Emile Zile is an artist, filmmaker and performer.
Group show of Australian video artists in Santiago, Chile. Featuring Ian Andrews, Emile Zile, The Kingpins, Anna Davis & Jason Gee, Philip Brophy, Denis Beaubois, Alex Kershaw, Lauren Brincat and Tony Schwensen.
Curated by Tim Welfare.
I’m showing ‘Larry Emdur’s Suit’ 2002 and ‘Five Production Company Logos in 3D’ 2010.
Boo Australia
Matucana 100
Santiago, Chile
April 24 – May 27
Camera: Ian Elson
Edit: Emile Zile
https://youtube.com/watch?v=c3b4s1JkYaM
Documentation by Pieter Kers
Palais Paradiso
February 16, 2012
http://www.palaisparadiso.nl
It is often said that if Sisyphus were alive today – he would probably be using a bulldozer to push his boulder up the mountain, while running a small company for similar services. Such are the times in which we live, where it’s possible that even mythology cannot exist without having cast over it the contemporary shadow of the corporation. Art that uses technology in any way is also under the same shadow: the product is embedded, be it the logo on laptop lids, in-camera menu systems, the sheer presence of digital projectors in the gallery space adds the subliminal presence of the multi-national brand. This minor conflict is not so much because they are there but because they are not intended to be there. It is a concession that must be made in order to use these tools. Never before has industry been so visible in art materials. Perhaps in a typical setting we are expected to overlook the device in order to consider the art is only what comes out of it. For this reason gallery and museum spaces often attempt to conceal these pieces of equipment so that their relationship with the artist and the viewer is not questioned, but in some ways this smudges something that might be pivotal.
With his history of performances that engage with popular culture and consumer technology Emile Zile recently premiered OMG_Sisyphus. The Greek mythology of Sisyphus, a tale of burden and absurdity, is used as a prop on which to enact a contemporary performance situation: being on YouTube. The performance happens in the midst of laptops, amplifiers, digital cameras, projectors and a heavy looking stone that the artist carries in from outside. In recent performances of OMG_Sisyphus at (Open Archive Melbourne, 30 November 2011, Palais Paradiso Amsterdam 16 February 2012) Zile enacts a humorously calculated switch. In his treatment we begin to understand that the laptop/webcam is now a rock, or vice versa. Its physical presence, weight, and texture become entwined in a passage of worship, as the ubiquitous Apple product is now something more equivalent to a Chinese scholar stone (Gongshi). Throughout the whole performance it is as if through some application of post-production what we should be seeing as a computer (the adored gateway to online audiences) is now a small volcanic boulder. Simultaneous slips between live action and published content begin, as Zile sits staring at the rock we imagine him staring at his computer, alone in a room while addressing an imagined YouTube audience. In doing so the actual live audience sitting in the gallery space is distanced, even denied. YouTube clips are executed and closed at the same time as the live performance, and by performing to the rock the absurd act of speaking to a mute object is comically revealed. All at once we view him in physical proximity sitting at his desk almost as if we are already at home watching him online. But we are not. At the same time YouTube clips projected at large scale on the wall present various moments recorded earlier, leading to a sense of shifts in time – the first clip is a (insert precise video length) closely cropped macro image of the minute crevices and minor surface details of the rock itself. The tragedy is that even though the rock is there in the room with us we still see it more closely on YouTube. The tone of this performance brings to mind the not-quite-transcendent aura of work by Shana Moulton combined with the webcam style bravado and entertainment factor of Hennessey Youngman. At some points in the piece we are made to feel the joys of web 2.0 publishing, light relaxation muzak plays, we are all connected by technology. But the gallery space begins to fall out of step as the artist struggles against what appears to be self-doubt and loneliness. The rock remains motionless on a small table under lamplight. Is real life different to projected life? Maybe it used to be. Zile seems to suggest a new friction is built in this crossover rather than a seamless merger. Whilst various elements of the performance are online, the crux of this work hinges on being present live in the gallery space – where multiple facets of contemporary being are felt and fired simultaneously. As it happens we are pointed toward a space where states of alienation, corporation and intense connectivity collide into a state of indivisibility.
February 2012
Supporting BODY/HEAD: Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth + Bill Nace
Sunday February 26 2012, OCCII Amsterdam €7 doors 20.00
Daniel Mudie-Cunningham’s project to collect songs to be played at funerals has opened at MONA in Hobart, Tasmania.
I chose a song by Daniel Johnston.
Photo by Pandarosa
Five Production Company Logos in 3D showing in a group show at P.ART Zwolle,
curated by Edwin Stolk/The Organisation.
