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INTRODUCTION
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PROGRAM TWO |
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 Image: Seoungho Cho, “I Left My Silent House,” 2007. Courtesy Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York. Text: EAI online catalogue: http://www.eai.org. Reprinted with permission by EAI. . |
Seoungho Cho: I Left My Silent House Seoungho Cho’s I Left My Silent House begins in a meditative mood, with black and white images of people in the subway, and then transforms itself into a colorful journey across dramatic open spaces, before returning once again to the city. The video’s driving electronic soundtrack and dramatic image processing give it an intense yet somber quality. Cho creates a visceral yet lyrical investigation of the tensions and pleasures of travel, movement, and, ultimately, metamorphosis. Soundtrack by Stephen Vitiello. Biography: Seoungho Cho was born in 1959 in Pusan, South Korea. Cho’s one-person exhibitions have included The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Philip Feldman Gallery, Oregon; the Contemporary Art Museum, Honolulu, Hawaii; the Pusan Metropolitan Museum of Art, Korea; Montevideo, Amsterdam; and the Cinematheque Ontario, Toronto. His work has been shown in numerous international festivals and exhibitions, including the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; the 58th Edinburgh International Film Festival; the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; the International Film Festival Rotterdam; and the New York Video Festival, Lincoln Center, New York. |
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 Image: Martin Brand, “Breakdance,” 2003/2004. Courtesy of the Artist. Text: http://www.martinbrand.org. Reprinted with permission. |
Martin Brand: Breakdance Breakdance is based on video images captured at the Cranger Funfair, at Breakdance No. 2, a popular teen hangout spot. While the adolescents, watching the surrounding happenings, stand in the image foreground, the colorfully lit wagons from the fast-paced fun ride in the background become blurred. The image plane is complemented by a first-person narrative: a girl recalls a summer, which she spent with her clique at the fair. She talks about a life full of violence, disappointed yearnings and lost prospects. Biography: Martin Brand was born in Bochum, Germany in 1975 and studied art and German philology in Bochum and Dortmund until 2002. He lives and works in Cologne as a photo and video-based artist. His works have been shown at numerous exhibitions and festivals; he has been awarded scholarships and artist residencies, and received an award for young artists from the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. In conjunction with a solo exhibition at the Dortmunder Kunstverein, the catalogue Martin Brand: Eyes Wide Shut, was published in cooperation with the Hartware MedienKunstVerein Dortmund. |
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 Image: Jim Finn, “Dick Cheney in a Cold, Dark Cell,” 2009. Courtesy Video Data Bank, Chicago. Text: VDB online catalogue: http://www.vdb.org. Reprinted with permission by VDB. |
Jim Finn: Dick Cheney in a Cold, Dark Cell River ice sets the scene for Judy Garland’s international justice cri de coeur. It’s hard to understate the amount of anxiety created by a vice president who usurped authority for eight years to start wars and wreck the economy and then sidled off to Wyoming to be a retired Hero of the Right. Impunity is not just the stuff of autocratic dictatorships in the third world. The American form of impunity is going to get us all killed. Biography: “Steeped in the obsolete language of revolutionary art,” The New York Times said Jim Finn’s films “often play like unearthed artifacts from an alternate universe.” His award-winning movies have been called “Utopian comedies” and “trompe l’oeil films”. The trilogy of communist features is in the permanent collection of the MoMA, and he has had retrospectives in seven countries. His movies have screened widely at festivals like Sundance, Rotterdam, Sao Paulo, AFI and Edinburgh as well as museums and cinematheques. He has been making films, videos, revolutionary needlepoint pillows and photographs for over a decade. He was born in St. Louis and is currently living in Providence, RI and teaching at Emerson College in Boston. |
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 Image: Nicolas Provost, “Long Live the New Flesh,” 2009. Courtesy Video Data Bank, Chicago. Text: VDB online catalogue: http://www.vdb.org. Reprinted with permission by VDB. |
