The projection and screens in this installation are access points meant to connect the present to an ancestral past. Evoking the ritualism of Aztec cosmology, this experience recalls lumbreras – circular excavation holes in archeological sites, such as the recently found Tzompantli (skulls ceremonial rack) at the Templo Mayor in Tenochtitlan (Mexico City). The use of obsidian crystal as a nuclear filter in the chamber is also essential.
A woman survives a clinical death in 1988 and wakes up hearing voices in her head. Samuel, a spirit, has started to speak through her. People identify her as a medium. Samuel proclaims a mission to save the world before the year 2012. The entity's name soon changes from Samuel to EN K1, a Sumerian God who claims to be the father of the human race.
The Wake was filmed at the Invertebrate Zoology department of the Carnegie Natural History Museum in Pittsburgh. In this department there are old cabinets full of categorized butterfly specimens, neatly ordered in drawers. I released into this space 100 live butterflies that flew among the dead specimens. The result is as if these dead specimens have now come to life.
The violent overreaction to 9/11 and to the revolutions of the 1960s cannot be explained only with fear and politics. Franz Hinkelammert, a German-born liberation theologian, economist and philosopher, brings religion front and center to the discussion in a unique way. The emptiness and senselessness felt by those at the margins of a free-market utopian ideology has been filled by an extreme millenarian Christianity and other religious fundamentalisms that justify murder and torture as preemptive self-defense.
Linda Montano is interviewed by Janet Dees, Curator at the Mary and Leigh Block Museum, Northwestern University.
Since the 1960s, Linda Montano has aimed to blur the distinction between art and life with her performance and video work. Delving deep into subjects like death, spirituality and personal trauma, she is seen as an influential figure in feminist performance art.
Songs of Praise for the Heart Beyond Cure is a fourteen-minute experimental video that unfolds through a series of short episodes. "To describe Cooper Battersby and Emily Vey Duke's new video as ironic doesn't do it justice.
The Waiãpi videomaker Kasiripinã decides to show white people the documentation he did on his people in Amapo. He presents and comments on three celebrations that represent episodes of the myth-cycle of the creation of the universe. The theme of the Tamoko celebration is war, and it presents the death of a cannibal monster. In the second celebration, Pikyry, the dancers act out the spawning of fish. The last is the Turé, the dance of the flutes, in which the Waiãpi reenact the death of the tapir in honor of the creator, Janejar.
Directed by Kasiripinã Waiãpi.
In these lunar paths the moon is the celestial body of brilliant colors that crosses with its cyclical and mythical dance the dark space of our present time and in whose dance the moon enters, moves away, approaches and lies on itself in a cycle rhythmic of celestial agitation. These are the shamanic ways of the moon. Part of the Lunar Films series.
"Presented in seven parts, Beauty Plus Pity considers the potential for goodness amidst the troubled relations between God, humanity, animals, parents and children... (it) contemplates the shame and beauty of existence; it is part apologia, part call to arms."
— Duke & Battersby
Note: This title is intended by the artist to be viewed in High Definition. While DVD format is available to enable accessibility, VDB recommends presentation on Blu-ray or HD digital file.
A multiple award winner, this experimental tape explores the psychological ramifications of a woman growing up under orthodox Islamic law. Resisting traditional definitions of a woman’s role in society as first and foremost a dutiful daughter or wife, Nanji struggles to find a space amidst the web of restrictive familial and societal conventions.
The Passion According to Sevilla focuses on the celebration of Holy Week in Seville, Spain. Statues of the Virgin and other religious images and figures are carried through the streets on parade floats.
El jardín del amor (The garden of love) is a celebration of life and love, religious ecstasy, where animals, humans and nature coexist in harmony.
The projection and screens in this installation are access points meant to connect the present to an ancestral past. Evoking the ritualism of Aztec cosmology, this experience recalls lumbreras – circular excavation holes in archeological sites, such as the recently found Tzompantli (skulls ceremonial rack) at the Templo Mayor in Tenochtitlan (Mexico City). The use of obsidian crystal as a nuclear filter in the chamber is also essential.
