I recently watched a video showing the early works of Jan Švankmajer, aka the god father of surrealist animations and features, and gained a lot of insight into the diversity which can be achieved through time based image making. His trademarks of absurd sounds often eating, bringing food to life along with a whole other host of inanimate objects, and perspective through the eyes of a child are combined with aggressive and unsettling scenes or plots. Yet I was surprised that in result of this the films became almost comical whether from their sheer madness or Švankmajer's flippant approach to the disturbing nature of the film. My personal favourite had to be the living fence.
Monday, 31 January 2011
Nicolas Provost
Nicolas Provost's first solo exhibition is currently being help at the Haunch of Venison, London. The film maker's short films play with multiple aspect of the medium, challenging sound, transitions, time, narrative and form, merging visual art with cinematography. In 'Stardust' fact is entwined with fiction, documentary art with hollywood movies; by a simple pairing with intense, emotive soundtrack and a clever arrangement of clips (filmed with a hidden camera), the film echoes a Hollywood film. In 'Long Live the New Flesh' Provost turns again to the mass media combining clips from popular horror movies in an fresh experimental technique, where each image morphs into another through pixelation and break down of images at climactic points so the end result is a new, 'whole' film.
Diana Thater
Until the 5th of March Hauser & Wirth's Piccadilly gallery plays host to Diana Thater's video instillation entitled 'Chernobyl'. The piece continues to convey Thater's fascination with the relationship between culture and nature, depicting the post-nuclear 'Zone of Alienation' in Chernobyl. The oxymoronic landscape hosts both decaying manufactured structures and the thriving rare and endangered Przewalki's Horse; illustrating an area where man-made has perished, and the organic has flourished. Thater's instillation overlaps the two footages by use of projectors, submersing the audience into a somewhat contrasting world to what they are familiar, pushing the question to how something beautiful can come of a man-made catastrophe.
Wednesday, 26 January 2011
DOCUMENTARY
A documentary is a non fictional 'slice of life', based on facts and evidence it is an attempt to capture 'the truth'. Reportage it is not, however. Although a documentary is a depiction of reality, it can only be reality as seen through the eyes of the artist, and therefore can never be objective, and is almost exclusively subjective. Documentary is lead by an individuals opinion and so can transform a subject that may seem banal into a topic filled with interest and depth. It is an attempt to 'humanise' humanity just a little bit more.
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