Emile Zile

Kat Barron and Lara Thoms a.k.a. SPAT’N’LOOGIE a.k.a awesome hybrid performance creators a.k.a Charltons ‘Gangstas Paradise’ Karaoke Champions have quickly moved from their HOLIDAY show during Melbourne’s recent Next Wave Festival to a residency in Rauma, rural Finland.

What are you doing in Finland?

Soaking up the sun. Taking tours of ‘Rauma’s dark side’, inlcuding a date in a car with ‘pussy patrol’ sprayed on the doors. Writing a feature film. Making a cooking show. Hanging out with teenagers. Making videos at the pool. Making paper mache muscle suits and spitting in each others faces. 7 hour dinner parties. Getting into craft – creating heaps of ‘buddies’.

Do the Finns make good conversationalists?
Do you have any Finnish tales or jokes now?

The most popular joke in Rauma is to say ‘Hey, what’s going on in Rauma tonight?’ – funny because nothing is ever going on in Rauma tonight. Also to add a T to the beginning of Rauma. The locals we have met have been pretty good conversationalists, we met two brothers who were satanists and told us they  wanted to make a didgeridoo out of a t-rex bone and come on as guests on our cooking show to cook mock human (soy based). One of them was going to begin a job managing the local nuclear power plant. We are a bit concerned about that.

What’s the greatest thing that’s happened to you during the residency?

Buddies. (shell art). Seeing a young punk with multi colored giant mohawk dive from an 18 metre platform gracefully into the local pool fully clothed. An all-accapella heavy metal band in Helsinki.

Has the constant daylight affected your ability to work or sleep?

In the beginning we were waking up at 2am, thinking it was 2pm, etc. Its getting dark at about 12 now, we still can’t bring ourselves to sleep before 3am.

How did the cooking show come about?

Boredom and hunger and inability to ever eat outside of the house, entertainment for close friends and coconuts.

Have you been to the Finnish outback?

We are in the Finnish outback.  We have seen crop circles in fields nearby. No, Lapland would be nice.

What else are you doing in Europe?

We are planning to visit St. Petersburg and Stockholm during our visit for good times, after the residency we are going Linz to attend Ars Electronica.  Other plans include making a skype video artwork gameshow with you.

Exotic?

Reindeer stew.

Where can I revel in the excitement of candy?

Pick and pay, this is a mall city.

Whats hot this summer?

Roller blading, peroxided hair, sausage dogs, PUA’s

Being locked out of my Sandberg studio while holiday renovations take place creates time for exploring the Amsterdam forests by bike, watching EasyJet 737’s full of anticipatory stoners land from my balcony and reading books.

The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. Australian Screen Classics series. Currency Press, Sydney.

Philip Brophy

Brophy’s reading of the signs within this iconic Australian film is a euphoric textual overload. Few other writers cause me to verbalise my intellectual agitation during the act of reading as Brophy does. I find myself floored by the spiky analysis, unexpected connections and sharp wit. His analysis is incisive and the language used is never jargonistic or cluttered. The author generates a highly subjective theory-fiction, akin to Baudrillard or Barthes’ analysis of the products of culture. Just as valid as any other potential reading and certainly not pandering to any pre-digested self-image of the Australian Film Industry. A highly provocative reading of the gay/straight, male/female, urban/rural energies contained in this film, the passages on Chrome-plating and the Rolls Royce Spirit of Ecstasy, Scarves and the Village Roadshow logo leave a lasting impression, as too the Freudian disfiguration of the land to make way for the Snowy Mountains Hydro Electric scheme. I come away from this book thinking where are all the other analyses of popular culture that refuse to tow an accepted ‘Margaret and David’ canonisation of certain cultural works. Where is the psycho-sexual re-reading of Antiques Roadshow, Channel 10 Late night news or The NRL Footy Show?

http://www.currency.com.au/search.aspx?type=author&author=Philip+Brophy

http://www.philipbrophy.com

Cultural Activism Today. The art of over-identification. Episode Publishers, Rotterdam.

