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Program
One: Total Running Time 01:54:00
1. Leah Gilliam
Playing
the Race Card, 2001
Digitized
still images output to DV, 7:47
Courtesy the artist
This video
presents 36 digitized still images output to DV. The photographs
were taken by the Dutchess County police as evidence for a
criminal investigation regarding a hate crime assault against
the artist. This incredibly intense reconsideration of the
"facts" is simply presented through the intercutting
of images and title cards.
2. Robert
Banks
(MPG)
Motion Picture Genocide, 1997
35mm,
3:43
Courtesy
the artist
This mixed-media
social commentary addresses the 100-year legacy of violence
and stereotypes in American cinema. The film’s linear
progression is metaphoric of a pulsating blood flow to a beating
heart. MPG features a historical montage of Blacks
getting killed in the movies. A real cut-and-mix dream, effects
include optical and transfer printing, emulsion etchings,
ink dyes, watercolors, rear-screen projection, and trick rotations.
The director describes the film as a high-end quality "hand-job."
3. Robert
Banks
My
First Drug: The Idiot Box, 1994
16mm,
5:09
Courtesy
the artist
My
First Drug: The Idiot Box is a semi-autobiographical experimental
film reflecting the impact of TV and its effects on young
children. A personal favorite of the director’s filmography,
eighty percent of the effects were done in-camera and parts
of the film were shot in reversal.
4. John
Ridley
THE
UNDERCOVER BROTHER: Fifty Years of Saving The B.R.O.T.H.E.R.
H.O.O.D., 2000
Flash
4.0 animation, 5:46
Courtesy
UrbanEntertainment.com
John Ridley’s
riotous animated Blaxploitation series chronicles the exploits
of an Afro-sporting, ‘70s Shaft-type action hero working
undercover for a secret organization to "level the playing
field for African-Americans." Created using net-friendly
flash animation, this segment honors the award-winning "Undercover
Brother" for its contributions to the American TV landscape.
5. Art
Jones
Over
Above, 2000
Video,
3:54
Courtesy
the artist
Over
Above is about the physical and social distances through
which everyday horror is seen. Airplanes, buses, helicopters:
these provide the windows that filter perceptions of contemporary
American culture where "not-quite-seeing" has become
the dominant mode of vision. The visual "effect"
of the video is two-fold: the first, composed through a helicopter
window, is the beating of Thomas Jones by the Philadelphia
police on July 12th, 2000. The second is a view of the scene
from a bus window. Masks and transfer modes were also employed–the
director gives a "shot out" to final cut pro.
6. Christiane
Robbins
Amidst
the White Noise, 1997-1998
Video,
9:51
Courtesy
the artist and the Banff Center for the Arts
Are you
a witness or are you watching? In 1994, 93 million Americans
tuned in to the Orange County police’s tracking of O.J.
Simpson, "The Bronco Chase". This monumental human
drama sparked a new genre: "reality TV". Robbins’
experimental docudrama offers an intervention into the construction
and discourse of technologically rendered whiteness, the discourse
of race, the marketplace, and the specter of information circulating
around media-based events.
7. Ulysses
Jenkins
Vulnerable,
c.2000
Video,
3:53
Courtesy
the artist
A neo-noir,
Vulnerable explores the psychological conditioning
of ethnic profiling and stereotypical assumptions of an African
American and a white male. The investigation takes the form
of a ride on the MTA subway in Los Angeles. A surrealistic
downward plunge of suspicion and fascination is exemplified
by the archetypal use of weapons and character paranoia. The
standard fare of racism, based upon the mistrust that lingers
within society, is all played out as a "psycho-dramatic"
chase that comes to the classic colloquial conclusion that
is resolved in part from the sound track: just because you’re
Black doesn’t mean you’re a criminal.
