Camera Obscura, Easter Monday, and you (and me I guess).

In 2008 myself and Michael Prior of Tape Projects curated Electroprojections, an annual showcase of local and international video art that screens as part of Electrofringe, an annual electronic festival of electronic arts that is part of This Is Not Art...

And so it goes.

This Monday, a selection of works from the 2008 Electroprojections program will be shown at Serial Space in Chippendale heralding the return of Camera Obscura after a two year absence. Camera Obscura was the premiere monthly source of strange moments in screen culture, which met its end with the demise of Lanfranchi's Memorial Discotheque. And now it's back at a new home; huzzah!

After the Electroprojections program and a small break, Victor Sjöström’s classic (at least I keep hearing it's a classic, I've never actually seen it) silent horror film from 1921 “The Phantom Carriage”, will be screened. Filling in the silence will be a new soundtrack recorded by dark wave noise wunderkinds KTL, which features Stephen O’Malley of SUNN O))) and Peter ‘Pita’ Rehberg [for those playing at home].

If this sounds like a good idea to you, you should head to Serial Space, which is located at 33 Wellington Street, Chippendale (which is here) by 7pm. If you would like more information on Camera Obscura, you can go to their facebook thing or email cameraobscura.syd@gmail.com.

Research - 26th of May, 2008.

http://au.youtube.com/wwadotc
http://www.myspace.com/wwadotc
http://www.flickr.com/photos/wwadotc/

Incoming politically themed art show!

My previously mentioned vile act of boredom Four More Years will be showing from this Thursday as a part of The Howard Years, a group show in response to eleven years of John Howard's Australia, being held at At The Vanishing Point in Newtown. These kind of shows usually bring out the worst in a geographic locales artist movement all presenting works that essentially preach to the converted in new and possibly not so interesting ways. I can safely say that my work will probably continue this trend. But if you happen to come along, wander to the back of the gallery and find that for some reason or another you aren't able to shake John Farnham's You're The Voice from your sub-conscious, I'll consider that a minor victory.

Of course it's not about bad art, it's not even about bad art and drinking [although both events are easily achievable if you so desire], it's about showing solidarity at a time when a Australia could do with a few subtle changes. Thanks my excuse any way. Annoying video art is just a bonus.

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The Howard Years

The ATVP Spring '07 Show of the Season
Artists In Response to John Howard's Term As Prime Minister

Artists include:
Lachlan Anthony, Mick Bales, Gav Barbey, Gustavo Boke, Stan the Bottletop Man, Jenny Brown, CACA - featuring Schappylle Scragg, Pierre Cavalan, The Collective, Michael Davis, Maz Dixon, Seiko Furuse, Alyx Guidi & Bob Cooney, Daniel Green, Thomas Hungerford, Amanda Hunt, Rolf Knudsen, Amanda Le May, Wendy Lowe, The Motel Sisters & John Howard, Peter Moore, Audrey Newton, Jade Oldfield, Jaqueline Olivetti, Brendan Penzer, Georgina Pollard, Tony Priddle, Elizabeth Rankin, Tanya Richards, Che Ritz, Chris Samuel, Holly Schulte, Beau Scott, Wendy Shortland, Kirsten Smith, Megan Sprague, Jasmine Steven.

25 October - 18 November 2007

Opening Launch Thursday 25th October - 6:00pm - 9:00pm

At The Vanishing Point
565 King Street, Newtown.
http://www.atthevanishingpoint.com.au/

"How long can we look at eachother..."

In a stroke of genius that's surprising myself in a way a blog post is never really going to describe properly, I'm currently rendering a new video work that features a seamless loop of a section of You're The Voice by John Farnham. It's quite possibly the most vile act of boredom I've yet produced, and I'm alarmingly comfortable with this.

As I said to a friend of mine yesterday, "I can feel my powers growing".

Newcastle migratory season 2007.

