DC's

* (restored)

 

‘David Shields recently dismissed most contemporary novels as “antediluvian texts” that “could have been written by Flaubert 150 years ago”. “In no way,” claimed the author of Reality Hunger, “do they convey what it feels like to live in the 21st century.”

‘He has a point – albeit one that Alain Robbe-Grillet had already made in 1965 when he deplored the fact that young French novelists were praised for writing “like Stendhal” but castigated as soon as they refused to abide by the “dead rules” of a bygone age. Along with Michel Butor, Nathalie Sarraute and Claude Simon – the main proponents of the new novel (nouveau roman) – Robbe-Grillet stood resolutely in the second camp. In his essays, he returns time and again to the notion that the novel, from Stendhal to Joyce, has constantly evolved – hence the absurdity of using “the norms of the past” to judge the fiction of today. Far from representing a rejection of the past, the quest for a new novel was thus very much in keeping with the history of a genre which, by definition, must always be renewed.

‘Feeling that his work was too often misrepresented by the critical establishment (with a few notable exceptions including Barthes, Blanchot and Nabokov), Robbe-Grillet published a series of articles to set the record straight. In 1963 they were collected in Towards a New Novel – for my money, one of the most important works of postwar literary criticism. However, these “critical reflections” were never meant to constitute a manifesto. Every novel, according to Robbe-Grillet, is a self-sufficient work of art which cannot be reduced to some external meaning or truth that is “known in advance”. “The New Novel,” as he put it, “is not a theory, it is an exploration.” Why bother writing a book that illustrates a rule when “the statement of the rule would suffice”?

‘Quoting Heidegger at the beginning of an essay on Waiting For Godot, Robbe-Grillet writes that the human condition is “to be there”. In another essay, he states that it is “chiefly in its presence that the world’s reality resides”. So there you have it. Man is here, the world is there and the distance between the two lies at the heart of the new novel project. We endow the world with meaning (or meaninglessness) in order to control it. From this point of view, the writer’s traditional role was to excavate nature in order to unearth the “hidden soul of things”. Robbe-Grillet calls for the creation of a new form of fiction that reflects the “more modest, less anthropomorphic world” we live in today – one which is “neither significant nor absurd,” but simply is.

‘This seemingly anodyne observation has serious literary ramifications. Gone is the traditional hero of yore who believed the world was there to be conquered and whose hour of glory coincided with the triumph of individualism. Gone is the humanist “communion” between people and things: “Things are things, and man is only man.” Gone is the notion of tragedy, which Robbe-Grillet sees as a twisted ploy to reaffirm this solidarity: “I call out. No one answers. Instead of concluding that there is no one there (…) I decide to act as if someone were there, but someone who, for some reason or other, will not answer”. In the new novel, “Man looks at the world” but “the world does not look back,” which precludes any symbolism or transcendence. The novelist’s task now is to describe the material world, not to appropriate it or project himself onto it; to record the distance between human beings and things without interpreting this distance as a painful division. All this implies that the “entire literary language” be reformed. Similes and metaphors, which are often used gratuitously to confer literary status upon a text, are seldom innocent since they tend to anthropomorphise the world.

‘The new novel is routinely attacked for being inhuman and coldly descriptive. Robbe-Grillet responds that his work is in fact far less objective than the godlike, omniscient narrator who presides over so many traditional novels. Description here is purely subjective and takes centre stage, whereas in Balzac, for instance, it simply sets the scene by lending the plot an air of authenticity. Instead of referring to an external, pre-existing reality, Robbe-Grillet’s descriptions seem to create their own objects, their own hallucinatory reality. “Nothing,” he explains, “is more fantastic, ultimately, than precision.”

‘The reality of any work of art is its form, and to separate style from substance is to “remove the novel from the realm of art”. Art, Robbe-Grillet reminds us, is not just a pretty way of presenting a message: it is the message. Like the world out there, a novel is self-sufficient and “expresses nothing but itself”. Its “necessity” has nothing to do with its “utility”. Whenever an author envisages a future book, “it is always a way of writing which first of all occupies his mind,” which leads Robbe-Grillet to state – provocatively – that “the genuine writer has nothing to say. He has only a way of speaking”. Creative writing classes should always start and end on that note.’ — Andrew Gallix

 

