Stigmart VideoFocus Special Issue by Stigmart Artpress

From experimental cinema to fashion videography, ten 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 sumitted 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 corageous documentary. Stigmart10 Team

Karanos Akis

A video i've been working over a year, a collection of adult live webcam sex shows - only when the performer is absent. A ghost documentary, a record of the most private sanctum aesthetics- those of the sleep chambers.

Emerson Sigman

The greatest, most challenging response any-one’s had to this work was someone who said she knew it was supposed to be boring. At first I thought she was wrong, that I’d been misinter-preted.

Marit Shalem

The visualization came about as a second step following the writing of the text. The text is built on 36 paragraphs and summons a mental process of the hybriddouble-creature named Zimp&Co. Zimp is the narrator and the voice over.

Melissa Michel

You Only Live Once allows the viewer to get an insider’s perspective on the present day scene, and makes subjects question if heavy alcohol consumption is worth all the risks that may follow.

Ashay Gangwar

I had been living a dual life for the past three years. Imagine a guy standing with a camera inside a shabby railway engine. That was me yesterday living my first life while shooting for a new film.

Iona Pelovska

This film invokes the process of memo-ry, the way thought snippets interject per-ception. The moving train => time => the moving image. The beginning of cinema: 'Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat' seen from the POV of the passenger.

Alexis Perepelycia

PLP#5 it’s an audiovisual essay that intends to propose an approach to a concern about the possibility of existence of a unique mode of language: one that would be absolute, unambiguous and irrevocable.

Alex Monterville

I intended to convey what are to me some of the background or affective textures of everyday life. What holds together the shifting and non-specific imagery is the mood the music is intended to provoke.

Josh Bricker

In the weeks following the terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers, many of us sought solace in what used to feel normal, in everyday events. I remember going to a UCLA football game in search of some sense of stability.

Anna Natt

Goats is a symbiotic sculpture and performance piece. In a perishable dress constructed of recycled collard greens and corn husks, I stand amidst a group of goats involved in a movement improvisation in a forest.

Kiel Fletcher

Kiel Fletcher is an interactive, new media and video artist living in Portland, OR. His work has been shown at dOCUMENTA(13), Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, and is in the Yale University Library.

Elena Slobtseva

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I explore perceptions of the body, its manifestations, behaviors, desires via the anthropomorphous medium – jelly mass. Wiggling jelly mass is wet as well as most of the human body, it moves like the body and provocatively can even be edible and pleasing to the taste.

Joy Mckinney

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“Touch Me” is a complementary document to “The Guardian” photographic series. “Touch Me” began as a way to further explore how people responded to touch outside of their controlled environment.

Tabita Rezaire Using filmmaking to socially engage, Tabita Rezaire explores the relationship between body politics and geographies, seeking to deconstruct cultural archetypes and normalising social structures.

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Karanos Akis A video i've been working over a year, a

collection of adult live webcam sex shows 8 only when the performer is absent. A ghost documentary, a record of the most private

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sanctum aesthetics8 those of the sleep chambers. A parable about communication8 absence8 essence and the investigation of

identiy in the Digital era.

But i'm not interested in making a documentary, or prove a case, the facts are never facts isolated.

I'm hooked on reality. The raw material for my work - collages, assemblages of found and bought objects, even the elements, the vocabulary i use when I paint or make a video (as in "Camtasia" case)- the basis is always out there. It is real, it has volume and physical presence – marketing and the laws of free market have that force. So I view ‘Reality’ as a synonym for perversion, an unholy invertion of the purity and wholeness of the absurd. Shocking, fascinating and total.

My approach is, let's say, alchemistic. Setting free the cultural leftovers (symbols), testing their strength if out of context, creating metaphors for every certainty , transmuting Logos*1 to logos*2 and the opposite - not - as a critique made to exclude and prove me, but in an attempt to depict- build- a personal myth, closer to the notion of truth, stripped of any use (or value as a product) and enriched by the provocative force of humour. Because from a different angle everything is ridiculous. *1 Logos λόγος, from λέγω lego "I say" as a philosophical term *2 logos = abbreviation for logotypes

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The idea for the video came when i first entered one of these rooms, there was a video of a performer, presented as if it was a live performance, luring us to pay to see more and hundreds of comments of angry horny people in the live chat pointing out that this is a scam, if you pay you just get ripped off since you'll just watch a video.

This was pretty powerful, time and space became obsolete in a one panel cartoon like situation, where cofusion was crowned king of the night, with a big shiny digital $ of sedated hormons on the top of the crown. First thought is that cyber-space leaves no room for magic, but this incident made me realize that the cyber-space is the magic. Not a magical place, but THE magic.

Instead of what? Interacting ? So there was this ghost of an exploited (either way) girl, peforming her ritual of sexual luring for ever in a loop and the voice of people who have this same experience(?) with me at the moment, from all over the world, angry, unable to buy.

Well if you think about it, we do anything to trick our brain in order to be content. Cyber-space is the place, mainly because of the insane vastness of information and the characteristical absence of any effort. So you are a semi-god there.

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On the other hand, it's virtual. A total of 0 and 1's, love in cyberspace is a "ghost" romance without past, something like a primary echo - in a way closer to 'ideal' and therefore 'absent'.

corner of the planet and in totally different financial widths? I was alone. People were there, but absent. Hillariously tragic, no?

Camtasia is exactly that, a parable about communication - absence - essence and the investigation of identiy in this Digital era. On the process of making the video, took a little more than a year, i found myself pondering at the situation. I was looking for empty rooms, I was actually visiting sex web cam shows, to search and record inhabited but temporarily empty, rooms. What kind of perversity was this ? I could fantasize i'm the sole survivor in the cheapest dystopic post apocalyptic film ever made, or maybe I was an animist, getting turned on by this extra super double comfort cozy IKEA bed ? A strange anthropologist recording the latest trends in bedroom interiors, in every

I get the same sense, this 'ghost limb' feeling, every time i watch the video, I'm glad it came across. People worshiped fire some thousands of years ago, now we invent a new self online, we live a digital life.

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Everything to feed that bitch, the brain, with cause and fullfilment.

That's really hard for me to answer, as a child of a painter i was always getting information or found myself in the middle of grown ups talks about arts and this and that, so i can't really track influences. For example i remember that those years everybody talked about Beuys so when i actually saw Beuys' work i found it boring and fake, pretty much like watching an Agatha Christie movie after having read the novel first. But in order to not avoid the question, i want to believe L.Bunuel, Dada, the faith in the game of the situationists, the acceptance of the erraneous as truth of Cy Twombly, and the presence of P .Guston, G.Baselitz, A.Jorn,

S.Polke- the weaponry of arte povera and pop art, and the not-give-a-fuckiness of the so called "Young British Artists" are of influence to me.

I dont think there's a dichotomy there, art uses every technological achievement, to the point of exhaustion. See what will happen when 3D printers will be cheap and larger. For me it's like if i have a spoon i will make something with the spoon, if i have a space rocket, i'll bring my spoon and curve my initials on it.

Always is, for now i'm settling in my new home

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in the Netherlands plus I have a solo exhibition in 2015 so i'm working for that. There's also my project of digital collages at akk@ kaak.tumblr.com, where i replace the use of the 'subconscious' as used in Surrealism with the randomness of google image search and tumblr feed @and my solo exhibition of digital images 'the Freat Gorgeting' at my website cargocollective.com/karanos this September. I believe digital should remain digital, so I will use this webspace to make virtual exhibitions, often. My sound project can be found at kokkala@ means@ bones.tumblr.com all releases will be free for download, I got an album out from the Italian underground label Spettro Records called 'Αντιφαντασιωβίωση' (Antifantasioviosi) this September and a new release at christmas. Thank you guys for the questions, thank you for reading this. I am opening my virtual arms in a big web hug. I hope you were there.

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Emerson Sigman

This idea has also been done before. It’s not anything I’ve come up with. Other performances have involved chopping away at hair. Everyone has had a haircut. Each time I perform an action, it is something that has been done before. What makes it different is my body, in a particular space and time, and the way the work is documented.

The greatest, most challenging response anyone’s had to this work was someone who said she knew it was supposed to be boring. At first I thought she was wrong, that I’d been misinterpreted. I thought I’d left something unattended in the work to have someone find it boring.I felt as if I’d failed. What’s really the case is that my interests differ from my audience’s interests. I was excited by Curl from the start. But the thing about me is that I’m thrilled by anti-theatre and alienation, whereas most others seem to resist these notions.

I wouldn’t say I have a style. I have ideas, and then I make something from my ideas. Each element will be in service of that concept. It’s something you refer to as simplicity, but I look at as necessity. There’s no method of editing except for what an idea requires. In this particular work, I knew I’d be cutting my own words out from the start. Following this concept informs the way I perform for the camera.

I make art for myself, as a means of progressing my being. Curl serves as documentation that I have lived and changed in this moment in time. I don’t have to entertain, I simply have to be.

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After making this video, I’ve since seen footage of celebrities or politicians edited just to hear their breathing in a similar manner. I find this divisive. It’s a question of ethics, to manipulate what others are saying through the edit, either making a laugh of them or condemning them.

To take you through my process, I’d have to let you spend a lifetime in my head. I watch detective movies. Gritty crime films, particularly from the 70s, are what I love lately. Any kind of puzzling narrative that requires some mental tinkering hits my gut. But there’s a meditative quality to these works too. The protagonist has to solve something dire, with life or death consequences. And it’s so great when an action sequence comes around, because the heroes use their bodies to work through it. When I look at the world, I’m reminded of these films. I’m figuring out the world around me to solve something and then fighting through with my flesh. The stakes are life or death.

I’m reminded of an early episode of The Simpsons, “Homer Badman.” Homer is interviewed by the local news station after being charged with sexual assault. They edit his defensive answers with jump cuts to form incriminating sentences. Though there will always be editorializing, there is a responsibility to the power of editing. I take the responsibility to edit myself and be aware that I am doing so.

It’s different for every work I create. I see many things in my life that I want to keep. I want to carry them around and let them fester until the ideas become a part of me.

Art doesn’t have a purpose. The meaning of the word art is ‘to make with skill.’ So an artist is someone who makes anything.

And here again you mention simplicity. Simple once again seems to undercut the necessity of making. If something is simple, it’s because it is onefold. There’s nothing about art which is onefold. I’ve been depressed and static at times in my life, overburdened by a fighting family and the anxieties of major life changes. The revelation of making is enough to motivate me into active being. Makers aren’t limited to curated content. Anyone who makes anything is an artist. I make a living for myself. Do I make it with skill? I’m always trying harder to. So my life is art. Art is not just an agent of change but transformation itself. Art does not have a purpose, art is purpose. Art doesn’t change people’s behavior, it is people’s behavior. How do you live?

I’m on Instagram @autoselfies. I’m always making. My next performances will be durational and endurance-based. I’m making work less for the camera and more for public, accidental audiences. I’m also documenting work for other makers of performance to help get their work seen.

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Marit Shalem , a synopsys The visualization came about as a second step following the writing of the text. The text is built on 36 paragraphs and summons a mental process of the hybrid-

double-creature named Zimp&Co. Zimp is the narrator and the voice over. Zimp&Co have merged into their current form during an explosion of their planet Eikela and the flight through space which concluded with the final landing on Apatia.

While hoping to find the Creator and a hint to the origins of the real Real substance, they notice a fascinating figure – Hønkemüller. Hønkemüller proves to be a controller- regisrator with connections to the unseen Creator and other figures. Hønkemüller leads them to her domicile, a wooden Datcha, situated right in-between deserted urban architercture. She then drugs and ties up both Zimp&Co. The story ends with an optimistic conclusion: the way for freedom lays in pulling the write strings: they pull the string that pops out of her derriere and find their way to freedom. With no hard feelings they bid farewell.

The actors were filmed in a DIY chroma key studio. As of to all of Marit Shalem's films: also this one is a work which is set inbetween film and visual art. The viewer does not necessarily need to understand the continuity or the plot in order to dive into the orchestration of the different elements and layers.

