FOR YOUR DELECTATION...

Thomas Barbey & Olivier Cazin
'Sun City' (2005). 6 min
DVD, cartoon
This cartoon by T. Barbey and O. Cazin is made of several sequences taken from youth TV programmes, focussing on their representation of modern cities. A tangle of images and different graphic designs gives the frame of a narrative emptied from its protagonists. We are facing a city emptied of its movement, its inhabitants and of its the traditionnal genre‚s content which is : the manichean fighting between the hero and his enemy. What is left are cuts up of drifting buildings, streets and bridges. These interstices are edited end to end in order to reconstruct a unity of time, place and action, purposing the viewer an hypnotic vision of the urban landscape.

Dominique Blais
'Psycho 3' (2005)
Video & software. 2005
'Psycho 3' is a video project about the famous Hitchcock movie 'Psycho' and the remake by Gus Van Sant in 1998. A digital programme constructs a hybridisation between both in real time. Each projection is unique because of the random generation software. 'Psycho 3' is based on the cut-up technique.

John Lalor
'L'Obligation du Blanc' (2005). 9 min 50 sec
DVD
the first of three films around the problem of opalka in which the artist meanders through a small wooded area during a sunset filmed over one week loaded with rapid editing in reference to jean luc godards 'a bout de souffle' and also the cemetary scene in the sergio leone's good the bad and the ugly made in 65 the year opalka started his 'details' the film explores the time aspect of the fall of the day into non day.

About Glassbox:
Glassbox has been in existence since 1997 and is the first artists run space in France based on the model found in the UK, Holland and Germany. Glassbox has affirmed its national and international reputation by underlining its difference within a French context which is principally organised by the galleries and institutions etc. At the present time Glassbox has six members even though the team has evolved the reasons remain the same. The gallery is housed in 120 sq metres in a Francois Borel designed building in what one would call a popular quarter in the 11th district of Paris. The gallery has established partnerships with the different business around the area and has become with the years an active and visible member of its community. Over the years Glassbox has worked with both French and international artists in which a highly organised series of networks have been established which has also provided the artists involved to be able to work on off site projects and with different curators both national and international thus providing a kind of artistic fraternity. Glassbox is supported by the direction regionale of cultural affairs and by la ville de paris.

 

 

Anthony Gross
'Parallelines' (2004). 3 min loop
In 'Parallelines' Anthony Gross has re-edited and placed side by side, in strict split screen format, the training sequences of Rocky I and Rocky II. Set to the original score by Bill Conti, the film presents a dynamic doubling of the familiar training build-up, from hard first push ups and jogging through to fast ball-punching and bounding up victory steps. The two sequences are near identical, with similar clothing, locations, situations and even with the same camera movements and positions. So closely do these shots resemble each other that the very notion of 'sequel', starts to break down, instead offerring a dopplegänger-like compression of time and iconography. 'Parallelines' slows down and speeds up the familiar forumlaic devices in film-making drawing attention away from the content of the film itself alluding instead to wider manipulations of culture production.

 

 

Cyril Lepetit 'International Exhibitionist'
'Hairy Exhibitionist at the Sento' (Nagano, 1999)
Sento: Japanese Public Bath
People visit these baths regularly, even daily.
They wash, bathe, relax and talk.
The women's and men's bath are separated.
Visitors who wished to participate in this act were invited to take off their clothes and take part in a mixed bathing session organised by the Hairy Exhibitionist. Those who did not wish to take off their clothes could watch this bath, from behind the glass door separating the changing room and the Sento.
This impromptu took place in a Sento (Japanese Public Bath) in the context of the NIPAF (Nipon International Performance Art Festival, Tokyo, Kyoto, Nagano, 1999). This project was developed along a 4 month residency in Japan and Taiwan, (with the support of the Ministere de la Culture Francaise) a series of drawing and writing has also been developed in relation to this piece.

"It is probably about the principle of freedom, the never-ending attempt to re-invent myself... it will be my contribution to the art of flirting with the nature and the complexities of desire and sex. Something without solutions...
In creating devices or putting into place actions, in contexts I've borrowed from reality, I create situations that I call 'fantasised'. They deal with sexuality, and with existence. They are usually devised to receive visitors, in the expectation of their reaction; of their taking a stance. Out of a concern for fairness, or perhaps simply out of a desire to bring myself closer to other individuals, I involve myself in these situations."

"I am but a fragment devoid of meaning, if I do not relate to other fragment" Title of the first video work, 1994 ( cf G.Bataille in ' Les larmes d'Eros')

 

 

Miltos Manetas & Luuk Bouwman
'Wyne Veen' (2004)
A Neen commercial. Directed by Luuk Bouwman on an idea of Miltos Manetas. Music by Gnak.

 

 

Damon Packard
'Dawn of an Evil Millennium' (1988-89). 20 min
Super 8 film
Epic Super8 short with a cameo by Miles O' Keeffe. Lived in my car for some time while financing this film (this is what happens when all money go's into the film) A feat which would go even further during the making of "Apple" several years later, while living in a tent in Hawaii for 2 years. This is the film I continue to regret not squeezing onto the Reflections DVD. It was in actuality three short films (as part of a trilogy) finally amalgamated into one. Some people people have drawn early parallels to Reflections on this one but frankly I don't see any connection at all. This was my no-budget sci-fi/horror/fantasy in the vein of "Mad Max" and "Evil Dead 2". I should've gone from this to making million $ feature's!! What the hell happened? I was at the age Spielberg was when he got his first directing gig on Night Gallery. It's just Tragic

 

 

Joe Walsh
'Mister Miguel' pop promo for Kevin Blechdom (Chicks on Speed Records) (2004). 5 min
video
Linking performance practice with 80s pop video aesthetics, a music video to Kevin Blechdom's 'Mr Miguel'. In the video a woman emerges from smoke and she has something to tell you.

 

 

Julie Wells
'Apocalypse a Go Go' (2005). 5 min 40 sec
Live action shot on 16mm Black and White Film
Intercut with footage from the Feature Film Apocalypse Now
Constructed around the 3min live track “O Susie Q”
Generous support from Ice Film Equipment Ltd
Two Teenage girls messing around in their own private game on a London roof top.
Captain this mission does not exist, nor will it ever exist ... a military tactic, covert action…. playing with seduction and illusion.
Interrupting Apocalypse Now, in the end did anything happen anyway? The teenage girls are a low key fragile fiction that falls apart easily.
In Apocalypse Now the entertainment falls apart too, the troops break rank and storm the stage, the show comes to an abrupt halt.
Both the live action and the used feature film end up feeling artificial and a goal is never arrived at.

 

 

Jen Wu
'YouthInAsia: Killing Me Softly' (2005). 16 min
Tragicomic video narrative using home video footage depicting the artist as a teenage pianist playing at her graduation recital. Fast forward ten years and the recital is interrupted by the image of a synthesizer in a bare artists studio accompanied by the sound of 'Killing Me Softly' on instrumental autoplay. The two moments fight for attention back and forth as the pianist cycles through a mini-history of Western classical music and the synthesizer continues to play its song until finally the film's structure erupts and the song finally bleeds over images of the pianist at the reception.