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.