Bavo (editors)

I have been intending to read this collection of essays for the past year. Subconsciously avoiding it until I had decent time and space to take it in perhaps. Beginning with Slavoj Zizek’s concept of over-identification with ‘the enemy’ (advanced capitalism, totalitarian regimes, neo-conservative agendas) as the only form of cultural activism that doesn’t automatically lock into a played out notion of Left-Right politics, with all the perfunctory role-playing that such a binary opposition summons up. Post-ideology activism for a post-ideological age. The argument is that to face the opponent with an image of itself so magnified, heightened and detestable is the only way of exposing the inherent hypocrisy within that system. Santiago Serra, Christoph Schlingensief, Atelier van Lieshout are discussed at length and the cultural shockwaves that their performances and installations generate. Schlingensief has always fascinated me. His ability to be the enfant terrible for German-speaking culture, making unsettling film, tv and theatre work that implicates it’s audience, funders and participants. A kind of double-bluff that provokes a social black hole of shame and responsibility, of which Schlingensief isn’t immune to either. Schlingensief’s projects discussed in this book include the African Twin Towers film installation and Bitte liebt Osterreich, a protest against the extreme-right party of Jorg Haider joining the Austrian government; In a makeshift container camp in the center of Vienna a Big Brother-type reality show asked Austrians to vote asylum seekers out of the camp and out of the country. The ‘most integrated’ refugee at the end of the game won a residence permit. A superb analysis of the Slovenian industral band Laibach is undertaken by Alexei Monroe, dismantling their seemingly ultra-nationalist symbols such as the Slovenian Stag, Alpine romanticist oil painting and traditional folk costume. True to the image of themselves as ‘State Artists’, Laibach’s administering organisation NSK offers a passport to the public from their website for admission to their ‘state in time’. All the artists discussed in this volume keep their poker face. It is an ambiguous and complex gesture that provides no easy recuperation or dismissal.

http://www.niederer.info/new_site/archives/23

http://www.bavo.biz

Laibach Live 14.11.03 Ljubljana, Slovenia

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6EoPI-xO4PU

Destroy All Monsters. Marion Boyars, London.

Ken Hollings

A sharply non-linear novel that runs at breakneck speed between visiting aliens, Tokyo teens, reanimated Elvis Presley and the interior monologues of the President of the Unted States, Destroy All Monsters is a thrilling read. Elliptical narratives. Cascading plots and thoroughly media-soaked characters scattered around the globe. Also highly recommended is Ken Hollings and Simon James’ ResonanceFM podcast series on American 1950’s Science Fiction, Fantasy and Fact; how the cold war, space race and the very real ‘little green man’ hysteria influenced popular culture and vice versa: Welcome to Mars

http://readers.penguin.co.uk/nf/shared/WebDisplay/0,,74271_1_12,00.html

http://www.kenhollings.com

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

Let’s Paint TV is a community access cable television show broadcast in Los Angeles. A psychedelic Saturday morning smear of extreme video mixer effects, live painting, treadmill running and taking calls from the public. The host John Kilduff remains focused on being positive throughout abusive calls from anonymous callers, dealing with extreme multi-tasking while painting portraits and interviewing guests. Live studio guests have included a fake Robert DeNiro, carnivorous birds and the Wizard of Oz’s Tinman. Extremely effective grass-roots interactive art on many levels, Let’s Paint TV is an internet phenomenon and a peculiar broadcast endurance event that I wanted to know more about. I asked this indefatigable performer and UCLA MFA candidate graduate some questions over email.

EZ. You focus on multitasking and positivity in
your show, how do you gauge if these very
important life lessons are being imparted to your
call-in audience ? Have you been asked to run
workshops or self-help camps ?

JK. I do get a few personal emails from people who
ask me for advice on how to continue on with life.

EZ. Is positivity coming back in full force in the
USA ? Is Bush’s demise a blossoming flower of
openness or not ? How hard is it to be positive ? Is
California a great place to be positive ?

JK. Yes to all…I think. It can be hard and
frankly, most of the time when I am not
performing…I have to remind myself that Mr Let’s
Paint justs keeps on keeping on! Yes, I think
California is a great place to be positive..both
LA and San Fransisco.

