Contextual Study
VIDEO ART
Pierre Coulibeuf (b.1949)
Biography
Born in Elbeuf (France) in 1949. Lives in Paris. Filmmaker and visual artist.
Pierre Coulibeuf uses contemporary creation as material for his artistic work.
In a cross-disciplinary relation to film genres (fiction, experimental…), as well as to modes of presenting the image in motion (35mm projection, installation, video, photography), his works invent a place and a language on the borderline of the other arts, critiquing established forms and questioning representations of reality.
Since 1987, he has made short and feature-length films based on the universes of Pierre Klossowski, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Marina Abramovic, Michel Butor, Jean-Marc Bustamante, Jan Fabre, Meg Stuart…
His films have been selected in many international film festivals (fiction, experimental, video art). Pierre Coulibeuf makes installations with his films and photographs in galleries and museums. He has been artist invited in the International Pavillion of the Bienniale of Contemporary Art of Mercosul, Porto Alegre, Brazil, in 2005. His works are part of main public collections.
- 1993- Leonardo da Vinci Grant from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs for a residency in Italy (Cinema)
- 1995-96- Artist in residency at the Center of Contemporary Art of the Domaine de Kerguéhennec, Brittany, France
- 2001- Knight of the Arts and Literature’s Order
Balkan Baroque 1999
BALKAN BAROQUE: SYNOPSIS
Experimental fiction. The autobiography, both real and imaginary, of Marina Abramovic, Body Art artist. The film composes the life aesthetic of a woman in her era, with a personal history strongly marked by the Yugoslavia of Tito, everyday violence, the experience of physical and psychic limits… Balkan Baroque is guided by several principles: discontinuity (black and white as structuring elements); ritualisation and frontality; fiction (and not the documentary). The black of memory, from which arise the white images of the past (the artistic rituals). The images from memory are combined with fancies, fantasies and dreamlike waking images, as well as rituals of life the voluntary evocation of the past makes something more secret, more intimate crop up: an unknown evolution that is embodied in fictions felt like authentic fragments of truth. Balkan Baroque jumps from one identity to another, from a true story to an imagination, from a dream to a ritual.
(All the images in the film are original, whether inspired by performances or purely imaginary).
Adbusters
About Adbusters
They describe themselves as “a global network of artists, activists, writers, pranksters, students, educators and entrepreneurs who want to advance the new social activist movement of the information age.”
The Production of Meaning (2006)
“Here is the challenge of media democracy: to change the way information flows, the way we interact with the mass media, the way meaning is produced in our society. This DVD - a collection of television spots and video clips produced over the years by regular culture jammers - is proof that anyone can seize the media reins and begin producing real meaning.”
Reality Sucks
Second Skin is a visually stunning documentary about video game addiction. Following the lives of seven avid gamers, Second Skin offers an insight into World of Warcraft and Everquest players who devote a significant amount of their social life to virtual reality. While some gamers find love and romance, others play to the point of losing their jobs and being evicted. This documentary lets the gamers speak for themselves and refuses to push a single interpretation or agenda.
Francis Alys
Bolero 2007
‘The drawing and animation of a shoe being shined by a cloth and a video of a stripper in rehearsal are spritely, poetic and philosophical explorations of how labour affects time’
Banksy
The Punking of Paris of Hilton 2006
Hundreds of Paris Hilton albums have been tampered with in the latest stunt by “guerrilla artist” Banksy. Banksy has replaced Hilton’s CD with his own remixes and given them titles such as Why am I Famous? What Have I Done? and What Am I For? He has also changed pictures of her on the CD sleeve to show the US socialite topless and with a dog’s head. A spokeswoman for Banksy said he had doctored 500 copies of her debut album Paris in 48 record shops across the UK. She told the BBC News website: “He switched the CDs in store, so he took the old ones out and put his version in.”
Sophie Calle
Sophie Calle is a French artist who works with photographs and performances, placing herself in situations almost as if she and the people she encounters were fictional. She also imposes elements of her own life onto public places creating a personal narrative where she is both author and character. She has been called a detective and a voyeur and her pieces involve serious investigations as well as natural curiosity.
Sophie Calle and Greg Shepard- No Sex Last Night aka Double Blind
In her premiere video project, French conceptual artist Sophie Calle joins with Gregory Shephard to create a voyeuristic tour de force. Armed with camcorders, Calle and her collaborator/partner Shephard head West in his Cadillac convertible to produce and document a real-life narrative of their journey and their relationship. With America as the backdrop for this unconventional coast-to-coast road movie, Calle and Shephard each narrates and records a personal diary, presenting strikingly different versions of the narrative/relationship. Aiming their dueling camcorders, the protagonists chronicle the elusive landscapes of human relations, wrestling to reconcile self, sexuality, and desire.
Rebecca Horn
the tremendous precision of the physical and technical functionality she uses to stage her works each time within a particular space. Since the beginning of the 1970s, Rebecca Horn has been creating an oeuvre which constitutes an ever-growing flow of performances, films, sculptures, spatial installations, drawings and photographs. The essence of their imagery comes out of
An Erotic Concert 1998
A series of filmed interviews with Rebecca Horn, performance artist, filmmaker and sculptress whose work explores the themes of sexuality, human vulnerability and emotional fragility.