8. Kevin
Choi
Come,
2001
Video,
2:48
Courtesy
the artist
Exploring
male sexuality within a digital context, the artist debunks
stereotypes about the "asexual" Asian male by showing an Asian
male performing an intimate, sexual act. The subject, also
the artist, masturbates to porn images downloaded from the
Internet. Only his neck is shown, as the neck symbolizes the
connection between our thoughts and our action.
URL: http://www.kqchoi.com/come.html
9. Kenneth
Wyatt
Remove
Nigger From My Name, 2001
Video,
6:13
Courtesy
the artist
Watch:
A provocative
documentary exploring African Americans' use of the word "nigger."
Featuring man-on-the-street interviews shot using consumer
mini-DV and Hi-8 camcorders, the film is a powerful demonstration
of quick-cut editing.
10. Katy
Chang
Pronouncements,
1999
Photography,
sound, HTML with Flash Movie embedded, 00:19
Courtesy
the artist
Pronouncements
is a narration on racism and culturalism.
11. Katy
Chang
Fried
Dumplings, 1999
Photography,
sound, HTML with Flash Movie embedded, 00:33
Courtesy
the artist
Fried
Dumplings is a personal narrative on race and immigrant
culture, through language and food.
The low-resolution
aesthetic of Chang’s art is intentional. She states that
a "seemingly rudimentary and spare aesthetic echoes the
restriction of technology to those poor, female, and non-white."
For Chang, this aesthetic parallels punk-rock. The Internet
can be a very do-it-yourself (DIY) endeavor: anyone can have
a web page, release music, publish writings, and make art.
For Chang, such personal empowerment leads to the possibility
of "real-world" involvement in community activism.
12. Alex
Rivera
Dia
de la Independencia, 1997
Video,
1:32
Courtesy
the artist
Dia
de la Independencia is a satirical movie trailer that
mimics the cinematic obsession with "alien invasions"
(Men In Black, Starship Troopers, and Independence
Day). In making Dia De La Independencia, Rivera
and his collaborator (Lalo Lopez) invert the xenophobic undertones
of anti-alien sci-fi, by imagining a racialized, righteous,
alien invasion from South of the Border. The filmmakers used
a variety of digital imaging technologies to deploy, (but
not exactly reproduce), the conventions of big budget Hollywood
films. Using both 3-D and 2-D graphic design applications,
Rivera and Lopez created an intentionally clumsy collage of
found footage and digitally produced images. Some of the found
images were recorded from television news, some were "borrowed"
from other big-budget Hollywood movies; others were downloaded
from Internet photo archives. The end result is a cathartic
burst of border busting sci-fi.
13. Alex
Rivera
Why
Cybraceros?, 1997
Video,
4:35
Courtesy
the artist
Why
Cybraceros? takes the form of a mock promotional film.
It is based on a promotional film produced in the late 1940s
by the California Grower’s Council, titled Why Braceros?
This film justified the use of braceros, or temporary
Mexican farmhands. Using footage from this old industrial
movie to outline the history of the Bracero Program in the
United States, Why Cybraceros? shifts gears mid-way
as the narrator advocates a futuristic Bracero Program in
which only the labor is imported to the United States while
the workers themselves are left at home in Mexico. Telecommuting
back and forth over the high-speed Internet, there is no difference
between rich and poor. This is a future in which everyone
can work from home, even braceros.
14. The
Center for Digital Storytelling
Injustice
Everywhere, 1998
Digital
video, 4:51
Courtesy
The Center for Digital Storytelling, Community Programs Division
This personal
testimony explores an administrative attack on the ethnic
studies program at U.C. Berkeley. The filmmaker cites America
as "the land of injustice and hypocrisy," lamenting
the "genocidal massacre of Native Americans and the inhuman
institution of slavery." This digital story was produced
at The Center for Digital Storytelling (CDS). CDS is a non-profit
organization dedicated to examining the intersection of the
storytelling arts and the range of digital media technologies.