EZ. Do you get hassled at the supermarket ? Are
you well-known in your neighborhood ? Has someone
noticed you in 7-11 and shook your hand ?

JK. No,No,and No…..LA is so big that it just
hasn’t happened yet. Now if I was on the cover of
People Magazine…that would be different.

EZ. Have you made other experiments in the media ?
Ever hosted a radio show or exhibited your
paintings in unconventional spaces ? Were you a
painter before you were involved with electricity ?

JK. During the OJ Simpson trial, I painted the
reporters at the trial and they interviewed me. No
to radio show (my brother did that), But I have
been doing this live internet show on
stickcam.com/letspainttv. Yes, I have been a
painter for over 20 years.

EZ. What is your favourite music ?

JK. Not sure…I like/hate everything

EZ. What is your favourite colour ?

JK. I don’t think I have one.

Let’s Paint TV

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

the most impressive video installation i have seen in a long time, currently on at STEDELIJK museum POSTCS amsterdam.

two large 16:9 screens facing eachother, a line of seating along one wall.

screen A: interviews with members of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) a guerilla group committed to the redistribution of wealth in their local communities, namely by the sabotage of ROYAL DUTCH SHELL oil wells on their land. mostly handheld shots, interviews, a threatening encounter with local hunter, a euphoric ‘miami vice’-like ride through the river with MEND warriors toting guns, wearing colourful woolen balaclavas encrusted with talismanic protectors.

screen B: scenes from the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, traders screaming and selling, trading futures with hand gestures and noise, their own physical signifiers, coloured suits and flags, talismanic toys on their desks, interspersed with shots of the exchange, cold surfaces, the clean edges of capital, the ‘death from above’ of international trading, the detached forces that very directly change peoples lives around the world. mainly tripod shots, close-ups on abstract decimals.

groups of men, men fighting, trading, arguing, clusters of men on missions.

forcing the audience to see one or the other is a bold decision, the audience is on the equator looking left into the southern hemisphere or right into the north. i’m a sucker for these fuzzy binaries, this simple and powerful conceit to symmetry.

this work is at 16th SYDNEY biennale, go see it if you’re in sin city.

stedelijk museum interview with M.BOULOS

you are now about to witness the strength of GUUS knowledge.

holland were unimaginative and paralysed by russia, uselessly attacking through the centre repeatedly and being stopped by russias stonewall defense. very classy performance by the ruskis. lovely second goal, tap off the ankle from an extreme cross.

after helping S.KOREA, AUTRALIA and now RUSSIA perform beyond the sum of their parts in big tournaments, GUUS HIDDINK deserves a CUP OF BEER and a VEGEMITE SANDWICH. when will he assist LATVIA to win the world cup ?

now all i want to see is a RUSSIA v. TURKEY final, two non-EU countries in the euro cup final.

i watched the match on a plasma through the window of an 18century pub in amsterdam, sitting in the street while the orange facepaint slowly dripped off the supporters faces, and their plastic hats got crumpled and stained. very sad last drinks.

‘carn the cossacks…

she peers out from behind bullet proof glass, wry smile at the onlookers. adoring fans. people shooting low-resolution snaps of an icon. like a throng at an airport documenting the arrival of a movie star. crowd barriers. elbow to elbow.

a scrum ten ppl deep. canon sony olympus flashes going off. two bored guards looking on. an audience with the smile, protected behind glass and layers of art history. she must get tired at the end of the day. strobing flashes in the face. child on dad’s shoulders getting a glimpse.

at first i was star-struck. i refused to walk around the wall and see this image. how do i know it really exists? the reproduction is so much more palatable.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=Hse0L6iEqa8

tokyo stop start technical grind screamo viruosity.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=H5D8L7Fqt3Q

she channels john lydon pistols-era effortlessly. the demeanor. the stances. the vaguely straight jacket looking white top. the side-long stares to the audience.

tight songs and brutally extreme swoops and pans from a sampler. jumbo jet take off or being stuck in a mobile telephone for a ten minute ring cycle. affecting and exhilirating. concise and brutal.

goodbye melbourne community techno unit, hello amsterdam orange plastic hats