"Eraserhead"

Last night i watched the film "Eraserhead" By David Lynch. This was his first full length feature film, released in 1977 while doing his masters degree at AFI Conservatory.

Revolving around the central character of Henry it follows him as he discovers that his girlfriend has fallen pregnant and the events that occur after, what these events are though depends your own personal opinion, its possible he is going mad but on the other hand it could just be about masturbation (real theories, not mine), Lynch himself, in an interview said "he says no one has interpreted the film the way i do" but i do not think that trying to see it from the same perspective as lynch is the point of the film.

Of particular interest to me was looking how he was influenced by surrealist and Dada (to a lesser extent) film, films such as "L'Age D'Or" and "Un Chien Andalou."

Eraser Head is definitely one of the strangest films you will see and i recommend you watch it if your given the opportunity. 

Video by Oliver Laric

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Frieze Art Fair

Frieze Art Fair 2009

Frieze was for me a very strange experience, having never been to an art fair of this scale a did not realise how the show would be set up, that is with less thought put into how the art viewed and more into how it can be sold. Frieze is set up in a nearly purely financial sense, when walking around you can not help but feel that the galleries have different priority's.

That said, the was an incredibly broad range of on the whole, high quality work, ranging from painting to sculpture, interestingly there was almost no video work, obviously not quite as sell-able as physical objects.

On the whole the show was a worthwhile event to visit, it's good to see how the is a very real market for fine art and seeing the amount of galleries and work getting interest on the other hand it was also slightly disheartening to see that the majority of the work being bought was being bought buy rich people to show off being rich, saying that though, i wouldn't complain if it was my art being bought.

Film and Video

Yesterday i began a course of lectures that will last over 8 afternoon sessions, within this we will be looking at a wide range of video from film to digital and looking at what makes a video "art."


In the first session we looked at "Abstract and Found Cinema."
Starting with Melies.

These early video's (the above one being from 1938) were some of the first to feature special effects as Méliès discovered the ability to super-impose, reverse the film etc...

 

The above video "Le voyage dans la lune" by Méliès demonstrates the level of vision that he had as a film maker so early in the history of this new art form. To make a film of such grand scale with such limited equipment is incredibly impressive and the fact that the film is still very watchable today is further evidence of Méliès skill.

From Méliès we jump to Johan Grimonprez and his film "Dial H.I.S.T.O.R.Y" Winner of the Documenter award in 1997 this is amongst the most interesting films i have ever seen, the film is an amazing and intense selection of clips around the subject of Hijacking and terrorism and documents the rise of the terrorists status in modern culture. The video is juxtaposed with jaunty music which adds to the feel of menace of the film and clips from Guy Debord's essay "La Societe du spetacle" and Don de Lilo's novel "Mao II".



From that we moved onto the work of Stan Brakhage, Brakhage is seen

as one of the key figures in the world of experimental film making

and produced a large body of work over his life time with his influence

spreading into all areas of film.

 

His work is almost always viewed without sound, the sound of the projector playing the film being all the accompaniment the film needs. Interestingly, one of the aspects that Brakhage features in his films is making the audience aware that they are watching a film rather than trying to immerse the viewer in the film and make them forget they are watching a video, you can see a clear example of this in "Mothlight" 1963 (above).

The final film maker we watched was Austrian artist Martin Arnold who takes films/ T.V programs and re-edits them in order to reveal hidden sub-plots and meanings, he does this by slowing down, repeating and adjusting the footage as you can see in this short clip from "Alone. Life wastes Andy Hardy"

Itchy Scratchy

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Itchy Scratchy
An Exhibition of Photographs initated by Jason Evans

Charlotte Cotton, Head of Photographs at Los Angeles County Museum of Art, refers to career changing photographs as “The ones that interest and trouble you because there is something you don’t fully understand about them.” A quote that the Permanent Gallery has chosen to use on its show manifesto and one that could well describe the images provided by the wide selection of photographers whose work is on display. Interestingly it is how Jason Evans has decided to curate the show that brings the pictures together, saving the show from being a selection of less than brilliant pictures and images into a relevant collection. Unfortunately due to the nature of the show, many of the photographs being young graduates or just friends we can not really be sure to what level the principle behind this show has been followed, that said the photographs themselves are, in general interesting and different and not in keeping with the usual kind of images you can so often see at these kind of shows.

The photographers were selected on a friend of a friend basis with Jason Evans starting the chain. Images come from around the world and from a selection of photographs, most noticeably with a photograph by Tod Papageorge.  The presentation of the photographs; print outs from a home printer stuck straight onto the wall was not ideal but related well to the idea of the pictures coming from far and wide, therefore having to be emailed in order to reach the gallery. In all it is small quirks like how the photographers were selected and the raffling off of the images that held together the images resulting in an entertaining if not particularly memorable show.

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