The’ll be screening Polyethylene Bag here Tuesday night. Come say hi.
We’re back at Anthology Film Archive with another great line up of films! Fresh off the boat from screenings in London, Paris, and Brussels, we’ll start the evening with a selection of films from our 2009 program, including the work of Fritz Donnelly.
We’ll then move straight into the World Premiere of Buttons Vol 2, a full-length disposable film by New York’s own Red Bucket Films!
Program Starts at 8pm.
Tickets are $10, only at the door.
Anthology is located at 32 2nd Avenue, between 1st and 2nd St (closest stop is the F,V)
A storm system roared across Manhattan and left a strange Pernod colored sky in its wake. I ran home to try and catch the sunset. It was one of those sort of Spielberg skies where you think maybe the saucers will emerge and land on Flatbush Ave.
I just found out that my little film Polyethylene Bag is going to be shown at the Pocket Film Festival in Paris at the newly renovatedForum Des Images. I’m thinking I should go! I had to transcribe the dialogue so they could make a subtitled translation. It was interesting for me to see the words written down… as I usually improvise them off the top of my head. This way I can see the structure of my own stream of conciousness. Here is the text:
I had a really strange experience the other night.
I happened to have my camera with me, so there is something of a record.
Although, this isn’t the record of the other night, this is the record of the day after,
But I’m making no sense.
I was coming back from the bar.
I’d been out at the new Galapagos Space in Dumbo
And I was a little beery and a little weary
And then the F train turned miraculously into like the C train and swung off into the middle of nowhere Brooklyn and it took me an hour and half to get home,
But that’s not the strange part, here’s the strange part:
I came upon a guy who maybe he was homeless I couldn’t really tell,
But it had been threatening to rain all night
And somehow he’d managed to pass out inside a plastic bag.
To keep himself dry I suppose,
But aaaah it seemed tremendously unsafe
And a kind of infantile way to die and sort of sad.
So in a small act of human charity,
I cut a couple of air holes into the bag
Just so, you know, he wouldn’t die on the way home,
Or if he was homeless,
Just so he wouldn’t die on the way.
My friend brought me a souvenir of Japan. I said, oh look Kate you’ve brought me back infinity. Nice trick. But Japanese money sure is pretty and it looks like steel wheels and they have a Pocket Festival Japan too… Hmmmmm.
Polyethylene Bag in Disposable Film Festival on Vimeo is in the running for Audience Choice Award. This is mostly an attempt by the festival to drive eyes to their channel to watch the program, but Hey all you have to do is press the heart like button in the upper right corner of the vid and that counts as a vote for me. I could win a bleedin’ cell phone, or a remote controlled dinosaur. I’m actually more interested in the offspring of these two devices… a sort of remote controlled video cell phone dinosaur, but that’s maybe next year’s prize? Just press the DFF logo and it will take you to their channel. Vote Poly Ethylene Bag and vote often.
I think I’ve finished this (maybe the first?) version of the Kubrick Lolita poster for Jauques’ SUpEr Trash Show. There could be others or even other movies, but strangely this fucked up raw thing actually took over a month to get finished. The head is painted in one of the Little Prince covers.
Orson Whales swam up to Canada for a show at Oakville Galleries. They are projecting the video and have all the original drawings stacked in a glass vitrine like some sort of unholy relic. Last week The Whale was also featured by Flavorpill’s Daily Dose. Like the Leviathan that inspired it, this viral video refuses to die. Here’s the Video in case you’ve missed it:
In a rapidly growing world of new technology and electronically disseminated ideas, books have become endangered entities. They are old-fashioned forms in a society that feeds on convenience, archival impulses and a constant desire for instant gratification; in which information travels fast, and at the single click of a button. In this exhibition, artists create tangible forms that demonstrate the book’s practical use: to be consumed, absorbed, and eagerly explored by inquiring minds and willing hands. Books become snapshots of a specific time and place, not only in the stories they tell, but through their very bindings and typefaces, even by the distinct telltale aroma that only the most time-worn novels can possess. Here, bound pages are transformed into sculptural objects of curiosity, valued not only for their content, but for the many aesthetic possibilities of reconfigured paper and ink.
Novel Ideas explores the reincarnation of found objects and literary detritus in a collection of bookworks by eight international artists. The featured artists seemingly resist suggestions of rapid technological progression with their more rudimentary approaches to art: acts of slashing, cutting, dissecting and extraction are reductive processes that reveal the presence of newly-appropriated meaning through the very voids they create. Thus, with marks borne from blades rather than brushes, these books become more than just vessels for information and narrative fancy—they begin to exist as physical testaments to their own novel forms and ideas, questioning the way we traditionally consume the written word.
This form of consumption mirrored in each act of physical extraction made upon aging covers and delicate pages demonstrates the ease with which ideas can be manipulated to create alternate modes of visual and intellectual instruction. Classic stories and didactic texts are transformed by acts of selective cutting that leave surprising and new visual narratives. Some texts are gutted and dissected, actively questioning the limitations of scholarly authority, while other artists play directly on the novel itself as a statement piece, with works that are sculpted to reflect their titular properties. Video pieces, on the other hand, present a simultaneous contrast and union of traditional and new media.
These artistic processes recall functions of editing, erasure and censoring, all vital elements in the act of literary creation. But perhaps more importantly, they reflect a constant human need to question, appropriate, challenge and interpret. In Novel Ideas, words are consumed and ideas are released from the bounds of their covers, wholly concrete, and forming new entities unto themselves. Here, books become curious objects of beauty to behold, and a celebration of everything that exemplifies the archaic charm of ink on paper, and of pages turned and cherished.
A few ideas for an e-vite for a screening and talk I’ll be doing for the Frost Bite show at 17 Frost Street on Sunday, Feb. 22, 3:00 pm. Not sure which one I’m going to run with, or I may switch it up. Opinions appreciated. Thanx.
Finally saw A Cock and Bull Story last night. I drew these pictures during it. I found it to be one of the more clever films I’ve seen in while. Leave it to the British to be literate and funny. I also dreamed I could fly last night. It’s been a while and it was good to dust off my wings.
