If you stay home this week you'll miss the following: Brent Coughenour's live, multi-/new-media performance of Mysterium Cosmographicum, video[ish] piece controlled via appropriated video game controllers, at 7pm on Weds 16 Nov at UWM's Union Theatre for program 2 of 3 of the The Nohl Fellows; the results of Kabaret, MARNkino's 48 hour film making festival, at 7pm on Thurs 17 Nov at the Times Cinema.
Coughenour, adjunct faculty at UWM in PSoA's Dept of Film and established artist Nohl Fellow, will perform his latest work, in 3 parts, that draws A/V material from public sharing forums as found on the internet (or the "collective unconscious" in the artist's words). The role of performance in video work will be highlighted as Coughenour mixes the A/V materials with controllers from popular video games appropriated and reassigned for his purposes.
Milwaukee Artist's Resource Network (MARN) will present its monthly, local chapter screening of the global "film open-mic," Kino. While there is a theme every month that helps to guide the new work presented, this month the screening will present the results of Kabaret, MARNkino's entry into the 48 hour film festival. The theme for Kabaret, which took place 11 thru 13 Nov and will conclude with the screening on Thurs, is "1".
Sunday, November 13, 2011
Thursday, November 10, 2011
Agenda for the Week of 7 Nov
If you stay at home all week you miss the following events: Melika Bass screening work, old & new, with her program From the Tender Archive on Tues 8 Nov @ UWM's Union Theatre; a lecture by Reginald Baylor & Mark Brautigan on Current Tendencies II on WEds 9 Nov, an exhibition currently on display @ Marquette's Haggarty Museum of Art.; Tess Gallun's new edit of her 2010 documentary Out of Respect on Thurs 10 Nov @ Times Cinema; the closing of Crossing Over, a show of undergraduate visual arts, on Fri 11 Nov @ UWM's Union Art Gallery.
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
Catching up on unpublished thoughts: The Nohl Fellows, Program One: Of an airplane that didn't hit the ground & a chameleon in black & white
If one thing united Weds 2 Nov '12 night's first of three film/video screenings of work by this year's Mary L. Nohl Fellows, it was Gesture. Gestures performed, cinematic, intellectual, & conceptual. The program, in two parts, presented the work of Sarah Buccheri, a retrospective from '97 to present, & Brent Coughenour, all new[ish] works from his year as a fellow. While each artist showed a range of technique & content, neither the two programs nor the evening ever felt scattered, held together loosely by focused aesthetics and entertainingly obtuse program notes.
Though the UWM Union Theatre sat largely empty, the audience of fewer than twenty was attentive and enthusiastic. Though, of course, being the Union Theatre, there was the exception or two: snoring was heard.
Landscape may be the wrong the word for Antarctic Territory, Buccheri's opening piece, as there was so little to be seen. Both a document and meditation, the program opened with 5 beautiful minutes anxious abandonment at the bottom of the world from 2004. One of her most recent pieces, Man Crashes Plane, followed: stylistically diametric to the opener, this video portrait of a non-tragedy captures a very similar anxiety to that first piece. The gathering crowd becomes singular in its gawking awkwardness and misplaced impulse to help. The two greatest joys of Buccheri's program totaled 6 mins together. Door is a B&W Super8 film the causes a swinging door to dance across and around the screen; the quick editing breathlessly lifts the inanimate object into a character. And, again a diametric, I'm Not Pregnant: A Secret History of the Female Potbelly is a 4 min performance of a (presumably, the title and all) woman's robust stomach slowly entering the stationary video frame to hold for a few moments, centered, before backing slowly out. From the program notes: "A Simple Portrait of a floating belly into a key to lost and/or hidden knowledge." In image and deed.
And here, at the program break, do the evening's notes become a joy.