With: Michelle Wilderom as Hønkemüller and Gülümcan Tezcan and Joost Bult as Zimp & Co. voice over: actor’s camera: soundscape: make-up: titles:

The specific style of this film can be defined as somewhere in-between silent film and futuristic semi Anime. 23

Hello, well , I have studied visual art and painting in Berlin end of the 90es. While feeling the urge to produce more and more pictures while the medium of painting proved to be too slow for me, not to mention all the material needed and collected - I have come to the idea of experimenting with animated film. I was always fascinated by underground comics and was drawing a lot in little note books. some immediate ideas and ridiculous situations.

(a photo by Koos Siep)

While on exchange in Rotterdam, Holland, I started diving into the technique and possibilities of video and digital manipulation. later on I started working with video also for theater and other projects under the name SpOp. SpOp was set up by Lenno Verhoog and myself. I used to initiate the artistic projects within SpOp. Nowadays I continue solo with SpOp for experimental film productions and programming an on-going series of experimental film evenings, with works done by others. The series is titled Layers.

Thanks for the lovely introduction. It went like this: first came the text. Catch on a Datcha is what I call semi-poetry, a narration divided into 36 paragraphs. The urge for writing was due to both personal circumstances and a political reaction. Both this work and my former work Frozen Hope deal with the subject of non-love and a lack of empathy. Personal circumstances are not interesting, I find, for explaining art works, as it should go beyond the personal. The political one : it was an interview I heard, they were telling about the lobby of concrete manufacturers in Rotterdam in the 70es. A lobby which pressurized for the building of concrete high rise buildings in the city. Rotterdam is the only place in the Netherlands with something resembling a metropolitan sky line. At the same time they were also building cozy neighborhoods for families with less income. neighborhoods which are not all that pretty after all. Catch on a Datcha is about measuring human proportions against megalomaniac architecture.

I had a vision of a deserted city in the future, an apocalyptic picture of run-down estates with a remaining Datcha in the middle of this wreckage. A Datcha btw. is a holiday-hut which some of the Russians during the Communist era could go to in their free time while having their main domicile in laborers estates.

mechanics and electronic devises. they can vary their limbs in number or delete, but never to zero - that's their lot. It's a parallel to Sartre's description of our lot never to be able to escape our own consciousness of existence; we can never lose ourselves, can't get rid. they land on Apatia with the intention of tracing origins of the real Real substance. They are being trapped by HĂ¸nkemĂźller, a domina figure, who druggs them and ties them up in her Datcha. The sci fi form gives me the freedom to go wherever I want. It offers the space for mundane terms and imagery, news topics, political terms and terms taken from capital economy to float around - to seem displaced and discharged of their original context. That's what I like about it, creating a collage of connotations and discharging well established norms and dogma's.

The refusal of narrative technique comes also a refuge for a technique I have never learned to master. As I see my work first and foremost as visual art I play with this barrier of being 'disabled'. The same goes for writing - I write quite a bit, although I don't see myself as a writer. I guess that this is my way of developing my own artistic language.

Yes, the couple you see Zimp & Co were merged during a blow of their original planet Eikela. They became a hybrid creature of flesh,

I thought I was extremely careful this time with

the colors. when strong colors appear they have a strong impact and a conceptual value. It stands for many things, the yellow and then the red. mostly for the lack of empathy and red for deep rage. But also for a passion for life, eventually. My video works are also moving paintings. Modern painting is always aware of its own limits, being two dimensional. with the white, the works refer to their own presence as a two dimensional work, just like a work on canvas or on paper.

Some whimsical idea pops into my head. The moment an idea comes to mind always interested me as a subject. It happens in the most unexpected times, places and through the most unexpected things. for example a small package of tooth picks with a slogan about the in-between spaces. which makes me think of non-places and public areas of transfer. But also while reading, especially while reading

board. When I draw, i think, then I realize what the actors are going to wear and how the settings will look like. In accordance I set to making costumes and props. That's a part i like a lot, because i make things that could only be used for the purpose of the story. It has something slightly rebellious. I used to work with actors and non actors. Now I go only for actors or performers that can really deliver. It's important to have strong presence as the environment i create could be quite confusing for the viewer. I film in a green screen studio. The video material is then being reworked digitally. I paint digitally, as I see it. It's actually a long process. It never happens that it immediately works (only when it is a commission with a purpose for some design). trial and error. At half time i start working with the musician(s) and sound person. for Catch on a Datcha I worked with Vincent Denieul, a sound-man with a unique sensibility for the tiniest noise you can get. Experimental music, minimal as well as noise are just as important for me as any book or visual art works. i wish visual art could flow like sound works... well by then we'll be recording the voice over. I was very happy that the actress Fania Sorel agreed to participate. she has developed her British accent for this production, brilliant.

theory texts. philosophy for example, or articles about the way capitalist value is exchanged and manipulated. for Catch on a Datcha I was influenced by Catherine Malabou, especially what she writes about the plasticity of the brain and our ever existing ability to change the way our own behavior is determined. I start with writing drafts of text, the basic idea, what could happen to the personages. often i start a personage with the name. The name symbolizes everything this personage stands for. Then the script. then mostly also a story

I hope so and I think it has to. other media is so dominant in our daily lives.

all this overload of photo's, the design and small animations on mobile phones, the often tasteless cheap design of leaflets and billboards. But also narratives. stories often repeat themselves in cinema while video art knows how to twist this linearity of narration,

It's fascinating and is a challenge to re-think this banal story of our life ;).

I am a visual artist and therefore influenced

by artists and art works. absurd theater had a strong influence on me when I started consciously making art. Jean Cocteau, Jean Genet and Samuel Becket. music of the band The Fall and all kinds of other distorted music. B movies and science fiction, of course

Ballard and Cronenberg (that's an A movie). the best film maker for me is Atom Agoyan. he has created wonderful constructions of story lines.

like it. As to artists: Harun Farocki- an amazingly devoted film makers, very much concerned with sociological issues, economy and structures of power, Martha Colburn - on the other side of the scale, Yoko Ono, Sigalit Landau, Martin Kippenberger and many more.

I don't know much about theater, although I

I work towards realizing a video installation called Jutta Mind, I might change the title later on though. I intend to reduce on the

visuals and work from within the sound. the script lays for a long time untouched, I think it's the right moment now. I will collaborate with V. Denieul again, dealing with the material as a radio play and developing the projections accordingly.

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Melissa Michel viewer to get an insiderâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s perspective on the present day scene, and makes subjects question if heavy alcohol consumption is worth all the risks that may follow. This crutch is a slippery slope into academic failure, DUIs, health problems, rape, injuries, and alcohol poisoning.

In my 30 minute self-directed documentary, I expose college students binge drinking at fraternity parties. You Only Live Once allows the

This atmosphere serves as a unique and informal place outside of the classroom that gives peers a chance to socialize. However fun, people need to remain aware and stay cautious of issues that can be avoided by knowing limits and balancing a buzz.

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My friends were throwing a party on Halloween night my senior year. I brought a camcorder that was originally meant for documenting costumes, but I ended up with pretty neat clips of some of the events. This included beer pong and quarters, dancing in the backlight lit room with the DJ, and watching a guy make batches of jungle juice into a pumpkin pale. I didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t go to many parties in my college years, but I can certainly say that this one was ridiculous! Around this time the police had issued statements campus wide saying that there would be no more warnings for noise complaints be-cause it had gone too far. A part of me doubted that fraternity parties were as crazy as Animal House to Project X and all the hollywood glamorized movies and television shows in bet-ween, but this party motivated me to go out on the weekends and document real life footage of parties unfolding. The title You Only Live Once, YOLO for short, is used heavily in youth culture. I remember hearing it on a few different occasions when implied to binge drinking. The motto is essentially the derivative to the concept of Carpe Diem, meaning seize the day, but a lot of people also see it as an excuse to act stupid. My intention with this project was to unhinge the barrier between the opposing mentalities, and figure out how they have the possibility of coexisting within the setting of a college fraternity party. In other words, parties may be loads of fun but that kind of fun can also come with consequences. My idea is similar to that of centrism; maintain a balance that wonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t shift a side too strongly.

My experience with students was spontaneous. Nothing was planned or staged other than the questions that I asked during interviews. I tried to stay unnoticed while pulling a Mark Cohen and shooting from the hip. My camera acted as another face in the crowd. This diversion allowed me to capture the pure essence of the human experience and maintain the element of surprise. I did the majority of the project with barely any connections. No one wanted to get involved because they felt at risk or uncomfortable with the situation. My only resort was to go into open parties and sneak my way into the closed ones. Occasionally, a student would spot my camera and I would have two very different reactions. Some of them were too drunk to notice, care, or enjoyed the few seconds of attention. Others were interested in why I had a DSLR camera, and that tended to be the half that were extremely worried where the footage would end

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up. They either turned away or forced me to leave the house.

alcohol had a continual impact on a few of my peers throughout college, and how this habit was developed freshman year when they choose to walk a slippery slope with binge drinking. This thought caused me to expand my project to the all boys college down the road because I knew a lot of lowerclassmen went there to party, plus I had an advantage because they let girls in without hesitation.

One night on fraternity circle, I had run into quite a few people from all walks of campus life after helping this guy with a DJing crisis. I found that a lot of students had the same mentality about parties and drinking. It was a fun, cheap way to get out of the classroom, let go of stress, and connect with peers on a more dynamic level. They acted as if it were another classroom of the sort and actually took a role in their social growth, so the overall response was very positive after I had finished the film.

Each of the houses had large open rooms attached to them that were known as â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;bunkersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; and used to host parties. These spaces let me get a much wider perspective as well as move around and focus on specifics while the cleaner shots were ensued from having a sober eye. The sticky floors and hazy atmosphere blended me amongst the obscure identities who appear in my clips. These bunkers became my studio and the lights my palette.

I immersed myself in the culture around me. First hand experiences allowed me to see how

This was actually my first film project which

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started off as a collection of film stills. I was hesitant in switching from photography to video because it was my safe medium, but I knew that I needed to step out of familiar

territory to reach the full potential of the project. The experience factor would help me convey the message to my audience in a much more clear and intriguing way while

elaborating on my concept with greater visual depth. In the beginning, my project looked like nothing more than an entertaining music video with party clips mashed together. I lost my

path in aesthetics because the medium and software were completely new, but once I worked past the technical aspects and details I shifted my focus to the language of the film.

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Every now and then with a project I might hit a bump in the road or have a hard time starting an idea, so in nearly all of my artistic endeavors I have used a sort of representational system similar to the processes used in the scientific method. I ask myself questions, conduct research, write out a working statement, expe= riment, construct or edit my findings, and com= municate them. My art isn’t all done in this order nor is it always so systematic, but I find that having a solid direction leads to a better understanding or result.

The documentary filmmaker must uncover the truth and tell it. A story is at the filmmakers hands and their job is to bring it to the surface through an unfiltered lens and share its raw qualities to society. They wield a powerful tool to see the world from the inside out, and enlighten the viewers perspective. It’s similar to stepping into someone else's shoes. Some artists may have a bias or particular direction in which they choose to show, but that is up to the individual and whether or not that is an attempt to change, an effort to help, or simply a desire to expose the truth. I would say that most films outside of documentary are free for all; a creation of self expression in some shape or form. All filmmakers have the ability to construct a new way of seeing reality through the visual and interpretive enhancements of the medium.

Needless to say I eat, sleep, and breath whatever project is in the spotlight. I have to put all of my time and energy into what I do to get the answers I’m seeking in order to create. I’ve learned that failing is equally as important as succeeding and retracing steps is significant. My creative process is interchangeable but it is always necessary to put however amount of time in that it takes to get to the right conclusion. Everything after that is just sequence.

