An idea whose time has come, collective self-immolation of all trappings of web2.0. An idea that was banging around Tbos head and mine last week. Happy to see the excellent Worm venue in Rotterdam tuning into the zeitgeist.

Screw your newyears resolutions and dive into 2009 with a collective Web2.0 suicide! WORM’s own medialab moddr_ has conjured up a machine that lets you delete all your energy sucking social-networking profiles, kill your fake virtual friends, and completely do away with your Web2.0 alterego. We provide you with an opportunity to escape back into reality through an *actual* social event, with real people and real drinks at a real bar … meatspace that is. 

No need anymore for your MySpace to be LinkedIn to your FaceBook, just bring your usernames and passwords and join in on WORM’s Cyber_Catharsis 2009!”

Fri 09 Jan / door opens @ 21:00u / start @ 21:00 / free
WORM.EVENT, WEB 3.0 SUICIDE NIGHT

Dive into 2009 with a collective Web2.0 suicide!
http://www.wormweb.nl

Beginning life as a radio series on London’s ResonanceFM, Welcome to Mars is an extensive and deep analysis of post-war American myth-science, science-fact and science-fiction. Ken Hollings and composer Simon James created a dense weave of alien synth drones and prickly social history. The mixing of reality and fiction, hopes and fact in this era is so chaotic and euphoric. The American post-War desire for the ‘Future’ is palpable in Hollings’ delivery, a desire to extend all limits of human consciousness, behaviour and thinking. A truly thrilling and perverse period of mutant growth for humankind. Soaking in the wealth of Hollings’ research can be overwhelming in the radio series mode; the flow of names, affiliations and institutes often requires a rewind to gain a thorough understanding, so I am very happy Strange Attractor Press will be publishing the book of Welcome to Mars in mid-November…

Welcome To Mars draws upon newspaper accounts, advertising campaigns, declassified government archives, old movies and newsreels from this unique period when the future first took on a tangible presence. Ken Hollings depicts an unsettled time in which the layout of Suburbia reflected atomic bombing strategies, bankers and movie stars experimented with hallucinogens, brainwashing was just another form of interior decoration and strange lights in the sky were taken very seriously indeed.

“Ken Hollings shows brilliantly how the extraordinary web of technologies that drove the Cold War have shaped not just our culture but the very way we think of ourselves as human beings. Welcome to Mars offers a rare and fascinating glimpse of the roots of the strange humanoid culture we live in today.” – Adam Curtis

Post-graffiti. Peeling posters. Buff-proof ink. Dirty Canvas. Gallery and street. White walls.

http://www.flu01.com

http://www.upstreamgallery.nl/jeroen-jongeleen

EURO EURO BILLS Y’ALL

It was 1998 and our film night HIPNOTISMO was just kicking off. Held in the old Theatreworks hall in St Kilda, we were nineteen and full of beans. Amiel, Dorian and I were excited to show Conner’s MONGOLOID, a found-footage music video before music video. We had the reel of 16mm film from the state film centre, the projector was in working order and we had a half-full auditorium of late-night buffs. The 1978 film cuts together post-WW2 science experiments, nuclear tests and monochromatic chemistry animations, all wildly out of context, with the plasticated future-retro new wave of Akron’s favourite sons DEVO pulsing behind the high-school science. All very influential to us young artists and film-makers. We doubled MONGOLOID with MONGRELOID, George Kuchar’s 1978 film of a man and his intimate relationship with Bocko the dog.

In a perverse twist Bruce Conner’s MONGOLOID is unavailable on YouTube, due to a copyright infringement notice. Did the estate of Conner submit an objection? It never ceases to amaze me how precious stake-holders can be with found-footage work, to the point of placing their own copyright symbol on the tail of a video. Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust. It comes from the unsolicited pile of visual culture around us, it goes back to it, given a spin by the consumer/producer. Value-added organic compost in the electrified slurry of appearances, images and signs.

R.I.P. BRUCE CONNER

DEVO play Australia and Japan in July and August – sing along with MONGOLOID very loud.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=ZWmf7r_37eA

two audiovisual works caught my eye:

A short documentary by SINA KHANI, an Iranian-born German living in Amsterdam. First he exalts the power of cinema and television, then releases air captured from a Mosque into a Church in a sequence titled EXHALAL, finds a field to recreate a scene from THE SOUND OF MUSIC, meditates on the power of cinematography and celebrates the day’s shooting with a KEBAB and a COFFEE. He is a very comfortable comic performer, openly asking the cameraman if he is overacting or not. The video was installed on a flimsy table next to a plastic DONER KEBAB takeaway sign. A very free and activated use of sound. Interuptions and cuts. Non-diegetic sound and crash endings.

SINA KHANI

A song by Mr. Khani “Let’s not hate the Americans”

May 28, Rode Bioscoop Amsterdam

Danish photographer EVA MARIE RODBRO‘s video ‘FUCK YOU KISS ME’ presents the lives of a group of teenagers living in a snowed-in, northern community, it could be LAPPLAND or ICELAND or NORWAY, i dont know. Black and white DV footage that is about to fracture with iced-out beauty and banality. A scandanavian KIDS with no Harmony K in sight. Mundane activities documented in cabins. Kids trying out new crunk dance moves. Slicing open a polar bear’s chest cavity. Slam dunks on a snow covered court. An observational doco with minimal dialogue, superbly controlled timing and a whole SLAB of atmosphere. i need to see her next work in a cinema not on a stool.

EVA MARIE RODBRO

goodbye melbourne community techno unit, hello amsterdam orange plastic hats