Vimeo Group: Experimental Art

So I came across this group on Vimeo, a great video hosting website, and this entire group is run by video artists surrounding the experimental genre: http://vimeo.com/groups/experimentalvideoart CHECK IT OUT!

Amongst my favorites are "bougainvillea" by Hidemi Takagi. It it 1 min long and it is one of the most visually stimulating videos I've seen in awhile. The colors used set the tone of the piece in an innovative way and the complexity of the piece lies in the simplicity of the visuals. Watch it here.

Another one of my favorites is "Spoken & Melted #1" by Aymeric Ayral. Its only 56 min but it is a spooky and pretty psychedelic piece. I'm still trying to decode the video but it's an experience trying to match the visuals to the audio. I'm unsure if this is a quote or not but it's a pretty cool video. Watch it here.

Check out other videos at the group here: http://vimeo.com/groups/experimentalvideoart

My Own Piece

I wanted to include my own piece in this to show my interest in experimental art films. Enjoy!
Women and Water

LACMA: Not Just an Art Museum

LACMA, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, has begun to explore new types of art and they are currently expanding their collections to not only include paintings and sculptures but also video art and performance art pieces as well. They have begun to screen certain films and have discussions after, giving the audience a chance to converse with one another. Below are my picks for the best screenings to attend:

Dec. 20th, 1 pm: Lawrence of Arabia
Jan. 3, 1 pm: His Girl Friday
Jan. 17, 1 pm: Experiment in Terror
Jan. 21, 3 pm: El Violin

All these films are apart of a new program called "Independent Film at LACMA". 

"Film Independent, the non-profit arts organization that produces the Spirit Awards and the Los Angeles Film Festival, and LACMA celebrate the launch of the Film Independent at LACMA Film Series, presented by The New York Times. The inclusive series offers unique film experiences, bringing together Film Independent’s large community of filmmakers and wide spectrum of audiences, with LACMA’s commitment to presenting cinema in an artistic and historical context. The program presents classic and contemporary narrative and documentary films, artists and their influences, emerging auteurs, international showcases, special guest-curated programs, in addition to conversations with artists, curators and special guests. Film Independent at LACMA is under the curatorial leadership of esteemed film critic Elvis Mitchell in collaboration with LACMA Film Coordinator Bernardo Rondeau and Film Independent’s programming team."

For more information, check out LACMA's website: http://www.lacma.org.

If you can, be sure to check out the screening for "100 Years of Paramount Pictures" on Jan. 26th, 7:30 pm!!!

More Things To Do....

Long Beach Museum of Art: "Exchange and Evolution"
Oct. 7 - Feb. 12

"Exchange and Evolution: Worldwide Video Long Beach examines and highlights key moments from the video program at the Long Beach Museum of Art between 1974 and 1999, and organizations and individuals who collaborated with the Museum. Some thirty international artists whose work was exhibited at LBMA during this time will be on view, and programmed are four screening events that celebrate the LBMA video studio and honors its Videonights. Two of the screening events are scheduled to take place at REDCAT (Roy and Edna Disney CalArts Theater), in partnership with California Institute of the Arts, a long-time supporter of video art and collaborator with Long Beach Museum of Art.

Selected artists for Exchange and Evolution include: Marina Abramovic/Ulay, Klaus vom Bruch, Robert Cahen, Tony Cokes, Juan Downey, Ed Emshwiller, Vera Frenkel, Thomas Allen Harris, Gary Hill, Nan Hoover, General Idea, Mako Idemitsu, Sanja Ivekovic, Joan Jonas, Shigeko Kubota, Thierry Kuntzel, Victor Masayesva, Jr., Bjorn Melhus, Antoni Muntadas, Ko Nakajima, Marcel Odenbach, Nam June Paik, Lisa Steele, Turppi Group (Marikki Hakola, Lea Kantonen, Pekka Kantonen, Jarmo Vellonen, Martti Kukkonen), Edin Velez, Steina Vasulka, Woody Vasulka, and Bill Viola. The exhibition and screening series is curated by Kathy Rae Huffman and Nancy Buchanan.