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Further

Alain Robbe-Grillet, The Art of Fiction
AR-G @ Editions de Minuit
AR-G @ goodreads
POUR UN NOUVEAU ROMAN, d’Alain Robbe-Grillet
L’INFLUENCE DE LA NAZISPLOITATION DANS L’ŒUVRE D’ALAIN ROBBE-GRILLET
Video: Soirée en l’honneur d’Alain Robbe-Grillet
Alain Robbe-Grillet, The Way Back
Obituary: AR-G
Alain Robbe-Grillet: Bucketfuls of semen
Video: Blow up – Vous connaissez “Les gommes”, d’après Alain Robbe-Grillet ?
Alain Robbe-Grillet se reflète à l’infini
Alain Robbe-Grillet, vous connaissez ?
ALAIN ROBBE-GRILLET, PÈRE DU NOUVEAU ROMAN
Buy ‘For a New Novel’

 

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Extras

Tom McCarthy on Alain Robbe-Grillet

Robbe Grillet, Experimental Fiction & Myth

Alain Robbe-Grillet Exhibition at the Cafesjian Center for the Arts

Apostrophes : Alain Robbe-Grillet et Robert Kanters “La création littéraire”

 

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Interview
from Senses of Cinema

 

Back in 1958 Roland Barthes wrote that “there is no Robbe-Grillet school”. Decades on, aside from the nouveau roman, can you see a traceable influence of your work on the contemporary novel?

There is no such thing as a Robbe-Grillet school of thought! Barthes, in his articles on me, reduced my first two novels into something fascinating, but something which was closer to his train of thought than to mine. In his articles, one on The Erasers and the other on The Voyeur, he emphasised the projection onto the object, thus creating a paradox around the concept of objectivity. In this way he completely ignored the phantasms which were already playing such an important part in the works, and thus he ignored the projection onto the outside world of the personal inner world. He interpreted these two novels as representative of a literary statement, where objects were viewed purely as they were and nothing else. Barthes viewed my work from a very subjective point of view and projected his own value system in his interpretation, which, when all is said and done, he was perfectly entitled to do as a critic.

From my point of view, there never was a school; when I gathered around me a number of writers like Claude Simon, Nathalie Sarraute, and later Marguerite Duras, there was never any intention of gathering people whose outlook was the same, and whose research aimed at the same objective. What in fact brought us together was that the same criticism was leveled at all of us, namely that we did not write like Balzac. Consequently, sharing the same criticism, we all made up the nouveau roman, or New Novel, as compared to the traditional style of writing. Each one of us had to strive in the direction each of us had chosen for himself or herself. I have always fought against the normalisation, the standardisation, of the New Novel — this is one of the reasons why I found myself in opposition to a younger generation of theoreticians who tried to structure the concept of the New Novel and excluded Marguerite Duras from the movement, for instance.

When we meet we are aware of a certain solidarity amongst ourselves, a type of brotherhood. During the last big gathering in New York we realized that we had a common language. For instance, when we talk about the notion of consciousness — the ‘Balzacian Conscience’, the 19th century concept of writing is a totalitarian concept, it is all comprehensive, inside man, it englobes everything, it is whole and stable, whereas in the New Novel we deal with a consciousness which is outward looking, as defined by the philosopher Edmund Husserl, in other words, a consciousness of something — a fragmented mobile consciousness.

Because the outside world is fragmented, consciousness must also be so, and this way it looses the overall coherence which it had a hundred and fifty years ago, and at the same time this consciousness is constantly changing, constantly struggling against itself, forever creating new images — Sartre called it “freedom”.

In its earlier development the nouveau roman was called many things — objective literature, école du regard, phenomenological novel, etc. — in hindsight do any of these descriptions seem more accurate than others?

When critics used the term “phenomenology”, they had no idea of what it could be. They liked the word, but when one looks closely at what they wrote one gets the impression that phenomena are external to man, fulfilling its own life independently from man — this is not what Husserl meant by phenomenology. He meant a moving consciousness, projected outward towards the phenomenon, this very phenomenon exists because of this projection outside myself. It is in this movement outside of me towards an object that the phenomenon appears. Phenomenology does not exclude man, as critics seem to imply. Already, you can see a different sort of consciousness appear in Albert Camus’ The Outsider, particularly in the first part of the novel.

Critical analysis has emphasised the role played by “the eye” in my novel Jealousy, but I would say that “the ear” plays an equally important part in it. As for the word “objectif” critics have made numerous mistakes. Barthes launched the concept but gave it a thwarted meaning. Barthes always liked controversy and enjoyed using words in a context other than the one usually used or understood. In his article on The Erasers he described the work as “objective literature”, and he immediately defined this adjective by referring to the dictionary and thus giving it the meaning of “projection towards the object”. As for the traditional school of criticism, they stupidly omitted Barthes’ definition of “objective” and described my work as objective in the sense of meaning that the subject had completely disappeared.

I would describe the type of literature I write as a subjective type of writing, but geared to the idea of “projected towards the object”.

