struggle with beauty. Our love and haterelationship. I wanted to connect the aspect of the sugar and the body to the image little by little until it is all combined and in the end is just one image. The body went from being the main footage in the video to be the mystical creature that drops in and out like a fairy that lives in this water/sugarfall. The feeling of the waterfall going on and on in front of you is a powerful image and I was lucky to chance upon filming it. I have never been fond of the way Icelandic artists have abused Icelandic nature, I call it nature-porn. But I have to admit that sometimes the urge is just to strong for me. It is like sugar. Addictive. Could you take us through your creative process when starting a new project? A work often starts when you least expect it. For some works it takes months before I know I am on to something that interests me.

aspect. While in Japan I made my first homage to sugar. Cake frosting is not just delicious, it is a white, smooth material that we can use to hide the real cake, fill in all crevasses and cracks. It makes for the ideal wedding-cake. It looks like newly fallen snow. Pure and pristine. I love it. Beautiful but deadly. Did you know that sugar was originally used almost only for art? Before Europe discovered america and slavery and industrial production, sugar had to be imported from Asia and was so expensive that nobody but kings dared to eat it. So instead they used it for decoration, there were sugar-smiths just like goldsmiths that created very small sugary statues and rich people had them at home to show off their wealth. In the editing the imagery changed over and over again as I ended up redoing the work three times. During the second and the third attempt to find the right rhythm in the work I got so fond of the waterfall going on and on

I get irritated out of something in me, my life or the society. It takes some time until my brain creates an image from that issue/frustration and I feel the need of presenting/ talk to the greater public. During the process of choosing what art form I should use that would be the best way to present the image and what venue I would prefer to present it in, the images changes. I create other images that collaborate or combines with the original. Then in the end of the process when it is time to present the work the image has often changes completely and nothing is like I imagined it at first. I feel that the space is very important as well. I donÂ´t want you to just watch my work from any screen. For example So Sweet It Hurts should ideally be seen from my knitted wall. I want to take the two dimensions into 3 dimensional space or even 4 dimensional space. The interaction with the audience is fundamental for your artistic research and practice: can you better explain this aspect of your work? I have always seen my audience as part of the work from the beginning of the work process. There is always room for them in my work and I want them to relate on a personal level. With

my works I want to give the audience an experience that will change something in their physical body. I want to attack their senses. I want to create something for them to touch and be touched by. Not just see and hear. I would love to experience a film that was just the smell. Can you tell a story through smell? Communicate an idea? In her work “Tapp- und Tast-Kino” Valie Export questioned whether a film was just something to see by putting a box or a “movie theatre” around her upper body and moving around inside a movie theatre letting people touch her but not see. Could you

make a film based on touching not seeing? There is joking and voyeuristic element of course but more importantly an attack on the patriarchy traditional cinema. It angered many filmmakers who found her piece pornographic or perhaps realized that it was mocking them. I like this kind of playfulness, but it is not my style. However, the experiment is very interesting and the question is still valid. Maybe I will knit my next video, just take strips of film and knit them together. Would an unwatchable film like that still be a film? Well, the material is still a film.

Your experimental cinema is rich of references. We have previously mentioned the painters of the Renaissance, even though your filmmaking style is very far from what is generally considered 'academic': your visual imagery seems to be closer to Matthew Barney and Romeo Castellucci's visionary work. Can you tell us your biggest influences in art and how they have affected your cinema? I am more fond of Valie Export, Loie Fuller, Carolee Schneeman and DV8. My main inspira-

tion comes from fairytales, mythologies and nature. The most basic things really. Thanks for sharing your time, Ragnheiður, we wish you all the best with your filmmaker career. What's next for you? Have you a particular film in mind? I guess all artists are working on their next piece subconsciously even if they don´t know it. I am looking for materials that excite me. But perhaps it is time to think about ugliness. After all, you can´t have one without the other.

Kelsey Velez DAIMON is an experiment in choreographing error, and a response to Nick Briz’s “Diamonds” project in which artists were invited to visually interpret Rihanna’s performance on Saturday Night Live.

