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Hangmen Also Die 2010
Above is a tiny fragment of Hangmen Also Die, my latest project with director Robert Allen. It is a performance-installation at the Laguna Art Museum for the OSCENE 2010 show that recently closed. Together, the installation and an associated live performance model the problematic nature of collective memory as a bulwark against ideological corruption.
On opening night, the actor seen here (John Mellies) interacted with a projected video environment as he delivered a short monologue. When this live phase of the piece ended, the installation component was activated to continue, echo, and extend the live event. In the installation, video clips of the actor's monologue are embedded in a semi-randomized visual environment. Over the course of a 70-minute cycle the piece is programmed to gradually break up and degrade, triggering successive attempts to salvage meaning by re-interpolating material.
The text for this piece is a poetic montage I wrote, incorporating text fragments by Bertolt Brecht, Heiner Müller, Arthur Koestler, and others. The title comes from a 1943 movie directed by Fritz Lang and written by Brecht, Lang, and John Wexley. Main videography is by Amy Kaczur.
More clips:
August 2010
I've started a new blog for occasional writing about art, artmaking, the peculiar business or art, and related concerns. It's linked from the menu bar and from Quick Links at left.
August 2010
I've updated this website after finding a few too many expired links. In particular, I've added new project pages for 2000-2010 instead of just linking to external and often outdated project websites. It's one of my ongoing frustrations that I only really have time to extensively update this website once a year, in the summer. Regular visitors will notice some changes to the navigation; hopefully this will make it easier to find things.
June 8, 4-6 p.m., 2010
Studio Art students from the Claire Trevor School of the Arts at UC Irvine are proud to present the first Graphic Novel Exhibition on June 8, 2010, 4-6 pm, in ACT #2224 at UC Irvine. They created their original graphic novellas in my class in just 8 weeks of intensive effort, from concept through writing and artwork to print publication. Come to our mini exhibition to see the results. One day only!
"Eisbergfreistadt:
2009
My article on the fictive art of Nicholas Kahn and Richard Selesnick is out in the Oct.-Dec. 2009 issue of Visual Communication Quarterly (pp. 210-241). They did a wonderful job with the layout, and thanks to the artists, there is a good number of accompanying images of their artwork.
Quote of the Day
May 12, 2010
French artist Annette Messager, in this interview:
"I was very impressed by the Carte du Tendre [Map of Tenderness] invented by a woman writer of 17th century France, Mlle de Scudery. For some time, I conceived of gardens of "tendre" which mix writing and photography with real spaces: the path of reconciliation, the tree of shame, the herbs of confidences, the turtle of longevity, the spider of scandal, the route of chance, the maple of dispute, the copse of indiscretion, the timber trees of hope, the oak of kisses, the poppies of confession, the rabbit of fortune, the branches of forgetfulness, the junction of uncertainties, the forest of hesitations, the lake of temptation, the plains of fatigue, the lime tree of rest, the mountain of assiduousness, the passageway of pain, the intersection of ambition, the ramble of emotion, the slope of forgetfulness, the mound of despair..."