Ann Arbor

Here are a few things I learned on my trip to the 47th Annual Ann Arbor Film Festival. If you're ever in Ann Arbor you might want to remember these handy tidbits:

-Balconies are better.
-Women with dice for bracelets can be mean.
-Free drinks are better than balconies.
-Don Hertzfeldt is a dick.
-When up north in "springtime", bring socks.
-Drinks from a backpack on a balcony are the best.
-Hot dog stands sell lobster bisque.
-Mark Hosler is not a dick.
-If your projector breaks mid-Festival, rent a new one.
-Don't eat the lobster bisque.


Here's the real review:

This past week a group of us set out to take part in the Ann Arbor Film Festival, an aptly titled fest that focuses on experimental works from around the world. Highlights of the festival in order of appearance:

-Western Spaghetti by PES
-Clear Glasses by Sam Green
-P.R. by Bryan Leister
-Adventures In Illegal Art presentation by Mark Hosler
-Operated By Invisible Hands by Nicole Brending
-Steeling Magnolias by Juan Carlos Saizarbioria & Patrick Hasson
-The Bond by Michael T. Connell
-La Battue by Guy Edion
-I Live In The Woods by Max Winston
-Permutation by Viktoriya Gruzdyn & Katerina Friday
-Love Child by Daniel Wirtberg
-My Happy End by Milen Vitanov
-Automorphosis by Harrod Blank
-Marilyn Times Five by Bruce Conner with Arline Hunter
-RiP: A Remix Manifesto by Brett Gaylor
-O'er the Land by Deborah Stratman

If you get a chance to see any of these I highly recommend you seize the opportunity, you won't regret it. Overall it was an insane week full of great films, technical difficulties, parties, yelling in the theater, and parties. One thing that bothered me all week long was the unbelievably bad programming. Placing things in order by color and shape works with geometric, colored blocks meant for children, but it shouldn't be applied to organizing works of art for public viewing. By putting films that were stylistically similar in the same program, the festival directors ensured that audience members could not give the necessary respect and attention to each piece. This was especially true in screenings dedicated to the abstract or meditative. Griping aside, I had an amazing trip. The "student summit" gave us a chance to see what is going on in some more film based programs and it also reiterated the huge lack of real arts funding we have here at UTSA. GO RUNNERS! So, go to Ann Arbor next year if you have to chance, and don't go to UTSA if you have the chance.

Luminaria

Taking Over

The Birthday Party brought to you by Kat Skrilla!

Fish Heads

Project #2

In conjunction with the Delumination's second installment, I will be offering handmade goods to people for no cost. VHS tape mash-ups with limited edition covers, buttons, stickers, posters, drawings etc. Some of these items will be made by me and others.

Bearded Child

Billed as a program full of "films other festivals wouldn't touch with a ten foot poll", the Best of the Bearded Child Film Festival as presented by Dan Anderson was a delightful evening of non-traditional films. Upon arriving I was handed a hot pink program listing, I took a seat and read over the titles. Immediately one name spoke to me and said, "I AM GOING TO BE AWESOME!" A film that combined an existential French playwright and a public television talk show host, "Charlie Rose by Samuel Beckett" was without a doubt the best of handful of shorts shown Friday night. There were actually only two that received less than stellar marks in my brain and even those were enjoyable.

DIY and the Avant Garde

The panel discussion held at the UTSA downtown campus last Thursday featured four "self-starting" artists/musicians that have developed their own methods for navagating the oft-times frustrating culutral machine. Some starting a record label as a means to produce and distribute their own music, others running an alternative arts space as a appendage of their own work. Each of the panel members had something unique to contribute. Although the subjects of DIY and the Avant Garde where not exactly featured, hearing about their motivations for doing what they've done was extremely interesting. For the most part people who do these types of things do them because they want to, not because of some supernatural confidence or motivation.

Dirt

A man hangs above a pit of spikes that he presumably dug himself. Will he fall to his death? Is he even in danger? Why did he do it?

Self Portraits

Kate Gilmore With Open Arms, 2005 (video still)

The idea of self or the absence there of, is referenced in any work of art. Whether it is directly commented upon or not, the selves of the viewer, the artist, and the subject are always present. Kate Gilmore's work is no different. While not explicitly self- portraiture, nearly all her videos feature her physical self and some facsimile of her emotional self. While it can not be said that the character in the videos isn't her, it is also true that the person being spattered with tomatoes in the photo above is most definitely Kate Gilmore. She uses this contradiction as a way to talk about our other self, the universal human self. Her ideas are emotional ones that speak to the center of human experience and seek to find a connective thread between all types.