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cap off ready to shoot any fleeting moment. A presence isolated in time speaks in a transcending manner, no matter how distinct. I am highly influenced by the photographers Peter Beste, Michael Wolf, Pessoa N Beat, and Julien Legrand. All of them together have shown me how the public and the streets around me are all inexhaustible sources for inspiration that call for an extensive range of possibility. Execution is not always planned just discovered, observed, and snapped at a certain moment in time. Beste and Wolf particularly influence me with portraits of humans within their natural habitats. Wolf’s contemporary photographs tend to crossover with some of the more aesthetic values of Beats work. They show life within the abstract in the way that they frame their subjects in a surrounding. Legrand’s series ‘Filled Emptiness’ uses space and color to give life to a seemingly quiet void. It causes me to think about how all my subjects act in their space and the affect that they have on it. All of these artists have helped me to become a careful observer at the world around, and I must thank my photography professor for encouraging me to keep my lens

I would like to explore film more and work with local artists to produce music videos. Music is another passion of mine and I love editing footage together to flow with a song. It's fascinating to see how a collection of various or random clips can stimulate the senses as much as the music itself. I enjoy the flexibility and simplicity of a lot of those types of videos. As far as bigger projects, I would like to explore photojournalism within the bartending commu= nity, and have customers revealing their confes= sions. I really enjoy working behind the scenes and undercover, so I will always continue street photography and other side projects. At this point it’s natural instinct for me to have some type of camera at my side. It is truly impossible for me to stop documenting!

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Ashay Gangwar being a filmmaker was never on my mind. I had always watched Bollywood and sci-fi Hollywood movies. For me, back then, movies meant just entertainment.

, by Ashay Gangwar, Director I had been living a dual life for the past three years. Imagine a guy standing with a camera inside a shabby railway engine. That was me yesterday living my first life while shooting for a new film. Being an amateur filmmaker you never get license to shoot at places like these where one has to be on a perpetual look out for guards whose eyes are trained to catch trespassers. However all this is my usual shooting routine now. In case I get caught, I will be just an engineering student shooting for his new college project and that’s where my second life saves the day! It will be unjustified to say that I was in love with filmmaking since birth. Although as an Indian, films have always been an integral part of my life,

Daydreaming about inventing a pedal-boat-amphibian bicycle with blades instead of spokes or a pressure cooker powered toothpick gun is how I remember my childhood. As I grew up, a part of me still wanted to be an inventor. I thought maybe engineering was my ‘thing’. As I was academically sound, I landed up as an engineering student at one of the most presti-gious technical institutes of India. Being the only child, your parents teach you almost anything. I had been trained in badminton, piano, nib painting, taekwondo, sitar and a drama. So, in the freshman year I was clueless as to which club or society to join.

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And, this is when ‘it’ happened; I was selected in a filmmaking society at my institute. For the first time I was exposed to world cinema and the works of Polanski and Majidi left me captivated dreaming and awestruck. Although both works are at the opposite extremes of filmmaking but the style of storytelling with which they presented the comp-lex ideologies made me more inquisitive about the field. For the first time I was watching movies not for entertainment alone.

all forms of art into one and gives you the freedom to daydream. It takes you and your audience to a different realm altogether. The goose bumps that the engrossed looks of the audience gave me during my first screening, made me realize that everyone was dissolved into the world I had created. A world where they were the ‘Hero’ and I, the ‘Merlin’. Every filmmaker is expected to have a life changing moment that motivates him or her to enter this field. Honestly speaking, I never had that moment. In my case, it was not even close to love at first sight. I had always loved watching films but when I became mature enough to understand and go through the process of filmmaking, I fell in love with it. The love of filmmaking grew on me. Sleepless nights thinking about the script, locations, camera angles, music and the editing style are like making love to my movie. Is it love or just infatuation, was a question I was concerned about. So, I decided to compare filmmaking with the field I was pursuing my major in, Engineering. The call from a media lab as their intern cinematographer was my first experience ‘in field’. I worked with them for two months. Working with the professionals I realized how little I knew. None of the pros and cons of the field were in favor of an amateur. On the other hand I also worked as a technical intern at a car manufacturing plant. The same period of two months was like a lifetime sentence. Yes! I was an ‘Engineer’ but for the last time.

As a member of the filmmaking society initially my job was merely to carry props for the shoot and watch as the magical words “Lights! Camera! Action!” brought a new world to life - the world of ‘Cinema Paradiso’. My passion for camera made me enter professional photography. Having no prior schooling in this field, I learnt and still learn from my critiques. Photography not only meliorated my cinematography techniques but also aided in improving my observation skill. As my photography skills developed I came across my first cinematography assignment, “Shoot anything beautiful”, was the instruction. I had no script or list of shots and I went out shooting with my headphones on. It was an exhilarating experience to note that everything from people talking to a silent architecture was a part of the invisible symphony. Working like an addict of the process of filmmaking, I rose from being a spot boy to the position of an amateur director after three years of various productions. I am so much into the process of filmmaking that now I have started to see things as frames. I can see you reading this in a dark room, alone. The white light of the screen is falling on your face and you are sipping your coffee, smiling and thinking over the readerreferential aspect of my last line. In my world, everyone and everything is a part of cinema. For me, the beauty of cinema is that it encompasses

Pursuing a major in Industrial Engineering was my choice. To pursue a career in Filmmaking is again my choice. But, as no knowledge goes in vain, engineering too has its own benefits. Following my passion in this dual life of mine has taught me the pivotal role of time management. The courses that I have taken have taught me about product development, innovation and

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customer satisfaction, which are directly or indirectly related to the complete process of filmmaking. I remember my professor saying,” about? Your product will always be successful in the market if you package and market it well.” A tautology that even our cinemas follow. Remember the big star cast movies we always mockabout? Whether it’s Hollywood or Bollywood they always end up as biggest box office collectors.

and over again. Although making one was not that easy. Imagine Terrence Malik making a Larry Charles’ movie. The same happened with me when I was working on my sit-com series. The script was good, editing decent but the camera work? I had nothing to do in that. Starting of in this field as a cinematographer, my first instinct says that the shot has to be beautiful. It is difficult to make college actors who actually have never undergone training in acting, understand the problem of continuity .In contrast to movies where the location and shots provide you much more freedom, here the limitation was eventually set on the camera work. The shots were refined to a master and close ups. You might call it a direction flaw but in my opinion that was the safest step to take, then. The constraint was not limited to camera work but also to time, for we had only weekends to shoot. The whole project was set to be a one-day project per episode, which included scripting to uploading. Making a sit-com that too a

I am never ashamed to admit that I have always been audience hungry. I believe that for retaining the faith of the team, the effort put in by it to realize the director’s dream should always be rewarded. The making of the sit-com series had a somewhat similar idea. The first movie I made, as a director, was a surreal movie and you cannot expect college students, my audience, to watch that kind of a movie even if they know you. In order to create my market before releasing the movie I started with the sit-com series. Comedy has always been eternal in filmmaking. You cannot get tired watching Charlie Chaplin or Tom and Jerry over

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important minor details of our day-to-day life that affect us in ways that are not always clear. Personally I feel films are always for the audience while the filmmaker portrays back the audience’s schemes. The amazement that people feel when they see themselves clicked by the silent photographer is how I want the people to react on seeing the stories that they can relate to.

five episode series in college was the hardest project that I would ever consider myself to be a part of. Howsoever the mass acceptance of the series helped in gaining a lot of popularity for the movie. Now comes the pertinent question, why do I want to be a filmmaker? Sorry for being rude, but all artists are self-obsessed people who want the world to know their story. If you don’t believe me then you can go through the interviews of any filmmaker, painter or musician and the first line you’ll find there is “ I do it for myself.” I want people to know my perspective on their simple life and I couldn’t find a better transport medium for my ideas than a movie. I don’t want to change my audience’s perspective. If that could have been possible, all great directors in history would have been Gods, to all, and not just me.

In an Indian middle-class family you are brought up to be an engineer, a doctor or an administrative officer but never a filmmaker. None in my family history has relished the art of filmmaking but that does not deter me from my goal. Standing inside that engine while my friends were getting placed with hefty paying companies, I thought, what is it that keeps me going? And then I recalled the pleasure of a stranger coming and exclaiming, “How did you do that!” For all the goods and the bad, the success and the failures, my journey shall always strive to metamorphose a daydreamer into an artist.

Although being a film school reject I still dream to be a professional filmmaker and make movies that are cinematographically rich excerpts of life. For me, rationality of the story is the primary idea for a movie. I want to concentrate on stories about

The first time when my professor, Dr. Anjali G. Roy, contacted me I was told that I have to go out for shooting an interview with Mr. Duncan J. Hall. That he was an Anglo Indian driver of Indian Railways was all I knew about him. Well, you can never say no to such jobs especially when for the first time in four years of your stay in college, a professor asks you to shoot something. So having no clue as to what was going on I went out for the shoot. I reached to find Mr. Duncan too excited to talk about his experiences in life. I thought he would just give us, Ph.D. scholar Catherina Moss and me, an hour for the interview and then we pack up. But the whole thing lasted 10 hours. Mr. Duncan took us around the town and kept narrating his story. I had never thought that a dayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s shoot would give me enough footage to make a mini documentary but being a filmmaker you cannot let the footage go to waste. I had never experienced the town of Kharagpur to be more alive. His stories had me engrossed within minutes. I realized l barely knew the town Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d been living in for 4 long years. It took me another trip to shoot the locations for the fillers and an interview of 40 minutes out of which only about 3 minutes were used. First of all I would like to thank you for letting me know about my cinematography style. But the truth is I never had anything to experiment with apart from my camera, not even lights, and working in that constraint for the past 4 years on more than 20 projects, just for the sheer love of making

The whole affair was a surreal experience for me considering how it was the first time I had shot something of such an unplanned nature. Having just a Nikon D5100 camera and a monopod the complete shoot was done. 44

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movies, I developed my own style of shooting. I am much inspired by the cinematography style in Majid Majidi movies. The true essence of life is what cinematography should depict. Any kind of adulteration will only make it unattached to the audience. I want the audience to be a part of the experience and feel that all this is believable.

Any kind of cinema that can connect to the audience is good cinema no matter how large or how small the audience is. The only thing that matters is the true appreciation for your work. As you can see in the current trend of YouTube viral videos comedy always connects with people. Why will you not watch anything that makes you happy? For me it was more of a push because now I had the confidence of making more as a director. The series received much appreciation from the audience I was targeting. The team I worked with also garnered public attention. Howsoever, it was just for the push and I could not ink to it for long. The cinematographic experience was one of the main aspects as we were just working in two-shots and some

All this is how they see the world yet they missed admiring the beauty of what they saw. There has to be a balance between the street style and highly composed cinematography in order to attain this.

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lother basic angles. Eventually I didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t see myself contributing the way I had wished to.

but itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a delight watching the audience support young directors with a different taste and the style for more mature movies. The competition is getting healthier and the industry is growing at a rapid rate making ample space for all forms of cinematic experiences. In short, I call myself lucky enough to be a part of this change.

Satyajit Ray and Guru Dutt have always inspired me. I can relate to their kind of cinema and their works urge me to attain similar heights. A perfect balance of philosophy, art and story is what makes them stand out.

Photography is largely different from cinematography. The angle that would look good in a photograph may not be the right one when it comes to filmmaking. However, as they say, no knowledge goes waste. I believe that photography taught me two important things. Firstly, to appreciate the nature and secondly, the play of lights

Indian cinema is undergoing a Renaissance. The typical Bollywood cinema will never cease to exist and I believe it should not too, 46

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and shadows hence making me more observant about my surroundings. Both of these are important during pre-production and during the shoot.

I am working on a full length documentary about “Komagata Maru”, a passenger ship that left the shores of Hong Kong in 1914 with about 377 Sikhs for Vancouver, Canada but the passengers were not allowed to enter Canada, then known as British Canada, and were sent back after 2 months of stay aboard. The ship sailed back to a place called Budge Budge in India. India at that time was British Colony and when the Sikh landed here they wanted to go to Kolkata against the permission of the British Government. When they tried to force their way in, a horrific turn of events resulted in a firing where 75 Sikh were killed. My documentary deals with the current situation regarding the incident and the repercussions that have travelled down to the present day.