Over the last six years CDS has developed a workshop process
that integrates aspects of creative writing, oral history,
filmmaking, and digital media manipulation to assist people
in telling stories as short digital videos.
Program
Two: Total Running Time 01:08:21
1. Eric Henry & Syd Garon
Turntable
TV, from DJ Qbert's "Wave Twisters: The Movie",
2000
Animated
film, 1:35
Courtesy
Thud Rumble, Ltd.
The
physical skill of scratching vinyl is realized visually
in Turntable TV–we see not just the cutting
and mixing of images, but the real-time visualization
of frenetic scratching and DJ tricks such as spinbacks,
phasing, and acrobatics–the filmic result is a
unified visual montage of beats and extremely intricate
and controlled scratch textures which don’t just
simply "subvert", but go further to visually
release the expressive potential and transformative
power of inexpensive consumer grade tools for sound
and image manipulation.
2.
John Carluccio
Battle
Sounds ("Old School" and "The Dopest
Scratcher"), 1997
Hi-8
video, 12:47
Courtesy
the artist
With
an emphasis on craft, this film shows how the watermark
techniques of DJ-ing have furthered the sonic possibilities
of turntables. The selections screened in this program
include the invention of the "scratch" (moving the record
back and forth under the needle) by a young DJ Grandwizard
Theodore, DJ DST's experience of winning a Grammy as
part of Herbie Hancock's band, and how DJ Qbert's scratch
patterns are influenced by jazz-legend Miles Davis’
use of silence as music. This film ups the ante on the
idea that the DJ's use of the turntable is just as relevant
and important in the world of music as the trumpet player
or the guitarist–furthering the notion that DJ-ing
is the new jazz.
3.
Sanford Biggers in collaboration with David Ellis
Mandala
of the B-Bodhisattva II, 2000
Video,
4:02
Courtesy
the artist
This
film offers an overhead view of breakdancers (b-boys)
whose acrobatic moves echo the circular designs of a
Buddhist mandala-style floor piece assembled from brightly
colored institutional rubber tiles. The use of the mandala
likens dancers to the Hindu deity Shiva, the lord of
the dance, while subtly referring to artist Carl Andre’s
floor pieces. The film features the Battle of the
Boroughs, a break-dancing competition held annually
in the Bronx. The piece is a collaboration between Biggers
and David Ellis, who has used Duchampian roto-relief
patterns as break-dance pads. The mandala–a Buddhist
symbol of the universe, typically taking the form of
a circle enclosing a square–can be object or movement.
"Certain Tibetan monks dance in circles to create the
mandala physically," explains Biggers.
4.
Linda Gibson
Improvisation
II, 1975
Video,
2:46
Courtesy
the artist
Performed
to Laura Nylo and LaBelle’s, Spanish Harlem,
this improvisational video dance piece features a very
simple, yet creative effect achieved through the superimposition
of two cameras and the stark limbo of black and white
achieved by controlling the spill of light to create
the sharpest possible contrasts. The final product was
lifted out of a reel-to-reel record of an afternoon's
"play" in the studio.
5.
Robert Banks
X-The
Baby Cinema, 1992/93
16mm,
4:58
Courtesy
the artist
This
film is a rapid visual assault on the now-past, heavy
over-merchandising of the "X" hats, shirts,
jewelry, and other memorable and forgettable items marketed
during the hype of the Spike Lee film, Malcolm X.
Combining highly-aggressive, mixed-media animation with
a hard-driving rhythmic music track, this film expresses
the filmmaker’s true feelings about mass marketing
and the conflict between social awareness and short-lived
fashion trends and fads from within and outside the
urban community. Shot on film, it features animation
and scratch drawings. The soundtrack was composed on
a computer and then performed live and recorded on an
8-track mixer.
6.
