50 Word Artist Statement:
This is a true documentation. There are no conventions for the documented event. The image is a document of truth, narration is a superfluous failure to connect, and the reaction can be universal. The image is most important. The sound is the connection. Together the documentation is a total experience.
Friday, November 7, 2008
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Friday, October 24, 2008
Video for the week
I finally have my video work up on the internet! For anyone doing video work Vimeo seems to be a superior option to youtube. They're ability to show work in HD is nice. We'll see.
I'm A Well Adjusted Person from John Hendershot on Vimeo.
I'm A Well Adjusted Person from John Hendershot on Vimeo.
Complete
Paul Thulin has read your blog up to this point/entry. Your blog is currently up to date and complete.
Is it that you are scared of the "conversation"? IS it really that you do not want to take the time to reset the camera ? I mean don't you have a responsibility to set the camera up --- especially for the "conversation" -- even if it is an inconvenient time?
This idea kept going through my head. She wanted to talk and the camera (John) shut it down -- the "documentary" was exhausted. Does that bother you or am I processing our discussion wrong?
Is it that you are scared of the "conversation"? IS it really that you do not want to take the time to reset the camera ? I mean don't you have a responsibility to set the camera up --- especially for the "conversation" -- even if it is an inconvenient time?
This idea kept going through my head. She wanted to talk and the camera (John) shut it down -- the "documentary" was exhausted. Does that bother you or am I processing our discussion wrong?
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Week In Review
* Did anyone critique your work this week? If so, what were their impressions?
Not this week. I’ll be having a group crit next week.
* What was the most motivational or creative moment of the past week?
When I was able to get my footage to actually show up in my editing software. I feel like I can actually do something now.
* What do you want to achieve in next week's studio practice?
Edit this footage. Develop a story from it and get it critiqued
* What did you achieve in your studio this past week?
Not a whole lot
* What has been an artistic failure this week?
Not doing a whole lot of anything
* What was the most profound thought in relation to your practice this week?
Not much, it’s my dead space time.
Not this week. I’ll be having a group crit next week.
* What was the most motivational or creative moment of the past week?
When I was able to get my footage to actually show up in my editing software. I feel like I can actually do something now.
* What do you want to achieve in next week's studio practice?
Edit this footage. Develop a story from it and get it critiqued
* What did you achieve in your studio this past week?
Not a whole lot
* What has been an artistic failure this week?
Not doing a whole lot of anything
* What was the most profound thought in relation to your practice this week?
Not much, it’s my dead space time.
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Word 2
Personal
Main Entry:
per•son•al
Pronunciation:
\ˈpərs-nəl, ˈpər-sə-nəl\
Function:
adjective
Etymology:
Middle English, from Anglo-French personel, from Late Latin personalis, from Latin persona
Date:
14th century
1: of, relating to, or affecting a particular person : private , individual
Marlon Riggs
His self documentaries have allowed viewers to better understand the world and feelings of this African American caught in an identity struggle between his race and his sexual orientation.
Tongues Untied (1990)
Black Is Black Ain't (1994)
Review of Black Is Black Ain't"
With BLACK IS...BLACK AIN'T, Riggs focuses attention on the "isms"that divide and separate, and challenges black people to "reconcile themselves to each other, to our differences ... We have to get over the notion that you can only be unified as a people as long as everybody agrees. You know we don't achieve freedom by those means."
For centuries American culture has stereotyped black Americans, but equally devastating have been the constraining and often contradictory definitions of "blackness" African Americans have imposed on each other. The right attire; hair from "conk" to Afro; ghetto slang or "proper" speech; "true" black religion versus the false; macho man or super woman; authentic, Afro-centric, or Euro-centric; sexuality and gender roles: Each one of these has been used as a litmus test in defining the real black man and the true black woman. But is there an "essential" black identity? Can blackness be reduced to a single acceptable set of experiences that African Americans should share or even aspire to?
BLACK IS...BLACK AIN'T forcefully confronts the identification of blackness with a hyper-masculinity born of the '60s Black Power movement. Colorism, the black church, the Civil Rights movement, family -- all continue to be defining factors in today's black communities. BLACK IS...BLACK AIN'T brings it all to the table, knowing, as Riggs says, that "there's a cure for what ails us as a people, and that is for us to talk to each other. We've got to start talking about the ways in which we hurt each other ... because nobody can unload the pain or the shame or the guilt by not speaking."
Stan Brakhage
Brakhage’s work, specifically his earlier work was a documentation of everything in his life. One of his earlier films Window Water Baby Moving was a controversial attempt by Brakhage to film the birth of his child. Brakhage was constantly looking for new ways to document his own personal life.
Window Water Baby Moving (1959)
Desistfilm (1954)
Review:
Brakhage's ambivalence about existence can be seen in his early film dramas, in which agonized individuals strain against imagined prisons; it can be seen in his first major work, Anticipation of the Night (1958), a testament to the failure of imaginative seeing, ending in the protagonist's suicide; it can be seen in the cosmic deconstruction that concludes the four-hour The Art of Vision (1965); it can be seen in what is perhaps his greatest achievement, the "Arabics," a series of 19 abstract films that are both glorious examples of light in motion and unsettling documents of seeing so "abnormal" that the viewer feels almost disoriented. And it can be seen in his five final completed works, being shown at the Film Center May 20 in a "Tribute and Benefit" to assist his family with the costs of his final illness. Four of the five are Chicago premieres (the 2001 Jesus Trilogy and Coda is not), and this is only their fourth public showing anywhere. (The two works left unfinished at his death are being completed by former students and will soon be released.)