Formal education is always helpful. Selftaught artists have to struggle to build up their credibility while the ones with the formal education are already on the channelized path. Self-taught artists learn it the hard way about “dos and don’ts”. However I believe that formal education must never outweigh your art of story telling.

Iona Pelovska Moments of life lived, missed, remembered and forgotten, as glimpsed through the window of a moving train. A view on thought and vision playing out the film of life - eyes looking through the window of a moving train. This film invokes the process of memo48

ry, the way thought snippets interject perception. The moving train => time => the moving image. The beginning of cinema: 'Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat' seen from the POV of the passenger. The passage of time seen through the ears of John Cage: 'Baccha-

that explores the lived and imagined modalities of moving image media and language - the ways they warp space, contrive and construct tempo-ralities, and compete with our most intimate connection to the world, the mind. Live cinema is, in its basic photographic premise, an abstracted, free-floating supraspacio-temporal, mirror of life. The mediumatic transposi-tion of a live moment into a gallery space invites the viewer to explore the experience through diffe-rent media (lenticular prints, film and video) and the realities they intimate through the perceptual possibilities and limita-tions they impose. The entire installation is based on a single POV sequence. By exploring various mediumatic experiences of that sequence, it insists on the phenomenal relationship of viewer and moving image, underlying the primacy of the subjective gaze. In this, it responds to early cinema's fascination with the moving train as a metaphor of technolive movement. Now the viewer has been placed inside that movement, remin-ding him or her of both the subjectivity of the cinematic experience and, at the same time, the hypnotic effect cinematic technologies have on our perceptions.

is an artist/filmmaker and cinema theoretician invested in art as a way of knowing and interested in the cognitive ramifications of moving image technologies. Her dissertation â&#x20AC;&#x153;Poetry and Pornography: Means and Meanings of the Moving Imageâ&#x20AC;? explores cinema as an intersection of the alienating forces of industrial technologies and the oneiric powers of poetic language. Her films explore the clash and com-munion between techno-science and embodi-ment, between poetry and mechanization. Her work has been shown and presented at film festi-vals and conferences around the world.

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nale' - the sound of life dynamic and chaotic, a thrust forth in time reversible/re-playable unto death. The Eyes that Stop the Train is a part of a moving image installation of the same name 49

Most remarkable though is the precision with which you summed up the questioning of cinema that led to this project. The Eyes that Stop the Train is part of a trans-media moving image installation that emerged gradually throughout the writing of my PhD dissertation. As an artist/filmmaker, I have been troubled by the implicit conflict between the principles driving industrial media technologies on one hand and traditional artistic practices on the other. The PhD work allowed me to take the long meditative pause needed to dive deep into the question of what is cinema. But not the cinema we know - rather, cinema beyond cinema, the means and meanings of the moving image. Cinema as a way of assembling a world that is not necessarily human, but necessarily interpolates with the human ways of knowing, in order to both emerge from within and exert its pressure onto the human realm. In short, the question "what is cinema" demanded questioning the very ways we assemble our world. In the installation The Eyes that Stop the Train I began to explore the practical ways of the mediumized moving image. As you so astutely ob-served, I approached this from two directions - the sensory and the mental - as composites of the mind-bodyworld manifold. The installation in-cludes video, film and lenticular animation. The juxtaposition between film and video on one hand, and lenticular animation on the other, questions the embodied gaze and interrogates the ways tra-ditional cinema arrests the viewer. Unlike cinema, lenticular animation is activated by the physical movement and the respective change of viewing angle - it is contingent on physical mobility. So,

the phenomenology of those two types of viewing, the stationary and the mobile, were points of departure for my questioning. The film The Eyes that Stop the Train explores the arrested gaze as the eyes mesmerized by the movement of the world, by the passage of time, by cinema.

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cinema makes this absurdity a reality - randomly assembled strangers get together and experience a common point of view onto a world that moves for their eyes only. But what is going on with us as we gaze onto the moving world?

When I was 4 or 5 years old I was fascinated by the movement of the landscapes I was seeing through the windows of trains and streetcars. I loved to play a game of switching my perceptual interpretation - now I was moving past the landscape, now the landscape was moving past me. I would keep switching back and forth until I reached a point of not being sure anymore whether it was the train or the landscape that was moving. My senses could not tell me which was which, it was just by logical extrapolation I could assure myself it was indeed the train that was in motion. The logic was a logic of economy - it would be inordinately less efficient to make the entire landscape move for my gaze and the gaze of randomly assembled strangers, all of us becoming simultaneously the arbitrary centre of an entire world moving just for us. However,

This is how I decided to base the entire installation on a footage of a landscape from a moving train. The film The Eyes that Stop the Train focused on the reality of the gaze - the interpolation of the sensory and the mental as we look onto the moving world. The running landscape as seen through the window of a moving train becomes the mirror of the mind as the continuous shot is sporadically intercut with memorysnippets of documented life. I used exclusively found and archival footage for those scenes in order to underline their mnemonic character. Thus, the film would simulate the experience of watching through a window of a moving train and, at the same time, allude to the moving images that emerge within the thought process that interjects continuous perception - memory snippets of life as we think it.

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a symbol of movement, life, the passage of time. I found it inspiring that my first private childhood explorations of the phenomenology of the moving image were as obliged to the moving train as was early cinema. This was especially meaningful in light of the significance the steam engine had had for the launching of the Industrial Revolution reflecting right back on my questioning of cinema as an industrial technology. I began to think of The Eyes that Stop the Train as my response to The Arrival of a Train at Ciotat. Today, when the development of new media technologies have been threatening to obscure traditional cinema, inducing anxieties about the end of

The decision to base The Eyes that Stop the Train on a footage of a landscape as seen from the window of a moving train was twofold - it referred not only to my earliest fascination with the moving image but also with cinema's traditional fascination with the moving train as

cause somehow they make me think of our body-mind as the camera obscura of the world - as the door through which the emanations of the world pass in order to be assembled into images, the images of what becomes our world, that which we know, or can know. Thought of this way, the world is a sort of dream and suddenly, the banal saying that cinema is a dream is no longer just a flat metaphor, it acquires a certain experiential depth.

Cinema is a temporal medium and it baffles me when filmmakers use sound illustratively rather than as a semantic layer in its own right. Cinema is not a reflection of reality any more than it is a reflection of our mind. It is both and none, because above all, it is its own mind-reality. And this cinematic mind-reality, unlike ours, can dislocate and misplace any one of its composite elements. This is the poetic power of cinema and if we don't harness it, we might as well do theatre or some other live art form. I use sound not as a complement or illustration of the image but as its dialogi-cal counterpart, as that which enters into a troubled relationship with the picture to re-veal whatever the visuals cannot render and thus can only be silent about, and vice versa. I consider this film a posthumous collabora-tion with John Cage in the most humble and wonderous sense. When I started editing the film, Bacchanale almost immediately inserted itself in my mind as the perfect soundtrack. So much so that I rethought my entire editing approach and started cutting the film to the musical piece, almost like a music video. Bacchanale was the perfect title as well - it captured the raw poetic power of life and implied yet another reading to the random found footage snippets weaving the parabola of the film. Most of all, it was sheer joy to edit to this piece. But the most anecdotal thing happened

cinema itself, I was in a unique historical position to enter into a dialogue with a work from the dawn of modern cinema. That distant era fascinated with cinema as a documentary witness of an "outside" reality would be meeting our era fascinated with cinema as a private "inside" experience. It is even more interesting that you mention the magic lantern, because I regard cinema as a technological stand-in for the mind-body, generating a world that can almost entirely hijack ours. I find those early technologies, like the magic lantern and the camera obscura, very revealing of this "hidden agenda" of cinema be-

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the moment after I finished the fine cut - I went on the internet to find out that day was the 100th anniversary of John Cage. This was a moment of stark elation - the feeling that time-space and lifedeath had collapsed into one happy trans-dimensional bacchanal, and the news media were acknowledging that miracle to boot... I wanted to put that date as the release date of the film (and I have a copy that does exactly that). However, I had a lot more work to do - visual effects, titles so, the film was released months later. Still, I consider the film as my gift to John Cage for his 100th anniversary.

od that has been at least somewhat documented. This inevitably transpires in the multiplicity of angles I bring together. My initial formal training was in the visual arts and I find that especially painting has become a major undercurrent component of my visual sensibilities. Add to this, an interest in literature and philosophy matching in intensity and involvement, and you get a tapestry of influences too dense to unravel here. Thus I cannot track individual influences without risking to turn this interview into one of the libraries of Jorge Louis Borges. However, I can name artists that have inspired me, and I will try to keep my list to art film just so we keep on a more narrow topic. In my films, in addition to live shooting and found footage, I use a wide range of animation techniques. This mixed-media visual focus makes me feel aligned to filmmakers who manipulate film-time more unequivocally than most, auteurs like Vera Chytilova, Jan Ĺ vankmajer, Maya Deren, the Quay brothers. But filmmakers that have moved me deeply, yet whose presence in my heart is probably not immediately evident in my filmstrokes are Jonas Mekas, Andrey Tarkovsky,

I began my artistic practice very early in life. This has given me ample time to pass through periods of, sometimes obsessive but never just epidermal, involvement with almost any art school and peri-

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Chantal Akerman, Alain Resnais. I'm missing many, but will settle with only mentioning two more - the experimental works of David Lynch and Peter Greenaway have invariably contributed to my delight as a (human) being dedicated to the dubious activity of generating meaning.

Which brings us back to the beginning, to the film screen as both a "touchable and ethereal surface," as you so accurately observed. What I aspire to channel for the viewer is a manifold experience that doesn't only speak intelligibly and intelligently but also chaotically and incomprehensibly, a language that transgresses and spills through the cracks of the known leaving the viewer with a whiff of the unknown - that which is ungraspable through any language, cinematic or other. This is why I tend to saturate my work with references and meanings that overwhelm the body-mind and hopefully inspire it to abandon control and imagine a leap into the unimaginable. On one level, The Eyes that Stop the Train can be read as a timeline metaphor of life today - a life as much experienced as it is thought and mediatized. But this is only one layer of "narration" designed to lull the mind into an adventure beyond the said and seen, an adventure that may take place years after the last frame of the film has dissolved into the fade-out of oblivion.

Yes, I am working on what is emerging as a kind of trilogy that I collectively call Bodies in Trouble. It explores further the relationship between art, technology and the human body. The first film looks at the development of medical imaging, the second one is concerned with the pornographic gaze and the third one - with the capacity of cinema to stage the inside of the body as the abstract scene of an event. In this series, as in all my work, I use cinema as the dreamscape where I am looking to find ways of poetic reconciliation between the merciless efficiency of industrial technologies and the vibrant sensuality of the human body.

Alexis Perepelycia An artist's statement

Praxis Leye Pelicae #5 (PLP#5) belongs to large polysemic piece ‘La frontera ausente’ (The absent frontier). A group of pieces of different artistic expressions explore possibilities of verbal and non‐verbal human language.