A still from DAIMON

An interview with

Kelsey Velez Kelsey Velez's cinema creates a genuinely affecting mood through precise rhyms and hypnotic structures where identical images are reintroduced time and again. From the first time we watched her short film DAIMON, we were impressed with Kelsey' s editing style reminding us of Guy Maddin's films. Kelsey, can you speak a bit about your background, and how DAIMON came together? Daimon was put together in a bit of a frenzy. I like to think of myself as a mindful planner and the production of Daimon proved to be n exception to the modus operandi. First impressions are a serious obstacle.. There were moments during production when I knew for sure what I was making, and to set it aside for even an hour revealed to me moments in the material which felt more interesting than earlier iterations of the video. I was in no particular rush, yet the video had a way of fulfilling itself in bursts of activity. I’ve seen the thing so many times it’s hard to say whether or not I’ve really completeded it. It feels unoriginal. The coming together, I think, has a lot to do with saying “this is okay,” and letting it be. In the arsenal of artistic techniques that you use, re-editing and appropriation are fundamental in your quest to explore the boundary between perception and imagination. How did you develop your visual imagery? I want to say that I admire Nick Briz, first of all, because the Diamonds project is so astute and comical. Absolutely a necessary

addition to the archive of human imagining. The project is an example of a bretty firm principle vvich guides evolution. I see Daimon as a mutation in the genetic code of the project. Things framed by “The Internet” are SO easy to get trapped by! The project is predicated on a principle of revelation and the footage has been used as a template rather than something raw. I’ll say too that it’s a bit technophobic. There’s a way that it’s about the Internet, and at the same time about putting it in doubt. I’m simply an opportunist. IIt is purely a process of observation and discrimination. DAIMON derives its imagery from footage extracted from Rihanna’s performance on Saturday Night Live, considering the only possible form of originality to be the"authentic forgery". What's the future of foundfootage art in your opinion? What will be the influence of platform like vimeo and youtube? I have a difficult relationship to the Internet. It’s future is a collaborative effort. Tricky. We want to explore your art process. Where do your materials come from, and how do you go about putting them together? Change, light, time. We would like to explore now your 3D ZOETROPE project: we find stimulating the way you subvert the cinematic apparatus through the use of unconventional tools like braille touchpads. Can you introduce our readers to this work in progress? The 3D Zoetrope is something I am excited about sharing. I plan to meek a special mononcle for a friend of mine! He is blnd. We’ve been on such a trip, this thing and me. The base took 3 months to paint and it’s bänged to hell. Right now I am happy to say I have had time to let

Kelsey Velez

A still from DAIMON

the project sleep and dream itself anew a little. It’s an important project. It is a conceptual path between belief and reality. I hope the project encourages a spirit of cooperation. Language is powerful. We limit each other in language and this project is a step toward liberating victims of language by re-inscribing the conceits of the “h able body.

Let’s speak about influences. From the first time we watched your work, it reminded us of Kenneth Anger's cinema: your sense of juxaposition give your films a playful and subversive sensibility. Have any videoartists from the older generation inspired you? The first experiment in film I viewed with interest was probably Deborah Stratman’s In Ordrer Not to Be Here. I’m interested in experiments from before the time of computer software, when the work wasn’t quite cut out for us. like the tactility of celluloid. Film speaks to me more clearly than tape or DV.

Thanks for sharing your time, Kelsey, we wish you all the best with your filmmaker career. What's next for Kelsey Velez? Have you a particular film in mind? I’m getting my bearings in Chicago. I will probably begin to paint the zoetrope again now that I’m finished lugging it around in my trunk.

Julius Richard Triptych of Love Supreme (TDAS) is in fact a Pentaptych wich two first chapters Julius never watch or show. Filmed between october 12 and march 13, TDAS is the narration of an End wich is Two: End of Love and End of World. Escatological-

apocatastatical triptych that follows a visionary discipline: to watch what you have to see. Julius Richard Tamayo