Taking defiance of filmic forms to a new extreme, these works have qualities often found in an artist's late oeuvre. Brakhage refines his art to its essence, to an unpredictability that's nevertheless not random, neither borrowing from drama as in his earlier films nor supplying the potent symbolism of such late hand-painted works as The Dark Tower. The last four films in particular have an austere, almost autumnal visual and emotional evenness. All but one of the four — Max is the exception — were made by painting directly on the 16-millimeter film strip one frame at a time, and their shifts in perspective keep the viewer on edge to an almost delirious degree. Because each frame takes only one twenty-fourth of a second, Brakhage often chose to repeat each one two, three, or four times in the printing, resulting in between 6 and 12 images per second. At this speed, each painting is visible just long enough to be perceived in some detail but not long enough to become a static picture. The resulting tension between stills and implied movement is only one of the many ways Brakhage sets the viewer off balance.
Main Entry:
per•son•al
Pronunciation:
\ˈpərs-nəl, ˈpər-sə-nəl\
Function:
adjective
Etymology:
Middle English, from Anglo-French personel, from Late Latin personalis, from Latin persona
Date:
14th century
1: of, relating to, or affecting a particular person : private , individual
Marlon Riggs
His self documentaries have allowed viewers to better understand the world and feelings of this African American caught in an identity struggle between his race and his sexual orientation.
Tongues Untied (1990)
Black Is Black Ain't (1994)
Review of Black Is Black Ain't"
With BLACK IS...BLACK AIN'T, Riggs focuses attention on the "isms"that divide and separate, and challenges black people to "reconcile themselves to each other, to our differences ... We have to get over the notion that you can only be unified as a people as long as everybody agrees. You know we don't achieve freedom by those means."
For centuries American culture has stereotyped black Americans, but equally devastating have been the constraining and often contradictory definitions of "blackness" African Americans have imposed on each other. The right attire; hair from "conk" to Afro; ghetto slang or "proper" speech; "true" black religion versus the false; macho man or super woman; authentic, Afro-centric, or Euro-centric; sexuality and gender roles: Each one of these has been used as a litmus test in defining the real black man and the true black woman. But is there an "essential" black identity? Can blackness be reduced to a single acceptable set of experiences that African Americans should share or even aspire to?
BLACK IS...BLACK AIN'T forcefully confronts the identification of blackness with a hyper-masculinity born of the '60s Black Power movement. Colorism, the black church, the Civil Rights movement, family -- all continue to be defining factors in today's black communities. BLACK IS...BLACK AIN'T brings it all to the table, knowing, as Riggs says, that "there's a cure for what ails us as a people, and that is for us to talk to each other. We've got to start talking about the ways in which we hurt each other ... because nobody can unload the pain or the shame or the guilt by not speaking."
Stan Brakhage
Brakhage’s work, specifically his earlier work was a documentation of everything in his life. One of his earlier films Window Water Baby Moving was a controversial attempt by Brakhage to film the birth of his child. Brakhage was constantly looking for new ways to document his own personal life.
Window Water Baby Moving (1959)
Desistfilm (1954)
Review:
Brakhage's ambivalence about existence can be seen in his early film dramas, in which agonized individuals strain against imagined prisons; it can be seen in his first major work, Anticipation of the Night (1958), a testament to the failure of imaginative seeing, ending in the protagonist's suicide; it can be seen in the cosmic deconstruction that concludes the four-hour The Art of Vision (1965); it can be seen in what is perhaps his greatest achievement, the "Arabics," a series of 19 abstract films that are both glorious examples of light in motion and unsettling documents of seeing so "abnormal" that the viewer feels almost disoriented. And it can be seen in his five final completed works, being shown at the Film Center May 20 in a "Tribute and Benefit" to assist his family with the costs of his final illness. Four of the five are Chicago premieres (the 2001 Jesus Trilogy and Coda is not), and this is only their fourth public showing anywhere. (The two works left unfinished at his death are being completed by former students and will soon be released.)
Taking defiance of filmic forms to a new extreme, these works have qualities often found in an artist's late oeuvre. Brakhage refines his art to its essence, to an unpredictability that's nevertheless not random, neither borrowing from drama as in his earlier films nor supplying the potent symbolism of such late hand-painted works as The Dark Tower. The last four films in particular have an austere, almost autumnal visual and emotional evenness. All but one of the four — Max is the exception — were made by painting directly on the 16-millimeter film strip one frame at a time, and their shifts in perspective keep the viewer on edge to an almost delirious degree. Because each frame takes only one twenty-fourth of a second, Brakhage often chose to repeat each one two, three, or four times in the printing, resulting in between 6 and 12 images per second. At this speed, each painting is visible just long enough to be perceived in some detail but not long enough to become a static picture. The resulting tension between stills and implied movement is only one of the many ways Brakhage sets the viewer off balance.
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Artist of the Week
Marlon Riggs
Born in Ft. Worth, Texas, U.S.A., 3 February 1957. Graduated from Harvard University, magna cum laude, B.A. in history 1978; University of California at Berkeley, M.A. in journalism 1981. Taught documentary film, Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley from 1987; produced numerous video documentaries, from 1987. Honorary doctorate, California College of Arts and Crafts, 1993.
His theoretical-critical writings appeared in numerous scholarly and literary journals and professional and artistic periodicals. His video productions, which explored various aspects of African-American life and culture, earned him considerable recognition, including Emmy and Peabody awards. Riggs will nonetheless, be remembered mostly for the debate and contention that surrounded the airing of his highly charged video productions on public television stations during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Just as art-photographer Robert Mapplethorpe's provocative homoerotic photographs of male nudes caused scrutiny of government agencies and their funding of art, Marlon Riggs' video productions similarly plunged public television into an acrimonious debate, not only about funding, but censorship as well.
Trailer for Tongues Untied (1989)
Interview with Artist
No official Artist website exists
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