quick + dirty #1: ian berenger, surfap, pets + ducroz.

I see many more videos that I love than I could do full blog posts on. Though I’m constantly adding vids to my Vimeo channel that aren’t on the blog, I decided to start posting some of them here even though they won’t each have a full written post. In the time-honoured programming tradition of the quick and dirty, that’s the name I’ve decided to give to this new post series of awesome vids that I think you’ll want to see…

ian berenger: our time is brief.

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surfap: super mario bros.

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pets + rémy m. larochelle: a good day for telling lies.

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ducroz: phosphene.

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gorillaz + jamie hewlett: on melacholy hill.

Gorillaz are one of a select group of artists who continuously and relentlessly push the edge of what music videos can accomplish. Working with some of the absolute best directors and animators in the business doesn’t hurt either. They’ve never stopped evolving the visual lives of the animated personas, and in so have created a video universe where the music and the motion complement and augment each other. I still think the vid for “19-2000” (also directed by Jamie Hewlett and Pete Candeland) is one of the best animated music vids ever.

If it ain’t broke don’t fix it. Gorillaz have teamed up again with Passion Pictures‘ Hewlett and Candeland for their latest, “Melancholy Hill.” The video is, basically, fucking incredible. There were over 40 people on the crew of animators and compositors, and it shows. The attention to detail is crazy and it pays off big time. Not watching this in HD would be the equivalent of going to a top restaurant and asking for ketchup. HD it baby.

Personally, I think it looks better on Vimeo but if that one gets pulled here’s the link to the vid on Gorillaz’s YouTube channel.

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Via Feed.

patrick boivin: at-at day afternoon.

Ah, Star Wars. Though I fear it’s starting to become the Helvetica of retro pop culture design references, just like Helvetica, or anything over-played, when it’s done really well in a new and exciting way allowances can be made. And if the outcome is as totally kick ass as Patrick Boivin‘s “At-At Day Afternoon”, then everything old is new again.

The premise? Gloriously simple. Imagine your dog was an At-At. Film it. Rejoice. Spread its awesomeness to the world. Make everyone feel like children again. Done.

And if you’re not sure what an At-At is, then I’m afraid I’m not sure we can be friends anymore.

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Via Motionographer.

ryan mcginley + nowness: entrance romance.

I first started following photographer/artist/wunderkind Ryan McGinley more than 2 years ago, when I posted about his gorgeous (and still my favourite) photo exhibition “I Know Where The Summer Goes.” Since then McGinley has blown up huge and deservedly so. Expanding his visual scope from photography, he moved into film last year with a short for fashion house Pringle of Scotland starring Tilda Swinton.

Last weekend, in collaboration with LVMH-branded website Nowness, McGinley released an incredibly hot looking short film (shot partially by a Phantom Camera at 1500 fps) called “Entrance Romance (It Felt Like A Kiss).” I’m a big proponent of art not necessarily needing to be “about” something, so this is right up my alley. In the short, supermodel Carolyn Murphy shoots hairspray at a lighter, makes out with a wet dog, and has a few glass objects thrown against her head. I fucking loved it. What’s it about? Don’t know, don’t care. It seems so gleefully confident in it’s abject weird nothingness that I fully bought it.

Though the whole concept of filming shit being thrown at people isn’t original (the work of New York City-based photographer Meg Wachter comes to mind) the production value is through the roof and, plus, Murphy is simply incredible to look at. The look of serene intensity she maintains while knowing, somewhere, that a bowl full of goldfish is hurtling towards her is somehow completely fascinating. However, it’s the sly wave of sadomasochistic discovery that spreads across her face after being drilled in the head with a bottle of Heineken that really makes this worth the price of admission. Except that it was free… but you get my point.

Via Towleroad.

s. carey: in the dirt.

Interesting that two of the freshest, most exciting new sounds I’ve heard lately are both from percussionists in established acts doing the solo thing. A few month’s ago was the first EP from Caribou drummer/percussionist Brad Weber’s side project Pick A Piper, and now Bon Iver’s drummer/pianist S. Carey comes to the table with his solo project “All We Grow.”

Coincidence? Methinks not. It feels to me like the percussionists think about music a little differently. Rhythmically, sure, but I think all that time spent, literally, keeping time, gives them a separate approach when they expand to creating the whole sound. With the best of rhythm – a pulse, a throb, a gait – that’s finally being allowed to express its own freedom and reach out.

The first track, “In The Dirt”, is percussive with the piano and dreamy throughout. Again, it has a tone that repeats but in a way that feels like coming back to something you love rather than being stuck in the same place. A fresh familiarity. It’s the difference being the sound of being home and the sound of just being.