Tamayo A still from TrĂptico del Amor Supremo

An interview with

Julius Richard Tamayo Julius Richard Tamayo´s films are essential for tose who conceive cinema as an anthropological tool to explore the incommunicable. His titanic Pentaptych film project reveals an impressive effort to explore new dimensions of time and space in cinema. Julius, how did you get started in independent cinema? Before I start I’d like to thank you for the selection of my work and the chance to show and share it with you. Furthermore, the opportunity here and now to express some of the ideas in TDAS is a blue and soft door I’d love to cross. I will express myself in the “language of the Empire” instead of saying goodbye to language. Obviously, it is not my mean or maternal voice, but I’ll do my best in this ventriloquian exercise of translating oneself. Under the door it is written the word: “Instant”. Trespassing. Starting from the very beginning and trying to make the story short, I must say I’ve never dreamt of thought about becoming a film-maker. Beyond childhood dreaming of becoming a football player or a punk-rock star (my teeanage dreams), I decided to be a writer too long ago. This is the last century. I won a literary price in 99´ and travelled to USA to follow the steps of my then beloved Charles Bukowski. I was fourteen at that time, when I saw Frisco or LA for the very first time. From 99´ until 03´, I wrote a series of autobiographical books in Henry Miller´s dirt style (“E” (00), “Barna” (01), “Mandanga” (01), “Extinción” (02)) while I was studying Philosophy (in which I finally licensed). I quitted from writing at that time and then started my journey from words towards images which will carry me to this place and time. It follows this quote: Love has the need of reality. There is no doubt in telling it is a journey of illumination: the image will come in the time of resurrection. So, to use concrete terms, I’ve never been a typical cinephile. I abandoned narration in the Gutenberg Galaxy and it’s the same in Lumière Galaxy. I don’t read novels (I read all the books and sad is the flesh) and very soon I will not see nor watch cinema fictions (I watched all the films and sad is the blood). I arrived at cinema not by train but late and from a theoretical path.

Julius Richard Tamayo

From philosophy I started to write on film trying to do “philosophy of cinema” and not film criticism. Don’t forget, thou, that the word “theory”, that comes from the Greek, means “contemplation” or, basically, “vision”. More concrete. I started filming two weeks before 11-S. In my 18th birthday that summer, I’ve been given my first Panasonic NV-GS. Sev-

eral years after that, I will lose all my footage, in 2007. I remember me crying helplessly in the bus station of Príncipe Pío in Madrid, just arrived from a trip to Venice, once I realised I’ve lost my equipment or it’s been robbed. I’ve lost the material from five or six years. From 2001 to 2011 I filmed dozens of tapes that I’ve never edited. I started to give them

light, to light-birth, in the springtime of 2011, at the very first moment in a Fluxus way, with no editing at all. My first public exhibition would take place that autumn, in Filmoteca of Santander where I’d show the second chapter of TDAS (in fact, the first and last time to project that piece). In 2011 I was a film-critic (writing for Transit (Spain), hambre (Argenti

A still from TrĂptico del Amor Supremo

na) or La Furia Humana (Italia)) and also a filmmaker, but a very theoretical one. I’ve made my mystic journey from words and representation towards images and reality. I must say it was some kind of schopenhauerian way. I was trying to write the fifth chapter of “The world as will and representation” through cinema. But I was not writing… It’s a pity that in English we don’t have this beautiful word we use in Spain or Fance: “realizador”. Director or realisatuer: the thing is not to direct somebody or something but to direct own self. The place is for me clear and straight forward: community is the destiny of travelling. You know this important difference, in politics but also in aesthetics: the difference between community and society is that in society law rules but in community loves does. So, to answer quickly: I started in independent cinema to find the other, because I was a solus ipse. To find you. Cinema is a magic tool to do so. A magical tool descended from heaven. Is a machine with a destiny: to end up definitely with metaphysics. A phenomenal and phenomenological machine with and inscription: “straight to the things themselves”. Stan Brakhage, who maybe read Edmund Husserl´s meditations, call it “an adventure of perception”. That’s what cinema is for me: adventure of the eye/I, soul journey(e), invitation au voyage. For this Videofocus Edition we have selected your complex and layered work Tríptico del Amor Supremo. We have been really impressed by the balance the have been capable of achieving in this work between classical sensibility and pure experimentation. How did you come up with the idea for this experimental work? The word “idea” is a principal one. There is an “idea” of cinema and there is the “work” of cinema. The idea of cinema is a platonic one. Plato must be considered the fundamental and symbolical father of cinema. The idea of cinema he had is exact and precisely the same of the vanguards: vision and cinema are ways of emancipation from illusion. This is the opposite of cinema as “the factory of dreams”: cinema as a way of knowledge. This Socratic mood conforms the sensibility of cinema from EJ Marey to Stan Brakhage, from Dziga Vertov to Hollis Frampton, from Jean Luc Godard to Andrew Noren. I started in experimental cinema when I was reading thousands of pages on phenomenology and ontology, so my idea of experimental cinema is maybe related more to the theory of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Gaston Bachelard, Gilles Deleuze