The 1970s and 1980s were an extremely active period for video in Long Beach: by the 1990s the Museum's profile expanded and its studio production facility flourished. The studio attracted artists from all over the world. On the West Coast, LBMA's facility was one of the first such media art centers, with a focus on artists' needs which in turn nurtured the development of the medium. Starting in 1978 it offered on-site performance space, technical assistance, broadcast-quality cameras, post-production equipment, and exhibition opportunities. The LBMA was one of a handful of institutions worldwide that specialized in video as an art form.

This exhibition will recover the dialog from this dynamic era and show how a small but energetic regional museum became a world-known institution, because of its passionate support for video. The Exchange and Evolution advisory committee, made up of artists and curators, brings together decades of artistic, historical, and critical expertise and experience working with the Museum. This committee will support the undertaking of the exhibition and its public program by reaching out nationally and abroad, extending research efforts, helping connect with the international archives and institutions who worked in collaboration with the Museum, and re-establishing the many links in the worldwide network of artists engaged in video.

A publication, with essays by Norman Klein, Erika Suderburg, Gloria Sutton, Wulf Herzogenrath and David Ross, as well as curatorial texts by Kathy Rae Huffman and Nancy Buchanan will be available for the exhibition. All artists' works in the exhibition will be fully illustrated. The publication, screenings and exhibition are a remarkable resource for faculty and students of modern and contemporary art, film-TV-digital-media studies, and international studies, among others.

The Long Beach Museum of Art Video Archive is now housed at the Getty Research Institute. It contains some of the earliest examples of video preserved in original formats (it numbers over 5,000 tapes). The videotapes, artist files, and exhibition records were transferred from LBMA to the Getty Research Institute in 2006. They are now secured, maintained in archival condition, and available to researchers by appointment."

Things to Do

I've looked up some screenings and events that I feel are worth going to see if you are a film or video fanatic. They range from short films to feature length ones and take place in several different forums. They profile an organization or program putting the event on so that people can get a sense of the film and video community today.



REDCAT: The Experimental Impulse
Friday,  Nov. 18 until Sunday, Jan. 15

This screening "explores the pivotal role of experimentation in Los Angeles in the years immediately following the city’s emergence as a vital artistic center. The exhibition offers new insights into the understanding of developments in critical art practice after 1965 and bridges the gap between these histories and more recent approaches to artmaking. Consisting exclusively of reproductions and facsimiles of materials culled from publications, institutions, and personal collections, as well as a series of recent video and audio interviews conducted for the exhibition, The Experimental Impulse reflects on the networks of exchange and support structures that underlie the history of art in Los Angeles.

This collection of interviews, filmed and edited by Larissa Brantner James, focuses on a selection of key figures who shaped the city’s cultural landscape through various forms of patronage and artist-motivated initiatives. The exhibition includes original interviews with such individuals as Robert Smith, founding director of the Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art (1974-85); Dorit Cypis, co-director of Foundation for Art Resources (1979-82); Marc Pally, first director of LACE (1979-83); Gemini G.E.L. co-founder and patron Stanley Grinstein; collectors Judy and Stuart Spence; and many others.

With contributions by participants in “The Experimental Impulse” seminars at CalArts’ School of Art (2009/10 and 2010/11), the exhibition operates from a position that context informs content and develops an open-ended methodology that has been characteristic of CalArts since its founding. Conceived from the perspective of artists and art students who currently live and work in the city, the exhibition’s curatorial approach reexamines the very notion of historical representation and aims to embody the principles of experimentation.

The exhibition’s scope and content has been largely guided by a group of current and recent CalArts students, whose respective research forms the basis of The Experimental Impulse and attempts to offer an account of this history from the perspective of artists currently living and working in Los Angeles. Topics covered in the exhibition include the intersection between Conceptual art and pedagogy (Fiona Connor); the critical role played by art magazines and publications (Krista Buecking); video and the exploration of new technologies (Yogi Proctor); the history of the late CalArts Design School (Benjamin Tong); and the influence of country music in the early Los Angeles punk scene (Ariane Roesch). The Experimental Impulse presents the outgrowth of the students’ research, which takes the form of recorded conversations with artists, writers, designers, editors, curators and collectors, as well as selections of images and various printed materials that have been uncovered throughout the research process. The seminars and exhibition at REDCAT attempt to address the problem surrounding the organization and display of materials that have, by their experimental and ephemeral nature, attempted to evade history.

