Humor

This compilation is a fresh, witty, and compelling addition to video’s rich legacy of media deconstruction. Through appropriation and reassemblage, these intriguing works upset the hypnotic spectacle of TV viewing by displacing its logic and forcing viewers to make new connections among its codes and conventions. While this disruption is playful, it also reveals the tragic underbelly of corporate message-making—the way it appropriates and suppresses nature and "unpredictability," the way it preys on human vulnerability, and the way it shamelessly celebrates mediocrity and distraction.

Marie Losier

Bird, Bath and Beyond

"I don't put myself into my movies because that would be too much--my pictures reflect my own feelings. So hopefully it's entertaining. Otherwise I can't bear looking at them, ha ha!"
--Mike Kuchar

In this dream-portrait of Mike Kuchar, he floats through his memories as the sea, space and sky drift past. Wrapped in odd costumes, he frolics with the imaginary creatures surrounding him, and recalls the creatures of his own imagination.

Tom Rubnitz

Bump and Grind It

A glittering, Las Vegas-inspired music video for John Sex’s song "Bump and Grind It". With an outrageous fountain hairdo (by stylist Danilo), Sex sings his catchy pop lyrics, “You gotta put your love behind it/Bump, bump, bump and grind it.” Featuring the Bodacious Ta-Tas and inter-cut with Vegas showgirl footage.

This title is also available on Tom Rubnitz Videoworks: Sexy, Wiggy, Desserty.

Animal Charm

Brite Tip

"Brite Tip explores the indoctrination of children and police through an assortment of cross-fades, wipes, and other stock transitions. A highly danceable essay on breastfeeding."

—Gavin Smith

This title is also available on Animal Charm Videoworks: Volume 3, Computer Smarts.

®TMark

Bringing It All To You!

®™ark is an organization dedicated to bringing anti-corporate subversion and sabotage into the public marketplace. This updated video compilation includes a glitzy promotion for the ®™ark system (Bringing It All to You!); a behind-the-scenes look at some ®™ark propaganda efforts; an ®™ark PowerPoint presentation concerning "the Y2K bug”; a Danish television report about ®™ark and Hitler; a Boston news report about ®™ark; and, finally, the grand prize winner of ®™ark 1998 Corporate Poetry Contest, reading his winning entry.

Teddy Dibble

Born Yesterday

As with his predecessor Ernie Kovaks, everything is fair game for ridicule in Dibble’s gentle and eccentric humor. Skillfully manipulating the video image in these brief sketches, Dibble gives us his view on subjects ranging from the practical application of Newton’s law, to the prospect of video dating. Born Yesterday includes:

1. Newton’s Law, 00:45

2. Mr. Dibble, 01:16

3. Three Things, 01:49

4. Video Dating, 05:38

5. Cantankerous Television, 3:44

Ho Tam

The Books of James

Through a stack of personal journals, this video reconstructs a biography of the South Dakota-born, New York City-enlightened artist James Wentzy. Tracing his days starting out as a struggling artist and later involved as an AIDS activist, the video provides an intimate portrait of a neglected hero. Wentzy reads from journals and shares old family snapshots and notebook sketches. “I hope I don’t die of sainthood,” Wentzy jokes in an entry from 1990—the pivotal time when he was becoming involved with ACT-UP and beginning to live healthier after the revelation of his HIV-positive status.

Animal Charm

Body Prep

Body Prep helps fortify and support the body during any level of activity—low, medium, or high intensity. It compares various alternatives to weightlifting with natural and artificial light sources. Exercise is explored through the change of seasons.

This title is only available on Animal Charm Videoworks: Volume 3, Computer Smarts.

Barbie Liberation Organization

BLO Nightly News

In a form of subversive media terrorism, BLO operatives purchased talking Barbie and G.I. Joe dolls, both of which were programmed to speak crude cultural clichés. The dolls were then taken to the BLO headquarters where “corrective surgery” was performed: switching the dolls’ voice boxes.

George Kuchar

Attack of the Giant Garuda

A video I made with students at the California College of Arts and Crafts. It brings to life the terror and romance of cryptozoology as the hero and heroine (both played by young women) go south to bumpkin land on a search for the notorious and monstorous MOTHMAN. A fun journey in video-making desperation (the whole thing had to be shot and edited in 5 days).

John Smith

Associations

Images from magazines and color supplements accompany a spoken text taken from Herbert H. Clark’s “Word Associations and Linguistic Theory” (in New Horizons in Linguistics, ed. John Lyons,1970). By using the ambiguities inherent in the English language, Associations sets language against itself. Image and word work together and against each other to destroy and create meaning.

George Kuchar

Art Space

A brief trip to the Miami '09 art festival was the moving (or swimming) force to instigate this travelogue. There are some bathing sequences sprinkled about and lots of munching going on in this latest addition to my Christmas video series. There's even a Santa Claus figure trodding across sand instead of snow; but don't let that dismaying personage in shades of gray discolor an otherwise plentiful poo-poo platter of pulchritude.

George Kuchar

Artists in Residence

The artists of the future and the past converge and converse as the funding dries up and extrapolation envisions extinction.

Hermine Freed

Art Herstory

“In her brilliant video Art Herstory, [Freed] has restaged art history, putting herself in the model’s role in numerous paintings.... Time dissolves under her humorous assault—one moment in the painting, then out of the canvas and into that period, then back in the studio."

—Jonathan Price, “Video Art: a Medium Discovering Itself,” Art News 76 (January 1977)

An excerpt of this title (14:49) is also included on Surveying the First Decade: Volume 1.

Chip Lord

Aroma of Enchantment

Aroma of Enchantment is a video essay investigating the fascination Japanese teenagers have for the America of the 1950s and '60s, sporting bobby socks and hair soaked with Brylcreem. Weaving together historical anecdotes about General Douglas MacArthur and his own feelings of alienation in the midst of Japanese culture, Lord focuses on stories told by collectors of American memorabilia in Japan and advocates of Americanization.

Humor

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