Coughenour is something of a production fiend in 2011: All seven of his pieces were made in 2011 and presented in "various states of completion." Some of the work rehashes old footage already in a completed and known commodity, others are super16mm film sketches that let the extra exposed portion of the film create a pulsing soundtrack, and one pesters a spider. The notes to a piece culled from unused footage of a trip to Russia read "Sketch for a document of a time and place other than the contemporary." This confident uncertainty and ephemeral concreteness colors the program. From Work in Progress: "Something here to describe, in roundabout terms, not what it's about, but rather, what it does." (I must admit here that the actual content of this piece escapes me and my notes, so many months in the past) But the program and its notes culminate with "A Special Bonus." These three video & film works of "no duration" represent the improvisational quality to Coughenour's recent work and the over-confident academic bravado with which such ad-hoc-ness is so often presented.
MAG.dock failed to attend any other Nohl Fellowship programs, one of which featured Coughenour performing something called Mysterium Cosmographicum.
Though the UWM Union Theatre sat largely empty, the audience of fewer than twenty was attentive and enthusiastic. Though, of course, being the Union Theatre, there was the exception or two: snoring was heard.
Landscape may be the wrong the word for Antarctic Territory, Buccheri's opening piece, as there was so little to be seen. Both a document and meditation, the program opened with 5 beautiful minutes anxious abandonment at the bottom of the world from 2004. One of her most recent pieces, Man Crashes Plane, followed: stylistically diametric to the opener, this video portrait of a non-tragedy captures a very similar anxiety to that first piece. The gathering crowd becomes singular in its gawking awkwardness and misplaced impulse to help. The two greatest joys of Buccheri's program totaled 6 mins together. Door is a B&W Super8 film the causes a swinging door to dance across and around the screen; the quick editing breathlessly lifts the inanimate object into a character. And, again a diametric, I'm Not Pregnant: A Secret History of the Female Potbelly is a 4 min performance of a (presumably, the title and all) woman's robust stomach slowly entering the stationary video frame to hold for a few moments, centered, before backing slowly out. From the program notes: "A Simple Portrait of a floating belly into a key to lost and/or hidden knowledge." In image and deed.
And here, at the program break, do the evening's notes become a joy.
Coughenour is something of a production fiend in 2011: All seven of his pieces were made in 2011 and presented in "various states of completion." Some of the work rehashes old footage already in a completed and known commodity, others are super16mm film sketches that let the extra exposed portion of the film create a pulsing soundtrack, and one pesters a spider. The notes to a piece culled from unused footage of a trip to Russia read "Sketch for a document of a time and place other than the contemporary." This confident uncertainty and ephemeral concreteness colors the program. From Work in Progress: "Something here to describe, in roundabout terms, not what it's about, but rather, what it does." (I must admit here that the actual content of this piece escapes me and my notes, so many months in the past) But the program and its notes culminate with "A Special Bonus." These three video & film works of "no duration" represent the improvisational quality to Coughenour's recent work and the over-confident academic bravado with which such ad-hoc-ness is so often presented.
MAG.dock failed to attend any other Nohl Fellowship programs, one of which featured Coughenour performing something called Mysterium Cosmographicum.
Minutes from the week of 6 Nov
If you stayed at home all week you missed Sarah Buccheri & Brent Coughenour's screenings at the first of this year's Nohl Fellows programs at the UWM Union Theatre on Weds, as well as the continuing exhibition for the Fellows in the visual arts at INOVA/Kenilworth; a rare screening of "the greatest failed art film," Boom!, from the Milwaukee LGBT Film/Video Festival's monthly series on Thurs; another chance to see Crossing Over and Current Tendencies II at the UWM Union Art Gallery & the Haggerty Museum of Art, respectively.
Buccheri presented a retrospective of 16mm film and various format video work dating back to 1997 and included a recent piece that documents the clean-up of a airplane crash that didn't touch the ground. Like any good cross-section of an emerging artist's work, her program lacked in focus where it had a surplus of energy. The subject matter ranged from the Antarctic ice-scapes to doors in portrait, the approaches were similarly varied. Each of the pieces, none longer than 5 mins, were polished and exciting testaments, some documented and some performed, to Buccheri's kaleidoscopic vision.
Coughenour exhibited a sort of restlessness in the seven film/videos screened, all [in]completed this year, in his part of the evening. Old footage from a trip to Russia was recut into a new piece from the perspective of the artist ten-years on, Lost was appropriated and reduced to pregnant stares, and the audio of an image on the sound strip of film was explored. The common thread to these pieces seemed to be on improvisation with the camera, using images at the ready, including the artist's high-school yearbook.