Rebecca gazes into the crystal ball. It is afternoon in a Brooklyn neighborhood of industrial buildings. Rebecca has a way with words just as words have a way of seeking her out. The crystal ball intensifies this. The A train rumbles over the Manhattan Bridge. Rebecca gazes into the crystal ball. Nighttime in a suburban neighborhood of burnt out buildings. Words have a way with Rebecca just as Rebecca has a way of seeking them out. The crystal ball intensifies this.
This tape addresses spiritual closure. Video gave me a chance to examine, see, and celebrate the seven spiritual venues, paths, and journeys that I have made: 1) Catholic life, 2) nun's life, 3) yoga life, 4) Buddhist life, 5) feminist life, 6) natural life, 7) life. Publicly, I am admitting that I am a spiritual materialist—been there, done that—but I am also saying that all of my spiritual experiences have worked together to prepare me for even deeper journeys combining all of the sacred technologies I have learned so that I can re-invent my own way.
Strip / Musrara is part of Assor's ongoing “Strip” series, set in Jerusalem’s Musrara neighborhood. It is an attempt to create a living map that is both collective and subjective – a plurality of combined perspectives. Not a map of the exact measurements of the neighborhood, but of the experience of moving through it, together and alone, locals and strangers, intersecting and drifting apart.
"A chamber drama set in the confines of an apartment’s sun room, this video further explores visual themes and obsessions found in my earlier works and adds in a few new ones for good measure. Earlier motifs seen here are lightbulbs in pendulum movement, tabletop antics with simple household objects, Christo-like fleshy textures, sketchbook pages torn from their binders, book pages, bookshelves, and flowers. I play a vaguely Walter Mitty-ish figure, who imagines himself as a conductor, as Orpheus, and as conflicted characters in a Greta Garbo movie.
Songs of Praise for the Heart Beyond Cure is a fourteen-minute experimental video that unfolds through a series of short episodes. "To describe Cooper Battersby and Emily Vey Duke's new video as ironic doesn't do it justice.
This suite is a set of circular and fragmented compositions, in which a rhythmic and haunted dance hides an eroded lunar landscape. The microscopic rubble of our contemporary civilization. Part of the Lunar Films series.
The Waiãpi videomaker Kasiripinã decides to show white people the documentation he did on his people in Amapo. He presents and comments on three celebrations that represent episodes of the myth-cycle of the creation of the universe. The theme of the Tamoko celebration is war, and it presents the death of a cannibal monster. In the second celebration, Pikyry, the dancers act out the spawning of fish. The last is the Turé, the dance of the flutes, in which the Waiãpi reenact the death of the tapir in honor of the creator, Janejar.
Directed by Kasiripinã Waiãpi.
Lunar Pond is part of an audiovisual series about lunar cycles and rhythms in an attempt to evoke, integrate and develop the mythical presence of the Aztec lunar goddess Coyolxauhqui, thus evoking the eroded contemporary landscape of our time.
"Presented in seven parts, Beauty Plus Pity considers the potential for goodness amidst the troubled relations between God, humanity, animals, parents and children... (it) contemplates the shame and beauty of existence; it is part apologia, part call to arms."
— Duke & Battersby
Note: This title is intended by the artist to be viewed in High Definition. While DVD format is available to enable accessibility, VDB recommends presentation on Blu-ray or HD digital file.
On February 10th, 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 was convicted on charges of conspiracy and providing material support to terrorists in 2005, and sentenced to 28 months in prison. Her felony conviction led to her being automatically disbarred. She was re-sentenced on July 15th, 2010, to ten years in prison in light of her perjury at trial.
The Bible Belt is exactly what its name implies: a belt attached to a bible that comes with a sturdy brass buckle, in the name of "Jesus", dipped in gold. We've created a special television spot of a televangelist selling the belt. Edited as a typical day of channel grazing and zapping, the televangelist plays between "real" television preachers and scrambled porn.