Nicolas Provost: Long Live the New Flesh Long Live the New Flesh uses found footage to transmogrify existing fragments from horror films into a new video. It deploys a digital technique with painterly quality in which the images literally consume one another and the horror in all its visual power is brought to a natural boiling point. Provost strips down the imagery of a mass medium, uses it to construct a new visual story behind the dissection and horror, and allows the viewer to cross every phase of the emotional spectrum. Biography: Nicolas Provost is a filmmaker and visual artist living and working in Brussels, Belgium. His work is a reflection on the grammar of cinema and the relationship between visual art and the cinematic experience. His work has been screened worldwide at festivals such as the Sundance Film Festival, the San Francisco International Film festival, the Venice Film Festival, the Locarno Film Festival and the International Film Festival Rotterdam. Solo exhibitions include Haunch of Venison (Berlin), the Seattle Art Museum, Tim Van Laere Gallery (Antwerp), the International Media Art Biennale (Poland), De Brakke Grond (Amsterdam), C-Space Gallery (Beijing), and Solar Galeria de Arte Cinematica (Portugal). |
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 Image: George Kuchar, “Song of the Whoopee Wind,” 2005. Courtesy Video Data Bank, Chicago. Text: VDB online catalogue: http://www.vdb.org. Reprinted with permission by VDB. |
George Kuchar: Song of the Whoopee Wind A California Christmas season ushers in an array of holiday visuals designed to feed the hunger of soiled souls in search of truffle filled delights. A glittering seaport of electric lights helps the viewer to see through the murk of isolation as various species claw their way through the bountiful gifts that a rainy season delivers. Awash in joy and Juju statues, the unclean celebrate a rebirth dipped in chocolate as reptile and mammal unite in a dark hunger for foil wrapped ecstasy. Biography: George Kuchar ranks among the most exciting and prolific independent videomakers working today. With his homemade Super-8 and 16mm potboilers and melodramas of the 1950s, ‘60s, and ‘70s, he became legendary as one of the most distinctive and outrageous American underground filmmakers. After his 1980s transition to the video medium, he remained a master of genre manipulation and subversion, creating dozens of brilliantly edited, hilarious, observant, often diaristic tapes with an 8mm camcorder, dime-store props, not-so-special effects, and using friends as actors and the “pageant that is life” as his studio. In 1992, Kuchar received the prestigious Maya Deren Award for Independent Film and Video Artists from the American Film Institute. |
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 Image: Jeanne C. Finley, “Loss Prevention,” 2000. Courtesy Video Data Bank, Chicago. Text: VDB online catalogue: http://www.vdb.org. Reprinted with permission by VDB. |
Jeanne C. Finley: Loss Prevention Loss Prevention combines documentary and fiction to tell the story of Irene, arrested at the age of 79 for stealing a bottle of aspirin from a Miami Wal-Mart and sentenced to ten weeks of Senior Citizen Shoplifting Prevention School. Narrated through the voice of her daughter, this video explores the alienation of aging and the evolving relationship between a daughter and an elderly mother. Biography: Jeanne C. Finley is a California-based independent video producer. Through the use of true stories set in an experimental documentary form, her videoworks explore the tension between individual identity and the cultural and social institutions that both shape and affront that identity. In 1990, she received a Fulbright Fellowship to travel to Yugoslavia, where she directed programs for Radio/TV Belgrade, and was artist-in-residence in Istanbul, Turkey, through a grant from the Lila Wallace Readers’ Digest Foundation. Finley is also a Professor and Chair of Film/Video/Performance at the California College of Arts and Crafts. |
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 Image: Harry Dodge and Stanya Kahn, “Can’t Swallow It, Can’t Spit It Out,” 2007. Courtesy Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York. Text: EAI online catalogue: http://www.eai.org. Reprinted with permission by EAI. |
Harry Dodge & Stanya Kahn: Jeffrey Kastener writes, “What at first might seem like random decisions in the works—unorthodox choices for location, wardrobe, and editing—are carefully poised to produce scenarios that flirt with slapstick without diluting their characters’ basic humanity. This balancing act is particularly vivid in the pair’s Can’t Swallow It, which charts the relationship that develops between that logorrheic Valkyrie and her voyeur-cum-documentarian as the two move from confrontation to empathy during the course of an off-kilter dérive through Los Angeles. Wandering a largely depopulated city, the woman regales her newfound companion with tales that run from personal reminiscences to insane ramblings.” Biography: In 2003 Dodge and Kahn each received an MFA from Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts, Bard College, New York. Their work has been exhibited in solo shows at Elizabeth Dee Gallery, New York, and in numerous group exhibitions, including the 2008 Whitney Biennial Exhibition, New York; The Getty Center, Los Angeles; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, and P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, New York. |
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