The only remaining print of Boom!, an adaptation of Tennessee Williams's The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore, was screened in all its color-faded and pink glory, missing reel and all. The missing second reel was replaced by a dvd copy highlighting the organic and lossy nature film. The result is delightfully playful and fitting for a film that inspires John Waters.
If you stayed home this week, like your correspondent, you will notice that you have only 3 days remaining to see Crossing Over. And you will have not seen Current Tendencies or The Nohl Fellows exhibit.
Buccheri presented a retrospective of 16mm film and various format video work dating back to 1997 and included a recent piece that documents the clean-up of a airplane crash that didn't touch the ground. Like any good cross-section of an emerging artist's work, her program lacked in focus where it had a surplus of energy. The subject matter ranged from the Antarctic ice-scapes to doors in portrait, the approaches were similarly varied. Each of the pieces, none longer than 5 mins, were polished and exciting testaments, some documented and some performed, to Buccheri's kaleidoscopic vision.
Coughenour exhibited a sort of restlessness in the seven film/videos screened, all [in]completed this year, in his part of the evening. Old footage from a trip to Russia was recut into a new piece from the perspective of the artist ten-years on, Lost was appropriated and reduced to pregnant stares, and the audio of an image on the sound strip of film was explored. The common thread to these pieces seemed to be on improvisation with the camera, using images at the ready, including the artist's high-school yearbook.
The only remaining print of Boom!, an adaptation of Tennessee Williams's The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore, was screened in all its color-faded and pink glory, missing reel and all. The missing second reel was replaced by a dvd copy highlighting the organic and lossy nature film. The result is delightfully playful and fitting for a film that inspires John Waters.
If you stayed home this week, like your correspondent, you will notice that you have only 3 days remaining to see Crossing Over. And you will have not seen Current Tendencies or The Nohl Fellows exhibit.
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
Agenda for the week of 31 Oct
If you stay at home all week will miss Sarah Buccheri & Brent Coughenour, two of The Nohl Fellows for 2011, presenting their work in the first of three programs at UWM's Union Theatre on Tuesday 1 Nov and Elizabeth Taylor & Richard Burton in one of the greatest/worst art/camp films of all time, Boom!, for the first of this year's LGBT Film/Video Festival monthly screenings at the Union Theatre, the event, presenting the only existing 35mm print of this Noel Coward adaptation, will feature a live rendering of the action contained on the missing reel of the print.
The Nohl Fellowships continued at INOVA/Kenilworth thru 4 Dec. Crossing Over continued at the UWM Union Art Gallery thru 11 Nov. Current Tendencies II continued at the Haggerty Museum of Art.
The Nohl Fellowships continued at INOVA/Kenilworth thru 4 Dec. Crossing Over continued at the UWM Union Art Gallery thru 11 Nov. Current Tendencies II continued at the Haggerty Museum of Art.
Monday, October 31, 2011
Minutes from the week of 24 Oct
This week you missed documentarians Pam Minty and Alain LeTourneau accompanying their 16mm film Empty Quarter -- a feature length contemplation of the farming and ranching communities that comprise nearly 33% of the states geography and 2% of its demography -- at the UWM Union Theatre for Experimental Tuesdays; a weekend of Super-8mm film presented by UWM Peck School of the Arts's Dept. of Film, which included Adept-8, a slew of contemporary American film featuring UWM alum -- local and scattered -- among other recognizable names, at Woodland Pattern on Friday and Dutch film maker Jaap Pieters's visit B91 in UWM's Mitchell Hall with his Eye of Amsterdam Tour on Saturday.
Crossing Over, an exhibit of work from under- and graduate students in a variety of visual media, continues at the UWM Union Art Gallery thru 11 Nov, a Friday. Current Tendencies II, an exhibit of local visual art (accompanied by criticism by faculty at the host university), continues at Marquette's Haggerty Museum of Art thru 31 Dec, a Saturday. The Nohl Fellowships, an exhibit of the local artists who received the 8th annual fellowships continues at UWM's INOVA/Kenilworth thru 4 Dec.
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