*best*RapidEssayNSFW!! is a live video essay by Amsterdam-based Australian artist Emile Zile. It uses online and prepared video sources from YouTube, 24hour news streams, scientific trials, viral marketing blips, social software and monologues by .com-era cult leaders to weave an audiovisual portrait of contemporary culture and its acceleration of signs. As a live performance, *best*RapidEssayNSFW!! references the audiences’ familiarity with non-linear web browsing and ‘skimming’ content, yet slows down this practice by using audio effects, music and in-browser video manipulations to create a coherent whole. Using multiple sources of appropriated footage in a highly performative and audiovisually dense way, Zile creates a unified and traceable story through the live crafting of a video essay. – Video Vortex, Amsterdam 2011

Performances:
March 12 2011 Video Vortex at Trouw Amsterdam
November 30 2011 Open Archive Melbourne

Using the visual overlay from an expired final cut pro plug-in and the image of Steven Spielberg talking about Stanley Kubrick on the dvd extra of Eyes Wide Shut DVD release.

The work ‘Spielberg on Kubrick (Father-figure dvd bonus extra) 2010,
- seeks to sloppify the proud (pseudo-) potency, present in the business of Hollywood film making.
- can be seen as a ‘de-masturbation’ of Spielbergs oral tribute to Kubrick.
- is a portrait of a self-proclaimed god father, rambling in circles.
- interprets a monologue and suggests a spastic nature in the concept of ‘I’ve got your back pal’.
- tries to digitally dethrone Steven Spielberg.
- is a release of the original version of the interview. (He Is a meaty & neurotic robot).
- was shown in the expo BYOB in Berlin July 2010.
Max Van Zomeren

Bring Your Own Beamer (BYOB) Berlin, July 20 2010
One-night group show initiated by Anne de Vries and Rafael Rozendaal.

Showing at Diane Tanzer Gallery + Projects Melbourne April 2-23 2011

Urzsula Dawkins review in Realtime 103 ‘Signalling, not clowning’

Philip Brophy catalogue essay ‘Ego Logos & Euclidean Cum Shots‘

Original audio by Adam Milburn

Emile Zile’s Five Production Company Logos In 3D presents an imaginary ‘real man’ behind these grandiose charades born of selfimportant declaration. Just as design company CEOs probably come in their pants when they look at their Maya-rendered fonts casting shadows on planets, so are Emile’s hands ‘working magic’ as he performs aerial jack-offs synchronised to Adam Milburn’s gilded melodic refrains. His hysterical hand movements hilariously replicate the excessive overload of those corporate logos which move around like Jane Fonda doing Zumba on crack. Best of all, it simply looks like Emile is masturbating as if he uses some amazing technique to whack a super load into our faces. Which is exactly what the proud designers of those gleaming chromed star-cruiser logo-ships imagine they’re doing. And a grand tradition it is, for what is Coke’s ‘dynamic ribbon’ but the allusion to a frothy foaming cum shot.
- Philip Brophy, January 2011 philipbrophy.com

Performed to audio created in the guise of fictional cinematic intro sequences, here 3D modeling is reduced to hand movements. Constructed spontaneous gestures and painterly hand motions, emerging and fading in short-lived blooms against the unadorned white walls of an assumed gallery medium. Though gestural hand motion implies stroke, the piece also mines the history of the video format as a medium for effects, motioning toward cursor or hardware driven art-forms. Paint without paint. The online video format sublimated against itself – given form against the absence of overt post-production.
- Ry David Bradley, December 2010 paintedetc.com

Compaction and compression of the guitar solo, Mouth microphone channeling the eternal guitar solo, noise and liberation, freedom and egotism. Presenting a metaphorical exorcism of the guitar solo. A channelling of the guitar solos delivered to audiences at Amsterdam’s iconic live music venue Paradiso.

