Music

"Blight was made in collaboration with composer Jocelyn Pook. It revolves around the building of the M11 Link Road in East London, which provoked a long and bitter campaign by local residents to protect their homes from demolition. Until 1994, when our houses were destroyed, both the composer and I lived on the route of this road. The images in the film are a selective record of some of the changes which occurred in the area over a two-year period, from the demolition of houses through to the start of motorway building work.

An abandoned rural house, the Ravel Quartet in F major and then rain, wind, snow and fog are the elements of which this video is composed. In an impossible procession, one take presents four atmospheric agents to strike against the house. The musical instruments which follow the quartet each become an audio track which corresponds to each one of the atmospheric agents. So the sound of the first violin drips like the rain, that one of the second violin is muffled like the snow, the sound of the viola moves like the wind and that one of the cello vibrates like the fog.

An extremely rare documentation of a private performance of John Cage, one of the leading avant-garde composers of the 20th century, who created "Writing for the Fifth Time through Finnegan's Wake" using I-Ching chance operation: Chinese fortune telling.  Here Cage performs in front of a video camera operated by Takahiko iimura, while he transforms the text of a modern literature classic by James Joyce into Cagian music in three ways: reading, singing and whispering.

A small Italian town on a seemingly distant hill appears like an architectural model illuminated by interior lighting. Suddenly, sounds seem to cancel the distance, suggesting nearness. Places and actions appear in miniature, animated by the light that is switched on and off. The whistling of the wind and the sounds coming from the town increase. A voiceless aria reverberates through the landscape in the absence of light.

—International Kurtzfilmtage Winterthur, 2015

This video is part of the 5 Video Hits series.

This piece still seems relevant to me somehow, perhaps because its main characters remain titans in the entertainment industry. But what of Janet Jackson, off-screen then and now?

When a handful of composers and musicians staged a week-long festival in New York in 1979, they had little idea how large an audience "new music" would attract.  Thousands of people stood in line for hours for a chance to crowd into performances, and for eleven years, New Music American traveled the United States, settling in a different city each year.  Featured in the video, shot in Houston, Texas, in 1986, are members of an internationally recognized music community including Pauline Oliveros, John Cage, Stuart Dempster, R.I.P.

This is a colorful fable of many foibles involving a man of the cloth who wishes to shed those accouterments for something of a more sinister fabric. The plot tumbles unrelentingly toward a sci-fi tone when a time machine is thrown into the vivid melange and our anti-hero gets caught up with an ancient soul who has the hots for less ancient hunks. There’s spectacle on a budget and young and old doing their best to put on a big show about the sacred, the profane and the goofy.

Painter and multi-media artist Jack Goldstein lived and worked in New York City. His airbrushed paintings of lightning and night skies are shown here accompanied by synthetic music, which the artist also composed. Goldstein committed suicide in 2003.

Interviewed by Jim Johnson.

“Christopher Wilcha’s fascinating feature-length video reminds us how seldom we’re allowed to see certain businesses operating from the inside. Wilcha, a 22-year-old college graduate and alternative-rock enthusiast, was hired by the Columbia Record and Tape Club—apparently as a fluke—to help launch a whole new niche-marketing division, which brought him face-to-face with the contradictory meanings of the term ‘alternative’ once it’s been embraced by the mass market.

Short for "Probably The Last" (of the series), Spiral PTL uses the image processor like a musical instrument to create variations on a spiral, transforming its basic form into an ever-moving gyro. The movement is synchronous with an audio track that varies from electronic buzzes and Space Age voices to the quiet sounds of running water.

In this video, drawing from Bob Dylan's song Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues, layers of experiences circling loss and longing are overlaid between images of landscapes and movement. In the song, a stranger's listlessness and exhaustion are woven through and around Juarez, Mexico, and so too are these stories woven around original discontent and uncertainty as they move through an uneasy negotiation with the strangeness of the American pioneer spirit.

Commissioned by Brianna Matzke for The Response Project, 2018.

5% is a ten-minute work that questions the cult of pop stardom, deconstructs music industry practices, considers the problematics of live performance, and suggests other, more anonymous working strategies.

In this early Tom Rubnitz, Barbara Lipp and Tom Koken collaboration, "Frieda" performs her rap song with a bevy of dolls as back-up singers and dancers. Features rock-bottom production values and song lyrics by Barbara Lipp and Tom Koken.

In this surreal experimental narrative, there’s something wrong with a patch of sky. As it travels over Southern England, objects cast up into it come down hugely enlarged, bloated. Meanwhile in London, the patch is in fact a troubling scab on a crippled old man’s head. As the scab develops, all he can do is wait, going through the changes, led on gently by the idiot-savant son with his childlike multiple identities.

An independent film portrait of singer/songwriter Elliott Smith in Portland, Oregon in 1996, wherein he plays three songs. The songs were done live acoustic--in his old studio, a living room, and a bathroom (it was quiet in there). It's also a small portrait of Portland, Oregon.

The songs are "Between the Bars", "Angeles", and a cover of "Thirteen" by Big Star.

This is Elliott as I remember him, at his simple finest as musician. 

Shot in black and white Super 8, this lyrical short follows a wandering, disengaged youth through grey afternoons. German Song features the hard-edged music of Come, an alternative band from Boston.

Separation of the (Earth by Fire) is a multi-disciplinary project that includes print collages, audio, and video. Together these works rethink the politicization of the image of the child, using David Wojnarowiczʼs “One Day This Kid Will Get Larger,” as a conceptual springboard. From pre-existing mainstream films, the video uses imagery of violent encounters between children and adults.

Because of the War things were changing. Very few toys or games were left and music was almost over. Tap water was tasting female and television only came in nasty spasms…

A surreal and sometimes comic meditation on how war affects the hopes and dreams of ordinary people.

An experimental documentary that asks “What is Hip Hop?” Media Assassin deals with popular magazine coverage of the black music scene and efforts to define the new musical forms emerging since the late 80s. The tape focuses on the story of Harry Allen, a former music journalist for The Village Voice, who handled public relations for the rap group, Public Enemy.

Circle's Short Circuit is an experimental feature-length work with neither a beginning nor an end—the film can be viewed from any random point. It moves through a circle of five interlocking episodes that describe the phenomenon of interruption in contemporary communication through various forms and modes, investigating causes, consequences, and side-effects. Genres shift along the episodic path of this circle, moving from documentary to essay, through collage, simulated live-coverage, and silent film.

Capitalizing on the visual aspect of musical performance, Quad Suite explores the essential link between the image of music and its sound. In Six Vibrations, the camera is riveted to a close-up of the four upper frets of Landry’s guitar, maintaining an image of the sound easily identified with the gridded field paintings of Agnes Martin. In Hebe’s Grande Bois, Landry improvises on a bamboo flute as the camera frames his mouth, again in extreme close-up, in the center of the screen. There is something sensual, almost obscene, about Landry’s lips.

Why is this injured man driving around and around a shopping center parking lot? Just what is his Target? An atmospheric mystery tale that hints at a sad story.

"The Flag is the second part of a video series about the state-controlled national day ceremonies of the Turkish Republic. Shot during the April 23rd Children’s Day celebrations, which mark the establishment of the new Turkish Parliament, and hence the official demise of the Ottoman Empire back in 1920, this split screen film documents a pompous patriotic performance devised by elders to be performed by children.

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.

An alternative music video featuring R.E.M., and directed by Jem Cohen. A poetic and passionate indictment of a world where out-of-control military budgets are paid for at the expense of the impoverished.

Also available on the Jem Cohen compilations Just Hold Still and Jem Cohen: Early Works