“A word or an image is symbolic when it implies something more than its obvious and immediate meaning. It has a wider unconscious aspect that is never precisely defined or fully explained … As the mind explores the symbol, it is led to ideas that lied beyond the grasp of reason.” (C.G. Jung, ‘Man and his symbols’)

PLP#5 it’s an audiovisual essay that intends to propose an approach to a concern about the possibility of existence of a unique mode of lanL

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guage: one that would be absolute, unambiL guous and irrevocable.

arranged following a taxonomy later translated

The proposal turns around the concept of noise in communication theory. In order to do so it was decided to work on video trying to achieve different noise modes in different moments of the narrative. An archive with several video excerpts and sound was obtained, classified and

a plot.

into a series of signs that were set according to

, Argentina, June 2014

First of all: I am musician. I've started playing music early on in my childhood. Tried several instruments for a while. During elementary school I've moved to painting and drawing. By that time every afternoon when I came back from school I attended to a woodshed and worked as carpenter assistant. Later on, during secondary school I've came back to music. By that time I've began to play around with an old compact camera my dad had at home. As well, in school - the first two years attended to a technical school - I began to solder, cast metal and experiment with electronics. Then, after school I did one year of biotechnology. After that I got enrolled to the Music University. Studied drums, percussion and composition. Then studied electroacoustic music, sound art and multimedia. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve also done postgraduate studies in musicology. So, when I think of a new work I cannot avoid the fact of the many disciplines I've approached during my life and the many aspects you can/should/must consider when crafting a piece aimed to be perceived by more than one sensory channel.

direction and experiment previously unexplored paths of my own production. Something that has not changed throughout my whole life is the fact of being astonished by the unexpected. Perhaps that was the fact that led me to improvisation in any of my artistic research areas (music, drawing, painting, video, sculpture, writing). Sometimes you evocate chaos in a pledge of help sometimes your idea call for as much control as you could possibly achieve. Another thing that it's almost always present in my works is a recollection of thoughts or subjects Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d like to explore that I keep writing down on paper along with graphics and diagrams on how I believe the procedure should be.

I think every time it's different. But one obvious thing is as you grow and gain experience you began to identify certain aspects of your own creative process. This does not means that you have to take the same path over and over again. It just means you might know how to take a shortcut. Normally I would decide to take a new unknown

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It was magic! Every morning I got up really early took my bike, arrived to Padova train station, took the train to Venice train station, from there I run to take the Vaporetto at a certain point I had to change line so I had to take a second boat and then I was in a restored Benedictine Monastery rehearsing and discussing the philosophical aspects of a beautiful piece by Nono called La lontananza utopica, nostalgica, futura.

Well, during university years I was exposed to some pieces by Nono and by the time the course of Nono was about to take place I was living in Padova (Italy), which is around 20â&#x20AC;&#x2122; from Venice, I was travelling once a month to study in Paris were a lecturer (Horacio Vaggione) often referred to some Nono pieces, plus I was doing a residence at ZKM (working on a piece for sax player Pedro Bittencourt - a friend who invited me to write for him at Karlsruhe, Germany) so I ended up tying everything up and taking that course on Nonoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s music.

Everyday during a whole week, after that we performed it live. It was an overwhelming experience.

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Sometimes – mainly on live performances - I take an opposite approach to the critical/theoretical thought done when writing or conceiving a large piece: the idea of the urgent/ the immediate need of doing something that needs to be done in a second independently of the result. I mean: just focusing on the moment, being processual. Which I think has less to do with Nono’s way of crafting art and would be more related to punk and grunge movements or to action painters and improvisation in general.

There would be hundreds but I am not quite sure it would be fair to point out any particular influence, even Luigi Nono. What about the others that one might forget? I believe everything influences you, each thing at different level and different ways. Just to mention randomly: life, death, love, war, birth, philosophy, writers (I’ve taken a whole brunch of ideas from books, any kind: poetry, essays, novels, short stories), geography, biology, engineering, cities, politics, history, chemistry, physics, medicine, nature, cooking recipes, travelling, people in general (the most unknown the better), etc.

I believe art in general is a meta-language. However the way I approach meta- language in my pieces – most of them multi-media or multi-

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disciplinary pieces – is by referring from one language/discipline to another and from the later to the former – or from one verbal mode to another and so on – creating some sort recursive dialogue which would end up being some sort of Chinese whispers – or telephone game. Basically if I’d like to refer to something I have to build a different code first in order to avoid literalness.

- (to be premiered next year); writing the scripts for two documentaries to be shoot throughout 2015 and 2016 respectively, writing music for a documentary (already shot), finishing the music for a short-film (already shot), working on a video-installation (to be premiered soon), rehearsing to record a new album with Navío Noche (one of my bands), about to premiere a long film (co-directed with my friend Franco Fontanarrosa) entitled Ajendra, shot last year and to be premiered on the 21 st Festival Latinoamericano de Video Rosario, plus keep co-coordinating the fourth year of a free improvisation concert series called all free! and keep touring with my partner – Alejandra Valdés - and her new dance piece Semilla del aire (I’ve written the score and play it live).

Nowadays I am working on a piece for two performers, video and multi-channel sound system (to be premiered by Ignacio Esborraz and me on the PULSOS festival later this month); a large polysemic piece – involving photography, music, video, painting and writing

Thanks for your time and the invitation. http://www.alexisperepelycia.com.ar/

, details

Alex Monterville This is an expressionistic/impressionistic experimental video. I tried to make the images speak for themselves. There is no particular story being told. The context is shifting continuously and never really touches a completely common ground. I intended to convey what are to me some of the background or affective textures of everyday life. What holds together the shifting and non-specific imagery is the mood the music is intended to provoke.

and attempting to communicate on a non-verbal level. I really believe that the fabric of every day life has been warped in an extreme way; a simple illustration comes from Mark Fisher: What Deleuze-Guattari call ‘fictional quantities’ absorb the socius into themselves in an irreversible process of artificialization that happens at the level of ‘code’, the very biological and socio-psychic formatting protocols from which all identity is produced.

My intention was to generate through the imagery and music a set of feelings and suggestions that were strong enough to provoke the viewer in some way to ask themselves questions, 66

I want to draw attention to what are for me some of the specters which haunt everyday life, but we never look long enough to see them.

That’s really interesting, “ deterritorialize the fluxus of moving images”. I don’t know if I was aiming that high, but I did aim to create an unusual sense of flow. I was interested particularly in deterritorializing the flow of standard ultra-quick cross cutting often used in things like news and in films; though I never thought of it as deterritorializing. But that helps to explain why I wanted to use imagery that was very slowed down, even if the imagery wasn’t very straightforward. I wanted to leave semi-nascent signifiers around everywhere, suggesting ideas or as if to be pointing to something. In connection to that, I wanted to dislocate expectation with the pacing, in order to create effects that were uneasy or unexpected.

ly. I wanted to create a piece that would be able to slip under the radar of mass-media ways of seeing the world, and attempt to touch on some more basic common ground of experience. It wasn’t exactly found footage; almost all of the imagery was extracted from sources I had intended to use, like Tricky’s ‘Hell is Around the Corner’ video, Radiohead’s Kid A blips, and the film Videodrome.

The basic idea I had in the beginning was to create a video that would somehow represent the background textures of everyday life or of experiences I’ve had, which I sometimes wonder are common to everyone, but no one is able to talk about. I believe communications media and the imagery and narratives they convey play a huge part in separating people from their own immediate experiences; glossing things over with some kind of fuzz of unreality, which I think is no accident. That is why the video too, I believe in connection to the manipulations of power deployed through communications media, sometimes has a sinister or dark look to it. I began just by playing around with images that I wanted to use; that I thought might be interesting texturally, visually, or conceptual-

I also love UK musician Burial, and the track I used for the sound was the slowed down beginning of one of his songs. The mood it provokes fits perfectly with what I intended to do. Even the amorphous sounds that popped up now and then after I had slowed it down worked in accordance with what was happening with the images. In particular I made the video for the students in the class Time-Based Strategies that I was taking, never knowing if anyone would ever see it again. To my surprise the ideas seemed to be more effective than I thought they would, based on the reactions of the other students, and also it was chosen for this contest.

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red shots. I didn’t think of it, but red is a color and motif I’ve used a lot in previous projects. I would say it relates to emotions and feelings

It’s funny that you brought up the frequent 68

like anxiety, desperation, frustration, fear, anger, pain, rage; a lot of negative emotions. Also to a feeling of hopelessness I sometimes feel in the face of the world, which often feels crushingly harsh and chaotic. I was inte-

rested in bringing these feelings to the forefront and talk about them through the video.

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Mark Fisher, whose writing inspires me a lot, says that the historical moment we live in is inherently negative. So relating back to mass communications media, I feel these kinds of emotions, that are actually predominant, can be forever kept as uncoded background noise, because mediatized narratives often seem to cancel out their ability to be articulated or even given any significance. I guess this relates back to the title I chose for the video, â&#x20AC;&#x153;I could swear it wasâ&#x20AC;?; the video being an attempt to discuss aspects of life and the world that terrify or disturb me, but that I canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t ignore, but I could swear are real, even if no one seems to talk about them. There is the scene in the beginning that is almost completely red except for the blur- 70

red-out figure in the middle rocking back and forth; and also the flashing red image that cuts in and out several times, which is an image of a blurred-out sunset. The latter scene often flashes as the camera appears to zoom into it, as if to indicate something, at different times using different speeds. My interpretation of using this motif is that there is something that is ever-present and over-watching, but is somehow ignored or pushed into the background. It could be consciousness, time, running out of time to address serious problems, etc.

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Only about a year ago was the first time that I used Photoshop or any software to make something, and for the video I used FinalCut Pro X. My love for spectral textures and of juxtaposing textures that I often aimed for in those mediums made it’s way into the imagery of the video. In terms of ‘neurological editing’, that’s interesting, because in a way the images are always shifting and indistinct, like nothing can really be grasped; and if identity is basically messed up then the world around never seems quite real, and nothing is certain. I did intend to edit the images to seem as if the viewer was wat71

ching the internal workings of something or someone, like watching the re-play of someone’s experiences, although I didn’t intend them to look like memories per se. I was interested in having constantly shifting imagery using sound as the emotional basis carrying the whole thing, like the images are a riff on the melancholy theme of the music. I wanted to condense experiences and feelings into a semi-recognizable presentation but almost leaving them on the level of affective suggestion. A few classmates commented that they would watch the video again and again in order to understand what the images were; and said that the video seemed to be saying something that meant something to them but they weren’t sure what; that it contained ‘sub-

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liminal messages’. That’s exactly what I wanted to do. I.e. convey feelings that don’t seem to have words with which to talk about them; something like the textures of common experience beyond socialized cover-ups. In relation to the quotation from Mark Fisher, the quote actually reads further as: “capitalism is the story of the successful implementation of a quantititavely-increasing fiction, i.e. Capital itself. What DeleuzeGuattari call ‘fictional quantities’ absorb the socius into themselves in an irreversible pro- 72

cess of artificialization that happens at the level of ‘code’, the very biological and sociopsychic formatting protocols from which all identity is produced … so that distinguishing the so-called natural from the artificial is radically impossible. In this cybernetic age of anticipative simulacra, fiction, to paraphrase Deleuze-Guattari, ‘is not an image of the world. It forms a rhizome with the world, there is an aparallel evolution of fiction and the world.’” In a way, I wanted to make a video of what I

media matrix. So because of this I wanted to communicate some of my darker experiences of growing up in the video too.

