Humor

The rocks are red, the mood is blue, the sky is big, and the scars on the earth run deep as a man and woman shop incessantly for nature's bounty and the trinkets of a vanishing culture. 

There is no future in reproduction. I have no concern with any species extending itself through time. You think you have given birth to a baby, when really you have given birth to a bus driver, or tax collector. Instead I'm interested in the placenta, the real mother of us all, forgotten discarded. The softest machine, all lipids and blood, that blooms and rots like any vegetal/floral martyr. That umbilical cord did not connect you to your mother. It connected you to that most partial of objects — the placenta — part you, part mom, all martyr and garbage.

A trip to Las Vegas and a hike down a red carpet of star trodden footprints highlights this glimpse of glamorous glitz as flash bulbs pop to ignite titans of tinseltown as they rub shoulders with brethren of lower voltage.

An alternative earth music video. An epic last stand. A portrait of two utilitarian workers engaging in a collaboration with Karen, manifesting improvisational geographic friendships...

This title is also available on HalfLifers: The Complete History.

A nostalgic glazier shows off his knowledge and expounds his theories. Taking glassmaking processes and history as its central theme, Slow Glass explores ideas about memory, perception and change.

Linda Martinez stars in this sequel to the horror series, which relishes in colorful detail the misadventures of Sherry Frankenstein.  Made with my students at the San Francisco Art Institute, the viewer is plunged into a world of young and old as they tackle the monsters within and without. Chock full of entergetic scenes filled with all the opulence that only $600 could purchase, this epic of good gone bad will stun you with its massive verbosity and visual voracity. The plot deals with Ms. Frankenstein's mission to save the body and souls of strumpets in heat.

A big colorful rendering of the monster now terrorizing Puerto Rico and the hot-blooded people who have to deal with its deeper mysteries. Made with my students at the San Francisco Art Institute, the video takes the viewer to our never-never land of constructed fantasy, loaded with visiting personnel who dropped by the class and got sucked into the venture. Lots of torrid, tropical mayhem and monsters.

George Barber doffs his cap to the 20th anniversary of Scratch Video with What’s That Sound?, a mesmerizing montage of questions, answers, and the cries and screams of people caught in a disaster movie. The work uses as its starting point, the film Airport '77 where, improbably, a jumbo jet sinks to the bottom of the sea. What follows is a clever amalgamation of absurd linguistics, cries and shouts, highlighting the artist’s permanent fascination with speech, and human reaction to out-of-the-ordinary situations.

A wonderful and humorous example of early image processing, Parry Teasdale and Carol Vontobel perform to camera as their faces are morphed together, forming an image of one person. 

A pro-domme gives her friend a freshly shaved head. In return she gets a buzz cut. A client gets to be a (bound) fly on the wall.

This title is also available on Chicago Sex Change: 2002-2008, A collection of Minax's early videos that together create a punk-documentary tapestry of young queer life in Chicago in the early 2000s.

1.1 Acre Flat Screen is a 45-minute video about a year-long effort to improve a lot of 1.1 acres of desert land in Utah, which we purchased on September 4th 2002 on eBay. The video starts with ways of finding a lot in the desert, using satellite images, topographical maps, a compass and string. It displays ideas and plans on how to improve the land’s value and documents our preparations to face the unforgiving desert.

Gibbons plays the sleazy Director and lampoons the movie audition and its legendary corollary, the casting couch. Barbie is recast, not as the impossible-to-attain ideal beauty, but as the victim of sexual harrassment and exploitation.

This title is also available on Joe Gibbons Videoworks: Volume 1.

A portrait of the artist as a not-so-young man. The filmmaker attempts to enter the digital age by making a new video version of one of his old films.

"The award of the Short Film Festival goes to a video in which the reflection of artistic work becomes a form itself. John Smith manages to give us a self-ironic humorous experiment about art and time."

—Prize of the International Short Film Festival, Oberhausen 2000

This title is also available on John Smith: Program 2.

A thirty-three minute video odyssey documenting one woman's search for the miracle of the Virgin Mary. A must-see for recovering Catholics and their families and friends worldwide. From Italy to Portugal, from France to Georgia, from Iowa City to Peru, Miracle recovers a newly-minted set of the Seven Deadly Sins on the way to immortalizing the latest modern religious trend: "Spiritual Tourism." Rated S for satirical.

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)

The sun pretty much shines throughout this romp back East as waves crash against a land of plenty while the residents bathe in its nutritional offshoots. The artist Mimi Gross is seen sketching away while pets are pampered and the hefty get even bulkier on the vitamin-drenched shores of cranberry-bushed opulence. Even the city folk dabble in the colorful gaiety of multi-textured menus that create a montage of sea, sand, and crab dishes fit for a kingly queen. Relish in the splendors of a New England seascape and escape to New York with a tummy hungry for culture cramming. 

Joe Gibbons plays Dr. Joe Baldwin, the self-styled child education expert. He prepares Zoe, from birth, for acceptance into a coveted “gifted-only” kindergarten program. He brings to each lesson an assortment of modified educational books, games and toys. These sessions, along with monologues analyzing her development, are recorded in hopes of proving that “genii [his term] are not born, but made.” What becomes evident is one man’s misguided quest to manipulate pitted against one child’s exuberant resistance to being controlled.

Director’s statement:

In Precious Products we are subtly reminded of this country’s obsession with consumerism and narcissism. George, with his ever-present video-8 camera, attends an opening of Precious Products—an exhibition of artworks satirizing art as commodity. He leaves the art world of San Francisco to spend a Christmas holiday with friends in their opulent home. Ironically, this is the home of a celebrity (another kind of commodity), Russian defector/ballerina Natalia Makanova. Surrounded by all the luxuries of life and Makanova’s image, George muses about death.

An ordinary living room with a green screen, TV, and domestic cat serves as the backdrop for this DIY introduction to experimental philosophy. The president of a company is considering a vice president's moneymaking scheme. He says, "Look, I know this program will harm the environment, but I don't care at all about that. All I care about is maximizing profits. So let's start the program." The company adopts the policy, and sure enough, the environment is harmed. Now consider a seemingly straightforward question: Did the chairman of the board harm the environment intentionally?

Prompted by Apple’s Siri to ask questions, Magenheimer takes the AI invitation seriously and invents a long list of queries. We see them appear one by one over scanned images from Architectural Digest magazine’s idealized interiors of 1981, the year Magenheimer was born and the year Ronald Reagan became president.

A young girl buys a weird toy from a charity shop. She forms such an intense relationship with it that it develops special ways of communicating and a strange connection to her that seems to defy the laws of physics. As the situation escalates, it seems that repression is the only way forward. First conceived of as a kind of fairy tale that goes wrong, this is a piece about learning the “rules” of grown-up reality and an extrapolation of the consequences of “over-identifying” with toys. A digital video with digital video effects, live-action, and model/object animation.

By accident, the content of a computer encyclopedia is transferred into the brain of an animated parrot resulting in the emotional breakdown of a fine peach.

"I would never have known how to do anything on my computer if it wasn't for Computer Smarts."

—Mark Roth

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

PASSIONS run deep and LOVE flies high on Cupid’s arrow when ‘Boys’ are the desired target.

The small cruelties of a subliminal fog roll in.  A pandemic thwarts intimacy. Perched from their little planets, this cast of wildly colorful creatures question their futures and navigate the longing for connection.

This is the fifth collaboration between Jessie Mott and Steve Reinke.

"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.