Codex, 2007
HD & SD video/ Jitter/ mac mini

Codex is a clearing house of video clips, audio sound bytes and textual pieces created but never finished since I moved to NYC in 2003. Through the use of a semi-random algorithm the narrative body flows through sorted sets and grouping of ideas and movie clips that deal with fictional and non-fictional mini-narratives. The mini-narratives range from subjects concerning geography, technology, capitalism, socialism, political history, spiritualism, the occult, multiplicity, and direct observations of urban life on both broad and micro levels.

It’s a movie that is never complete, never ending and never the same twice. It’s about me, you and everything around us past present and future. Call it artful dodging by computational power, call it laziness, call it a hopeless but beautiful mess because who has time to sort out interrelated ideas, who has time for anything longer that 30 seconds ? I don’t but the codex, or rather algorithm does and can neatly sort it all out for us.

Codex … 11.1 – 11.14.2009

Atrium Gallery – Western Michigan University

Chris Borkowski is a media maker from Buffalo, NY that is now living and working in New York City. He has worked professionally as video editor, network administrator, media arts center Technical Director, and University instructor in digital arts. He is a co-founder of the video art portal Perpetual Art Machine [PAM]. He has shown work internationally at various galleries and media festivals and has also performed a number of real-time audio and video pieces.

Chris Borkowski – New York New York

Christopher Borkowski

Destinesia explores repetition in relation to ritual practices of both communities and individuals, using the institutional space of a school as a platform. This sound installation utilizes audio informed by an examination of sonic ritual practices that bind a community, and their relationship to the flow and disruption of free associations as used in an individual’s practice of mining the unconscious. Destinesia is part of a larger examination of the quantification and perception of time; and the breaking down the structures to look at the significance of their sonic elements for the listener.

Atrium Gallery – Western Michigan University

Leah Rico’s art practice explores the function of language in relation to what defines individual and group identity. Most recently, she uses the phenomenological characteristics of audio to take the work into the lived space of the audience. Casting language as quintessence, Rico breaks down the sonic structure of speech, revealing its hidden histories and mapping its unspoken politics.

Leah Rico – Los Angeles California

www.leahrico.com

see video excerpt

Les Langues, running time 3:10 mins.

This whole business of images started when the doctor recommended that I look, and look and look again until I understood something. On his kindly advice, I looked intently at images in order to understand them, amazing images of extraordinary bodies. Images in which one understands nothing. Images of succubi and those possessed by the devil, images of anger and irony, of impersonation and crucifixion, of wonder and possession, images of ecstasy and convulsion.

I looked at the images of bodies that produced the images. Bodies that were simply vulnerable surfaces, presented for photographic recording and dermographical inscription. Public bodies on which floating words had been fixed by hands become cynical through indifference. Words that were no longer read as words but rather as symptoms. A symbolic violence exerted by the intersection of reifying hands and gaze. A risk that is part of the desire to become an image.

Can you believe that I could be held by these images to the point of being almost maternal towards them? I protected them, loved them, took care of them, revived them, cleaned them up and made them speak. I even reintroduced them into the incessant circulation of images. I hear said that images are appropriated, that they are used as citations but never is it said that one takes care of images, that one would like to make up for the abuse and humiliation that they have been subjected to.

Les Langues … 9.1 – 9.15.2009

Atrium Gallery – Western Michigan University

Nicole Jolicoeur was born in the province of Quebec and now lives and works in Montreal. She studied at École des Beaux-arts in Quebec City and at Rutgers University in New Jersey (USA) where she received a Master of Fine Arts degree. From 1972 to 1990, she taught at École des arts visuels of Université Laval and from 1990 to 2007 at École des arts visuels et médiatiques of Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM).

In 1980, she began developing her installation practice using photography and text and now video, which puts into perspective various discourse and contexts concerning the representation of a female subject. She creates spatial settings with reference to fields as diverse as the beginnings of psychiatry, the exploration of the polar regions, anthropology, strolling in the city, Roman Catholic religious iconography and now the operatic duo. Her practice has been built up around the implications relative to how women are represented as well as her interest in the found image, the theatricality of photographic records (more precisely the body of images J. M. Charcot and his followers produced at La Salpêtrière, Paris, at the end of the 19th century), the narrative created by image/text relationships, the performative aspects of self-representation and the use of one’s own voice.

