Jared Nielsen

Jared Nielsen

BYOTV

March 19-April 27th
New American Art Union
922 SE Ankeny
Portland, Oregon 97214

http://thevideogentlemen.wordpress.com/

In February 2009, the United States will add Dead Air to the acres
of accumulated Dead Media, pulling the plug on analog television
broadcasts. Subsequent waves of electronic waste are predicted
as consumers junk their abruptly obsolete receivers in favor of HDreadied
consoles.
Pre-empting the scheduled program of obsolescence, The Video
Gentlemen's BYOTV network launches a six-week season of
special reports in March 2008 engaged with this technocultural
turn.
Low-wattage transmissions emanate from an array of reconfigured
electronic detritus distributed around the gallery.
Telecommunication, and the distance implicit in its operation is
countered by a physical proximity prescribed by the limited range
of the BYOTV transmissions. Visitors are encouraged to "bring
their own TV," or borrow one from the gallery, intercepting
transmissions from their immediate airspace.
Awash with analog-only communiqués, the BYOTV airspace is
engineered for rabbit-eared receivers.

Reception March 22 New American Art Union 5-8 p.m.

Tony Conrad - Cologne Germany 2006

Click To Play

The people who shot this video are friends of Tony.  I asked what the story was behind the video originally uploaded on YouTube.  The following is from that correspondence:

Tony's a friend of a friend so we get to spend time with him every now and then...he had an opening for his "yellow movie" paintings at walter bucholz gallery in cologne a few winters ago and we happened to be in germany at the time so we went. the day after the opening tony bought and stuck the canvasses to his feet and walked to the gallery with them on and gave them the canvasses as kind of a funny gift for having the show...

Twarnock's You Tube page

More Patrick Rock

Oops...

Round Up

The Lion & the Twins - Emily Geanacopoulos & Avi Paul Weinstein

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Based almost entirely on incongruity, The Lion & the Twins, leads you through no familiarity whatsoever. It's a piece of humor similar to the Mothman Proficies (maybe) when you think you've got it, you don't, then you don't again. From the brains of Emily Geanacopoulos & Avi Paul Weinstein

George Kuchar Hold Me While I'm Naked - 1966

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"A very direct and subtle, very sad and funny look at nothing more or less than sexual frustration and aloneness. In its economy and cogency of imaging, HOLD ME surpasses any of Kuchar's previous work. The odd blend of Hollywood glamour and drama with all-too-real life creates and inspires counterpoint of unattainable desire against unbearable actuality." - Ken Kelman

"This film could cheer an arthritic gorilla, and audiences, apparently sensitized by its blithely accurate representation of feelings few among them can have escaped, rise from their general stupor to cheer it back." - James Stoller, The Village Voice

I remember my first film class. It was a Super 8 class with Luther Price. I was a snotty nose teenager wanting to make comedy films. Luther taught us how to process our own film and put emphasis on the straining the batch of chemicals to it's last potential.

Well we saw a lot of experimental films in that class. At the time a lot of them past through my memory. Except Hold Me While I'm Naked from George Kuchar. There was a lot of talk about the way George used light and color and exploited the 16mm saturation of color. Although that was very important to the film, I was more interested in the delivery of the film. George Kuchar was filming a melodramatic sequence which pulled you into the drama effectively. He also showed you his directing techniques in the form of a performance within the film. George combined music and his fantastic exploitation of his directing to execute a hilarious pathos on both himself and his talent. Key scene: George holding the bird on his finger. Cinema's greatest capture of the pathetic nature of sniveling poetics.

Patrick Rock

Iggy Want to Fuck

nice...

Patrick Rock
Rock's Box Gallery

Judging by what Patrick Rock's artist statement: "I am not prepared to make a statement at this time." leads me to believe the work is open for interpretation. Which is the way great art should be, and Rock's work leaves enough for us to contemplate in the short amount of time he gives us in his videos? performances? videotaped performances? The lines are not defined, nor should they be. Rock's work breaks form in a lot of traditions of humor, performance art, and video art which is why the work stands out. It's an honor to have his video pieces on this site, as I've been admiring his work, nearly, once my foot landed in Portland. He's an Oregon native who studied in San Francisco only to come back to Portland to start his gallery Rock's Box. If you're an artist coming back to Portland, starting your own gallery is in my opinion "doing it right".

On Being Funny by Adam Giangregorio

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Adam Giangregorio animates some of the process of allowing oneself to be funny. In this process Giangregorio creates art and humor out of nothing. While analyzing the psychology, the nuts and bolts of a cognitive process many people go through in considering humor, he creates the laughter within the frame of the analysis.

Or doesn't at all.

Danzig's Book Collection (J.O'B ReMake)

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Glenn Danzig gives us a tour of his high profile book collection.

Click to Play

James A. O'Brien gives us a tour of his high profile book collection.

Karl Stevens' Whatever - analyzed

This weeks strip of Stevens' Whatever has an excellent example of frame shifting in humor. Where the frame of what is happening takes a turn while in another frame. (literally in the panel and as a cognitive metaphor) This happens a lot in joke telling and metaphor.

Since Stevens starts the punchline at the beginning of the strip, the frame has to shift to the expected congruency, when it is not presented, the viewer rethinks the panel, then re-observes the strip. All of this is the cognition of the reader making congruent out of the incongruity setup within the narrative. This in itself can deliver a laugh.