18 September 2009, http://www.paradiso.nl

Live sound mix by Danny O’Really
Photographs by Malthe Stigaard

In ‘Post-It Kino’ I have sought to reduce the bulky cinematic apparatus to it’s barest elements. Reduction of narrative flows to fragments of text. Substituting the entire optical story-telling process with hand-written references to the chosen film’s social history and narrative. This meta-narration extends the film into an oral history, channelling memories of the movie while it’s soundtrack is being played. The emotive magnetism of a distinctive score combined with my fragmentary text serves to shape the audience’s remembrance. From sampling images to sampling memories.

Philip Brophy catalogue essay ‘Enlarge Your Penis Now’

Selected performances:
Unheard Film Festival Amsterdam 13 March 2009
Lost and Found Amsterdam 21 December 2008
Chinese European Art Center Xiamen China 17 October 2008
Netherlands Film Festival Utrecht 29 September 2008
Next Wave Festival May 2008 Commisioned by Tai Snaith

Cinema-based solo audiovisual performance that extracts the subtitle track from feature films and recombines them within one frame. For this example, three Lynch films were used; Lost Highway, Blue Velvet and Wild at Heart.

The independent subtitle tracks are modified, mutated and visually corrupted as the three scores are mixed live to create a bombastic pastiche of one auteur. A feature-length re-encoding of the scripts based on chance and narrative conventions.

Performances:
Netherlands Film Festival 2009

Only man dies. The animal perishes. – Martin Heidegger

Emile Zile’s performance is not only a beautiful ending to the evening, but also offers another perspective on the discussion surrounding Tot Zover Jij & Ik. ’0 views. 0 comments. 0 responses’ is Emile Zile’s collection of YouTube videos that are made in the memory of a deceased friend or family member. Emile selected videos that are accompanied by the music of “I’ll be Missing You” by Puff Daddy, a song that is apparently used a lot in these memorials. During the performance Emile first shows a few videos in sequence and then samples the images and music into a mesh.

The similarities between the videos are striking. Even though they were all made independently, the imagery and music is exactly the same: slideshows with photographs from the childhood of the beloved slowly fade into recent pictures, with texts that express how much the person is missed, and the constant sounds of “I’ll be Missing You” in the background. Although everyone has the freedom to creatively express their feelings of grief on YouTube, it turns out that most people prefer working in an existing format.
http://www.mediamatic.net/page/73002/en

Performances:

Mediamatic Death Salon Amsterdam 25 March 2009
Stutter Horse Bazaar Melbourne 14 May 2008
Video Vortex PostCS Amsterdam 19 January 2008

Completed during studio residency at Het Wilde Weten Rotterdam

Recombination of United 93 (2006) video track and Salo (1975) subtitle track. Two films that re-write political history. Two films that are a reaction to the prevailing political moods of their time.

By extracting the subtitle of one film and inserting it into the video track of another film I am inviting the texts to communicate with each other. The image track and subtitle track are set together and begin from zero. Using chance as an arbiter, I cut together the sequences that resonate poetically, politically or visually to create a unified siamese twin of two films. United 93 is a political film that is attempting to write history. Salo is a reflection on the depravity and sadism of the fascistic mind. By combining these texts I hope to uncover a psychosexual reading of September 11 2001 and of these two provocative film texts.

“Emile Zile’s recent work recaptures confrontingly what is presented to us in the media. He recreates the images in a shape we do not know yet, giving the impression that the existing image is approached from behind. A revealing work from his hand is a film in which he has combined Pasolini’s ‘Salo’ with the feature film ‘United93′ about the attack on the Twin Towers in New York on September 11, 2001. The subtitle of the one film has been given the sound and video track of the other. You don’t believe your ears. You don’t believe your eyes. This re-combination is so seamless that it is truly amazing, as if the scenarios of fiction and reality merge completely. You do not know any longer which is which.” – Alex de Vries, Amsterdam 2008

Steve Irwin as the prime-beef export model of sun-drenched Australiana. Steve Irwin’s family as the intersection of mourning, morning television and marketing. Steve Irwin trading on his own death before the fact. Steve Irwin’s televisual and broadcast aura, sifted and re-presented in nine minutes.

Completed during studio residency at Het Wilde Weten Rotterdam.
Sound design by Carl Anderson.