Since 1973, her work has been exhibited in solo, duo and group shows in Quebec, Canada, England, France and the United States, and has been the subject of numerous critical comments published in books, catalogues and periodicals concerned with art. In addition to her photographic installation practice, she has a strong interest in the production and publication of artist’s books, and artist’s projects and writings in art books and magazines. She has made many public presentations of her artwork at symposiums and as lectures.

She has received financial support for her work from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, UQAM and PRIM (Productions Réalisations Indépendantes Montréal).

Her works are in numerous public collections, among them, that of the Musée National des Beaux-Arts du Québec, the National Gallery of Canada, the Musée-Château d’Annecy in France, the Canada Council Art Bank, the Université du Québec à Montréal and in private collections as well.

Nicole Jolicoeur – Montréal Québec

www.nicolejolicoeur.com

10th Lesson
3.9 – 3.18.2009

A film within a video that uses bad timing to draw out a classic joke, this work highlights how language lessons teach you more than proper pronunciation. The motif of the circle, the wheel, and the spiral conspire to confuse and befuddle. Made in collaboration with sound artist Will Redman.

Essential Chair
3.19 – 3.31.2009

16mm experimental film about the ideal and the embodiment of the Father figure.

10th Lesson … 3.9 – 3.18.2009
Essential Chair … 3.19 – 3.31.2009

Atrium Gallery – Western Michigan University

Joanna Raczynska earned her masters degree in documentary production from the University of London. She is a member of the video collective Termite TV and a founding member of the programming collective Stateless Cinema. Her short videos have shown internationally and across the US. Screening history includes: Festival of Women’s Film & Media Arts, National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington DC, September 2007 – The Takoma Park Film Festival, Takoma Park, MD, October 2007 Videopolis – The Metro Gallery, Baltimore, MD, May 2008

Joanna Raczynska – Baltimore Maryland

http://jraczynska.com

44 Meaningful Sounds derives its name from the number of meaningful sounds (or phonemes) in the English (American) language. Each sound was extracted from representative words in order to obtain as closely as possible the way it might vary slightly from the beginning or end of a word to its interior. These sounds have been assembled into a library and are played back in random order using an algorithm designed to mimic the consonant and vowel patterns of the English language.

I am curious about the effects of randomness and the ways it can be wielded as a tool to upset our expectations and create representations that defy predictable meaning. While most of my work plays with or against language, 44 Meaningful sounds is the first to directly engage with systems of linguistic representation.

44 Meaningful Sounds … 2.11 – 3.7.2009

Atrium Gallery – Western Michigan University

Patrick Craig Manning is an Assistant Professor of Photography at the University of New Mexico. Born in Seattle, WA, he received degrees in photography and archeology from the University of Washington and his MFA from the University of New Mexico before going on to teach as a professor at the Herron School of Art in Indianapolis. His photographic, digital, and video work invokes loss to explore the intersection of representation, language, and history and has been exhibited at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, the Eiteljorg Museum of Indian and Western Art and galleries from coast to coast.

Patrick Craig Manning – Alburquerque New Mexico

http://pcm.pcmxa.com

Lee Wells
Metropolis (1800 Frames Plus), 2008
Digital Video (color/sound)
Duration: 54 minutes

An anonymous figure roams the maze-like streets of an ancient marble city. Although there are signs of contemporary life present, a bike, garbage bins, shops and some cats, no humans are present outside of occasional voices and the artists footsteps echoing down the claustrophobic walkways. More than a simple document of place and that of light and color. The work creates a subtle sense of suspense, mystery and discovery as the camera passes from areas of darkness that open up to theatrically lit ancient architecture and back again, eventually leading the viewer to a final destination.

This video was shot on location in the city center of Split Croatia, formerly Roman Emperor Diocletian’s 4th century palace.

Metropolis (1800 Frames Plus) … 1.26 – 2.7.2009

Atrium Gallery – Western Michigan University

Lee Wells is an artist, independent curator and consultant currently living and working in Brooklyn, New York. His artwork primarily questions systems of power and control and has been exhibited internationally for over 10 years, including the 51st La Biennale Di Venezia, NCCA Moscow, Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati, the Museo d’arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto (MART), Chelsea Art Museum and the PS1 Contemporary Art Center. He is a co-founder and director of IFAC-arts, an alternative exhibition and installation program for artists and curators. He is also a co-founder of the video art portal, Perpetual Art Machine His projects and exhibitions have been written about by various national and international art and news publications to include: The New York Times, Art Newspaper, The Washington Post, Art inAmerica, WPS1 Art Radio. Wells is currently a curator at large for Scope Art Fairs and is a site editor emeritus for www.rhizome.org.