“All We Grow” is out Aug. 24/10 on Jagjaguwar.

Via andrewformayor.

great lake swimmers + nir ben jacob: river’s edge.

Worthy Polaris Prize-nominees Great Lake Swimmers are one of my favourite bands of all time.  Their music is like acoustic air. It’s billowy and expansive and makes you feel like flying. I don’t have enough organic expletives to express my love for it. If I ever get married, it will be to a track from their brilliant 2007 album “Ongiara.” I won’t say which one, because it’s mine, but if I ever have a boyfriend who figures it out I’ll go down on one knee there and then.

Their latest, 2009’s “Lost Channels” makes me feel everything good and slow in the world. It’s sunshine and fresh-mown grass and cold beer and long eyelashes and that feeling that when you’re done what you’re doing you’ve got somewhere better to go – all rolled into songs.

Matching the subtlety and earthy eloquence of “River’s Edge”, director and animator Nir Ben Jacob has created a video inspired, literally, by wood. Carved and thatched, the visuals unfold and evolve like building blocks and move in time with the track like musical carvings. The result is a gorgeous vid that reaches out, like branches, and wraps itself around you.

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I found this quote from Jacob on Video Static. It made me love the video even more:

“About a year ago I stumbled on these old wood-chip plate compositions my late grandfather made. They’re a beautiful example of early Israeli-Yemenite art. As soon as I saw them I knew I had to animate them. They had been in storage for decades so it meant a great deal to bring them out and breathe life into them. This was an opportunity to not only contribute to his work, but also expose it to the audience it never had. It is the official video.”

If you’re into Jacob’s style, then check out his equally killer vid for The Walkmen’s “On The Water”:

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félix gonzález-torres: portrait of ross.

I’m endlessly fascinated by the different ways people try to attribute “value” to art. If something looks complicated to make, then more people seem more easily willing to accept its worth. A still life, for example, or hyper-realistic drawing; things that not everyone can easily do. Then there’s the shallow judgment of the “my kid could paint that” crowd, the anti-Pollocks, operating on the assumption that because something, at first glance, appears simple that there’s no way that a deeper meaning could possibly make it more complex.

For me, the visual layer of art is just that: a layer. It’s a facet of a whole. And like any thing where that whole is greater than the sum of its parts, there is an entire other realm of art where it’s the intention and meaning, and not necessarily the immediate visual complexity, that make a piece unforgettable.

Félix González-Torres‘ “Portrait of Ross” is exactly that type of work.

This is as much a pile of candy as Warhols are pictures of soup cans and Rothkos are blocks of colour. This is a statement on the loss of love so profound that I broke into tears when I first read about it.

González-Torres was a Cuban-born sculptor and installation artist who worked in New York City in the 80s and early 90s. He was part of the “process art” movement, where the experience of creating and re-creating a work is as intrinsic a part of it as the “finished” product (part of the ideal being that, really, the piece can never be finished as its intent is to constantly re-create itself).

Ross Laycock was Félix’s partner, and when he was diagnosed with HIV his doctor set his ideal weight at 175 pounds. “Portrait of Ross” is precisely that: 175 pounds of candy set in a pile. The candy is unguarded, the purpose being for the viewer to take some of it from the mound. Each and every day, the remaining candy is removed, weighed, and more is added until it weighs exactly 175 pounds. Then it’s set back out again.

The candy is both a representation of Ross’ physical weight and a metaphor for the very best and worst of his struggle with AIDS. As the disease takes away, the person’s size may dwindle, but the weight of the spirit – the intent to remember and replenish, the power to celebrate – brings it back each morning.

To me this is meaning so pure and exquisitely expressed that I take it thoroughly personally. Being handed this sort of raw offering, Félix’s life becomes mine. I’ve been entrusted by him to help share the memory of his partner. And in doing so, my love becomes his. His loss becomes mutual. How else to try and explain to another person, who’s never met your love, the weight and importance of their being; all the things that you’d loved about them but which are impossible to relate without a universal measure that we both can adhere to?

I put myself in his place and wonder how I would possibly convert the best of things about someone I love into terms we’d both understand: the lumens of light held in their eyes; the decibles of their morning whisper; the pressure of their hand on your back; the groundspeed of their walk.

…Or their exact weight in a pile of candy. The heaviness that represents everything they are and ever were – every molecule, every scar. True, the soul is intangible and only encapsulated in the body for a time, but there’s no way to deny the meaning of the body as the vessel of all that the soul contains.