X-PRZ
No
Sell Out... or I wnt 2 b the ultimate commodity/machine
(Malcolm X Pt. 2), 1995
Video,
5:23
Courtesy
the artists
                
No
Sell Out employs desktop video (Adobe Premiere)
to position images of Malcolm X in opposition to commercial
culture. It is a result of a series of loaded questions
X-PRZ asked themselves and then wanted to impose on
viewers. Mr. X is the serialized signifier that sparks
problematic readings and profits in rap music, "’political
art’ and fashionable sportswear....Is X the sign
of meaningful difference, or just another hip style
thang?" Appropriating an MTV-like format to critique
and question the capitalist commodification of Malcolm
X’s subversive politics, X-PRZ sets computer manipulated
imagery of Malcolm X against advertising logos, archival
footage, TV imagery, and a propulsive soundtrack of
rock music by REM and Nine Inch Nails.
7.
Art Jones
Nurture,
2000
Video,
3:59
Courtesy
the artist
Nurture
is a meditation on the anthropomorphic trends in "hard-core"
hip-hop. In the video, rappers become animals, animals
become rappers, all in a context of mediated nihilism
and the environmental trend toward self-destruction.
Ol' Dirty Bastard's classic Brooklyn Zoo is the
engine for our "Discovery Channel" nightmare.
Riotously ironic and self consciously deployed, the
director poses the question, "Where my dogs at?"
Earthquake
rumbles created in digieffects.
8.
Susan Smith-Pinelo
Sometimes,
2000
Video,
1:45
Courtesy
the artist
An
in-your-face (to say the least) chastisement of the
sexism in hip-hop culture, Sometimes is a funny,
feminist backlash against overtly sexist (and almost
ridiculous) images in rap music. Like feminists of her
generation, Pinelo is not interested in waving a politically
correct flag, but would rather make her contemporaries
the brunt of the joke. Will the hip hop nation and its
fans get it? Probably not. They will be too enthralled
with the impressive cleavage of a young Black woman
(wearing a diamond encrusted nameplate with the word
"ghetto") as her breasts heave and bounce
in her bra to a funky beat.
 View
clip
9.
Paul D. Miller
Glitch
Music, 2000
Video,
2:07
Courtesy
the artist
Glitch
Music is a visual composition based on the interaction
of digital anomaly–it's a play on the notion of
chance and randomness. In a world made of numbers, codes,
and signals, the idea of how communication can be subjected
to various forms of
involution
plays a big part in how people perceive their environment.
Essentially, the glitch shows up where we least want
it. In conversation on a cell phone, it appears as a
loss of signal, or on-line as a code interruption. Digital
culture is based on the smooth and seamless interaction
of our ability to create a sense of continuity in the
rapidly-changing information landscape that we in the
industrial world call home. Miller comments, "To
play with the mistakes of how we put it all together–to
conceive of alternative strategies for visual representation–these
are the goals of the piece." Glitch Music is
meant to be a "DJ tool", an element meant to be mixed
with other sounds. In the tradition of composers as
diverse as John Cage, David Tudor, and Olly Wilson (the
first African-American composer to use tape music loops
to make electronic compositions in the 1960s) Glitch
Music is a musical homage to mistakes.
Download MP3
10.
Ulysses Jenkins
Z-GRASS,
c. 1983
Computer
generated video composition, 2:50
Courtesy
the artist
Made
with computer-generated images designed with an electronic
paint program, this composition is based upon the functions
inherent to the z-grass command vocabulary. The animated
manipulations operate as a cultural commentary on gentrification,
as the white character replicates and assimilates itself
over the map it breaks out in a trail of red and causes
the "blues." The interface was performed in
the DATA MAX COMPUTER and the Z-GRASS PAINT PROGRAM.
The original image was drawn free-hand, sampled, and
animated into movement constructs. The audio sound work
effects were created by Vinzula Kara.
11.
Beth Coleman & Howard Goldkrand
TILT,
2001
Pixel
vision, DV, 3:25
Courtesy
the artists
TILT
uses ambient visual noise from various sources (Pixel
vision, DV). Code structure, particularly the aspects
that are "broken" or reveal the organization of digital
and electromagnetic tape, are organized into a pattern
of movement and disappearance. The music is also constructed
from pieces of "white noise" and audio flotsam.