Lee Wells – Brooklyn New York

www.leewells.org

Vince Mistretta

This video highlights the work of Western New York area media and sound artists interested in composition and new methods of collaboration. This is a witness to the development of original sound and image works that are collaborative and improvised, trustful and open to new ways of working between media and sound artists.

Twelve media artists were invited to produce an original, silent (or near silent) short film or video piece to be “read” as a graphic score by variations of performers from The Open Music Ensemble. Live recordings and performances of the scores in sound are paired with visual works, developed especially for this exhibition, now video. A live concert of selected works was originally performed on September 23, 2005.

Siew Wai Kok

Featured media artists include: Dorothea Braemer, Elliot Caplan, Stephanie Gray, Siew-wai Kok, Carl Lee, Brian Milbrand, Vince Mistretta, Jan Nagle, Alan Rhodes, Kelly Spivey, Carolyn Tennant and Stephen Vitiello.

Participating musicians include: Steve Baczkowski (horns), J.T Rinker (trombone), Josh DeScherer (bass), Ben Harris (violin), Leah Muir (cello), Otto Muller (accordian), Chris Reba (bass), Will Redman (percussion), Bill Sack (electric guitar), Andrew Walsh (contrabass) and Todd Whitman (horns and various alternative noise makers).

The Open Music Ensemble is a collective of over a dozen Buffalo-based musicians affiliated with The Open Music Foundation, a not-for-profit organization for composers and artists dedicated to the promotion of artistic expression based on unconventional, experimental, open-form, and — especially — graphical, forms of communicating musical ideas. For more information, visit http://www.openmusic.us

July 4, 2005 NYC
i: Elliot Capalan
s: Will Redman + N. Andrew Walsh

New York, 8pm, 8/25/05
i: Kelly Spivey
s: Todd Whitman

Intensity Priority
i: C. Tennant + David Jones
s: Otto Muller, Ben Harris + Chris Reba

Untitled
i: Brian Milbrand
s: Bill Sack, JT Rinker, Todd Whitman, N. Andrew Walsh, Chris Reba + Steve Baczkowski

Greta’s Ball
i: Dorothea Braemer
s: JT Rinker, Todd Whitman, Leah Muir + Steve Baczkowski

Leaving
i: Alan Rhodes
s: Ben Harris

Grass Roots, Moth Light
i: Stephen Vitiello
s: Will Redman + Bill Sack

Storm at Lacock Abbey
i: Jan Nagle
s: Steve Baczkowski + Josh DeScherer

Fire Escape
i: Carl Lee
s: JT Rinker + Otto Muller

Faces
i: Siew-wai Kok
s: Otto Muller, N. Andrew Walsh, Leah Muir, Chris Reba + Steve Baczkowski

Zig Zag
i: Vince Mistretta
s: Bill Sack

Governor’s Island
i: Stephanie Gray
s: Leah Muir

Eyes and Ears: Sound Needs Image … 1.5 – 1.21.2009

Atrium Gallery – Western Michigan University

A second version of this project was commissioned by Hallwalls in Buffalo NY in the spring of 2008.

Joanna Raczynska and Will Redman, curators

Translations of Lorca, 2006 (see video)

For this interdisciplinary collaborative project, I worked with the director of Central Washington University’s Chamber Choir and another filmmaker to create a video installation, which coincided with a live performance of the “Suite de Lorca” written by a famous Finnish composer, Einojuhani Rautavaara. The synchronized installation consisted of compatible imagery, compiled from video-based observations of nature and travels through various environments, projected on two separate 9 x 12 foot screens placed on either sides of the choir. Shifting with the music from fast to slow, light to dark, frantic to meditative, the film follows an anonymous figure whose presence serves as a conduit for one’s inner quest.

* single channel video only will be presented at Western Michigan University.