In conjunction with the exhibition at REDCAT, East of Borneo, a collaborative art journal and multimedia archive, hosts a selection of commissioned essays, documentation, interviews and research materials related to the process of organizing The Experimental Impulse. Edited by Stacey Allan, this archival component to the exhibition offers an alternative approach to the role of catalogues and print publications"

Take a look at REDCATS website for more information: http://www.redcat.org


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Another REDCAT event is "Music + Image", taking place Feb. 2, 2012.


"In the early 1980s, many artists were excited by the possibility of showing video art on television—a promise that was broken by commercialism. This selection of short videos takes inspiration from the spirit of Ernie Kovacs, television impresario and music lover, as it highlights some of the era’s most compelling video art accompanied by music. By turns humorous, pensive, or even abstract, the works are drawn from screenings and exhibitions at the Long Beach Museum of Art, and include artists Bob Snyder; Cynthia Maughan; Dara Birnbaum; Philip Mallory Jones; Tom DeWitt, Vibeke Sorensen, and Dean Winkler; Cecelia Condit; Toni Basil and David Byrne; Max Almy; Kit Fitzgerald and John Sanborn; Laurie Anderson; Claus Blume; MICA-TV (Carole Ann Klonarides and Michael Owen); Zbigniew Rybczyński; and Henry Selick.
In person: Curator Nancy Buchanan

Presented in conjunction with Exchange and Evolution: Worldwide Video Long Beach, 1974–1999, at the Long Beach Museum of Art."

After having my own experiences at the Long Beach Museum of Art and their "Exchange and Evolution" installation, I highly suggest visiting these events. 

Vidiots

Vidiots, located at 302 Pico Blvd, has been and will always be the definition of West LA Video. Vidiots has been around since 1985 and when it started it was a mere 1000 sq. ft. and only 800 movie titles. Now, the store is HUGE and there over 40,000 titles. The store specializes in rare foreign and independent titles as well as more art-house/avant-garde performance pieces. While they do have mainstream films, their customer base is more of the art-house type. Even when you enter the store, whether it's the store or the cult films section that stares you in the face, you can tell that this is an eccentric place.

Vidiots has not been just a video store in 25 years. This year the store celebrated the 25th anniversary of the Learning Annex, a innovative film study center that brings together a new film community. Offering classes and workshops in creative areas of film (in February I attended their screenwriters workshop), the Annex gives filmmakers the opportunity to share their craft with those interested a proper forum to do so. The physical annex has a great cool creative vibe and comes complete with a projector for screenings. The Annex had added a new income for the store but the annex has become it's own environment, attracting a new community of young filmmakers and bringing them together with older filmmakers.

The staff is very well versed in both mainstream and obscure films. Anthony, who not only was one of my sisters friends when she worked there, agreed to do an interview with me, despite internal conflict.


K: So why do you feel Vidiots has stayed in business despite video rentals becoming more and more "out of date"?

A: Well it has almost gone out of business....multiple times. What keeps it in business it that everytime we put up the "Going out of Business" sign, people run in to donate and make sure we survive.

K: That is awesome. Do you have a loyal customer base?

A: Loyal would be an understatement. There is this old guy named Peter that comes in every week and I feel like he's getting bored since he's watched everything! He could tell you anything you wanted to know about foreign films, especially the French New Wave.

K: Do you think more people come to Vidiots for mainstream films or obscure films?

A: Obscure, for sure. People who come into rent Harry Potter and the latest chick flick are always judged at the counter (but don't mention that to new customers). We appreciate the awkward people who either ask for porn or who want some film made in the 80s in Russia in some small town with 2 people and a small super 8 camera. Those are the rad people.

K: Do you think the video store, as a concept in LA, will survive?

A: Nope but I agree that Vidiots will since we are apart of the neighborhood. It's like when they shut down the Pinkberry on Abbot Kinney....the people here care. That is what will make Vidiots survive.

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Vidiot's also hosts many events in store because the store is such a large open space. My freshman year of college I came home to listen to my friend Shere and his band play there. Aside from having musical performances, Vidiots has many filmmakers and other industry professionals come speak such as Kenneth Anger (SO JEALOUS!) or Russ Meyer. This is no longer a "video store" but rather a "video experience". I HIGHLY suggest that you visit Vidiot's before video stores become a thing of the past! For more information, cal 310-392-8508.

