"Everything is connected"
V.I. Lenin
http://www.somedancersandmusicians.com/Some_QuickTime_Movies/index.html
Artist Statements
I mistrust the convention of the artist statement. It seems to me
the artist is often the least equipped to tell us what her work
is about even when this doesn't lead to either banal or totally
outrageous claims.
Nevertheless, I'm always happy to answer questions about the movies.
It's somehow easier to respond than to make claims, and the responses,
for me, are technical -- how I made the things; background (where,
when, who) -- or biographical, especially given the diaristic quality
of the whole sequence. There aren't special, hidden, intentions,
which I can choose to speak about or not, behind the pieces. Your
guess is as good as mine.
Cherry Blossom
Are poems written on such themes as 'Going to view the cherry blossoms
only to find they had scattered' or 'On being prevented from visiting
the blossoms' inferior to those on 'Seeing the blossoms'? People
commonly regret that the cherry blossoms scatter or that the moon
sinks in the sky and this is natural; but only an exceptionally
insensitive person would say, 'This branch and that branch have
lost their blossoms. There is nothing worth seeing now.'
Kenko, "Essays in Idleness," translated by Donald Keene.
cherry
blossom loop
early
spring
Childhood
I had a fantastic childhood, enveloped both by unconditional love
and a rigorous and sometimes joyless Puritanism -- the confluence
of the Methodism of the industrial North of England and the Cold
War -- at a time that now seems like an episode from the history
of an alien planet. A childhood, too, dominated by the experience
of being the son of a refugee and of his tales of how to shake off
wolves in the woods, of skating down the Pripyat river, of living
for six months in a hole in the ground and rescuing people from
burning tanks. This made the world outside the suburb of Sheffield
where I grew up seem, by turns, infinitely dangerous and infinitely
inviting.
Of course it was both.
|
|
the
heart and what it does
pages from 'the
childrens encyclopedia'
things past
the scottish war
the scottish peace
|
|
Collaboration
One of the things that excite me about the digital is that it makes
possible a new sort of collaboration with both other artists and
with non-professionals. Digitization makes the simple juxtaposition
of different kinds of work straightforward, or enables a kind of
framing process that, done sympatheticall,y enriches the work of
both parties.
I've used this
a lot in the arts education work I do and it gets applied here in
the five collabs with my daughter Anna.
the
scottish war
the
scottish peace
dream
poem
poem
(version)
orpheus
Compression
The movies sometimes get shown offline. This is problematic as I
spend so much time getting them as small as possible for delivery
on the Net but occasionally inadvertently overwrite the original
high quality files or make substantive changes after compressing.
The Net is what they're for; it's where, to me, they feel right.
If I get a chance to show them offline I often pretty much completely
remake them from the original raw footage.
I used to hate that, but now it tickles me that there are these
subtly different versions of things with the same title out there.
The Domestic
Of course travel is lovely and broadens the mind and often makes
for interesting art (if one avoids the postcard trap) but the domestic,
the backyard, the ordinary -- this seems a real test to me. I really
do believe everything is connected -- the general is in some sense
encoded, or at least clued, in every particular.
my
secret garden
a self portrait
in my father's house
shed
day and night in the garden
time machine
a tiny opera for anna
man with a
pot of white chrysanthemums
fruit machine
Drawing
Like singing, drawing was one of those things that the English education
system in the early 60s pretty much assumed one could or couldn't
do.
I was always a "couldn't do." I'd still feel embarrassed
in the extreme to present drawings I did simply as drawings, but
making them part of a movie, of a process (applied drawing) somehow
legitimizes them, at least for me. Making them involves intense
pleasure and intense frustration in equal measure.
pentimenti
karina
kingfisher
Epiphany
I would like to think there are moments of epiphany in at least
some of these pieces.
Flowers and nature in general
My parents loved flowers -- they didn't greatly care for art, but
they loved flowers, they loved nature.
Their implicit aesthetic was very 19th century, very Romantic, and
I imbibed it young and wholesale.
On a Saturday afternoon we'd walk the countryside at the edge of
the Peak District, and ever so often we'd stop and someone would
say, "Look at that, isn't it beautiful" -- a stream, a
tree in blossom, a fungus, the sky, a frog, a bird. Or we'd stand
and look at the A57 Road in the valley and marvel that the cars
all looked like toys. Or we'd say that the rain and mist were very
beautiful in their own way, too.
|
spring
flowers of the peloponnese
cyclamen
a
walk to pins del bisbe
after
ovid
cherry
blossom loop
early
spring
budapest
|
|
Found
objects and appropriation
It struck me recently that although I've been quite curmudgeonly
about the innovations and methodology of a number of 20th Century
artists in the line of descent from Duchamp etc., much of what I
do would have been unthinkable without them. Sherman and Nauman
for the performative, Warhol for repetition, just about everyone
for the found object. It's just that what I do is a kind of conservative,
domesticated, applied distillation, where one ceases even to be
conscious of things that once represented innovation and simply
reads as natural the extended language made possible by these pioneers.