When I start a new project, I usually begin just by pursuing a few basic ideas of what I want to accomplish. While doing that, other directions develop or new ideas come up, and I try to logically follow them, piecing things together and working toward forming a coherent whole. Sometimes something unexpected and exciting will happen and that helps everything to begin to gel together and tie up the loose ends. I’m still pretty new unfortunately to software, and it opened up a huge amount of possibility. I wish I would have started using it much earlier. That about sums up my creative process as of now.

believe are my own experiences in relation to this, e.g. how media seem to seamlessly in-form experience and experiences (virtualreality), and also sociality; and how the texture of a film, TV show, videogame, etc. leave an affective residue within consciousness, and the residue becomes a part of your consciousness; a process I think that is deeply interlinked with power and the power to control. I think it’s a very dangerous problem, especially for young people, who can lose or never have their ‘identity’ due to being immersed in a seamless entertainment

I think both. Art does change some people’s behavior, but has no influence on others. If you come across something that inspires you, is new and exciting, or unexpectedly connects missing pieces for you, that can change your direction forever. I don’t think art has one single purpose, and some artists like Gerhard Richter don’t think art as either expressive or that it can change anyone, but is a language in itself. It also could be either extreme: an artist might stop caring about any of the impact they might potentially have and only work according to what they love to do. Maybe the same artist at a different time in their life would also work in order to influence people’s behavior in some positive way, opening up potential for people. Processes like political propaganda and advertisements sometimes are ‘artistic’, but I would say totally divorced from the purpose of a true creativity, which I think has an inherent positivity. One of my favorite artists is John Frusciante, most well known for being the twice-former guitarist for the Red Hot Chili Peppers. His thought is that the creative act 73 is actually the Will to Death; but that this

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Will to Death intensifies the artistâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s life and the lives of those who appreciate the work. So art can be a negation that can make the world more beautiful and intense by providing a space that contrasts the ugliness of the

world. It can also be a pure expression while at the same time having the power to change someoneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s behavior.

focusing on my studies at SUNY University at Buffalo right now, working toward a BFA in Communication Design. Thanks for choosing my video! I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have a particular project in mind, just 75

Josh Bricker opening kickoff, as they always do, spectators stood for the National Anthem. As a lone trumpet solemnly sounded in the far corner of the stadium, a palpable feeling of unity and patriotism filled the Rose Bowl. The crowd, normally bifurcated by college allegiance, was made one in song as 95,000 spectators began

and healing exploded into an orgy of jingoism and techno-fetishism. As a sports fan and former U.S. Air Force Serviceman inured by the constant encroachment of the martial upon the social body, I had viewed fly-overs as benign expressions of patriotism. However, that UCLA game in a newly post 9/11 world yielded an awakening in me. It was an awakening to the power of military spectacle and direct proof of how its exploitation of mob mentality can instantly mobilize a wounded people. My piece, God Bless Deterritorialized America (endo-colonization in the age of techno-fetishism) is a translation of that moment at UCLA when I broke free of the military-industrial psychological conditioning that involuntarily shackles American society. God Bless Deterritorialized America (endocolonization in the age of techno-fetishism) examines the link between sport and the military in contemporary America. The deterritorialization of the American landscape refers to the colonization of public spaces (in this instance sports arenas) by the U.S. military, which brandishes its weapons thus preying upon and reinforcing the state of popular fear. In this state of deterritorialization, the border between the civilian and the martial is intentionally obscured. As a result the battlefield has been symbolically extended into our everyday experiences and public spaces. Every piece of footage and sound was intentionally culled from video sharing sites such as Vimeo, WikiLeaks and YouTube, highlighting their potential as egalitarian cultural archives fit for artistic investigation. Constructed to emulate viral videos, the work rejects the conventional relationship of the static viewer consuming traditional media; instead it exists as a challenge to the highly regulated nature of consumer capitalism. Rather than viewing the work as discrete and finished, I view it as a fragment of a larger, developing body of research that addresses the merging of simulacrum and reality brought on by the military-industrial-media-entertainment complex. Because I post all my work on YouTube—a fundamentally interactive and unstable platform—there is a real possibility for anyone to appropriate my work from the site, transform it and re-circulate it as a new work. Situated within this ideological framework, the video and my praxes can be seen as a meditation on cultural poaching, to use military parlance, as a “force multiplier”.

singing in unison. While initially moved by this, an extreme disquiet immediately supplanted my fellow feeling at the end of the Anthem as a deafening, militaristic roar spectacularly erupted, in the form of four FA18 Hornets flying overhead. In an instant, a collective public in the process of mourning

Sure. The most important thing to understand about me is that my practice is inextricably linked to my personal background as a soldier in the United States Air Force and a childhood spent in a small, working-class town in California dominated by pop culture, chain businesses, and high school sports. It wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t until I went to graduate school that I was really able to unpack my experiences as a soldier and critically examine my practice. As I slowly dredged through my military experience and childhood, themes of power, nationalism, social conditioning, propaganda, and play, began surfacing with greater and greater regularity. My early works were poorly articulated and too laden with personal meaning to be accessible. In the last critique before the summer break, one of my advisors, tired of my awkward, unarticulated tiptoeing around of the obvious blurted out something about my needing to read Foucault, Chomsky and Huizinga and hastily bolted for the door. To him, and probably every other faculty member it was blatantly obvious that my work needed to move beyond the personal. That to be of any consequence my focus necessarily had to expand beyond personal experience to include the social and cultural mechanisms that had led to my enlistment. In retrospect an obvious move, but at the time it was a major epiphany. I spent that summer reading and thinking. Armed, for the first time, with critical insights into these machinations I was able to analyze my experiences and articulate them clearly.

the artist to speak intelligently about things he or she knows. I think that final critique opened up a much more nuanced sense of the possibilities when one combines inductive processes with critical theory. Also, I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t want to suggest here that I had no agency in my own enlistment. I do, however, want to suggest that there are myriad competing cultural pressures constantly playing upon the decisions we make, influencing the paths we take. Without the analytical tools and time to critically examine these external pressures I was susceptible to the subtle, omnipresent forms of social conditioning that define much of contemporary life, particularly the brand of jingoistic rhetoric prevalent in many conservative households, of which mine was one.

I have always believed that the best art starts from a place of personal experience, allowing

In my family any questioning of Americaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s indiscretions, particularly those concerned

with the use of military force, was tantamount to an act of sedition. Graduate school provided the space I needed to critically engage some of my tacit and unarticulated assumptions (to borrow a phrase from Cornel West), about American culture and the military-industrialentertainment complex. Allowing me to break free of the conditioning that had shackled me to a belief system not fully my own.

In the weeks following 9/11, I went to a UCLA football game in search of some sense of stability â&#x20AC;&#x201C; football was something I had loved and played as a kid. Before the opening kickoff, as they always do, spectators stood for the National Anthem. As a lone trumpet solemnly sounded in the far corner of the

stadium, a palpable feeling of unity and patriotism filled the Rose Bowl. The crowd of 95,000 spectators, normally bifurcated by college allegiance, was unified in song. Initially, I was moved by this, but by the end of the Anthem that fellow feeling was supplanted by an extreme disquietude as a deafening, militaristic roar spectacularly erupted, in the form of four F-A18 Hornets

flying overhead. In an instant, a collective public in the process of mourning, fellowship, and healing exploded into an orgy of jingoism and weapon worship. As a sports fan and former U.S. Air Force Serviceman, I had formerly viewed fly-overs as benign expressions of patriotism. To be honest, I never thought about them for a second after they occurred.

Deterritorialized America,” is a translation of that moment at UCLA when I broke away from the military-industrial psychological conditioning that shackles American society.

While there is a long history of the relationship of sport and war, American sporting events are the apotheoses of this. U.S. military power and technological supremacy in the form of fighter jet fly-overs, helicopters hovering, parachuting exhibitions, booming gun salutes, epic video tributes to the troops, even cameos from jumbo bomber planes are the norm in American sports arena. Depending on the aircraft, flights are either slow, allowing for maximum appreciation (festishization) of that particular war machine’s aesthetic qualities, or come at a high velocity—the faster, sexier fighter jets usually blowing by, flexing their proverbial muscles. The effect of all this is the aestheticization of state sponsored violence. The flames of nationalism stoked every weekend across the heartlands. Less common, but equally dramatic are the mock invasions of playing fields performed by parachuting elite commando units like the

However, that UCLA game in a newly post 9/11 world yielded an awakening in me to the power of military spectacle and direct proof of how exploitation of mob mentality can instantly mobilize a wounded people. It illustrated the extent to which we Americans had become inured by the constant encroachment of the martial upon the social body. “God Bless

U.S. Navy SEALs or Green Berets into arenas. Their uniforms and equipment are plastered with kitsch American iconography: bald eagles, American flags, dog tags. All this incites orgiastic fervor. Fly-overs and parachuting exhibitions almost always coincide with the playing of the national anthem, ensuring maximum patriotic bang for the buck. The result is a metaphorical battlefield rammed with such force and regularity into our everyday experiences and public spaces that it is unnoticeable to most. It’s just “how it is” on any given Sunday in America. By brandishing its weapons within the civic sphere the U.S. military reinforces the post 9-11 state of emergency and fear obscuring the boarder between the civilian and the martial. Deterritorialization of the American landscape refers to these moments of colonization. And these moments when seemingly neutral public spaces, like sports stadiums, become a part of the military propaganda apparatus.

I never thought about my practice within a specifically Deluzian framework; but a “micropoilitcs of desire” captures the philosophical and political intention behind my work quite succinctly. I might steal that from you. comment on and exist within. (I feel that shooting my own footage or appropriating it from mainstream sources like a Hollywood film does not have the same effect as footage taken directly from amateur sources. The familiarity of amateur footage is meant to instill viewers with a sense of comfort, allowing them to relate with what they see on the screen, increasing the likelihood that the

When I made the transition into video art, I developed a loose set of rules that I still follow: 1. All of my videos must emulate the look of viral videos. (I believe that conforming to this aesthetic rule increases the works potential impact, while demonstrating the medium’s potential for political use.) 2. All of the footage used has to be culled from the same virtual communal spaces the work was meant to

piece will resonate long after viewing, or so my theory goes). 3. All of my work is posted back on YouTube. (Doing so removes me from the marketplace, liberating me from the pressures of the pleasure economy. Who wants to buy an artwork they can see on the web for free? It is also a way to remain faithful to the open source ethos of Internet culture. By reposting my work to such a

fundamentally interactive, unstable platform, I am exposing it to the very potential I exploited to make it: appropriation. Once posted, anyone can rip my video from the web, transform it and recirculate it as a new work.) And finally, and maybe most importantly, 4. I have tried to make works that â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;show, not tellâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;. (I have tried to develop a visual language that allows for exploration, is

not didactic or proselytizing. This, of course, asks questions and invites viewers into a dialogue.) As a self-imposed proposition this can be very tricky. How does one say anything of importance without being overly forceful or didactic?

The events of September 11th turned my gaze inward toward Americaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s transgressions. For the first time, I was confronted by Americaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s position as global

This sense of exceptionalism has burrowed into the American psyche. It is manifest in generations of disastrous foreign policy that have slowly extended American military power into every corner of the globe. Presidents from Woodrow Wilson to George W. Bush have sought to reshape the world in America’s image. Underwriting that desire has been two core beliefs: the belief that American ideals are universal; and the belief that the use of military force is the primary and preferred vehicle for the exportation of said ideals. (How else can one explain the attempt to institute a Jeffersonian democracy in Iraq?). As a result, our relationship with the international community can be characterized by bullying less technologically advanced nations in order to maintain an antiquated, imperialist foreign policy. According to Chalmers Johnson, the US military maintains 761 military “sites” abroad. When one considers that there are less than 200 countries in the United Nations, the extent of US imperial overreach becomes grossly obvious. To your second question, I always have the same answer, which often surprises. I don’t think art can meaningfully contribute to sociopolitical transformation in any real way. I have a rather pessimistic view of art with respect to its ability to promote or actively generate meaningful change. I have yet to see any evidence to the contrary and, until I do, I will maintain that it can’t. I think it’s primarily a matter of audience and obscurantism on the part of many artists. Social/activist practices are such a specific subculture, locked within the ivory tower of the art world, particularly the academic/biennial art world, that, when exposed to the general public, their potency is extremely limited at best and completely impotent in most cases. The end result is often a stilted, esoteric discourse, predictably circular and insulated amongst a sympathetic cognoscente.

hegemon, yielding a desire to critically examine the misguided unleashing of American military adventurism. What I have come to realize is that America has been infected by a bombastic rhetoric of exceptionalism, beginning with John Winthrop’s City Upon A Hill speech of 1630, in which he suggests that our existence would illuminate the world.

Despite my stated cynicism, I do my best to make work that communicates with a larger audience, independent of the oft restrictive and exclusive art world. As a corrective mechanism and guided by an egalitarian impulse, I still upload every video I make

directly to video sharing sites like YouTube and Vimeo in hopes of expanding the discourse. Why the effort if I’m so convinced no good will come of it? Because it’s the only way I know how to ward off the persistent nihilism that fills me every time I make or look at something.

