Humor

Craggy, ice-encrusted peaks soar skyward as blue lagoons lap incessantly to the drumbeats of big city behemoths hellbent on halibut and hashbrowns! The magic and grandeur of glacier-masked real estate is here for all to see and digest in this bountiful serving of natural delights.

“In The Girl Chewing Gum a commanding voiceover appears to direct the action in a busy London street. As the instructions become more absurd and fantasized, we realize that the supposed director (not the shot) is fictional; he only describes—not prescribes—the events that take place before him. Smith embraced the ‘spectre of narrative’ (suppressed by structural film) to play word against picture and chance against order.

Students shoot me and themselves in action, as we grind out one schlock movie after another at the San Francisco Art Institute.

“To master the one-minute time span requires considerable discipline, and few pieces, if any, had been shaped as genuine miniatures—most having the appearance of being extracts from larger works. The notable exception was John Smith’s Gargantuan, which was not only the right length for the idea, but actually incorporated a triple pun on the word ‘minute.’”

—Nicky Hamlyn, “One Minute TV 1992”, Vertigo (Spring 1993)

"A wonderfully witty example of how to conduct pillow talk with a small amphibian."

—Elaine Paterson, Time Out London

The filmmaker accepts the challenge of the philosopher and changes not only a table but also chairs, shoes, jugs, teapots and almost everything else lying around his house.

"What prevents me from supposing that this table either vanishes or alters its shape when no one is observing it and then when someone looks at it again changes back? But one feels like saying – who is going to suppose such a thing?"

--Ludwig Wittgenstein, On Certainty (Oxford: Blackwell, 1969)

Storms threaten to tarnish the Golden State as I wander through the rooms of my apartment, seeking a high in the lowering barometric pressure. Many mementos create a series of flashbacks to warm the cockles in our most secret places—some of those places being blatantly revealed in this cockle-warming picture.

Wobbly's very eccentric approach to music produces sounds and noises that consistently battles Anne McGuire's melodic voice. Anne's lyrics turned poems find a very differenct life in her performances as Freddy McGuire. The video Lottery Ticket is a collaboration with Fou Fou Ha! and Torsten Kretchzmar. Although the dancers of Fou Fou Ha! usually wear colorful, crazy outfits for their comical buffoonery dance performances, in this video it's all about abstract numbers.