looking and listening: J. Benning’s work

Ok. here the new Gus van Sant film ‘Last Days’ is just starting and as one of the reviewers (german only) drew connections to a shot of M.Snows ‘Wavelength’ and the general attitude of the films of James Benning as influences for van Sand, I thought it worth to connect to the work of …

unfinish! – 20 years transmediale

...transmediale.07 is going to open its doors on January 31st under the theme ‘unfinish!’.

“A finished work is exactly that, it requires resurrection.” (John Cage, 1949)

unfinish! demands the re-opening of processes that are deemed closed.

unfinish! questions finality and claims that any given situation is full of potential.

unfinish! investigates artistic processes that are open to change …

the impact of grainy images

.. and one of the many comments on the infamous mobile video
link even though I don’t agree with the ‘we-have-been-there-too’ impetus, but these following points are very interesting: first is an excerpt from Rob Shields’ posting on spaceandculture, ..
... Linking the visible with the articulable in a new way, changes not just what …

How the West armed Saddam ..

via newsgrist some links which should be passed on further: – a text by Zizek published in the NYT and an essential must-view flash film …
In a similar way, Saddam Hussein’s regime was an abominable authoritarian state, guilty of many crimes, mostly toward its own people. However, one should note the strange but key …

Agonistic politics and artistic practices

Looking east, towards the new 2007 EU members, might be quite interesting in many regards. One of these is very directly addressed by an upcoming conference – ‘Regimes of Representation: Art & Politics Beyond the House of People’ – at the Romania’s national museum of contemporay art: MNAC in Bucharest, which formerly had …

new religions ..

.. or the escape from staging the self:But cinema for me is like a kind of secular, western version of an ecstatic space. And there’s a ‘communality’ to it. You tend to lose your little, miniature empire. The enjoyment comes from letting go of this construction of yourself that you’ve got to keep staging …