Diary

Two gardens of plenty sprout with the seeds of bitter fruit made sweeter by the touch of summer, which rushes in with the scent of floral flatulence. Made heady by the gorgeous gas, the subjects of this video open both heart and mouth to nature's bounty which is served in microwaveable platters of convenient disposability to protect the environment from caustic suds. A touch of poison does escape the purity of these proceedings, but the general mood is one of gregarious grimness amid the plentitudes of paradise."

The artist Bruce Conner is featured in this videotape which bounces east and west, depicting the fragility of holistic hooligans in a world of hit-and-run encounters, Prozac, and pizzas. A meditation on faulty plumbing and paradise lost... but not forgotten!

A nocturnal COVID-19 memoir. 

Piano assemblage and image sequencing by Bob Snyder. Images by Sara Livingston.

Sections 1-30 of an incomplete extended poem describing the artist's connection to the radical black tradition. The completed poem will be formed of 180 sections.

"Lessons are all about constraints; they are thirty seconds, must feature a black figure, and I have rules about where to make cuts, how to edit sound, etc."
— Martine Syms in conversation with Aram Moshayedi, Mousse Magazine

A very chatty array of people along with still photos and a loose-tongued cab driver, make this a leisurely stroll through my social life of several years ago.

Cameras aim and click in this breezy short that blows hot and cold kisses to the "Big Apple" below and the maple leaf above and beyond the northern border of this great nation. Harmonize with the hairy (bleached or flea-powdered) as they smoke or yelp in unabashed abandon to the tune of time zones we all share.

In Xmas 1986, George Kuchar’s mother Stella has come to stay with him for the holidays. After a series of dinners with friends, Stella’s repeated discussions about her shingles and Kuchar’s ominous film-noirish narration, Kuchar rescues the morale of a dinner party gone bad thanks to an undercooked ham by presenting his hosts with a very memorable holiday gift.

– Kyle Riley

Opening with jarring violence, Dani Leventhal's Tin Pressed proceeds to negotiate a balancing act between the bewildering tonal variances of daily life — with all of its unnameable and enchantingly fragmented specifics — and the gravitational urge to construct both private and shared narratives. The world discovered through these images revolves around multiple centers. The camera's odd equanimity feels both generous and dangerous. Leventhal's deft oscillation between elision and inclusion reveals a brief but vast taxonomy of beauty, peace, longing and terror.

In a version of the “teenage diary,” Benning places her feelings of confusion and depression alongside grisly tales from tabloid headlines and brutal events in her neighborhood. The difficulty of finding a positive identity for oneself in a world filled with violence is starkly revealed by Benning’s youthful but already despairing voice.

This title is also available on Sadie Benning Videoworks: Volume 1.

In this impressionistic piece, O’Reilly provides a gripping portrait of personal trauma, while detailing the severe mental and physical confusion following two incidents. In April of 1991, O'Reilly broke his jaw in a biking accident, and in July of that same year he was assaulted and had to undergo brain surgery as a result. The video is breathtaking, as O’Reilly narrates the painful story of his recovery, his problems with Public Aid, and his daily adjustment to pain.

An urban and suburban blend of nerd, nebbish and nympho, united in the urge to create a cosmetic cosmology.

Addressing the camera, Segalove confesses to plagarizing her 5th grade report, The Story of Coal.

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.

The Love Tapes: World Trade Center is a collection of videos from Wendy Clarke's Love Tapes project. The project began in 1977 and is ongoing. Love, as described throughout the tapes, is not defined by any one singular meaning, but is instead contextualized by the variety of personal perspectives and experiences within this collection. Videos in this selection were recorded at a station the artist set up in the World Trade Center in 1980, open over the course of three weeks.

"Persistence was shot in 1991-92 in Berlin, and edited with films by U.S. Signal Corps cameramen in 1945-46, obtained from Department of Defense archives. Interspersed through these materials are filmic quotations from Rossellini's Germany Year Zero (1946). A meditation on the time just after a great historical event, about what is common to moments such as these—the continuous and discontinuous threads of history—and our attachment to cinematic modes of observation that, by necessity, shape our view of events.

Two video letters made to communicate the artists longing for her friends, and produced with the same images from her daily life in Israel. The first is addressed to Jacqueline, the artist’s Swiss friend in Zurich, and the second to Abla, her Palestinian friend in Nablus.

This title is only available on Radical Closure.

Nine individuals visit the Santa Monica Mall and share their thoughts and feelings about love with Wendy Clarke and her camera. Love Tapes: Santa Monica Mall is part of Clarke's ongoing project, Love Tapes.

In Nibbles, George Kuchar crafts a mini-travelette documenting his adventures around Cape Cod. Shot primarily in Provincetown, Massachusetts, Kuchar visits friends and takes every opportunity to sample the local cuisine. After a power outage at Provincetown’s DNA Gallery, Kuchar returns to his friends’ home once more, this time to view their son’s performance film about Minnie Mouse, and no doubt to eat more of their food.

– Kyle Riley

The summer comes to an end as the viewer tours the loft and art, the lofty art of Mimi Gross, the swinging dummies of Doug Skinner, and the mysterious real estate of famed author, Whitley Streiber. Hear his story of terror and beauty under the trees and roof of his country home. See for yourself the man behind the mystery and the people who love him. Also, as an added attraction: rare shots of UFO author and investigator, John Keel. An informal look at the incredible.

"It was as if I was living by the Nike slogan Just Do It."
— George Barber

Letters, conversations: New York-Chicago, Fall, 2001 is driven by a fragmented voice-over that criss-crosses between two female voices – one seemingly formal and distant, the other more conversational and intimate. It begins with short excerpts from emails, phone conversations and letters between friends, family, ex-lovers and acquaintances in the days and weeks following September 11th, 2001.

Another edition to my weather diary series, this particular one has more social intercourse occurring in the prairie hovel which houses the hidden longings of he who seeks sustenance from the void.  The void acts up in the beginning and then simmers warmly in the glow of companionship from fellow travelers on this Route 66 to who knows where? Perhaps to that pillar of pancake perfection known as Denny's (the restaurant, not the deity).

Waves crash on rocks as tongues flap in the wind about all things cinematic. People chirp and chew in various states of dress and undress as the climate shifts from coast to coast on the tide of a national pleasure/treasure: film festivals, lectures and art happenings.

Based on the filmmaker's autobiography, You Are Here examines the search for home within our era of transnational displacement. As the son of Italian immigrants, the filmmaker examines notions of home and belonging within the context of his ethnic origins, but also extends this in relation to his identity as a gay man. The film chronicles his trajectory from his familial home in Italy, to his native Canada and beyond, and weaves a compelling portrait shaped by memory and the realities of the present.

A brief visit with a graduate student in the painting department of the art college where Kuchar teaches and the discussion that follows the unveiling of his work. Stroll through a gallery of acryllic-rendered innocence gone awry and the yo-yo generation in heat.