12.
Amitav Kaul
USTRA,
1998
Video,
6:56
Courtesy
the artist
USTRA
is a short experimental narrative about discovering
an underlying sense of spirituality amidst the multi-cultural
chaos of New York City–or is it New Delhi? Combining
original 16mm and DV footage, classic Indian cinema
clips, composites, digital renders, animation, and modified
samples, USTRA was spontaneously created in 1998
after a series of live multi-media performances with
Talvin Singh, DJ Spooky, and Karsh Kale. It is a live
VJ mix spontaneously created in 7 minutes, the duration
of the sound track.
13.
Los Cybrids: La Raza Techno-Critìca
The
Global Warmaquina: It’s a Small Mundo, 2001
Video,
6:34
Courtesy
the artists
A
performalogue that brings to light the unpopular view
that the Internet and Information Technologies are the
"advancing armies" of global capitalism in
a war to promulgate an American-dominated global monoculture.
Through performance, video projection, aural activity,
and anti-panel discussion, Los Cybrids engage issues
of the economic and environmental impact of IT as well
as the corporate myth of the so-called "digital divide."
14.
X-PRZ
Guns
& Poses (Remix), 1995-97
Video,
9:14
Courtesy
the artists
X-PRZ
constructs a powerful collage of rap music, authorial
text, and iconic visuals to confront the politics of
race in the context of the American media. X-PRZ member
Tony Cokes writes, "The slick and easily legible
pop surface of the video deploys the media projected
Black male as its central model, heroic figure, and
the exploited buffoon of fear-mongers in the media."
Moving images include clips from Gangsta rap videos,
LA Rebellion 1992, the "Jam" Michael Jackson/Michael
Jordan video and other film sources. The sound was adapted
from the Murder Was The Case soundtrack with
works by Dr. Dre, Ice Cube, and Snoop Doggy Dog.
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Program
Three: Total Running Time 0:47:52
1. Ina Diane Archer
La
Tête sans Corps (Trailer), 1996
Video,
2:05
Courtesy
the artist
This
video is a trailer for a fantasy about the discovery,
electronic re-animation, scientific study, display,
and eventual exploitation of the disembodied head of
a young Black woman. An 840 AV Mac with Adobe Premiere,
as well as Photoshop and Illustrator were used for the
composition. The piece was shot in front of blue screens
with a hi-8 prosumer video camera and s-video. Produced
completely on desktop video, La Tête sans Corps
also features old-fashioned trick photography with
jump cuts and sets used to isolate both the head of
the actor and the mechanical props.
2.
Cauleen Smith
Chronicles
of a Lying Spirit by Kelly Gabron, 1992
16mm,
5:45
Courtesy
the artist
Chronicles
is an Afro-galactic time trip through the collective
memory and personal histories of Black folk. Shot entirely
on an Oxberry animation stand, source material for the
work includes Polaroid photographs, scribbled cellophane,
painted and clear leader that, once shot, were edited
to rhythmically co-exist with the soundtrack. The soundtrack
is exactly the same in both repetitions–it’s
the human brain that allows one to hear it differently.
3.
Rico Gatson
Selection
from Flaming Hood (silent), 2000
Video,
1:45
Courtesy
the artist
This
piece melds flames with a barely-visible hooded figure.
The images, abstracted by the effects of solarization
and the manipulation of speed, repeat on endless loops.
This work is from a series that focuses on the Ku Klux
Klan. Gatson’s aim was to create visual metaphors
to convey the disparity between Klan membership (ordinary
people drawn from the mainstream community) and its
violent aim.
4.
