Inspired by Chris Marker’s acclaimed short film La Jetée (which is included on the DVD Short 2: Dreams), 12 Monkeys combines intricate, intelligent storytelling with the uniquely imaginative vision of director Terry Gilliam. The story opens in the wintry wasteland of the year 2035, where a virulent plague has forced humans to live in a squalid, oppressively regimented underground. Bruce Willis plays a societal outcast who is given the opportunity to erase his criminal record by “volunteering” to time-travel into the past to obtain a pure sample of the deadly virus that will help future scientists to develop a cure. But in bouncing from 1918 to the early and mid-1990s, he undergoes an ordeal that forces him to question his own perceptions of reality. Caught between the dangers of the past and the devastation of the future, he encounters a psychiatrist (Madeleine Stowe) who is initially convinced he’s insane, and a wacky mental patient (Brad Pitt in a twitchy Oscar-nominated role) with links to a radical group that may have unleashed the deadly virus. Equal parts mystery, tragedy, psychological thriller, and apocalyptic drama, 12 Monkeys ranks as one of the best science fiction films of the ’90s, boosted by Gilliam’s visual ingenuity and one of the finest performances of Willis’s career. –Jeff Shannon (Amazon.com). Terry Gilliam directs.
Monthly Archives: April 2015
MIRAGE • Frederic Kokott
A SHORT LOVE STORY IN STOP MOTION • Carlos Lascano
To Venner / Two Friends
The Tale of the Three Brothers
SARA JANE BOYERS: GRIDLOCK
Robert Adams says, “At our best and most fortunate we make pictures because of what stands before our camera, to honor what is greater and more interesting than we are.”
Whenever I photograph, the detail of a scene attracts me to a subject and helps me locate within it the core of experience, evoking the mystery and drama of its light and inherent beauty. That beauty can be provocative and demanding, requiring one to see it all while at the same time loosening emotion and retaining control.
I thus seek those still moments in what is generally thought to be a frenetic environment – that leave a memory shadowed with intent to re-explore; that inspire a curiosity of what remains. Not memento mori. Rather past, present, and future as they exist to be seen and experienced today. My search is for that iconic element of ordinary experience – a presence – that defines the whole.
“About” best describes a specific portfolio. With respect to FINDING CHINATOWN, here is only a small selection from the decade-long project. Please contact me should you wish to see more.
michael lockshin • The Drowning
Joey – 123jaera • STEADYo
Joschka Laukeninks
Godfrey Reggio
4th Estate • This Is Where We Live
Plato’s Cave
WATER BREATH from bulle plexiglass
CHAJA HERTOG & NIR NADLER
Richard Mosse
Artist and photographer Richard Mosse reveals the stories behind the making of his latest film, ‘The Enclave’ (2013), in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The film was shown in the Irish Pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale and was the 2014 winner of the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize.
LoopLoop • Patrick Bergeron
Using animation, sounds warping and time shifts this video runs forwards and backwards looking for forgotten details, mimicking the way memories are replayed in the mind.
LoopLoop, 5 minutes video loop, Montréal, Québec
Extended looping version at dubcopy.com [ 20 minutes (4 x 5 min) ]
patrickbergeron.com/looploop/
Software used: shake, soundhack, finalcut, perl.
Sigur Rós Valtari Mystery Films
What is Conceptual Photography?
Kerry Tribe 2-channel video installation “Here & Elsewhere”
Amanda Charchian
Nalini Malini
Elizabeth Price
Gabriel Barcia-Colombo • Blend
Gabe Barcia-Colombo creates madcap art inspired both by Renaissance era curiosity cabinets and the modern-day digital chronicling of everyday life. Think: miniature people projected in objects and a DNA Vending Machine.
Why you should listen
Gabe Barcia-Colombo is an American artist who creates installation pieces that both delight and point to the strangeness of our modern, digital world. His latest work is a DNA Vending Machine, which dispenses vials of DNA extracted from friends at dinner parties. He’s also created video installations of “miniature people” encased inside ordinary objects like suitcases, blenders and more. His work comments on the act of leaving one’s imprint for the next generation. Call it “artwork with consequences.”
As he explains it: “While formally implemented by natural history museums and collections (which find their roots in Renaissance-era ‘cabinets of curiosity’), this process has grown more pointed and pervasive in the modern-day obsession with personal digital archiving and the corresponding growth of social media culture. My video sculptures play upon this exigency in our culture to chronicle, preserve and wax nostalgic, an idea which I render visually by ‘collecting’ human beings (alongside cultural archetypes) as scientific specimens. I repurpose everyday objects like blenders, suitcases and cans of Spam into venues for projecting and inserting videos of people.”
Barcia-Colombo is an alumnus and instructor at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program. Read about his latest work on CoolHunting and in his TED Fellows profile.
Tony Oursler