Yvonne Rainer, my weekend review

Link to a great interview in which she discusses her filmmaking and interests in the art of experimental cinema...

http://vimeo.com/30859870

p.s. I love her obviously. BYE.

p.s.s. read her autobiography, "FACTS ARE FEELINGS", if you cant afford it skim : thru it via Amazon.com book sample. duh. bye again.

CLICK PLAY BELOW 4 her APPLAUSE :

GIRLSCOUTS World Thinking Day 2012!

and now me gonna have me sum cookies.

BYE.

DIA: BEACON (Yvonne Rainer, Live Performance 2.25.12)

Mua posing in front of an installation ROCK BOULDER :)

Grand applause with Yvonne after her performance!

amazing day ended with buffalo calamari. BYE.

This is what...

...my healthy homemade high brow LEMONWATER looks like.

yum yum. want some? too bad. all mine.
BYE :)

Looking way foward to this !

NIght of the BULLHEAD

good film overall.

Rating? Thumbs half mast.

interesting concept, mafia run hormone business.

silly concept, making the wicked criminal a poor little hurt boy.

See it for the farm and rural vista settings.

working new film & new editing suite. BYE.

Snore. film whirring. gabbing and blabbing. here

I (or somebody) went to the screening of 'Sleep' last night. I (or some other person) figured this was my one and only chance to see this piece. I have never before been in the geographical proximity of a screening of it (at least that i was aware of), and the odds would seem I never will be again. And having now been, I think that's a damn shame. I don't know if 'Sleep' is good or bad. I don't know if it should be called a 'film.' I don't know if any other rubric would fit it any better. But I would say it's a force to be reckoned with exactly because it confounds categorization, expectation, any aesthetic/cultural convention with which I am familiar. It may be the most radical piece of cinema I have ever seen. I doubt anyone has ever entered a screening of 'Sleep' without knowing a) that it's really, really long, and b) that it's just footage of one guy sleeping. But I don't think there's any way that knowledge can prepare you for the specificity of the experience. I felt I began to get a handle on that specifity maybe 5 or 10 minutes in. There's a series of big contrasty black and white image on a wall. Movement is minimal. Sometimes the images are from angles that thoroughly abstract the subject. Sometimes they are recognizable body parts (a face, a butt crack) but apprehended in a stylized form due to the contrasty image. And everything goes on and on at a variety of unpredictable lengths, until it changes to something else that goes on and on at an unpredictable length. Even with the foreknowledge that the piece is composed of a limited amount of footage repeated multiple times, I found it impossible to discern any pattern or structure. Now, why I say this is radical I because I was not prepared to deal with this, nor, by observation, was anyone else in attendance. By 'not prepared' I don't mean 'unwilling.' There were, of course, people there at the beginning who just gave up and left sooner or later (mostly sooner). I was resolved to stay to the end, but quickly found myself posing the internal question, "OK, now what do I DO?" It's called a 'film', Andy Warhol is known as a 'filmmaker'. The room is full of chairs set up facing the screen, as in a typical film screening. So my first thought was to act the way film audiences are supposed to act: sit politely and quietly pay close attention to what's on the screen and try to make some useful sense or emotional response of the experience. Since I have watched a certain amount of experimental cinema, I'm familiar with works that seems to confound this approach at first, but ultimately reward it in the end after coaxing the viewer to alter some temporal and conceptual expectations (Frampton, especially). But, as I said, for me anyway well before the first reel was halfway through it was apparent that this was not possible with 'Sleep'. One just can't pay attention to it in that way. So if you don't leave, what do you do instead? The 'film' itself offers no instructions, no clues. The compositions on the screen, the significations of the authorship, the fame/infamy of the piece, the curiosity to see how the little variations on not much will proceeed, seem to be enough to keep a few of us hanging around, but none of us seem to know what to do, and we all seem a bit awkward about the propriety of whatever choice we make. Is it wrong to strike up conversations? Is it stupid to just stare at the screen? Man, I'm hungry, what will I miss if I go to Mickey D's for a burger. Could the title be interpreted as an imperative verb? It's pretty hard not to be self aware of your status as a viewer, hard not to have that status problematized, hard not to be aware of every other viewer in the room and how they are dealing with their own likely self-aware and problematized viewership.