Video Store Named Desire

A Video Store Named Desire is one of the most well-known video stores in LA, located at 11631 Santa Monica Blvd. With $1 new video release rentals, this video store has one of the largest collections of both mainstream and independent films. Catering to each customer, the store, if you can't find a title which is rare, will order a copy of the film just for you (although I was too shy to actually have them order it). They have GIANT catalog's of older films and foreign films that it seems impossible they don't have every single one made.

The stores biggest competition if Cinefile because of the two different markets the stores have covered: avant-garde, foreign, and documentary films and then mainstream video rentals from Hollywood studios. However, a Video Store Named Desire OWNS Cinefile when it comes to obscure and old titles just because they have a wider selection (even though the space feels cramped, they have way more titles). The current owner, Mike, is described as a "cool cat" or "a really cool hipster-looking Asian dude" and the staff are very well rounded in terms of knowing their films. While the staff at Cinefile was a bit more welcoming, I enjoyed my time here immensely. For more information, call 310-444-0079.

Cinefile

Cinefile deserves its own post here because Cinefile has beaten the odds. Located at 11280 Santa Monica Blvd, Cinefile is known by all film lovers in LA has the place to go for obscure titles and a great atmosphere. The owner, Philip Anderson, has done a great job keeping cinefile's reputation strong despite the decline in video rentals nowadays. Rentals are super cheap (around $4) and the store specializes in the "rarest of the rare in foreign, documentary, sci-fi, independent, horror, and just about every other aberrant genre you could possibly imagine, all sorted the only way films ever should be, by director". They have the typical "art films" but also obscure titles that aren't even recognizable on google. When I went in the staff were welcoming and very knowledgeable. After chatting about John Whitney's work, they showed me a special digital animation section filled with DVDs (a little surprising to me) but I appreciated the vast collection and witty banter with the staff. 

The store's atmosphere is also what makes it so 'cool'. It reminds me of Amoeba, a giant warehouse space filled with the most interesting collection of art. The only difficult part of the store is the way it is sorted because the genres are super obscure and random (not the typical "horror" and "comedy" type place by far!). Before leaving, I rented some Godard and then bought a t-shirt (they have the coolest t-shirts ever) and then reflected on my experience. I highly suggest people go visit this store before video stores become a thing of the past.

The Struggling Stores

Oh, some video stores are able to keep in business but then there are the others that are constantly struggling to stay open. Among the casualties is Rocket Video, located in West Hollywood, which closed this past September. However, this project is not focused on the lost and forgotten but rather on the stores that are still open for business.

Main Street Video, located at 1600 Main Street in Venice, is also known as "the Hipster video store". Attracting an artsy scene, Main Street Video is situated on a block filled with dying commodities and new boutiques. However, this store has been able to garner a loyal base of customers because of his location. Venice has always been loyal to independent businesses (the reason why you won't find a Starbucks on the boardwalk). Main Street Video carries a small selection but within their selection are art-house films, foreign films, and tons of documentaries. For more info, call 310-594-3616.

Jungle Video, also in Venice at 423 Lincoln Blvd, has a similar audience to Main Street Video. Many young adults use Jungle Video as an outlet from mainstream movies. With 99 cent rentals, Jungle Video gives you bang for your buck but that's if you can find your bang. Jungle Video is one of the smallest video stores on this blog, boasting a great porn section but a small regular film selection. Yet with 99 cent rentals, it's hard to argue. For more information, call 310-314-7777.

Along with Jungle Video and Main street Video is Video Addict. Video Addict also known for his giant porn collection but its small regular film collection. Run by a Japanese couple, Video Addict is a more Japanese-oriented video store, having a huge anime and Japanese TV show collection. It is known as "the place to go for Japanese programming on the Westside". For more information, call 310-312-5083.

Laser Blazer
is another video store, located on Pico Blvd in West LA, that has maintained a loyal customer base. Laser Blazer focused on having all laser disc films (those giant record looking things). For the past decade this has been THE place to get laser disc films but, like all other technology, the laser disc has become obsolete and the film has transitioned into providing different types of films (aka they went mainstream). While they still maintain a loyal customer base for those film buffs who want laser discs, they also shifted to a new customer base by providing more mainstream titles. For more information, call 310-475-4788.