The October long weekend means a number of things in New South Wales; like the AFL grand final on Saturday [alright, that might be more of a Victorian thing, but just go with it OK?], the NRL grand final on Sunday, and a day off on Monday to recover from the hang over. For a large group of artists, musicians, writers and other miscreants however, it means trying to find somewhere to sleep in Newcastle [and trying to work why you didn't learn from your mistakes last year and book accomodation earlier this year]. Now in its seventh year, the This Is Not Art Festival provides refuge to a number of oddballs and curiousities over four days and four smaller festivals - Electrofringe, The National Young Writers Festival, Sound Summit and Critical Animals.

I'll be running around town committing a number of acts of mischief in the name of Electrofringe. My video Ducks Should Be Free From Persecution will be showing as part of the Electroprojections screening series. On Thursday night I'll be stalking Newcastle's walls armed with a video projector and a power generator. Next Monday I'll be taking over TIN Radio with Ben Byrne to present two solid hours of something between 20:30 and 22:30 and this Friday I'll be presenting ElectroPopQuiz!, which may well just be my finest hour.

Taking place at the TINA Festival Club between 17:30 and 18:30, ElectroPopQuiz! will be your opporunity to flex your intellectual muscle over a range of topics that potentially you and most likely far less actually care about. Think of it as Wednesday night pub trivia hosted by your high school electronics club. It'll be sensational, I guarantee. And there's prizes too. All the trimmings.

If you're planning on entering, I suggest you bring a nerd along for back up. You have been warned.

Current exercises in productivity #2: A trip to Melbourne

After all the trials of the aforementioned trip to Luna Park, the end result of sitting on a ferris wheel and contemplating one's existence was The Duration Of The Ride Will Be Approximately Eight Minutes. This new work was completed for the group exhbition "Raise High The Roofbeams," which ran at Bus Gallery in Melbourne between the 8th and the 25th of May. The exhibition served as an exchange between Bus and Firstdraft Gallery in Sydney, as well as being part of a larger project called Making Space, which celebrates Melbourne's various [and many] artist-run-initiatives.

After being initally quite unsure as to how the work would turn out in the realm outside of my brain, I was very happy with its final state. It looked great, sounded fine [despite my various attempts to destroy my speaker cables during installation], and was suitably painful to watch. Have to be happy with that. The work isn't hard to imagine; it's eight minutes of me sitting in a carriage on a ferris wheel, filming outwards towards Sydney harbour. The video starts when the ride does, and finishes when it ends. Like most of my work of late, you get the point pretty quick. Yet it never ceases to fascinate me that people will stick with it until it ends, like something truly exciting will happen, and then complain that it doesn't. Admittedly, this is part of the point of undertaking such things, but it makes me laugh nonetheless. I think this is one of the better realised versions of this theme that I've done, but I do wonder how long I can push it for. It's one thing to be repetitive about being obvious, but that all changes when the reverse becomes the norm.

The trip to Melbourne itself was great, as any stretch of being somewhere else tends to be. It's the closest thing I've had to a holiday in a very long time, and it was nice to come back feeling energised about what one does. So much to see there is, and simply not enough time to get through it all.

Might have to go back methinks.

Michel Gondry does You Tube... Bloggers fail to find witty way to describe it.

I was going to do this whole big rant about how Michel Gondry has a You Tube page, and then talk about how I inevitably caved in to the ridiculousness of linking stuff from You Tube to my blog, as many foolish people have done before. However it's now quite late, I can't be bothered, and quite frankly, I really like Michel Gondry.

So, if you would like to see a video of Michel solving a Rubik's Cube with his feet, click here. Or, if you would rather see him solve it with his nose, click here. If you wish to watch both, I recommend starting with the feet.

A warning; there are links from both videos to others claiming to expose "how he does it". I recommend leaving these alone; don't kill the magic, even if it is streamed via You Tube.

He should really get that nose looked at though... that's just not right.