When critics looked at what I was writing, which emphasized the subject, the subjectivity of a theme, they said that I was attempting to be objective but failed. They ended up with a complete contradiction of the original intention.

From the period of the film Last Year at Marienbad critics started to speak about the concept of surrealism, of phantasmagory. They spoke about the cinema of phantasms. There had been no change in my work, but the approaches to my work were divided, sometimes emphasising the subjective element, and at other times the objective element. Barthes even speaks about Robbe-Grillet No. 1, No. 2, No. 3; yet when one becomes aware of the symbols of Last Year at Marienbad, one should re-read my earlier novels and one would realize that the symbols were already there.

What do you think is the current state of the nouveau roman?

To understand a new form of literature is a difficult thing for people. For instance, I would say that Flaubert is better understood today than he was in his own time, during the period he was writing Madame Bovary. There have been profound changes in the world, and consequently in the outlook of readers.

The New Novel is doing well, better than ever, because now it has a lot of readers. Not only do books sell, but they are better read and understood. For instance, with the last of Marguerite Duras’ books, The Lover, I had the impression that the book had become “visible” (popular) yet it is as complex as her previous work. But it was better understood because these concepts had made their way.

Given the gradual dissemination of Barthes’ idea of “ecriture” over the course of time, do you think that the nouveau roman has lost some of its autonomy from other kinds of novelistic practices? Has it become more elusive to define or recognize?

No, I don’t think so, because Barthes has disappeared from the New Novel. He was connected to the idea of the New Novel, but during the fifties and sixties. Since Jealousy, In the Labyrinth and Last Year atMarienbad, Barthes distanced himself from the movement.

Barthes really has not had much effect on the New Novel. There were moments when our outlooks coincided and other moments when they did not. What harmed the New Novel was not Barthes’ views, but the simplification of what he had said, which reduced the whole impact to a bland, neutral, factual type of writing.

I address these questions in my latest book, Le miroir qui revient.

Could you comment on this quotation from Umberto Eco: “But the moment comes when the avant-garde (the modern) can go no further, because it has produced a metalanguage that speaks of its impossible texts (conceptual art). The postmodern reply to the modern consists of recognizing the past, since it cannot really be destroyed, because its destruction leads to silence, must be revisited; but with irony, not innocently.’

I am interested in your thoughts on the debate between modernism and postmodernism, and their relation to your work.

I never spoke of destroying the past. Flaubert has been my inspiration. As for Umberto Eco, he is a dual character. He was at the vanguard of the modernist movement, but he is now writing populist novels. He was the theoretician of the avant-garde movement, but he has come back to the past. He speaks in this quotation about himself.

The idea that the avant-garde has failed and that one must back track is absurd. The avant-garde must by definition fail, because each writer must go to the ultimate conclusion of his or her ideas. Each writer must continue to progress in his/her chosen direction.

As for Postmodernism, it is a bad description. It was created as a specific concept, situated in a precise context — that of German architecture. It means a reaction against the utilitarianism of the Bauhaus type of architecture. It was used in literature in the seventies, especially in American criticism. It was misunderstood and misapplied. I have not understood either, all the more that in some articles I was viewed as a postmodernist and in others I was viewed as a modernist. I do not like this word as its use is pretty much impossible.

You seem to share an interest with the Pop artists in the signs/images of popular culture and, like them, there is an ironic position taken in your work.

I like popular images when they are taken up by art. For instance, a tin of Campbell’s soup is not a work of art, it becomes so when Warhol has been inspired by it. Marcel Duchamp was the first to have taken ordinary objects and to have transformed them in his work.

The American School of painting, like the work of Robert Rauschenberg, is in fact a perfect example of the way Pop Art has been inspired by everyday objects.

In literature a book like La maison de rendez-vous, or Project For a Revolution in New York, are also inspired by popular imagery, but this imagery is completely transformed in the writing process. I don’t believe in naïve pop culture, the filtering process of art is essential to make it an artistic work.

When I deal with popular imagery as a source of influence in my work, I use it as a critically distancing process. I don’t use the word irony when I speak of my work, I’d rather use the word humour. Irony, in the French language, is a value judgement, whereas humour means that you stand back and it does not automatically imply a value judgement.

The humour in my work was understood only of late. For a very long time I was viewed as a novelist and film director lacking in humour. With Last Year in Marienbad very few people saw humour in it.

What of the erotic imagery in your novels and films?

The erotic imagery in my books and films are just that, materials drawn from the influence of pop images which I use. In Roland Barthes’ terms, I pick out certain elements which I simplify to the level of significant objects. I transform them, purify them and create a new semiotic system out of them, to communicate and create something else. It is true for all of my imagery. I use the pop art imagery as creative material to produce something else, to communicate another message.