A still from Tríptico del Amor Supremo

or Martin Heidegger than any other else. But, of course, I also made my encounter with all the experimental tradition, on theory and on film. I mean: for me, there’s no difference between “classical” or “experimental” in ontological terms. This is historical consideration, it’s a tale. We have “classical” in the experimental tradition also. In fact, the idea of “classical” in

cinema is quite an oxymoron. The cinema itself is a child, a not-yet-born maybe. There’s no such thing as “classical cinema”. What we used to call that way is “contemporary theatre”, and not a brechtian one. Cinema is essential and structurally a “modern” thing that arises at the same time as Marxism or Psychoanalysis. It’s a weapon or an instrument to lib-

erate bodies and souls, just like philosophy itself. What I found in cinema is a method. Again, the way, the path: “method”, from Greek, means “the way beyond”. What kind of method? Using platonic words, we can say the method is the “metempsychosis”: the migration of the soul trough time. What I found in cinema (I

arrived late) was the definitive meditation’s machine, a machine to make rituals and make them concrete and effective. And, in this discovering of a new prosthesis I also discovered a new way of thinking and writing without words, which was my mean and old obsession or (artistic, poetic) project. Moreover, cinema could make real the dream of dissolving the line between life and art, a thin blue line. Cinema is not a window but a door. You can cross through it. If you cross a bazinian window you fall. If you cross a brakhageian door, you enter an unknown place. Let’s not quote William Blake hic et nunc. Which cinema is this? I used to call it “child-cinema”, following the incarnations from camel and lion that Nietzsche proposed. I arrived to cinema as a child and found cinema was a child too. Then we started playing, experimenting and discovering… And, how many greens does this child see, how many blues do I see? This cinema is personal, like Maya Deren said. Not in a first-person way, but in an intimate one. Cinema is the confession of a searching. It’s nothing but that. Not literature. Not theatre. The real cinephilia is not with film or movies but with cinema itself. Just read the word: love to movement. That’s it. Then, when I discovered this, is when I became a cinephile. Then is now. We want to take a closer look at the genesis of your film: could you tell us a particular episode that has helped the birth as well as the development of this project? TDAS was composed from 2011 to 2013. When I finished it, I was very tired, almost exhausted. I have also published my first book in November 2013 (written in 2008), called “Elementos enviados”, which is the fifth and definitive chapter of the series I’ve started in 2000 and took more than a decade to end. I’ve never thought about publishing so it was a huge surprise, something almost miraculous. I tell this because the relationship between TDAS an EE is very delicate and deep. Both are marked by logic of separation, both are written under the spell of eschatological forces. Also another series I’ve made at that time, “Tríptico de Tierra Verde” (2011 2012), is related with this stimmung, this blue and late-romantic mood. This life-episode is the end of a love. A big love. You know how it is. I will not explain too much. You can see it surreptitiously in the film. We don’t have a story, a narration, but we have a “history”… I remember here the words of the prologue of Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of grass”: “Once we have the history we won’t need tales”.

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The first two chapters of TDAS were composed in the summer of 2011. That’s when my lovestory was about to end. Love is the work and the work is love. So, at that time, I had to start working in other thing in order to keep my love alive. The first chapter, “M” has only projected once: it was in the wall of her house, of M´s flamboyant home. There were like twenty people. It was her inauguration party. Our relation was ending at that time. I guess I was trying

not to lose her with those first two chapters, maybe. I believe it was the opposite. The first chapter has images of her back only. We cannot see her face. We see a glimpse of her face just a very little moment in the second chapter, “lincr es retro”. These two first little pieces are some kind of farewell or homage. I don’t see nor show them anymore. Two years later on the process, in 12´s winter and 13´s springtime, I’ve finished PDAS defi-

nitely. But I was not able to return to the beginning at some point, so PDAS turned into TDAS. I could see it was disappearing in front of my eyes. Then I realised what it really was: the five chapters followed precisely the process of mourning that Klübber-Ross indicates in her schema. In this process, in this travel, “M” is “Negation”, “inV/Fierno” is “Acceptation”. Here, the divine and magical machine functions as a methodical and psychoanalytical dialogue with oneself. It’s personal but not