My conclusion is that 'Sleep' is what we would now call 'interactive' art. It has no fixed text, because the work is not experienced as a thing that appears up on screen, but as something that happens in a room full of people who react to the screen and to each other in different ways that change and repeat start and stop quite out of sync with the way the images change, repeat start and stop. I can't imagine any two screenings of it would be the same because the reactions to the work become inseperable from the work.

2012 Showcase Award for photojournalism (35mm image)

http://www.artslant.com/global/artists/show/249540-joey-huertas?tab=AWARDS

I was just awarded for my 35 print image "Female Riot Cop" .

Image taken on 35mm at the controversial 1999 KKK (Klu Klux Klan) N.Y.C. City Hall rally/ public protest.

bye :)

A debate on the preservation of "film projection"

Joey, with much respect for your works and while I don't have any solutions, Canyon's becoming a not for profit seemslike a good start. Perhaps then some in "the industry" who claim earlyinspiration from experimental films will get out their checkbooks.

Keeping Canyon going wouldn't take that much. Perhaps some in the Bay Area couldform a fund raising committee.At the risk of bringing up an old issue here, I am disturbed that nowherein the debate is it mentioned that there is a unique aesthetic value, formany films, to presenting them as originally intended, on film. Yes,projectors are harder to find; yes, some schools won't pay for rentals. Idon't have any solutions to all that. But if the members of this listwon't even acknowledge the particular qualities of film projection, andthat so many of the greatest works of the avant-garde were made with those particular qualities in mind, and that such works often lose hugely on video, then the "battle" is over before it has even begun. You can hardlytry to find projectors and rental funds if you don't even care.

Similarly, instructors who don't care about this difference can hardly explain itwith any passion to their students. I have found that many students canindeed appreciate the unique qualities of film with only a little explanation and encouragement.David Tetzlaff:"...everything needs to gets digitized, and made available in a medium rez form along with prints. So, when you rent a print of 'Cosmic Ray' fromCanyon, you get an SD DVD of 'Cosmic Ray' to put on reserve in the libraryfor the length of the term...."This does not even acknowledge that there are still filmmakers, stillliving filmmakers, perhaps even in my view some of the very greatest offilmmakers, who refuse to "digitize" their work because they feel too muchis lost. Is there no respect at all for the artist's intentions withregard to her or his work?

Fred Camper

Chicago

NPR's Amy Goodman and Joey Huertas in New York City

PREPARING & DIGITIZING MY HAND PROCESSED FOOTAGE (silence please,shhhhhhhhh)

This is what a snowy day at pre-selected ArtForum gallery announcements may have lookd like...

above is a painting of my beloved imaginary family.

not twins. triplets. cant u see my reflection in the middle?? DUH. use your brain for a second.

I told her not to wear the polkadot suit in public. she did it to spite me.

I liked this beeeyotchy snotty lady pictured above the most. my imaginary mother. took me out of the family will. BYE!

p.s. the coffee he/me is drinkin AINT a latte. DUH. BYE AGAIN.

subject of "PERSUASION" on 16mm film

watchin'/watched (notice PAST TENSE) a 16mm educational film that I purchased about the subject of the power of PERSUASION. Themes discussed by bad actors in afros and pigtails : REPETITION, DIVERSION,OMISSION, REPETITION, REPETITION, CONFUSION,REPETITON, IM CONFUSED ALREADY. JUST WATCH THIS CRAP BELOW:

here are some, below are some, please watch some clips...

p.s and just learned that: WHITNEY HOUSTON IS DEAD!!!! WTF BYE!

U saw 16mm film?? DUH! it was over 2 hours of West African cinematic visual poetry @ LIGHT INDUSTRY (hosted by Ed Halter) Brooklyn, NY

Naked Spaces - Living is Round
	135 min. color film (1985)
	Produced by
	Directed, Photographed, Written and Edited by Trinh T. Minh-ha AN AMAZING SCREENING TONIGHT! !! BUT STILL WAS SAD TO BE REMINDED THAT 16MM FILM IS DEAD :( THANK GOD FOR NEW YORK'S PASSIONATE UNDERGROUND CINEPHILE MOVEMENT. BYE ( yes, i was there tonight. DUH again!) BYE. BYE. and one more BYE.

My new sound-design recorder :)

It was LOVE at first sight.

BYE.

xo

underwater photo shoot with Bethany

Bethany 2012 (underwater photo shoot)