I’m probably a little different from most artists in this respect, but I don’t really look at much art or follow many artists. I prefer pop culture and theory. Movies, television shows and books influence me most. My practice is heavily research-based, so I end up doing a lot of reading, which inspires and feeds my work.

Currently I am working on a series of paintings that touch on similar themes of military adventurism, gaming, play, American exceptionalism, etc., as in previous work. As for what’s next, I have just embarked on a teaching career in tandem with my practice. So I’ll be busily working my way towards growing and integrating those elements together to hopefully continue making work people find interesting along the way.

No problem. I appreciate your interest and the opportunity to speak with you about my work.

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Goats is a symbiotic sculpture and performance piece. In a perishable dress constructed of recycled collard greens and corn husks, I stand amidst a group of goats

involved in a movement improvisation in a forest. The goats' behavior is affected by and dependent on the dress which is, in turn, sculpturally transformed by the goats.

? The goats I worked with are not milked which means that the only contact they have with humans is with their owner. As a result, they were quite shy when we came to film. Their languid approach and timidness tempered with the subtle power dynamic between those that approach first and those that have to wait seemed to tell a deeper story about their everyday interactions. I think this underlaying story plays a part in creating irony. The introduction of a foreign element into their surroundings results in a seemingly tactic awareness of being on film. This gives their movements a performative quality which I found quite poetic. The setting is also significant in that in fairy tales and mythology, forests are depicted as a place of liminal states, a place of transformation and a source of adventure and magic.

I find this stillness has a dynamic quality of being immobile but constantly moving, constantly changing. Although my work is multidisciplinary, this aspect of Flamenco is present in most of what I do. I began to develop an awareness of my relationship to stillness while studying flamenco in Sevilla, Spain, where I often worked as a living statue. Standing still for so long contrasted to the movement and people on the street, I was conscious of how much movement is continually happening inside and how, for example, the proximity of another body or an external sound can resonate within ones own body.

On the one hand, I see the dress I am wearing which was made with chicken wire and repurposed lettuce and collard greens as more of a sculpture than a garment. I also find the sculptural quality of Goats lies in the stillness of my pose contrasted with the goats' movement. Stillness has been an important aspect of my dance and performance work in general. I am trained as a Flamenco dancer and see it as a rather sculptural dance form in that explosive footwork is often punctuated by a long period of not moving.

The stillness of meditation has also been significant and inspiring to me. In 2007 I sat in my first Vipassana meditation retreat and subsequently sat in 3 more in the following years. Vipassana follows a strict schedule of sitting silently in meditation. During these retreats, I reflected on the stark contract between the still body and the constantly

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moving mind. Developing this awareness has had a profound influence on me.

A few years ago, my good friend and visual artist Douglas Padilla told me about his friend Stewart Turnquist who had withdrawn from the art world after 32 years as the director of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. He retired and moved to the country where he acquired a small herd of goats. Douglas planned to keep him company by visiting and painting portraits of the goats, then hang the portraits in the woods at his farm just low enough so that the goats could nibble at them. These portraits were to be a series of paintings done for nature. As Douglas told me about his project, he suggested I do something with the goats so I thought of ways in which I could interact with and involve the goats in a performance.

I feel very fortunate to have been able to study with Israel Galvan. I studied with him for two years before he became internationally well known and stopped giving regular classes. My flamenco training up until I started studying with him had been quite traditional. This was something I loved but it had always felt quite foreign to my body. Upon starting with him I had the feeling that I finally had found a style of dance I could relate to in that his style of dance is divorced from the rigidity of tradition, yet still retains the deep quality in Flamenco that is referred to as â&#x20AC;&#x153;jondoâ&#x20AC;?. He works conceptually and draws from incredibly diverse sources, which inspired me to study other types of movement such as modern dance, body weather and Klein technique.

We were interested in researching the lives of conjoined twins in relation to notions about individuality. We developed the project in a residency in Leipzig, Germany where we spent a minimum of 8 hours a day with our leg tied together and later worked in a dance studio developing a performance about our experience. The physical challenge of sharing a body part was the focus at the beginning of the project, but as we developed subtle muscular communication our movements synchronized and were able to work more deeply. We found ourselves sentiently and spatially linked and themes such as intimacy came to the foreground as our research shifted to our personal experience of being â&#x20AC;&#x153;conjoinedâ&#x20AC;?.

Thank you, that is quite a compliment. I feel inspired by diverse artists and artistic movements. I think I tend to draw from Flamenco as my main influence but the inspiration for different pieces has usually come from moving imagery, anything from scenes in films to animal movements to bullfighting poses.

I will be performing Goats live at a performance festival in Leipzig in October. Shortly after, I start a residency with Schauspielhaus Leipzig creating a multimedia piece with the Leipziger Synagogalchor which will premiere at the euroscene festival. I plan to continue work with video in that it allows a lot of freedom to do things with the body that are otherwise not possible.

We communicated well and all brought our own ideas and style to the piece while giving each other the freedom to experiment. I am very happy with the fairy tale aesthetic that Xavier Tavera created and Eric Mortensen composed music that would accompany and underscore the movement of the goat.

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Kiel Fletcher is an interactive, new media and video artist living in Portland, OR. His work has been shown at dOCUMENTA(13), Disjecta Contemporary Arts, Boulder Museum of

Contemporary Art, and is in the Yale University Library. He is a founding member of the interdisciplinary artist collective, Danger Punch.

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My style has developed throughout my time in school and out. I feel that the technical making of the work and my use of tools to create video is often influenced by a love for street art and DIY hacker culture. At the same time the content and constructed elements often point at older movements in cinematic and video art.This to me shows respect for those that have come before me and I hope to build off the conversations that they started by bringing new life into those techniques within the contemporary climate. Kind of like how Bumble Bee from Transformers uses the radio as a tool of appropriation in order to create his voice, but also carries the baggage of those samples by utilizing them.

I feel as a transplant to Portland itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s somewhat divided in a way. I feel like there is some really interesting stuff going on in the indie film scene and the video art or experimental cinema communities, but there isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t much overlap. To me it seems the communities are very autonomous but folks like Hannah Piper Burns, Ben Popp, Chris Freemen, and Stefan Ransom are doing amazing things for the DIY filmmaker community.

I am more interested in using glitch as a secondary layering technique. Not simply as an aesthetic tool but something that adds to the significance of the other material presented along with it. Often times my attempt is to seduce the viewer with the glitch imagery and leave them with a mix of confusion and want for more. I feel like its used as a transition technique or a way to convey tone in traditional cinema, whereas I am more interested in focusing on the intricacies that make up the glitch and the chaos of allowing the computer to create these miscommunications.

Danger Punch operates somewhat like the lost boys while Peter Pan is away. Every attempt at making involves a certain level of tongue-in-cheek humor and the videos I create within that project along with my colleagues tend to oversimplify highly influential creative works like 1984 or historical movements in experimental

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cinema like in our piece “Champs”. I attempt to keep the two projects (my personal work and DANGER PUNCH work) separate as much as I can because the tone is so different but there is the inevitable influence. I feel on this piece the viewer’s perspective is a study of motion and color throughout a landscape that mirrors the emotion conveyed in the chosen music. However, the DANGER PUNCH side of things is that I layered glitched abstrations of Boris Groys’ “Thinking in Loop” along with a glitched visual of Walter Benjamin’s, Art in Age of Mechanical Reproduction. I then chose to use those visuals to conceal and reveal a hyper-sexualized, seductive, landscape scenes from a Victoria’s Secret ad. The final punch being the audio track was sampled from the 1950 film ‘Visite à Picasso’ as a nod to Picasso’s celebrity as well as his style.

should give back to the viewer in some way. Even if it is purely for entertainment purposes, I feel that there is an exchange of goods by having a viewer present with a work and that it is the responsibility of the image maker to give back to the viewer.

I think this “frontier” will exist as long as circles within each group continue to push for the main goals that define the groups. The cinematic will always be drawn to the traditional theater setting where video art has the freedom to be presented wherever, whenever.

For now next projects involve a few larger undertakings for DANGER PUNCH including a new book on the way and a longer video work that will be presented as a short film. As for solo work, there are a number of diy hacks including some frame by frame animation work that I am trying to bring to the glitch process.

I am not interested if it doesn’t involve me learning something new. I always strive build DIY hacks for more technical processes and reworking older film techniques by improperly using new technologies. I also feel that every video or film work, no matter what the subject, it

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Elena Slobtseva of the human body, it moves like the body and provocatively can even be edible and pleasing to the taste. Jelly has a fleeting existence, it deteriorates easily, it can be extremely beautiful and ugly at the same time.

In my current video shorts I explore perceptions of the body, its manifestations, behaviors, desires via the anthropomorphous medium â&#x20AC;&#x201C; jelly mass. Wiggling jelly mass is wet as well as most

My experiments with jelly started in 2012 106

formless, amorphous and shining texture. The hand in the frame is awkwardly and somewhat obscenely reading the book. “Book” shows the interaction of animate and inanimate bodies – the hand and jelly. The hand functions as the mind here, bringing matter – jelly – to life. The binding of the book is a body fold, so the hand (a part of body itself) is trying to read the body. The video focuses on the touch experience, the hand movement is a spontaneous performative action, driven by curiosity. Since we do not see the head, it may remind of Braille, blind reading. It is the left hand that is acting, which is believed to be “dirty” in some cultures, it may be the dada’s or the child’s hand, which does not know right from wrong, which is maybe questioning the proper. My own self-therapy message in this video: accepting as much of the body life as possible, without being overwhelmingly vulgar, approaching the topic of sex, female and motherhood experience (it is usually the mother who deals with a child’s feces). I have a very strong childhood memory of a fishing day with my father when I caught a luce. The dead fish travelled several hours home and then, when it was cut and cleaned, its heart was still beating, without body. It continued running even when cut to pieces (pardon the child’s curiosity). It was a striking experience – seeing the organ working without the body, contemplating the will of an organ at its purest. There is movement, yet there are no visible traces of the mind which communicates movement to the body.

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with a performance “Breastfeeding” when jelly breasts were offered to the public at the exhibition opening. This dessert could be a usual thing at a night club but it became somewhat defiant and provocative in the museum context.

The characters of a jelly shape and its peculiar rhythmic movement are in the center of attention in this video short. Multiplication of layers is the expression of the nonsensical and total character of the “organ” movement.

In the , jelly mass becomes the text, the message being its wet, 107

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whether to be minimalistic and distill the very essentials of my experiments or to show something more decorative.

The material, tactile aspects of art making are very important for me. There were times when I non-systematically (the lack of formal training aided it) and intuitively messed with materials and the outcome was not always encouraging.

Our visual and life experience is confined to the surface or the skin of things, and there is always a feeling that we cannot go to the core, or to the meat, to put it this way. Thus if seeing seems to be the most superficial of the senses, there is a chance that one can feel/understand more by touching. The hand, being simultaneously a subject and an object,

I think recently, largely due to people I was happy to meet with, I have become more aware of the materials' implications and hopefully have become truer to materials. So now after some time of experiments on materials I stand back and make decisions â&#x20AC;&#x201C;

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does the Braille, blind reading, not knowing the right from wrong. If you ask me about the fundamental aspect of my art, I can only think of the performative aspect â&#x20AC;&#x201C; touching and manipulating materials, trying to peel them off and violate the surface. But these are only words.

needs a medium to be said. For example, right now I have several images that I need to express in order to get rid of them, and the materials will probably not be that important in those works.

? Usually I mess a lot with materials, play with them, taking photos or making small videos. Later I review the files with a more critical eye. Sometimes it takes months to see the message of some personal or aesthetic value in the experiments.

At present I don't feel at ease with performance when I have to be the integral part of the action. I once made a performance but the center of attention was the jelly dessert and that was fine for me. Maybe I have to see more performances to appreciate this genre.

