Poetry

Earthglow

Earthglow is a poem written for the character generator and switcher that conveys a writer's internal dialogue through both subtle and dramatic color changes and through movement, size, and placement of words. The ambient soundtrack evokes the confleunce of past and present perceptions.

Jennet Thomas

Double Dummy

Four dummies, two cats, and a portal to bliss inside their attempts at symmetry. A hairball, and a mess of twigs, whose love has died and who are sad.

Nicolas Provost

The Divers

A lonely girl is approached by a shy boy on a moonlight balcony. Their longing is hampered by the mysteries of love. The Divers is a neo-romantic audiovisual painting. It is a poem that combines the quest of the artist for the mysterious elements that create pathos in sound and image, as much as it is a melodramatic experience reaching for the viewer's subconscious cinematic and emotional memory.

William Wegman

Gray Hairs

Gray Hairs is a visual and aural poem to Man Ray, featuring close-up shots of the dog’s body and a soundtrack of panting, sniffing and licking.

Daniel Reeves

Ganapati/A Spirit in the Bush

A song of mourning, praise, and compassion for the sentient creatures with whom we share this planet. Focusing on the myth, history, and natural life of the elephant, the video explores the gulf we have created between ourselves and animals. Powered by the poetry of Lorca, Kipling, and Reeves, this impassioned lament for subjugated and slaughtered elephants earns its polemical stance—a broader relation to inhumanity—by force of its compelling subject matter.

Tom Kalin

Every Wandering Cloud

Every Wandering Cloud is the first installment in a series of experimental videos inspired by the writings of Oscar Wilde. Interweaving text from Wilde's "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" with hand-drawn animation derived from Eadweard Muybridge's Human and Animal Location, Every Wandering Cloud is a meditation on themes of freedom and imprisonment. The video juxtaposes an eclectic array of archival and contemporary imagery, including documentary footage and original Super-8 and digital video.

Jem Cohen

Lost Book Found

The result of over five years of Super-8 and 16mm filming on New York City streets, Lost Book Found melds documentary and narrative into a complex meditation on city life. The piece revolves around a mysterious notebook filled with obsessive listings of places, objects, and incidents. These listings serve as the key to a hidden city: a city of unconsidered geographies and layered artifacts—the relics of low-level capitalism and the debris of countless forgotten narratives. The project stems from the filmmaker's first job in New York—working as a pushcart vendor on Canal Street.

Mike Kuchar

Leticia's Poem

Poet Leticia Plotkin's final poem, intended to praise the ancient deities who control one's fate, turns instead into a bitter damnation scribbled in venom.

Mike Kuchar

Lady Fortescue's Nephew

Lady Fortescue, author of poetry, suffers from a writer's lack of inspiration, until "young Jeffrey" is sent to stay with her in her garden where, "The butterflies float about like fairies from an old picture book," in this sumptuous video.

Jem Cohen

Just Hold Still

In his New York City landscape, Cohen finds inspiration in disturbance. Looking to life for rhythm and to architecture for state of mind, he locates simple mysteries. Just Hold Still is comprised of an interconnected series of short works and collaborations that explore the gray area between documentary, narrative, and experimental genres.

Mike Kuchar

Obsessive

A boy endures sleepless nights of desire and obsession in this haunting visualization of erotic possession.

Tom Kalin

Nomads

“I fear nomads. I am afraid of them and afraid for them too.”

—Jane Bowles, “Camp Cataract” in My Sister’s Hand in Mine (New York: Ecco Press, 1978)

Mike Kuchar

Romance

Nymphs and Satyrs are conjured back into activity when poetry is recited and fluffy clouds sail above the contemporary, domestic landscape.

Blumenthal/Horsfield

Peter Schjeldahl: An Interview

Peter Schjeldahl began writing his “poetical criticism” for Tom Hess at ArtNews in the mid 1960s. He has since written for both popular and specialized publications including The New York Times, Art in America, and The Village Voice, among others. In this interview from 1982, Schjeldahl discusses the critic’s relationship to the artist, the audience, artwork, and the professional community of art critics. He also reads some of his own poetry.

Paul Chan

Untitled Video on Lynne Stewart and Her Conviction, The Law and Poetry

On February 10, 2005, Lynne Stewart was convicted of providing material support for a terrorist conspiracy. She is the first lawyer to be convicted of aiding terrorism in the United States. Stewart faces thirty years of prison and will be sentenced in September 2006.

Poetry

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