Leah Gilliam
Apeshit,
1999
Video,
6:15
Courtesy
the artist
Transferred
from 8mm and then processed using a combination of high-end
digital and vintage analog processing techniques (paik-abe
raster scanners, jones colorizers, video synthesizers),
Apeshit emphasizes the contradictory references
found in both the original text and its adaptation.
Serving up Battle for the Planet of the Apes
as proof, Apeshit puts forth tolerance as an
outmoded technology. This video revolves around a central
question: is alien-ness indeed the metaphor for the
20th century? Is there a relationship between these
forgotten formats and the discontinued political ideologies
that they depict?
5.
Philip Mallory Jones
Paradigm
Shift, 1992
Video,
1:05
Courtesy
the artist
A
poetic meditation on the cultures of the African Diaspora,
this video spot is a richly visualized collage of sounds
and images derived from African cosmology, tracing the
long historical struggle to define a transcultural African
race. The piece operates as a transcultural investigation,
questioning the validity of national identity as it
explores the origins of cultural ideology and communicates
messages about the fundamental social, political, economic,
and ecological shifts marking the close of the 20th
century.
6.
Jeremy Marre
Excerpts
from Improvisation: "Amiga Graphics and Sonic
Interaction" and "Kalimbascope," 1991
35mm,
7:37
Courtesy
RM Associates, UK
Improvisation
includes excerpts from interviews with musician George
Lewis, featuring his interactive computer music and
trombone performance with the interactive Amiga graphics
of Don Ritter and the alto saxophone of Douglas Ewart.
Ritter’s computer program used information from
Lewis’ trombone and Ewart’s saxophone to affect
choices of image while Lewis’ computer program
used information from the acoustic instruments playing
to affect sonic choices. The second clip documents the
installation, "Algorithme et Kalimba" (Kalimbascope),
a collaborative work by George Lewis and David Behrman.
A standard kalimba was interfaced to a computer using
hardware and software designed and built by Lewis and
Behrman. Performance on the instrument controlled the
sounds of a MIDI synthesizer and also influenced the
sonic and visual choices of interactive computer improvising
and low-resolution graphics generators.
7.
Philip Mallory Jones
Jembe,
1989
Video,
2:59
Courtesy
the artist
In
Jembe, Jones transposes African visual motifs
and image construction to the electronic medium. Vibrant,
sensual images, rendered into abstracted electronic
color and form, are fused with the dynamic music of
Coulibaly Aboubacar. This vivid, impressionistic piece
explores the development of codes based on what Jones
terms "emotional progressions and an African sensorium"
without dependence on specific language comprehension.
8.
Floyd Webb
BASQUIAT:
Meditations on Fame and Self-immolation, 2001
Quicktime
movie, 7:02
Courtesy
the artist
BASQUIAT:
Meditations on Fame and Self-immolation is a personal
meditation on the subject of "burning bright and
dying young." Webb describes the piece as a protest
letter to the spirit of Jean Michel Basquiat for leaving
us at so young an age by evoking the mysticism and rage
of his expression. Featuring 3-D animation, the film
was conceived in SimpleText and Jean Alkes "Stickies."
The images were harvested on the Internet and the audio
samples were "jacked" from Napster.
9.
Rico Gatson
Selection
from Invisible (silent), 2000
Video,
4:14
Courtesy
the artist
This
piece portrays the artist against a pink background
making faces and holding up symbol-laden objects. By
compressing the horrific and the comic into multi-layered
metaphors, Gatson identifies the power of symbols within
the political sphere. The piece features simple solarization
and in-camera stop motion effects.
10.
Cauleen Smith
The
Changing Same, 1998/2001
35mm
and 8mm, 9:05
Courtesy
the artist
In
this Afro-futurist narrative, the Mothership has dispatched
a lone agent to earth. Her mission: to assimilate with
humanity. However, she quickly discovers that she’s
not the only outsider. The film’s dynamic soundtrack
was mixed at George Lucas’ Skywalker Ranch and
features audio effects "borrowed" from the
films Starship Troopers and Face-Off.
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