There is another common way to make things with me â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the message is already there and it

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(Elena blushes) Jan Svankmajer is a great big artist, though if I was influenced by him, it was on a subconscious level. I think I could respond more to the art of such great female/feminist artists as Eva Hesse, Alina Szapocznikow and Hannah Wilke, to mention the few. Their strange and fresh sensibility seems very appealing to me and it would be great to express it in video.

Thank you for the interview! I feel there is a lot to explore from where I am now, so there will be more video pieces from me.

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Guardian” photographic series. “Touch Me” began as a way to further explore how people responded to touch outside of their controlled environment. The photographs truthfully translated the intimacy of the moment and the gentle

“Touch Me” Video: 2:29 “Touch Me”, Time Based Media “Touch Me” is a complementary document to “The 114

responses I encountered, further illuminating the ways in which people defend their personal space—their surprise, suspicion, candor and concern. Many are accepting while others are disturbed by the intrusive nature of the act. “Touch Me” is a triggering performance where I am as at risk as the participant feels at risk (or offended), pushing us both beyond the comfort zones usually preserved by the limitations of social interactions. I am using my body as a vehicle to transcend and explore the meanings of human interactions and reactions and documenting the results of these unusual, tense moments. I have touched 74 strangers, not including the ones who denied me entrance into their personal space. Why is this significant? Why do I feel much achievement? Issues of privacy and space occupy us more than ever, and much of the rhetoric associated with these topics focuses on the dangers and perils of physical and even virtual contact. Little is said about the fundamental need for touch, for intimacy, for the possibilities of wordless communication, even between strangers. Certainly, there are reasons for this, and unwanted touch is classified as assault in certain jurisdictions for a reason. I am not naïve, but I wonder if there is excessive fear and isolation—and if this allows us to deny the basic humanity of others, especially those who are physically different from us.

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nature of the subjects that choose to participate, but these still images could not communicate the guarded nature of the responses received when it was hostile and/or negative. “Touch me” uses compiled video to show the various 115

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acceptable and used my body as a vehicle to transcend social barriers. This has been in turn a course of self discovery wherein I have learned that my motivation to create a lasting photographâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;a virtual and timeless representationâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;is yet linked to my intimate attraction to people.

Being originally from the south helped birth the awareness to look at myself, my history and how social and cultural attitudes shift depending on one's geographic location. I wanted the work to investigate my own nature as well as what I was studying and observing in my daily life. I explored my own concepts and ideas by transgressing what is 118

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Observation, investigation, creation: This is my process as an artist, which does not arrive at definitive answers, but better questions, more curiosity and compassion. My artistic process is a way to challenge judgments and perceptions in order to create a lasting image. I find the challenge within myself, and photographically document my own transformation and transcendence. “ Touch Me” is a social experiment as well as collective response to touch outside of a controlled environment. The work points to the vulnerabilities we all share as individuals, and our desire to overcome our own differences as well.

The “experience” is a vital part of my artistic practice. I draw meaning from the fleeting subtle connections, and encounters, and spend time looking for moments to transcend my own judgements and beliefs.

I had to learn to accept No. I had to also learn that all people are not willing participants. This was the challenge and led me to create work that could capture all encounters both good and bad. The 119

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reactions and documenting the results of these unusual, tense moments.

photographs truthfully translated the intimacy of the moment and the gentle nature of the subjects that choose to participate, but the still images could not communicate the guarded nature of the responses received when it was hostile and/or negative. “Touch me” uses compiled video to show the various responses I encountered, further illuminating the ways in which people defend their personal space—their surprise, suspicion, candor and concern. Many are accepting while others are disturbed by the intrusive nature of the act. “Touch Me” is a triggering performance where I am as at risk as the participant feels at risk (or offended), pushing us both beyond the comfort zones usually preserved by the limitations of social interactions. Again, I am using my body as a vehicle to transcend and explore the meanings of human interactions and

Video, for me, is the phenomenology of movement in time that a still image cannot express. Video goes beyond the instant and gives one the opportunity to expand the storyline of the piece itself, shading it in a new light. As an artist, I explore the different dimensions of my narratives. My curiosity of for the camera, widened my horizons and gave new meaning to the world around me. Video is a tool I use to enhance the moments portrayed in my photographs.

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Thank you, and I happy to share the work with Stigmart. Currently, I am busy finishing two new bodies of work. “ On Point” , time based media, utilizes the public platform to investigate issues of labor, perceptions, and repetition. The second body of work “ IN the moment” uses photographic stills and performance to investigate social ideologies, and cultural/shared identity . Once again, I am using myself as a performer, and experiment.

Issues of privacy and space occupy us more than ever, and much of the rhetoric associated with these topics focuses on the dangers and perils of physical and even virtual contact. Little is said about the fundamental need for touch, for intimacy, for the possibilities of wordless communication, even between strangers. Certainly, there are reasons for this, and unwanted touch is classified as assault in certain jurisdictions for a reason. I am not naive, but I wonder if there is excessive fear and isolation—and if this allows us to deny the basic humanity of others, especially those who are physically different from us.

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Tabita Rezaire politics and geographies, seeking to deconstruct cultural archetypes and normalising social structures. Through an understanding of the screen as a site for social and political engagement, her works often address non-

Using filmmaking to socially engage, Tabita Rezaire explores the relationship between body

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This method highlights the dynamics between the camera and a given place and its community. Both uninvited intruder and postcolonial-techno warrior, her work and its mode of production rely on the spontaneous encounter; placing emphasis on the performative, productive nature of confrontation. By engaging in a critical, playful resistance - filmmaker as agitator -the camera acts as a trigger for social interactions in the urban environment. Nurturing a philosophy of displacement, her place as an artist/camera(wo)man/outsider/tourist is acknowledged within the work, confronting the audience to their own layered spectatorship. The images often enter a process of alienation where the text, sound and footage are in conflict creating a visual discord. Her anti-narrative, pop choreographic approach aims to challenge dominant documentary discourses. Video becomes a medium for active social resistance, a space where politics, social sciences and art history combine to question the role of ethics in artistic practice. Directly confronting the power of the image and its historical precedence - who controls images controls history - her works aim to provide alternative narratives that challenge occidental hegemony.

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hetero normative sexuality, gender issues or postcolonial identity within the fringes of society, emphasizing urban marginality. Tabita engages with her subjects through cinemythogeographic expeditions.

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certified @MALAXA - the duo I am in with the artist Alicia Mersy. We developed this method after we got into mythogeography, an alternative way of walking, thinking and visiting a place. Political tourism. Walking becomes a means to explore the geopolitical dynamics of a place, transforming the simple act of walking into a conscious and proactive experience. You add filming to this and you have cinemythogeography. The camera acts a trigger for interactions with the communities involved in the environments we go through. By doing so, youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re confronted to ethics as an uninvited intruder, simultaneously outsider, tourist, agitator, and voyeur. Being a woman behind the camera also affects the kind of relationships created with the encounters. This tricky position

Cinemythogeographic expeditions are about choosing an (un)known destination, getting lost, talking to stranger, seeking surprises, provoking interactions, confronting encounters and filming the reactions created by this setting. Method

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is acknowledged and performed within the works produced and do definitely challenge the traditional passivity of the cameramen. Here the camera is intrusive, provokes, confronts and creates a stage, while at the same time protects like a shield. To live through the camera, for the camera, thanks to the camera.

dynamics, exploring how people engage with each other and their cultural environments through their social constructs. Even more so fascinating/worrying is to see how the media portrays different social groups and the consequences it has on our collective thinking. 1 billion $ issue r-e-p-r-e-n-s-e-n-t-a-t-i-o-n AKA s-t-i-g-m-a-t-i-z-a-t-i-o-n!

What it is… genuine interest in people… people not like me.

When digging into marginal social and cultural phenomena especially with a camera, you have to be careful, it’s slippery. The risk is to fall in the portrayal of the exotic, to glamorise otherness. An image creates thought. It’s power. It’s dangerous.

Jean Rouch is my man! I respect his work and admire his protocols and methods. Cinéma Verité and Direct Cinema have influenced my practice a lot. I like it raw. The drive is definitely anthropological; I’m fascinated by group

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about a film - mise en abyme conceptual wanking. In my work it is that the process of the making of the film is the film, there is no writing, no acting… A situation and a camera trying to record it, it’s intuitive, the one take has to be the one. So often my work is me trying to make a film out of a furtive encounter or filming a building relationship. Constant stage of inprocess-ness. The films get written by the subjects as they speak. What is really funny is when people are like why are you filming this? Or that’s not a real film!

Not really. Everyone digs in his own thing. But personally it’s all about living things through. My works most of the time rely on encounters, on a situation that is lived in front of the camera, so it becomes about the experience. I have to engage and feel concerned personally about a subject to make work. I remember once I was arguing with someone in Mozambique and the guy clashed me by saying ‘for you occidentals it’s just about having new experiences!’ It’s still on my mind…

Wikipedia - ‘metacinema is a style of filmmaking in which the film is presented as a story about its own production.’ It’s something I’ve always liked in films, like those of Abbas Kiarostami, although it’s the usual author film subject: a film

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Black women and their hair is a serious issue that may seem superficial, yet underlies heavy and complex socio-historical constructions. It’s not just about hair, but race, power relation, identity construction, mainstream canon of beauty and black representation in media, going back to slavery when someone with straighter hair had usually better living condition.

I travelled to Mozambique last year, and during a bus ride in Maputo, a woman sitting next to me begged me to sell her my hair. She went on about my hair and all of the sudden all the bus got involved in the conversation, some arguing against the woman that I should never cut my hair, other reaching out to touch my head, or blaming the woman for not accepting her natural hair. It got very intense in there. Few weeks later I got braids in Johannesburg and the same debate happened, women in the salon screaming at me: ‘Why are you getting braids’, ‘You are crazy!’ and so on.

I started cruising on YouTube for videos about girls talking and complaining about their hair and found a myriad of them, so I made up mine. COMB THROUGH is a video about all of this.

Macbook dictionary - miscellaneous: of various types or from different sources, from Latin ‘mixed’. I’m mixed, my background is, my

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interests, so I guess my work reflects this. Though the content of my videos is not as wavy, rather always evolves around questions of social resistance, identity construction, or urban marginalisation.

Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m indeed experimenting with the forms, drifting from a documentarian approach. I am more and more influenced by technology as I engage with it constantly, and being involved with the Internet culture has contaminated my works recently, thinking of online format of

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shifting, drifting over time. I think I just spend too much time on the Internet. Just cruising the wild wild web. Google image I love you.

My works often reflect on my position as a filmmaker, questioning the ethics of the practice itself, so my videos can be seen as self-reflective. I struggle to have any distance with my footage. Art is funny, sometimes you feel like it’s the response to the world crumbling and at times you think that it’s a disgusting joke. But Art is definitely a platform for expression, whether only for artist, hopefully not. Art suffers from artists’ self involvedness: art that talks about art, artists talking to other artists, galleries exhibiting the same people over and over, it feels sometimes like a small elitist circle and it sucks. We need to burst that bubble uh oh! I believe or I want to believe that art can have a social impact, that someone’s engagement can have an influence. Art is definitely a medium that can carry social and political engagement, because there is an audience. What makes you angry or what you want to see changed needs to be addressed, discussed and spread. It’s worth trying. I see my filmmaking as a social gesture. From screen to screens it might reach you.

dissemination, interactive ways of display, digital imaging, which usually doesn’t pair up with documentary. I am trying to juggle between the raw aesthetic of my footage and the artifice of the platform supporting them, even in term of editing. This balance is

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Going south! I am moving to Johannesburg next month. HEAT, SWEAT, DANCE and LOVE is what’s next on my list! That among some cool stuff: the release of my online exhibition URBAN SAFARI www.urbansafari.tv, a workshop with A Maze Festival in Johannesburg, the launch of a digital magazine, a new film release with Malaxa www.malaxa.net and the next edition of 35A Moving Image Festival to curate www.35acollective.com …