Participating artists:
MERLIJN TWAALFHOVEN (NL)
ISABELLE SCHILTZ (BE)
ROBBERT WEIDE (NL)
EMILE ZILE (AU)
SEAN HANNAN (NL)
MARIJKE UITTENBROEK (NL)
HRISTINA TASHEVA (BG)
EDWIN STOLK (NL)
22 JANUARY – 4 MARCH 2012
http://www.gouldgalleries.com/Exhibitions/tabid/84/ctl/ExhibitionDetails/mid/420/eid/18/Default.aspx
Marc de Jong FLOCK WORK
Gould Galleries, 270 Toorak Rd. South Yarra
Opens Thursday 08 September 2011 – Saturday 08 October 2011
EXPANDED FERVOUR (SUBTERRANEAN UNDERGROWTH)
In Marc de Jong’s FLOCK WORK we are presented with explosive moments of energy controlled and contained. Removed from their origin as stock photography they appear to be slowed to the point of growing organically. His images of curling ocean waves, fireworks, volcanos, black holes all deal with brutal, spectacular energy. Electricity, water, gravity, fire – elemental forces man has tried to contain. These are portraits of entropy – a moment of peak energy about to dissipate – the greatest force frozen and permitted to grow a mould-like flock veneer. In this manner they are meditations on the speed of global image culture, overgrown phosphorescent works that contain our shared visual culture.
COPY PASTED (SIGNED AND SEALED)
Stock footage and universal logotypes have long been a fascination for de Jong. From the early sign-jacking of the re-advertising project to his re-appropriation of Mad Max in oils, to the alternate reading of nationalist pride in his combination of Australian Aboriginal colours and the Eureka stockade flag. Marc has continued a tradition of very precise and controlled re-use of contemporary imagery. In FLOCK WORK we are witness to a sifting of imagery from stock photography libraries that privilege moments of dynamic intensity only to seal them in their explosive state and alchemically make them permanent on canvas. Somewhere between printing, painting and electrostatic experimentation lies de Jong’s flock process. Generating sparks in their big bang moment in the studio, these canvases represent and also contain the energy used to make them.
SERENE SMILE (YOU VAIN CREATURES)
de Jong’s Buddhas stare out from the walls, peacefully surveying the folly of man’s attempts at longevity and permanence. These heads stand apart in this body of work as the only manifestation of a human form. A humble, resigned, knowing, curling smile that sees the world from it’s jungle home at Angkor Watt, Cambodia. These faces are the key to understanding Marc de Jong’s metaphysical concerns – they are the serene reflections of man surveying and attempting to understand the world. Fame dissolves, humanity is extinguished, but life continues in the pores of the earth. Surfaces of the world will again creep with lichen and moss, much like de Jong’s flock seems to grow and emit a faceless living energy.
Emile Zile 2011
In January 2012 I will begin a two-year studio residency at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten.
1. Laibach – Predictions of Fire 1996
In the early 80’s, an industrial rock band named Laibach emerged out of the Yugoslav republic of Slovenia. Incorporating what many took to be fascist imagery in their performances, they shocked this small Balkan republic and, after signing a recording contract with London’s prestigious Mute Records label, went on to shock the rest of the world as well. Laibach was soon joined by a painting group, IRWIN, and theater group, Red Pilot, at the helm of one of the most ambitious and cutting-edge arts collectives in the world. Modeled after a socialist state bureaucracy, and calling themselves Neue Slowenische Kunst (New Slovenian Arts, or NSK), these three groups became the titular heads of a micro-state within the independent republic of Slovenia. NSK recently began issuing its own passports and opened embassies and consulates in Moscow, Berlin, Ghent, Florence, and in the US.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziivUUKHf-I
2. Aleksandra Domanovic – Turbo Sculpture 2010
Turbo Sculpture is questioning the emergence of a new kind of public art in ex-Yougoslav republics. The title of the video is a reference to Turbofolk, a popular style of music from the Balkans that freely samples traditional and contemporary sources. A sculpture of Bruce Lee, or of Rocky are politically neutral and common cultural references for the different communities that were at war for over a decade in the 1990s. While the war time Turbo Culture was mostly associated with exaggerated nationalism, almost pornographic kitsch and crime glorification, the post war Turbo boldly contrasts nationalist xenophobia while retaining its stylistic identity.
https://vimeo.com/17523698
3. BBC4 – Nicolae Ceausescu, The King of Communism 2003
Nicolae Ceausescu created a unique personality cult in the 1970s and 1980s, transforming communist Romania into one of the strangest regimes Europe has ever seen. Newspapers had to mention his name 40 times on every page, factory workers spent months rehearsing dance routines dressed as soldiers and gymnasts for huge shows at which thousands of citizens were lined up to form the words Nicolae Ceausescu with their bodies. When the Romanian economy and living standards plummeted in the 1980s, the line between theatre and life blurred completely. Ceausescu went on working visits to the countryside where he inspected displays of meat and fruit made out of polystyrene, and closer to home began work on what would have been the largest palace in the world. At the final parade in 1989, workers walked past their leader to the sound of taped chants and applause.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5gVsYNGycc
On Friday, January 14 2011 the Netherlands Media Art Institute (NIMk) will host a night profiling the work of Sandberg Institute students from all departments. Theus Zwakhals of NIMk and Emile Zile (ex-S.I. Fine Arts, emilezile.com) are curating and producing the event. The last two editions have hosted installations, performances and a screening program to a broad public audience.
Participating artists:
Manon van Trier, Samantha Thole, Tom Milnes, Katja Novitskova, Maartje Smits, Salomé Lamas, Edwin Stolk, Jetske Verhoeven, Eva Marie Rodbro, Sina Khani, Lida Krul, Sayaka Abe, Marc Barreda
e3.50 entry, students free.