Was there any relation between the French New Wave movement in the cinema and the nouveau roman?

The New Wave is even more difficult to delineate than the New Novel, because in the case of the New Novel we are dealing with innovators, whereas in the New Wave there have been remarkably academic filmmakers like Claude Chabrol, or others who are middle-of-the-road intellectuals, like François Truffaut; they were very successful immediately because they were intellectual in their approach. However, there have been pure innovators like Jacques Rivette and Jean-Luc Godard. Therefore a certain parallel can be drawn with the New Novel from only a section of the New Wave directors. We do feel a certain common interest with the innovators in their field. Cahiers du cinéma have criticised Rene Clair, but he is much more innovative than Truffaut or Chabrol.

Finally, what novels do you like of late?

The New Novel of course! Everything which interests me I call a New Novel. To me it is not a closed shop or world, new people come in all the time.

 

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Book

Alain Robbe-Grillet For a New Novel
Northwestern University Press

‘Alain Robbe-Grillet, one of the leaders of the new French literary movement of the sixties, has long been regarded as the outstanding writer of the nouveau roman, as well as its major spokesman. For a New Novel reevaluates the techniques, ethos, and limits of contemporary fiction. This is a work of immense importance for any discussions of the history of the novel and for contemporary thinking about the future of fiction.’ — Northwestern University Press

‘Far from being a manifesto, For a New Novel is a releasing book, releasing in the fullest sense. It shows the possibilities of the novel, and possible ways of thinking about the novel; and it shows how little most of us . . . have dared to think, and why. Amazing. As for importance, I doubt that fiction as an art can any longer seriously be discussed without reference to Robbe-Grillet.’ –Eliot Fremont-Smith, New York Times

 

Excerpt

 

 

*

p.s. Hey. ** charalampos, First indeed. ‘Pavement Butterfly’ is a somewhat interesting silent film, but I wouldn’t necessarily think you need to watch it. The title is a metaphor. No butterflies. Love from the latest Paris heatwave. ** _Black_Acrylic, Yay, I’m so happy you guys made it to the screening and liked the film. Its rhythm is pretty particular and kind of demanding, I guess, but I’m glad it settled with you. The proprietor is supposed to send me pix, and I’m excited to see the costumed horde. Thanks so much, Ben. ** magkneesiumm, Hey! Astute observation, and thank you. Oh, an email? I’m fairly terrible with email, but I’ll go hunt for it. Sorry for the slowness. How are you? ** Adem Berbic, One hears. ‘Prayers’ that it isn’t a meds situation then. Not being able to write … that’s about 90% of why I don’t quit smoking. Both times I quit I couldn’t write or do much of anything that required concentration for months and months. Blip it surely must be. ** Bill, Thanks, Bill. No, no ebook sales, and I don’t think VPN would help if it’s just not available. I guess hopefully someone will upload a pdf of the German edition somewhere where people can download it? So strange. No, I don’t know ‘Jiu Bobo’ or their work. It looks most curious. I’ll hunt the ether and see what I can haul in. ** laura w, Hi. Agreed. Some of the most interesting animation I see these is organised into weird indie video games. Yeah, it’s too bad that literature’s current chic status doesn’t seem to extend much further into the wildness than Vuong and Greenwell and so on. It all seems to depend on whether some character in some viral TV series signals their coolness by being glimpsed in a shot reading something ‘cool’. Your August is surely going to be a huge relief, I command it! Yeah, I have friends in Spokane I’m worried about. LA has always been a place where it never gets actually cold, but the constant, slightly modulating heat all yearlong thing pretty much started after I came over here. But growing up in LA is surely why I’m so romantic about cold weather and winter. Hang way in there, pal. ** Carsten, I’m sure you know that Bertolucci originally intended for Maria Schneider’s character to be a boy, but the powers that be wouldn’t let him. I’m a fan of Brando. I like acting when it’s volatile and unpredictable. I just don’t like acting when an actor is fulfilling the requirements of the role with admirable finesse. For the same reason that I don’t like so-called ‘literary’ fiction. I want to feel like I don’t know what’s going to happen. And Brando was a master of creating that sensation. Weekend was fine, no real big. We’re entering another but supposedly brief big heatwave today, so I mostly was enjoying the spoils of the countdown. ** HaRpEr //, I have a strong pragmatic streak about life and everything, and that has saved me many times. I don’t know you create that pragmatism though. Right, ‘Despair’, I haven’t seen that in ages. I remember it being an oddball in Fassbinder’s universe. And, yeah, Bogarde is always great. You’ve seen Resnais’s ‘Providence’, right? A great film and a top example of Bogarde’s late period wonderfulness. Happy you imbibed ‘My Life’. There are fantastic things in amongst the Language Poets’ work, but you have to hunt around a bit. ** Uday, Your life is so exotic and adventurous right now, at least to chair potato me. Retroactive happy birthday. What is the scariest or most daunting thing that this week seems to hold in store for you? ** Thom, I loved the psychedelic days. I’m so grateful to have been a young teen in LA with enough money in my pockets (or my patents’ pockets more like) to go see bands all the time back then. Cool about your psych folk band. I had not only the psych folk band I mentioned but also a psych rock band at another point too wherein George Miles was the keyboardist. Never recorded anything, probably a good thing. I’m glad you liked ‘Crusade’ especially. Eddo Stern’s work is great in general. Your ‘Witches Hat’ is beautiful. I listened to it twice. Very cool. Oh, how about that: Mr. R-G coincidentally is back in your face today. ‘Sentimental Novel’ isn’t his best, for sure, but it’s interesting to see where he was at the end of his life. Okay, later! ** Okay. I have relit the spotlight that previously fell on a book that was very, very important to me as a writer when I was developing my George Miles Cycle novels and beyond. I don’t anticipate it receiving that big of a welcome from you, but I do think you should have a chance to test it. See you tomorrow.

