NAO_VA_EMBORA.mp4(2021)

Speaking of Abstraction: A Universal Language(en)

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, abstraction - that most quintessentially modernist innovation - maintains a peculiarly contradictory position. Used, on one hand, by post-modernist artists as just one more quotable style amongst many, it is on the other hand still considered an elitist or hermetic language by audiences intimidated by its lack of recognizable subject matter. Yet ultimately, abstraction continues to be a viable creative path for contemporary artists of all generations, many of whom embrace it as the most inclusive and fundamentally resonant of artistic languages. Filmed at the artists' studios, the Dia Center for the Arts, and the Guggenheim Museum during their exhibition, "Abstraction in the Twentieth Century."

Projections(en)

The innovative and influential British filmmaker Derek Jarman was invited to direct the Pet Shop Boys' 1989 tour. This film is a series of iconoclastic images he created for the background projections. Stunning, specially shot sequences (featuring actors, the Pet Shop Boys, and friends of Jarman) contrast with documentary montages of nature, all skillfully edited to music tracks.

Memorial(en)

A memorial mourns as time passes

The Meme Machine(en)

An exploration of the origins of memes, how they spread, and the stories behind some of the most popular “human memes” like Ermahgerd Girl, Overly Attached Girlfriend, and Chocolate Rain Guy.

Things That Were There(en)

Experimental video art compiled from video taken on an LG Env3 flip phone circa 2009-2010

Glitching Offshore(en)

If a machine would possess a soul it might be a beach. Every single sand corn symbolizes a data-set of a memory captured in the world wide web saved deep down in the ocean. From there the bytes condense and finally reach the cloud. But how would it feel for a machine to see the glitch waves and feeling the shore stones on its case? What would be the colours of the coastline? Glitching Offshore tries to portrait the soul of an AI and the universe behind it. Glitching offshore, alike drifting away as in a psychogeographical dérive (furthermore, away from the "rive": bank) where human intentional yet chaotic action is substituted by pixels' stirrings of the soul.

Grid(pt)

A ritual of grids, reflections and chasms; a complete state of entropy; a space that devours itself; a vertigo that destroys the gravity of the Earth; a trap that captures us inside the voids of the screen of light: «That blank arena wherein converge at once the hundred spaces» (Hollis Frampton).

Guadalcanal Requiem(en)

One of Paik’s most overtly political and poignant statements, Guadalcanal Requiem is a performance/documentary collage that confronts history, time, cultural memory and mythology on the site of one of World War II’s most devastating battles.

Wintopia(en)

IDFA and Canadian filmmaker Peter Wintonick had a close relationship for decades. He was a hard worker and often far from home, visiting festivals around the world. In 2013, he died after a short illness. His daughter Mira was left behind with a whole lot of questions, and a box full of videotapes that Wintonick shot for his Utopia project. She resolved to investigate what sort of film he envisaged, and to complete it for him.

Douglas Gordon sings the best of Lou Reed & The Velvet Underground (For Bas Jan Ader)(en)

In the present work, the artists appears lying on his back, his eyes mostly closed, dreamingly listening to a walkman that plays, a recording of 'The Best of Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground'. The artist can hear the music through his earphones, but as viewers we are only privy to the sound of his voice that whispers the melody. As we listen to the hypnotic interpretion of the familiar songs - as emblematic for pop music history as 'Psycho' is for film - we are forced to mentally 'reconstruct' the remaining orchestration, instrumentation and vocals. We must attempt to reassemble something we already know to be a fact by negotiating the sticky mess of interpretation, meaning, and memory.

Good Morning, Mr. Orwell(en)

In his book "1984", George Orwell saw the television of the future as a control instrument in the hands of Big Brother. Right at the start of the much-anticipated Orwellian year, Paik and Co. were keen to demonstrate satellite TV's ability to serve positive ends-- Namely, the intercontinental exchange of culture, combining both highbrow and entertainment elements. A live broadcast shared between WNET TV in New York and the Centre Pompidou in Paris, linked up with broadcasters in Germany and South Korea, reached a worldwide audience of over 10 or even 25 million (including the later repeat transmissions).

Feels Good Man(en)

When indie comic character Pepe the Frog becomes an unwitting icon of hate, his creator, artist Matt Furie, fights to bring Pepe back from the darkness and navigate America's cultural divide.

Kill Your TV: Jim Moir’s Weird World of Video Art(en)

Jim Moir (aka Vic Reeves) explores Video Art, revealing how different generations ‘hacked’ the tools of television to pioneer new ways of creating art that can be beautiful, bewildering and wildly experimental.

to Crinkle their Wrist, Perfumed Splendour(en)

An omnium-gatherum of film, poem, and song excerpts contextually juxtaposed in an attempt to explore masculinity, alienation, and identity in a post-industrial society.

A lo Mejor Algún Día(es)

The Statue of Giordano Bruno(en)

This film was made out of the capture of a live animation performance presented in Rome in January 2005 by Pierre Hébert and the musician Bob Ostertag. It is based on live action shooting done that same afternoon on the Campo dei Fiori where the philosopher Giordano Bruno was burned by the Inquisition in 1600. A commemorative statue was erected in the 19th century, that somberly dominate the market held everyday on the piazza. The film is about the resurgence of the past in this place where normal daily activities go on imperturbably. The capture of the performance was reworked, shortened and complemented with more studio performances.

The Machine That Killed Bad People(en)

The Machine That Killed Bad People is about the cultural and political history of the Philippines leading up to the overthrow of President Ferdinand Marcos in 1986. It also addresses the role of electronic media in the struggle for power, and more broadly, American intervention in the Third World. Using a structure that emulates the way television news programs construct meaning through fragmentation, the tape interweaves clips of Filipino activists and reporters, a fictional television anchorwoman and correspondent, commentary by independent filmmaker Trinh T. Minh-ha, Fagin's off-camera voice and script, and anonymous excerpts from commercial television.

VICE News Presents: 'Epstein Didn't Kill Himself'(en)

How the mysteries surrounding Jeffrey Epstein’s life and death gave rise to a conspiracy theory that will never die.

TFW No GF(en)

Born from the internet, the phrase "TFW No GF" was originally used online to describe a lack of romantic companionship. Since then, it has evolved to symbolize a greater state of existence defined by isolation, rejection and alienation. The meme's protagonist, "WOJAK," has become the mascot to a vast online community consisting of self-described "hyper-anonymous twenty somethings" and "guys who slipped between the cracks." TFW No GF asks: How has the zeitgeist come to bear down on a generation alienated by the 'real world'? Meet the lost boys who came of age on the internet- places like 4chan and Twitter, where they find camaraderie in despair.

You Can't Kill Meme(en)

A hybrid documentary feature film about the genesis of "memetic magick" and its application by the alt-right in the United States.