Project #1

4 channel loop.

A man appears to be hanging over a set of punji sticks or some kind of booby trap spikes, alla Hollywood action flicks. At times the man appears to be staging the dangerous feat, relaxing his grip, scratching his face, and at others he displays a genuine fear of falling to his demise.

Blume

PEEP THE FUTURIST NOISE MAKERS!

LOOK OUT!

A series of perilous events.

All Ladies Video Review

UTSA Satellite Space
1/1/09-1/25/09


Joey Fauerso's Ian [Be Still] 2008 and Karen Mahaffy's Untitled [Look Up] 2008 have more similarities than just parenthetical subtitles, both works focus on our placement in a beautiful world and the contemplative nature of humanity. In Ian, Fauerso uses found drawings of doves, tree branches, flowers as an animated back drop for a stagnant portrait. In some cases the cliche, posterish drawings seem to emanate from the photo realist painting of a shirtless boy. Fauerso suggests that by remaining still "Ian" is serving as a conduit for the ever changing world around him. The boy serves as a symbol of humanness and Fauerso wants us to follow his lead by being still.

Not unlike Ian, Mahaffy's work hopes to redirect our attention towards the oft forgotten spaces surrounding. [Look Up] draws our focus to the circle created by the armature of a parking garage entrance ramp. Projected on the wall, the shot takes on the quality of a port hole, the sky, clouds, and birds sliding past. By taking the vertical perspective and turning it horizontal, Mahaffy forces the viewer to recognize the powerful combination of two commonalities, the sky and the framing of the parking garage. Both Fauerso's and Mahaffy's works seem to encourage simple, slow observation of the world and the discovery of the sublime. Be still and look up.

Biography

Born Magnus ver Magnusson, the man you now know as Utah Snyder was destined to dominate all others in feats of strength. His years of intense training began when he was only a boy, at the ripe age of 3 Magnus began dead lifting with his father Sven. The miniature Swedish strong man soon became the talk of Ostersund. After years of training and several World's Strongest Man titles, Magnus left the International Meathead Alliance amidst scandal. Accusations of rampant steroid use and fraudulent travel papers forced ver Magnusson into exile in an isolated Northern Swedish province near the Lulealven river. It was there that Magnus discovered video art. Over the next year an amazing transformation took place leading Magnus to change his name and move to Texas. Thus the story of the man before you has unfolded, from strong man to artist, quite possibly the greatest testament to the power of the American dream.

Been Sleepin'

I rose from the grave this semester to find that, despite my lack of motivation and my trepidation towards another semester of school I still love making things.

Under construction

Bubblegutzz

GGGGGGGGOOOOOOOOAAAAAALLLLLLLLLLL...s

Right now the idea of me making art as a profession twenty years from now is far-fetched to say the least. I don't think my personality lends itself to doing anything for such an extended period of time and my frustration with the mechanisms and traditions of the museum/gallery system can reach such overwhelming proportions that I often find myself discouraged. That being said, I can't for see a time when the need to express myself will diminish. For me, making something has a lot to do with distilling my personal experience into broader and less specific terms in hopes to communicate with other humans about the emotional and corporeal aspects of our daily co-existence and interaction. In other, less pretentious words, I'm trying to make something that people can relate to and, at the same time rid myself of some emotional backlog. Which usually leads me to the same place, how do I get people to see this stuff without falling victim to that great leech known only as the art world? So I guess that's my goal. Over the next 5, 10, 20 years I want to drastically rearrange the way people, not exclusively artists, engage the community and each other. Lofty enough for you?

Pink DOTS

This past Saturday I went up to Austin to see the Legendary Pink Dots and was surprised to see their show had a live image component. They had two 8mm projectors and two slide reels being operated by what I assumed to be the wives/girlfriends and cohorts of the band members. Educational films from the 60's and still images of countless esoteric objects and scenes collided on the sheets behind the band to form a psychedelic and sometimes syncopated visual counterpart to the music. Despite the jankness of the presentation (something I actually enjoyed), both aspects of the performance blended very nicely. Apparently, Ed Ka-Spel, the Sliverman, and the rest of the Pink Dots haven't lost a step since their beginnings almost three decades ago. Big ups to Anglo-Dutch neo-psychedelia!