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Lesia Khomenko Self-portrait (2013)
‘Absolute painter Lesia Khomenko in her work “Self-portrait” of the year 2013 presents painting process by means of animation. The work has several levels of interpretation: life observation, Lesia’s sleep imitation game with her daughter, eye contact with the viewer, self-portrait as a classic form of art and in the end destruction of material object – the painting, which served as a screen for seven minute animated video.’

 

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Böhler & Orendt THE CARRION CHEER, A FAUNISTIC TRAGEDY (2018)
‘The spirits of extinct animals are emboldened through technological means to sing a song of forgiveness to humans, the ultimate cause of their demise. Animations are illuminated & projected onto screens of mist.’

 

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Lorna Mills Ethereal Imperial 1-6 (2018)
‘Lorna Mills is a Canadian net.art and new media artist who is known for her digital animations, videos, and GIFs. Mills has done work in other mediums such as installations. Her work explores how “the notion of public decency is anachronistic” Her use of GIFs are gathered through the dark net which includes 4chan, pornfails, and Russian domains. She currently lives and works in Toronto, Canada.’

 

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Charlie White Sabrina (2013)
‘Created in 2013, Sabrina is one of five music videos created for Music For Sleeping Children, the experimental pop music collaboration of artist Charlie White and Mercury-nominated electronic musician Bryan Hollon of Neon Neon. Working in tandem, White and Hollon transformed White’s immersive interviews with American teen girls into carefully articulated narrative dance tracks. Each track of Music for Sleeping Children captures the voice and spirit of a different American teen girl, from the privileged and popular sixteen-year-old “Georgia” musing on the importance of being pretty and liked, to the sultry and complicated fifteen-year-old “Isabelle” recalling her melancholy crushes of freshman year, to the neurotic and impatient sixteen-year-old “Sabrina” planning her life down to the last detail while fearing failure at every turn.’

Watch it here

 

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Bill Domonkos Dying is Fun (2011)
‘In search of the sublime, Mr. Fireman spends most of his time conducting radical experiments of self-obliteration, an ecstatic process in which he puts himself into a hypnotic trance, mentally deleting parts of his body. Inspired by Vladimir Nabokov’s “The Original of Laura”, his incomplete final novel. Evoking a sense of time and nostalgia, the film uses archive film footage which is manipulated, reconstructed and combined with newly created digital animation, special effects and sound, provoking new ideas and experiences.’

 

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Carla Gannis The Runaways (2010-11)
‘In the realm of the algorithmic mind anything is possible and virtual me can teleport within seconds to an exotic tropical island or to a snowy winter wonderland, but what are the implications of a real woman running down the middle of a rural highway, not yet denatured, on an icy morning, quite possibly imperiling her life? Once digital entertainment value is added, a kaleidoscopic sky and a 3D avatar, thinner and faster than she, do we really care?’

Watch it here

 

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Universal Everything Emergence (2018)
‘Emergence is a VR open-world art experience, visualising patterns of human behaviour and exploring the individual and the collective. It immerses the player in a crowd of thousands, against a changing canvas that is at varying points wondrous and intimidating, realistic and fantastical.

‘You control one solitary, glowing avatar amongst a mass of autonomous strangers, each of whose movements react to your own. As your pace and directions influence others as both individuals and as a whole, you essentially become the choreographer of the crowd.