teach
yourself russian
teach_yourself_russian.mov
karina
found
poem
art
a
found dance
from
a greek hotel room
pages
from 'the childrens encyclopedia'
the
scottish war
the
scottish peace
The
Frame
It seems to me that the detailed frame-by-frame control that the
computer allows over present-day video makes this practice more
akin to the experimental film tradition than to the kind of art
video that preceded digital film. Once more, the frame becomes a
natural basic unit. So one could say that it's easier to feel Brakhage
as a direct influence than, say, Acconci. Although what's actually
happening is maybe a kind of dialectical synthesis -- the technology
allowing more inclusivity of influence and practice.
|
through
the looking glass
portrait
of the artist in his studio (2003)
metamorphosis
budapest
jo,dancing
transfiguration
portrait
of the artist in his studio (2005)
|
|
Loop
One of the most wonderful things about Quick Time is the ability
to set it to 'loop' or 'loop back and forth' -- instant installation!
portrait
of the artist in his studio (2003)
cherry
blossom loop
early
spring
transfiguration
portrait
of the artist in his studio (2005)
song
Mobile phones
I resisted buying a mobile for a long time, then I got one with
a camera and snapped away.
I relish the lo-fi-ness of it (although that's going now as the
machines "improve").
Although I do usually carry a camera around, the mobile definitely
made for a looser, more spontaneous way of taking images for a while,
and the gloriously tacky onboard image editor shaped one piece in
its entirety.
transfiguration
found
poem
train
entering liverpool street station
the
red shoes
Music
I write all the music for the pieces. Occasionally, I play and /
or sing it; more often it's typed into Sibelius and then sent to
a software sampler.
It's an interesting challenge, writing miniatures for miniatures.
I almost never (spot the exception) match note to action -- it's
more a case of creating a piece of music that has the same length
as the movie, with an internal logic that is musical, then slamming
them together and watching what happens.
|
from
the prelinger archive
walk
from london bridge to liverpool street 22nd october 2003
kingfisher
song
early
spring
teach
yourself russian
karina
smile
|
|
Naivety
I think I'm something of a naïf although I'm not really clear
whether this is something one can actually know about oneself. Thinking
about what it is that I do I conclude that my aesthetic was pretty
much complete in my teenage years and it's this:
There are things about the world that move me in one way or the
other -- I want to make work that will somehow, almost telepathically,
communicate some of that feeling and its context to a spectator
/ listener / whatever.
I know -- it's
neither big nor clever.
Performance
Some of the work is me performing. But there's a more substantial
performance thread -- my daughter recites poems or tells a story,
my friend and collaborator Joanne Thomson dances, walks, and smiles
here and there, a bunch of Hungarian musicians descend from the
sky.
Some of the young people I work with on theater projects appear
-- in fact it's not so much the performance but the fact -- and
the circumstances and effects -- of performing that interest me.
The expressions of intense concentration on the faces of the young
people in the dioscuri move me deeply.
the
dioscuri
dream
smile
walk
myth
poem
(version)
jump
the
neon pizza man VS. Busby Berkeley
and
then the devil appeared
to the poor shoemaker
Repetition
I try not to repeat myself, at least outside the pieces that employ
repetition as a structural principle.
Self-portraiture
I do this more and more. Not just in this work, but in everything
I do. And as I feel myself age, the compulsion to do it becomes
stronger. I worry that it represents vanity or egomania but I do
work hard to be honest and observant.
portrait
of the artist in his studio (2005)
a
self portrait with my father lukasz szpakowski
the
firebird
the
watcher
a
self portrait in my father's house
after
ovid
return
to my native city
Sheffield
City of my birth and upbringing. It haunts my dreams when I'm away
and fills me with amazement and melancholy when I'm there.
return
to my native city
shalesmoor
on
campo lane
time
machine
shed
|
Software
Photoshop, Debabelizer, Director, Premiere, Sibelius, Kontakt, Sound
Forge, and, of course, the wonderful Quick Time Pro.
|
|
Some
Quick Time Movies
I started making these in mid-2003 and since then have made nearly
70. I think the sequence will go on as long as I do.
Song
I never thought I could sing when I was a kid; then, for much of
my life as a musician, I had to -- to illustrate a point here; to
show someone how to interpret a passage, there. I'm never going
to have a great voice but it does; and I like the making-myself-vulnerable
that comes with singing in these pieces -- again, I can't imagine
having decided to do this without Nauman or Sherman.
a
tiny opera for anna
song
This
Is Just To Say
orpheus
fragment
Time
Travel
You can do it of course, and travel sideways, too, through the things
that could have been and never were.
time
machine
myth
return
to my native city
pages
from 'the childrens encyclopedia'
dream
a
self portrait in my father's house
Trains
I love trains.
train
entering liverpool street station
triptych
walk
from london bridge to liverpool street 22nd october 2003
Unity
One more reason for the decision to present the movies principally
on the Net is that, to me, they seem to form, quite naturally, a
unity there; but a unity in which the thematic and technical links
between them can be explored subtly and gently -- offline pretty
much necessitates an ordering, which highlights this or that theme
and its development or otherwise. The current listing on the index
page is broadly by date of making -- this underlines the diaristic
qualities of the collection. Each new addition, it seems to me at
least, minutely alters the overall feel of the whole. New connections
between pieces arise, old ones shift a little.
My thanks to
Martha Deed, Rosemary Drescher, Millie Niss, Edward Picot and Robert
Roth for their helpful comments and suggestions. |
|