obscene. There’s no scene to be outside or inside. Everything, in this way, is insideness. TDAS is, definitely, a Kaddish, a gloomy prayer sung in the style of Allen Ginsberg’s: crying. Like tears, images come from the inside. From the first chapter until the last I clearly developed a more complex way of seeing and giving birth, which I think is quite notorious. The idea of ek-stasis and epiphany was gradually incorporated in my making. “inV/Fierno” for example, is a very prolix composition with has six chapters itself and three times the duration of the first chapters. All this discoveries, is very important to reckon, were made right “after” or “during” the experience (experiment). This is not the result of an a priori concept, or the illustration of an idea, but the realms of an inquiry. This is what the psychoanalysts call an “insight”, or thinking with hands, thinking with eyes, thinking with heart. This is transcendent in cinema and in life, in theory and in praxis: to die and to rebirth are usually metaphors of the vision. TDAS is the testimony of that: the rebirth of an Eye/I. All of this is very dialectical but dialectic is one of the main skeletons of TDAS. An elementary and emotional dialectic containing negation, anger, negotiation, depression and acceptation. We have been really impressed with your cinematography: the use of hand-held camera as well as the refined composition reminds us of Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, a masterpiece by the Armenian director Sergei Parajanov. How did you develop your visual style? - Tríptico del Amor Supremo reveals a highly original and consistent vision of time. Could you introduce our readers to this concept? It’s very kind of you! Sergei Parajanov is a filmmaker I really love, as I do with other Armenian film-makers as Artavazd Pelechian whom I’m devoted to. Composition, a concept received from the painting paradigm, is closer to the point than the cinematographic notion of miesè en scene. It’s always a necessity to remind that, at the beginning, cinema was not related to drama but to science, not related to circus but research. You know the story: Griffith reads Dickens. There’s another story: Fernand Leger thinks in a 24 hour film. For example. That’s 1925. From the beginning, cinema has something to do with literature, theatre: no thing. Remember: cinema was invented to see how a

man walked, how a cat jumped, how a fly flew. Pure theory. TDAS is a work deeply composed along the years. It shows a visual style that might correspond to the double-faced nature of the image. One is the enlighten, the prosthetic moment of vision. The other one is the moment of giving birth (witch in Spanish is said: dar a luz, or give (birth) light). It embraces a hidden and occult idea: there’s no style but openness. This category from the phenomenology reveals the position of the film-maker, the realisateur, he who “makes” reality. Who’s he? It’s me or the camera he who sees what the eye cannot see? The very first time I’ve shown my work, in October 2011, Fernando Ganzo, the curator and the person who invited me, explain my style with these terms: “He films like a child. He edits like an old man.” These beautiful words perfectly illustrate that idea of soul journey I found principal in cinematic research. We have those moments when you have to be awake and pay attention. You have to be and to pay and this is a real economic order. But the flux in this economy is not money or something valuable, but the immaterial: time or light is what is being paid. This first moment I would call it “Enlightenment”. The second moment is what I name “Aluzination” (note that, in Spanish, light is “luz”). So, cinematic process is one of Illumination. And surely it needs time. I cannot express something like a “compositional view”, in painting, artistic terms. I’d rather speak about resonances or moods. The big question I found in cinema is that of Monica Vitti´s in Il deserto rosso: “What do I have to see?” And again, the answer goes to the inside first. And in the inside we usually find darkness. That’s where we start, your own darkness. That’s again too platonic, isn’t it? In the limit between inside and outside there’s an Eye/I or a camera. It needs to be open, started, ON. It needs to have something to do. There’s nothing to tell –reality tells itself- so let’s do something. This is the style: you have to stand up, to walk, to watch and to see. Ok, you have to know what cinema is. You have to watch thousands of films and read hundreds of books. Ok. But later you have to stand up (this is which make mankind) and look up to the stars and to the sky. This is what you have to do. If not, you’re still in the cavern, in your own dark movie. That’s because TDAS is an outside film with an obscure an inside episode. The triadic move-