‘The crowd’s movements are programmed to simulate intelligent behaviours (including avoidance, following and mimicry), reflecting the seemingly endless ways that humans act in group settings. Viewed from above, these movements create mesmerising patterns against the landscape. A shaft of light beckons you – each time you reach the light, this landscape shifts, along with its soundtrack, gravity, atmosphere and mode of movement.

‘Emergence doesn’t dictate a goal. There’s no fixed succession of tasks that lead you to ‘completing’ the game. The experience instead is a powerful challenge to the player’s perception. Are you a leader inspiring a devoted following, or a defenceless figure overwhelmed by the encroaching horde? Emergence compels you to adjust to each transformation in your surrounding environment – all the while bringing you face to face with the primal desire to maintain your individual identity while being part of a crowd.’

 

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Tala Madani Various (2015)
‘Tala Madani’s animations, deadpan and brushy scenes of fictive ritual usually centered around groups of men, create a grotesquerie populated by dichotomies. Figures simultaneously innocent and nefarious, furtive and self-aware, or comical and violent float through a hazy pastel palette that seems to shine light through the vulgar comforts of bonding. Obliquely referencing Madani’s Iranian-American nationality, her work skirts formal and political lines to expose the slithery nature of creating an image.’

Hospital (2015)

Wrong House (2015)

 

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Okkult Motion Pictures Various (2017-2020)
‘Each GIF/video delivers a different message and is based on footage excerpted from vintage/out of copyright/public domain videos.’

 

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Dariia Kuzmych Acceptance (2014)
‘In the project by Daria Kuzmych ‘Acceptance’, the instruments of study of motion are simultaneously а video installation, а text and a drawing on a wall. The subject matter is the own walk of the artist, marked by a consequence of an automobile crash – lame right leg. The aim is to accept herself completely through the aestheticization of the defect. And this means to accept the way, predestined to you from birth, wherever it may lead. Even if you have to limp it, not just walk. Because acceptance is gratitude. I am leaving my cane for the whole time of exposition in Detenpyla gallery and all this time I will walk without it, thus continuing my experiment on myself in an attempt to eliminate my defect.”‘

 

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Birgitta Hosea Out There in the Dark (2013)
‘Artist and animator possessed by the spirit of Gloria Swanson’s performance in Sunset Boulevard (1950).’

 

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Tsang Kin-Wah The Fifth Seal – HE Shall Deliver You Up To Be Afflicted And Killed As HE Was (2011)
‘Chinese contemporary artist Tsang Kin-Wah is working on an ongoing project called ‘the seven seals’. the series of seven digital video installations uses texts and computer technology to project Tsang’s thoughts on various issues of the day.’

 

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Myriam Thyes HEROIC VIRILITY (2019)
‘Myriam Thyes is a new media artist from Switzerland and Luxembourg, living in Dusseldorf, Germany, and in Zurich, Switzerland.’

 

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Carla Gannis Selfies (2016)
‘My selfie series began one year ago as a search, turning my gaze upon myself (and my electronic devices) to see what I might find there. I felt vulnerable at first, speaking more directly through my own voice, and using myself as a character in the digital narratives that seem to be my most natural form of expression.’

 

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Ina Conradi Quantonium (2016)
‘Animation and Programming Mark Chavez, Music Tate Chavez. An audio reactive interpretive work that explores the idea of ‘an element which does not exist when not observed’’

 

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Wang Sishun Truth (2014)
‘For this exhibition, Wang Sishun drove from Beijing to MadeIn Gallery in Shanghai. The scenery on the road became his canvas, he released his « flame » as a creature, destroying and creating new landscapes, natural and social.’

 

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Chiara Passa Still Life (2019-2020)
‘“Still life” analyses the processes of the nature by investigating the relation with it and what is represented in art nowadays as still life. The VR artwork puts in question what is really dead in nature and what is still alive in history of art, by speculating on landscapes, paintings and objects, and so creating through the virtual reality an object-oriented space formed by a vibrant still-life environment designed all around the spectators. I designed each piece to behave and transform beyond its own functionality, according also to the Object Oriented Ontology philosophy.’

 

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Yves Netzhammer Adressen unmöglicher Orte (2012)
‘Netzhammer’s animations make uncomfortable watching. They are populated by expressionless androgynous figures that encounter animals, objects, each other and occasionally grisly fates. Characters alternate between determining agents and collateral damage. They travel in through mutating environments, where gravity and mass are meaningless. Even the surface of their bodies is not sacrosanct as hands are shown delving inside torsos. The animations appear to possess a cold and emotionless surface, punctuated by painful events: an image of paper cutting a tongue can make one wince.’