Paper Rad
Paper Rad’s explanation of themselves-‘ hmmmm, the never ending story,
for the general public I would say, just focus on our projects, our concerts, if we are on tour, our books, videos, and website, don’t worry about members, friends or any larger social and/or cultural relevance.
If you are trying to write an article, a school paper, or telling you mom or dad, or boss, basically you are screwed, you can say words like 3 member art collective, but remember that you are lying and are just trying to translate what we are trying to do into America-speak again, just explain a comic or joke you saw on the website or in a book, I think that will work out better, and as for the details, good luck.
If you are an art collector, policeman, or ad agency, we are no company, its individuals making things, you like the name paper rad? great, you don’t like it, even better, run with it, ask me who I am, maybe I’ll tell you, you know, there is no secret, if you want to know every detail about us, then live your life, and the details will come to you, like, do you think I have to explain what paper rad is my best friends? No, I don’t, they come over and see it, and they know the details, naturally, they know what my haircut is, it’s no secret, it’s just not the fucking point.
Actually my best friends have no idea what paper rad is, in fact the other day paper rad had a 4 hour argument about what is paper rad? so yah… ‘
P Unit Mixtape 2005
‘This delirious montage of appropriated and computer-generated elements merges perennial Paper Rad themes such as Gumby and the 8-bit computer aesthetic with a keen, critical take on contemporary culture. This self-described “mix tape” - a term that refers here both to the group’s montage strategy and to popular compilations of bootlegged hit music - takes on the war in Iraq, the art market, and the images of ostentatious wealth and glamour flaunted by pop stars today.’
WEB ART
I use the internet and modern technology of some kind nearly every day. I would find life so peaceful yet difficult without my mobile phone, internet and television. My relationships would be different, my day to day life would be different as would be my way of gaining information. I would certainly not like to be doing a degree without them! Despite this, apart from putting pictures on a website, I have not considered using the internet for my art.
The first thing I discovered when starting my research for art on the net, or net art, is that rather than finding innovative uses for the internet as a new medium for art production I found online virtual galleries imitating the real world. Pictures of pictures set out in a gallery format. I found it interesting that the transition of art onto the internet finds it easier to create an alternative landscape that reflects our own rather than creating something new. However, there are exceptions to this where artists have used the internet as a medium for art practice.
Amy Alexander
Alexander has been active as the curator of software art and development of software art discourse, with a particular interest in how software influences contemporary culture and vice versa.
theBOT (2000)
Realtime, time-based animation and audio net art project using a web search engine robot to reveal the “narrative” of the web. Text gathered by the robot moves as “packets” across the screen and is heard as layered speech spoken by a speech synthesizer. An examination and perverse poetification of the narrative of the web.
Jodi
Jodi is a term used for two collective internet artists called Joan Heemskerk and Dirk Paesmans. Their background is in photography and video art since the mid-1990s they started to create original artworks for the internet. The have also worked in software art and more recently in the modification of old video games. Their most recent work is what they call their ‘Screen Grab’ period, in which they produce works by recording a computer monitor while working, playing video games or coding.
Jodi’s map of the web; http://map.jodi.org/
also, http://404.jodi.org/, where Jodi plays around with the concept of File Not Found premise.
Bibliography
Ubu web film. 1999. Balkan Baroque. [Online] (Updated 04 Mar 2009)
Available at: http://www.ubu.com/film/coulibeuf.html [Accessed 04 March 2009].
Ubu web film. 2006. T he Production of Meaning. [Online] (Updated 04 Mar 2009)
Available at: http://www.ubu.com/film/adbusters_meaning.html [Accessed 04 March 2009].
Adbusters. 2009. Page: About [Online] (Updated 09 March 2009)
Available at: http://www.adbusters.org/about/adbusters [Accessed 09 March 2009].
You Tube. 2008. Francis Alys – Bolero (Bienale di Venezia). [Online] (Updated 16 Jan 2008)
Available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQjDOsfqqLI [Accessed 09 March 2009].
Sophie Calle biography. 2009. [Online] (Updated 09 Mar 2009)
Available at: http://www.iniva.org/dare/themes/space/calle.html [Accessed 09 March 2009].
Ubu web film. 1992. No Sex Last Night aka Double Blind. [Online] (Updated 18 Mar 2009)
Available at: http://www.ubu.com/film/calle_double.html [Accessed 18 March 2009].
Paper Rad. 2005. Paper Rad info. [Online] (Updated 13 Sep 2005)
Available at: http://www.paperrad.org/info/info/ [Accessed 02 April 2009].
Ubu web film. 2005. P Unit Mixtape. [Online] (Updated 02 Apr 2009)
Available at: http://www.ubu.com/film/paperrad_p.html [Accessed 02 April 2009].
Amy Alexander. 2001. Amy Alexander Projects and Biography. [Online] (Updated 26 Apr 2009)
Available at: http://amy-alexander.com/index.html [Accessed 26 April 2009].
Wikipedia. 2009. Jodi. [Online] (Updated 26 Apr 2009)
Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net.art [Accessed 26 April 2009].