Previous documentation: Translations of Lorca, Two-Channel Video Installation with Live Choir, Central Washington University, 2006

Translations of Lorca … 12.1 – 12.20.2008

Atrium Gallery – Western Michigan University

Originally from Southwestern Ohio, Michael Sherwin received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Photography from The Ohio State University in 1999, and in June of 2004 he received his Master of Fine Arts in Photography from the University of Oregon in Eugene, Oregon. He has taught a variety of photography and digital imaging courses at institutions including: the Center for the Arts in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, Maude Kerns Art Center in Eugene, Oregon, the University of Oregon and Central Washington University. After an eight-year stint in the Northwest, Michael recently returned to the East to accept a position as Assistant Professor of Photography and Digital Imaging at West Virginia University. He has won numerous grants and awards for his work, and has been exhibited widely. He is also an active and participating member of the Society for Photographic Education, and the College Art Association.

Michael Sherwin – Morgantown West Virginia

www.michaelsherwin.com

Michael Lasater
Passing Figure, 1999
Video with Sound, stereo
Running Time: 5:00 minutes
11.3 – 11.8.2008
see video

Michael Lasater
Billboard, 2004
Video with Sound, stereo
Running Time: 5:15 minutes
11.10 – 11.15.2008
see video

Michael Lasater
Visions Fugitive, 2007
Video with Sound, stereo
Running Time: 6:00 minutes
11.17 – 11.22.2008
see video

The subject of my work often derives from issues and processes of personal psychology, especially perception, memory, personal narrative, and the construction of meaning.

As an artist, I am primarily interested in composition in video, animation, and sound as a means of exploring, discussing, and objectifying ideas and concepts. But I am also interested in the exploration of media composition for its own sake; I’m interested in vocabulary, structure, technique, and methods.

Dziga Vertov (film), Anton Webern (music), and Gerhard Richter (painting) are representative of artists who have had a significant influence on my work. Vertov’s ethos in his declaration I am cinema-eye, I am camera-eye , his development of film as a separate reality, nearly an alternative consciousness, have influenced my conception of media composition as a self-referencing language, much like music. Webern’s serial work, in which every note is a planet, every movement a universe, suggests to me not only strategies for composition and structure, but provides a firm basis for confidence in minimalist time-forms or time-objects as vehicles of significant communicative power. I am enormously attracted to the work of Gerhard Richter, who often bases his art on photographs and other preexisting sources, and whose technique includes the ability to control radically different vocabularies, often within the same frame.

Passing Figure … 11.3 – 11.8.2008
Billboard … 11.10 – 11.15.2008
Visions Fugitive … 11.17 – 11.22.2008

Atrium Gallery – Western Michigan University

Michael Lasater – South Bend Indiana

http://michaellasater.com

courtsey of the Netherlands Media Art Institute, Montevideo/TBA
© Marina Abramović, The Onion, 1996 – 20:00 mins
see video excerpt

The first shot is a close up of Abramović looking upward and holding a large onion. Her fingernails are painted bright red, just like her lips. Slowly she brings the onion closer to her mouth, taking a large bite from it and beginning to chew. Her voice-over keeps repeating the following as she devours the onion: ‘I’m tired of changing planes so often, waiting in the waiting rooms, bus stations, train stations, airports. I am tired of waiting for endless passport controls. Fast shopping in shopping malls. I am tired of more career decisions: museum and gallery openings, endless receptions, standing around with a glass of plain water, pretending that I am interested in conversation. I am tired of my migraine attacks. Lonely hotel room, room service, long distance telephone calls, bad TV movies. I am tired of always falling in love with the wrong man. I am tired of being ashamed of my nose being too big, of my ass being too large, ashamed about the war in Yugoslavia. I want to go away. Somewhere so far that I’m unreachable, by telephone or fax. I want to get old, really, really old, so that nothing matters any more. I want to understand and see clearly what is behind all of us. I want not to want anymore.’

As she is complaining, Abramović is noticeably agitated by eating the raw onion. Her eyes are tearing up, her saliva is dripping out of her mouth as her lipstick is rubbed off and bits of onion layers stick to her face. Her chewing is slowing down, but she continues to take ferocious bites from the onion while the voice-over continues. In certain respects, ‘The Onion’ shows familiarities with early performances like ‘Art must be Beautiful, Artists must be Beautiful’, in which Abramović is violently brushing her hair and face while reciting the title of the piece. As the early performances revolve around mental and physical limits of pain, ‘The Onion’ resumes Marina’s dedication to idea of the inseparability of body and mind by challenging apparent limitations of physical stamina. The video is also part of the 16-channel installation ‘Video Portrait Gallery’ (Abramović 1975-2002).

The Onion … 10.25 – 11.1.2008

Atrium Gallery – Western Michigan University

Marina Abramović – New York New York

Sean Kelly Gallery