 

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Sun Xun IMG 3661 (2015)
‘Sun Xun’s works often highlight the absurd incongruities between authorised histories and personal recollections, and are particularly concerned with how history can be manipulated, interrogating the differences between official narratives presented by public agencies, politicians and the media — and more marginalised accounts that stem from ordinary people’s experiences.’

 

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Zack Dougherty Untitled (2009)
‘The Portland-based digital artist takes a simple sculpture and turns it into eternally repeating images, transforming pristine busts into psychedelic moving pictures. These switch so rapidly that eye and brain need some time to grasp the lightning evolution of the picture.’

 

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Mark Leckey GreenScreenRefrigeratorAction (2010)
‘GreenScreenRefrigeratorAction shows a shiny black Samsung smart fridge pondering its existence and mingling with like objects. In a scientifically-charged description that concerns its inner workings, the fridge’s anguished, robotic first person voiceover renders audible its inner life and its potential dreams. As we create increasingly smarter objects, Mark Leckey predicts a world in which things become sentient, start communicating, and alter our environment into new digital ecosystems.’

Watch it here

 

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John Gerrard Various (2011-13)
‘In Infinite Freedom Exercise (near Abadan, Iran), a virtual camera circles the dusty seaside landscape in southern Iran, recording a figure dressed in non-nationalized army fatigues. This actor performatively mimics the prescribed gestures of mortar release in an evolving sequence. Burning Oil Fields joined the work in 2013 and represents these fires.’

Infinite Freedom Exercise (near Abadan, Iran) (2011)

Burning Oil Fields (near Abadan, Iran) (2013)

 

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Stas Orlovski Wildflower (2013)
‘Animated projection over charcoal, ink, transfer and collage on the wall.’

 

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James Kerr Various (2019-2020)
‘bonjour. Ce sont des collages en GIFs, principalement des peintures de la renaissance. merci!’

 

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Allison Schulnik & Scott Walker Mound (2011)
Film by Allison Schulnik. Cinematography by Helder K. Sun. “It’s Raining Today” written by Scott Walker.

 

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Cory Arcangel I Shot Andy Warhol (2002)
‘I Shot Andy Warhol probably isn’t meant as video art, per se. Presumably it works best as an installation consisting of the actual reprogrammed cartridge running in a real NES console on a television; then you could actually play it. You could pick up the ZapperTM shoot Warhol, the Pope and Colonel Sanders yourself.’

 

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Younes Rahmoun Zaytouna (2015)
‘Younès Rahmoun typically begins an artwork by collecting numbers, shapes, and objects from his surroundings. He then uses repetitive, familiar gestures to manipulate these elements and give form to everyday, ephemeral, or barely visible activities, such as praying, rolling dough, and breathing. His religious beliefs and his identification as a practicing Muslim also inform his work. He repeatedly employs numbers that are significant in Islam, such as seven and ninety-nine, and chooses to orient his installations in the direction of Mecca. His artistic practice cannot be reduced to, or fully explained by, his religious beliefs and their attendant symbolism. His longstanding interests in Buddhism, meditation, and Sufism are equally visible, as are the basic shapes and materials of everyday life: cones, cylinders, grids, and spheres and light, brick, jute, and earth.’

 

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Francesco Vezzoli The Return of Bruce Nauman’s Bouncing Balls (2006)
‘In The Return of Bruce Nauman’s Bouncing Balls, Vezzoli abandons the conceptual coldness of the original work to present a slick video based on the canons of pornographic filmography starring Brad Rock and his the infamous American gay-porn testicles.’

Watch it here

 

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Stan Vanderbeek Science Friction (1959)
‘This film uses stop motion animation of still photographs to convey images of politics and science in the nuclear era. Everyday items and people are projected upwards – many in the form of rockets – followed by iconic structures, such as the Empire State Building, the US Capitol, the Washington Monument, the Eiffel Tower and the Kremlim, being rocketed skyward as visual representations of that race into space.’ — Ray Cathode

Watch it here

 

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Benjamin Forster Various (2010-12)
‘A Written Perspective: Using a custom text detection algorithm, footage from around the Joondalup Shopping City has been processed. Everything that is not determined a word is erased. This custom algorithm does not look for known letters, but rather in an attempt to avoid anglocentrism checks for properties common to the written word across all cultures. Inscribed (Ko Aye Aung): Inscribed (Ko Aye Aung) is an explicit analogy of the process of degradation and loss that has been occurred by Ko Aye Aung. I do not know Ko Aye Aung. If it was not for Amnesty I would not even know his story. All knowledge of him was provided to me as a simple digital profile. Dot pointed and only nine hundred and eighty two words accompanied by a small portrait. His is a story that is singularly unique, however at the same time multiple and all too common. His is a story we never truly know, we never hear about, we are all distant from. Computer Watching Television: The result of a simple computer vision system watching television.’

