Video Is The Only Constant April 7th 2010: Morgan Beringer

The Yud, 9:38, UK

A short document of abstract painter Xiana Wolfram's installation / performance in Highgate Wood last Autumn. The Yud is an ongoing project revolving around the installation of a massive canvas in various contexts. This video documents the Yud at a particularly playful halfway point in its overall development.

Morgan Beringer is an American video artist based in East London. Having spent and continuing to spend much of his life in transit between different countries, the thrust of his creative concern stems from the dilemma of living in-between cultures. An academic background in both philosophy and art pushes these concerns further into the realms of linguistics, performance, and film/video art.

Video Is The Only Constant April 7th 2010: Paul Kindersley

Star, installation

'Star' consists of hand made screenprinted cushions of a random womans face, the way it is done and the Warhol references make her look like a famous person allowing each viewer to have their own interpretation...is it Yoko Ono, is it Sharon Tate Etc....It shows the stalker, obsessive nature of fandom, and the saturation of popular culture in our lives. What we see on the cinema screen, becomes part of us, and we can no longer separate between reality and fantasy. The 'star' becomes an empty vessel for us to project our fantasies onto.

Paul Kindersley is an artist and curator based in London. After having lived and worked in Berlin, Cambridge and London, Paul graduated from Chelsea College of Art & Design with a First Class Hons BA in the summer of 2009 and was awarded the Transition Gallery Prize which resulted in a solo show, 'She wanted his soul, but he could only give her his blood', last October. He has exhibited widely in London and Europe.

http://sites.google.com/site/paulkindersley/

Video Is The Only Constant April 7th 2010: Michael Marczewski

14.7 Metre Psycho, 4:40, UK

14.7 Metre Psycho is a redelivery of Hitchcock’s 1960 thriller; stills from the film have been reconstructed into a long three-dimensional set,which has then been filmed with an unedited tracking shot.

http://www.mmarczewski.com

Video Is The Only Constant April 7th 2010: Monica Elkelv

KAOS, 3:48, UK

'Kaos' is a film based on the earliest condition of the Universe, before matter and the lower atmosphere that surrounds the earth: the great void of emptiness within the Universe. The film symbolizes the cosmic cycles of creation and destruction, and shows the relationship between the body and the natural environment representing the extremes of emotion by the loss of the body. Kaos is a paradox, between body and nature, and universe and matter: the space or gap between heaven and earth.

Monica Elkelv combines dance and film as an art form, pushing the art of modern dance into the forefront of the experimental film world. Movement and its manipulation enable her to create a space, which has no reference to time, transforming the body in a depersonalized figure. Through her films, she approaches the relation between the human and the natural world upon a metaphysical level, exploring the connection between mind and matter and the transcendental state of consciousness. In her dance films, we see the limits of the dancer’s body in contrast to the unlimited experimentations the filmmaker can have by using the body as a material, as an object. As an object, the body can be accelerated, without limits. The result is the creation of another imaginary space through a multidimensional perspective, resulting into an impossible dance.

Video Is The Only Constant April 7th 2010: Dustin Grella

Prayers for Peace, 7:38, 2009, USA

Prayers for Peace is a narrative stop-motion animation confronting the memory of the artist's younger brother killed in the current conflict in Iraq. Drawn entirely with pastels on a slate chalkboard, the materials used to create the animation become a metaphor for the impermanence of life.

Dustin Grella was born in North Carolina, grew up in Ohio and lives in New York City. In May 2009 he graduated from the School of Visual Arts with an MFA in Computer Art, having received scholarships from the department and the Alumni Association as well as the Paula Rhodes Award for Excellence in Computer Art. His animated short, Glimpse, won awards in international underground festivals including Best Animation, Audience Choice and Best Experimental film. Dustin’s first solo show, in 2007 at Summit ArtSpace in Akron, OH, was the first solo show in ArtSpace’s history. His work is the subject of a documentary film scheduled for release in July 2009.

Grella develops artifacts and events that explore the human experience through the passage of time. His work focuses on the design and creation of systems that gather the thoughts or feelings of individuals at particular moments. Through animation, installation, and even the postal services, Grella combines equal measures of sincerity and absurdity, structure and improvisation. By highlighting seemingly mundane tasks, he focuses on the importance of the moment. Notes To Self [2002-], is a ongoing series of over twenty-five hundred letters that he writes and mails to himself daily. These letters occasionally surface as objects in his work.

http://www.dustystudio.org

Video Is The Only Constant April 7th 2010: Alexandros Pissourios

Non-Fiction, 10:04, 2009, Cyprus

Does one ever stop remembering?
In 'Non-Fiction’, the aim was to go back to a personal archive and excavate images from events in order to come to terms with, or even relinquish them. In a sense, by remembering, what is remembered is then subjected to decay :
"Things in the past are in some ways nurtured if kept forgotten. Forgetting, like burial is a preservative. A kind of storage".
Perhaps what is at play is the contingency of memory as it is enacted in a dialectical opposition between sound and image. Truth and truthfulness become distinct from one and other, corresponding to ideas around immediacy (the belief in what one is being presented with as true) and mediation (the acknowledgement of art as art).

Alexandros Pissourios (born Cyprus 1982) graduated from the Royal College of Art in 2009, following a BA in Performance (Music) and Visual Art from the University of Brighton, 2007. Recent screenings and performances include Acoustic Images, BFI, London, 2009, Equator Project, St Lukes, London, 2008, Ars longis vita brevis, University of Brighton, 2006 and Urban Soul Festival, Nicosia, Cyprus, 2006. Alongside his practice he works as a sound and visual designer producing music videos (Floating Points, Mr Fogg) and alternative performances (A Man to Pet).

http://www.alexandrospissourios.com

Video Is The Only Constant April 7th 2010: Marianna and Daniel O'Reilly

Delivery, 14:00, 2008, UK

J-P Sartre once stated that the only free man is the man in chains. Stemming from an attempt to develop this idea, the film ‘Delivery’ wrests its suspense structure from two cases of men seeking meaningful performances within confined parameters; the now infamous chess game between Garry Kasparov and IBM computer ‘Deep Blue’, and the case of Anthony Blunt; art historian and KGB double-agent. Central to this attempt is the production of a synthetic universe in which contrived scenarios, filmic devices, edits and sound loops constantly refer back to the process of ‘reality production’ and the parameters by which individuals engage in producing images. ‘Delivery’ consists in a deconstructed journey of the image of free choice and the absurd quest for a meaningful existential performance both in front of the camera and behind it.

Marianna was born in Russia and Daniel in the UK. Having met undertaking their Master Degrees in Fine Art in London (Royal Academy of Arts and Chelsea College of Art respectively) they have developed multi-media installations, published artist’s books, participated and curated art exhibitions, screenings, debates and performances.

Since 2008 they have worked exclusively in video using their relationship as the basis for a series of protracted studies on subjectivity. These symposia focus primarily on the relationship between human freedom and individuality, the operations of self-deception, frustration and alienation, and a critical re-examination of identity. By employing a variety of incognitos and pseudonyms to articulate conflicting points of view, they have attempted to produce a synthetic reality occupied exclusively by these characters, placing them in extreme situations in which the dynamics of force and freedom enter into a critical relation.

http://www.mariannaanddaniel.co.uk