A still from Tríptico del Amor Supremo

ment –based more on physic dynamics than rational dialectics- follows the spiritual movements of the inner forces out coming. It seems to me that it really illustrates a movement: a walk, a jump or a fly. The relations appear cleanly over the film: in the first of the three chapters we have two different dynamics. The first one shows, in a hand-held and fragmentary style, the aerial elements, or the feminine ones: air and fire. This very first segment was filmed the 22th of November (22-11), the day of M´s anniversary. The first image is an autoportrait while M is cutting my hair off. Not a metaphorical image but a very literal one. The second segment, filmed the 21th of December (21-12) that year of 2012, concentrates it attention in the sun: it was supposed to be the last sun of an era, according to Maya´s. It’s not hand-held but filmed with a tripod all along that day. The physic element here is fire. The dialectic, not far away from that in I ching, closes in the third chapter, “inV/Fierno”, where

we found the opposite elements, such as earth and water. We found similar movements as in the first chapter: movements of the eye or the soul that guides the flux of images. The middle chapter, in comparison, is set in a room, and we never go out. It’s filmed the 16th of March in 2013. I’ve been 24 hours awake filming all the time, not getting out my room, remembering. “Facies totius universi (domingo, 16 de marzo, 2008)”, travels in time but not in space. No movement here. This defines past: a no place. TDAS travels from light towards light crossing darkness. This is the basic itinerary. Light-dark-light. Outside-inside-outside. Or, in terms of time: it travels from present to future, showing past as a non-travel-possibility. We can do a word-play: since past is no-place, past is NOWHERE, in past there’s no space. An every image is past. But, what happens when we open the past, we enter to it and open a space in “the” nowhere?

A still from Tríptico del Amor Supremo

We definitely don’t find the future there, another no-place. We may find paradise, in this cinematographic edenology Jonas Mekas used to explain. We certainly find time, the seed of time, by opening a space in “the” nowhere: now→here, NOW HERE. We have two presents then (illustrated by “Ortoño” and his couple “inV/Fierno”): the instant of the event, the instant of the reminiscence.

We find that your art is rich of references. Can you tell us your biggest influences in art and how they have affected your work?

Time is the fundamental question, not only in cinema but in life in general. You can answer in a Kantian, Hegelian way: “I know what time is because I do time, I own it”, or you can do it from the Augustinian mood, which is mine: “I know what time is until they ask me. Then I do not know”. TDAS is my personal way to answer the fact that Brakhage signed: “The entire act of motion picture making, thus, can be considered as an exteriorization of the process of memory”. Wasn’t Plato who said that knowing is remembering? We found, at the end, cinema to know to know.

The m∞n is also an influence, I might say, but only during the night. The primary fountain was maybe Kafka, who wrote about writing: “you have to print the negative”. This is essentially cinematic. I was not only Kafkaian in my youth by Kafkaesque all my life. I read when I was a child. I believed it. No matter if you paint, film or write: print the negative.

Well, I’m quite sure my biggest influence in art, cinema or life is the Sun, whom, as Alexander Kluge considered, was the very first experimental film-maker (or abstract painter, or land artist, or performer). We owe light to it. I cannot measure its real influence.

It could seem a suspicious question; however we have to do it, Julius: what’s the future of experimental cinema, in your opinion?

A still from TrĂptico del Amor Supremo

I will answer this by sharing with you a little text of mine (never translated into English), which also offers a number of human references that will answer more accurately the previous question. (Experimental)Cinema, moreover, is a futurecharged weapon, as JLG said, and I also wait very optimistically to the death of movies and films to come. Cinema is still a child or: 1. WE DO NOT KNOW WHAT CINEMA MAY BE. The cinema was invented to think but this was soon forgotten. (This was said by Jean-Luc Godard). Cinema will reborn when movies die. (I say this, here and now). You have to cross the desert of representation, a desert that grows (it was Nietzsche who said it). We must abandon the Conspiracy Bubble Fiction and Film: "literature of the imagination", as the mystic Simone Weil said, is boring or immoral. The disjunction is not exclusive. It is often both at once.