A Written Perspective (2012)

Inscribed (Ko Aye Aung) (2011)

Computer Watching Television (2010)

 

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LuYang DOKU_HELL (2022)
‘Long before Hollywood’s rediscovery of body horror, Chinese artist LuYang was articulating these concerns in the digital realm. LuYang’s LuYang DOKU series (2020–) depict AI-generated avatars undergoing grotesque mutations, bodies warping and melting in a virtual landscape. These digital works extend horror into the realm of the cybernetic, where the body is no longer a physical construct but a mutable, disposable entity.’

 

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Eddo Stern Crusade (2002)
‘Crusade – a mechanical windmill desktop spins on its axis looping a posse of medieval avengers and a MIDI sample of Led Zeppelin’s “Kashmir”.’

 

 

*

p.s. Hey. ** Adem Berbic, I think sex in general has become more crystal heavy over time. I was in fairly intensive therapy for a few years in the ’90s, and it helped a lot, even though, while it was happening, I thought, How is this possibly helping? Strange stuff. Kind of magical. ** Carsten, I think it’s strange and I suppose telling or something about the German ‘Sluts’ ban, but it doesn’t really bother me. What can you do. It sucks much more for the publisher, like you said. I have no idea if just the German edition is Indexed. In my experience and observation, petitions very rarely have any impact on a situation at all. They seem to be more about giving signers the feeling that they’re doing something. I don’t think I’d want to watch ‘Last Tango’ again. Even at the time it mostly seemed to me like an excuse to let Brando act his heart out. ** Fionn, Hi. All the texts are found and come from the sites. I edit them sometimes, and I mix and match them, but I never write them. Nice: the stun-locked observation. I doubt I’ll ever look at tickle fetish stuff without thinking about that again. He was in ‘Almost Famous’? I didn’t know that, but then I’ve never watched it. Huh. Thanks! ** Steve, If that government agency gave specific reasons, I don’t know them. But I assume there are all kinds of reason in ‘The Sluts’. I haven’t reread it in ages. Weekend … I have my biweekly Zoom film/text club on Sunday. So I’ll be watching a film called ‘Pavement Butterfly’ (1929), assigned by David Trinidad, and reading an essay by Camille Paglia, assigned by Jack Skelley. Otherwise, ‘RT’ just got accepted by a very cool Italian festival, and I have to send them a bunch of stuff. Wow, that French show sounds great. I don’t think I’ve ever seen live Matching Mole footage. Everyone, Steve has posted a 1972 episode of the French TV show POP 2 on the Internet Archive. It features 2 songs performed by Matching Mole (with a Robert Wyatt interview), as well as 5 songs from Lou Reed, John Cale & Nico’s acoustic performance at the Bataclan.’ Nice, thank you. I hope Lynch’s ‘Dune’s’ occasional charms get a warm welcome from you. ** laura w., France has a sometimes very vocal Catholic minority that can get quite assertive about morality issues if something tweaks their beehive attitude. They’re the only reason weed isn’t legal here and probably never will be, for instance. And unlike in the US, literature is still taken seriously by the populace, so books with outre content are considered potentially dangerous. That makes sense about the medication questioning. There are other ways to steady oneself, obviously. Continue thinking carefully, I think. The ‘Sluts’ thing is already drifting into my memory bank, and I’m fine. So if I don’t have a fun weekend, that’ll entirely be my fault. I hope yours counts. ** HaRpEr //, Yes, a friend of mine set up a Zaireeka listening session years ago with all the requisite equipment and spatial design, etc. It was fun. I wish I’d been stoned. I haven’t tried the new Arca yet. Okay, will do, and you have a great weekend with and without Arca’s input. ** Thom, When I was in high school, I was in a briefly-lived psych-folk band called Changing Horses, so yeah. Tam Skot, nice. When I was in high school, my closest arty druggie friends and I all gave each other nicknames based on song titles or lyrics by beloved bands of that era. I was named The Singing Cowboy from a song by the band Love, and I can’t remember why, seems weird. Okay, I will listen to ‘Slide’ this weekend. Thanks, exciting. Whoa, and thanks for the link to you doing ‘Witches Hat’. I’ll cue that right up once I push ‘Post’. Nice choice. Everyone, Want to hear Thom sing and play his version of the great Incredible String Band song “Witches Hat”? I’ll be so bold as to answer for you: you do. It’s here. Thanks a whole bunch for that, man. And all luck needed with the EP and the zine dropping. ** Right. This weekend you get a rangy but also focused thematic post if you’re so inclined. See you on Monday.