I think that here the value can be determined not by the skill it takes to pile candy in a corner – to evaluate “Portrait of Ross” like that would be intentionally small-minded. Here the value is not just in the experience shared, but in the sacrifice for González-Torres to share his most intimate pain. The immense strength of the human soul, not brush to canvas or hand to clay, is the genesis here.

I think of the holes life leaves us with and how we try to fill them. Some days we succumb to the smallest parts of ourselves and let them be filled with sadness. Some days we find the bravery to try to fill them with joy. With memories of light and moments so special and sweet that to recall them is a feeling not unlike the crinkle of remembrance, like pastel-dipped cellophane, untwisting itself within us like the opening of a piece of candy.

To me it speaks to the ways we try, and fail, to hold ourselves together. And when you need help there can be a polite request to take your own loved one and pass their memory into the collective consciousness. A never-ending public memorial. Not grand or tangible or even physically permanent in any way, just as our bodies are not, but just as our souls are: translucent, mercurial, airy, travelling. With every person who carried a piece of candy home, so went a  precious piece of memory and a transferral of duty. All humans remember those who we loved who are gone. And with this work, Félix asks us to help remember them both. We remember for those who cannot.

Life is not fair, but true love is. And when we celebrate it, a moment in the pale shadow of its grace brings us together.  Even strangers are more connected, and we are closer to each other and elevated to a purer version of ourselves.

Ross died of AIDS-related illnesses in 1991, as did Félix in 1996. Though I never met them, never knew of either during their lifetime, their lives have led to a story that has changed mine forever. I am different for “Portrait of Ross” having existed, and I will never forget them.

Via Now My Butt Hurts

eric whitacre: lux aurumque.

My head is filled with so many thing right now. This, hands down, is one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever heard. And the genesis of how it came to be makes it even more beautiful.

Los Angeles-based composer and conductor Eric Whitacre has taken the notion of crowd-sourcing to a new level. An artistic, sincere, sonically communal level. He used his blog, his Facebook page, and YouTube to audition hundreds of singers to virtually perform his newest choral work, “Lux Aurumque.” The chosen 185 vocalists, from 12 different countries, were sent the sheet music and each individually videoed themselves performing their part. Whitacre and his team then synched them together and created a video of a virtual choir, complete with all the singers, in video form, standing like a choir with a video of Whitacre himself conducting from the centre.

The result soars. There’s no other word for it. I pressed play and the world slipped by and I felt like I was nowhere and everywhere at once.

To me, the formation of the choir itself is such a lovely metaphor in itself: instead of just coming together vocally, this group was brought together across the means of separation that held them apart – distance, language, and the reality of their lives – to be brought together by a common love of singing and a common access to the internet. The digital world has the possibility to unite us in so many new ways.

Humbly, I don’t love the annotations at the beginning of the vid (I think they’re tacky and amateurish) and the purple and blue “lights” are sort of killing me (though I get that it’s reminiscent of choir theatre lighting, which isn’t always the greatest). I would LOVE to see what a real motion designer would do to create a visual interpretation of the virtual choir that’s as exquisitely haunting as the sound of it. For some reason, director Asif Mian is the first one that popped into my head. I’d kill to see Mian create a video for something like this.

Via Mashable

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caribou + video marsh: odessa.

There are very few things I’m as excited about this Spring as Caribou’s upcoming “Swim”, scheduled to drop April 20. Caribou (and now drummer Brad Weber’s amazing, percussion-crazy side project Pick A Piper) is one of my favourite musical entities ever. I hesitate to call them a “band”, because I feel that they’re more than that. An evolution of instrumentation and style that puts them one step ahead.

The “Odessa” mp3 was released online a little while ago, but I’ve been waiting for the video before posting. Happy days are here, thanks to Video Marsh, with a hazy, soft, memory-filled video. The video is very open to interpretation, which I like; it’s evocative but extremely unspecific. To me, it’s like the feeling you get from a smell: undeniably strong but hard to necessarily put into words.

I’m sure Caribou (or any artist really) doesn’t want to be categorized or pegged to a nationality, but I love how Canadian this footage is. They’re not playing stereotypes but they’re not shying away from the winter-ness that we all intrinsically know.  It’s our secret handshake, and they’re offering a hand. Like looking at an old $2 bill; nobody would totally get it but us.

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Via Stereogum

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02.19.10: jump jump dance dance, why?, kid sam, under byen.

jump jump dance dance + claire carré: show me the night.

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why? + agustin carbonere: these hands.

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kid sam + sherwin akbarzadeh: we’re mostly made of water.

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Under Byen + Sidste Carsens: Alt Er Tabt.

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