2. THE FILM IS ONE. And we are all filmmakers (Val del Omar was who said it). Film history is composed of all the films made: educational movies, news, advertising images, porn, sports, clinics, Hollywood movies and home recordings. All are the same film because the film is one (as Hollis Frampton said). We are all filmmakers because we are all Buddha (He told himself). The film is an oracle that tells us, as said Socrates by Delfos: "Know thyself". In its frontispiece can read the motto of St. Augustine: In experimentis volvimur. That's the motto of a reborn and amateur film. 3. A THEORETICAL AND EIDETICAL CINEMA. "Eidein", idea, to look. "Theorein", theory, contemplation. A cinema and a discipline: "looking the thing you have to see" (it was Henry David Thoreau who said it). Look and see. What? "No ideas but in things", as William Carlos Williams said. For what? To verify the First Material Truth of Cinema: "nothing takes place but the place" (was Mallarme who said it). Two forces gravitate around film, or vice versa, the film re-

volves around two forces: matter and memory, as Henri Bergson said. 4. THE DISCIPLINE OF LOOKING WHAT YOU HAVE TO SEE OR VIDEO MELIORA. Look what you have to see, "see better" (Ovidio). Metamorphosis of the gaze and eye’s metamorphosis: rebirth of cinema. Response to the question raised by Stan Brakhage: "How many green meets the eye without prejudice, the reborn eye?" A propaedeutic of film-making that says "we are all children-filmmakers" (Val del Omar was who said it). 5. CINEMA IS A MACHINE FOR MEDITATION (said by Claudio Caldini). Look, contemplate, meditate. A phenomenological machine with three legs: attention, arousal, epiphany. "No matter what they say attitudes and movies of men: the morning and cinema come when I am awake and there is a dawn in me" (it was Thoreau who said it). A new question that I pose here and now: How many blues meets the eye unprejudiced the reborn aye? 6. LUZAZUL (BLUELIGHT): SOMETHING GREEN TOWARDS BLUE. Rewriting a line from Valerie Mejer. An eye, a vision. "Light is the skin of the world." Let us add: and "deep is the skin" and "deep is the air” (were Emilio Pacheco, Paul Valery and Jorge Guillén those who said so). Light and air: this is the "skin", that is the "movie". That's the Second Material Truth of Cinema: "projected light: from us and for us." The light of cinema will follow the darkness of films. Cinema, like love, needs reality. Cinema Amador. Loving cinema. Thanks for sharing your time and thoughts, Julius. What’s next for JRT? Are there any film projects on the horizon? Thanks to you. It’s been a pleasure and I hope it will be great to share my space and time with you in this Videofocus Edition. It’s not easy for me to show my work, so I really appreciate it. The space for community is very little in this society, as you surely know and experience. More over if we use the “experimental” (or the post-anti-other-) prefix.

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Yes, of course I do. 2014 has been a very active year. My period of illumination took until I was 30. Then I was illuminated, as Buda, as Christ, as Zarathustra, as Thoreau. Now I’m 31 I’m in my period of aluzination (if I can say it with a “z”), which will happily take place until my 33. In this period, I’m planning two different series, in which I’ve been involved for two years from now and it will take two more. The first one, called “Elecciones Afines” (Affinitive Elections) is almost completed, since its first two

Another series, a more complex and longer one, called “Aluzinaciones”, is composed by a dancing number of pieces, between seven or eight, where I concentrate in different metaphors of the living light. Only the prologue is completed. Three pieces (“Ascensión (luz verde)”, “912197X (luz roja)” and “Ulises (luz blanca)) have been developed during the last two years. Hopefully, this project will end in USA in 2016, thanks to a grant. The effort in this series is quite peculiar, since it will take

segments were finished in summer and the third and last one will surely appear in the next spring of 2015. It will be projected and premiered this April, in Bilbao, España.

almost six years to complete and its duration will extend several hours. The necessity of the “series schema” is principal in the analysis of processes and its different moments through lifetime and film-time. “Elecciones Afines” and “Aluzinaciones” are two long series that go further than TTV and TDAS in its existential limitations. It may surpass the double-faced condition of my work in cinema in this very first three years: the poetic-immanent and intimate filmmaking of TDAS and the philosophic-structural, more conceptual approaching of other works as “Jolibú” (12-13) or “Locus Solanus” (14), in a non definitive and essayistic uniqueness. The ritual goes on, but comes from the interior to the externals. You know this, you remember it:

“This is to introduce myself. I am young and I believe in magic. I am learning how to cast spells. My profession is transforming…” I might say I’m publishing soon a poetry book called “luzazul” and other one on film-theory that will happily have the title of: “Video meliora: aluzinatory theory of cinema”. Writer, philosopher, film-maker, cinemist-anartist: transformer!