Unravelings

Initiation Rites

Trying to describe the videos of artist Ryan Trecartin isn't easy, but it's always interesting to watch someone give it a go. Summing up the underlying themes of identity formulation, socialization, and the contemporary mediascape is easy enough; but how to coney a sense of the work's imagery, energy, and frenetically interwound structures? Perhaps one of the best encapsulations I've encountered recently was by a writer who described them as, "If Facebook had a nightmare." Not bad, but that's not nearly the half of it. It's like if Jack Smith and Alex Bag somehow had a child who went off his Ritalin and -- for therapeutic purposes -- starting making videos of his own. But that desn't quite cover it, either.

Anyway. Tracartin's latest, CENTER JENNY, was one of four films that Trecartin recently debuted at at the Venice Biennale. This time, Trecartin opts for pointedly collegiate setting, with the results coming across in part like a "Mondo"-styled ethnographic study of sorority rush week. CENTER JENNY was recently hosted for a week's duration over at the Vdrome website. For those that missed it, it's presently up at Vimeo.

Sounding Out the Territories (The Idea of West)

Bill Viola, "Anthem," 1983.


{ Fair warning: If you have cats, the audio for the above might get 'em spooked. }

On malleability

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"Versions 2010" and "The Missile Variation," by Oliver Laric. (Not-entirely-safe-for-work 2009 preface "Versions" can be viewed here.)

More about/by here and here.

Another Music in a Different Kitchen

Steve Reich, "Clapping Music," 1972.
Video editing by Peter van der Ham, 2005.


"Beginning," by Peter Donabauer, 1974.


"Shutter Interface," by Paul Sharits, 1975.
(2009 installation view at Greene Naftali Gallery, New York)


Bee Mask, live @ Pageant Soloveev, Philadelphia, 2009.


Odd thing, that I often find my reading and listening habits are subject to seasonal shifts, prone to distinct zags as the weather transitions into autumn, winter, spring, summer. I'd be surprised if I'm alone, in this respect. Often these detours come with an awareness that I'm suffering from some sort of imbalance -- some literary or audio dietary deficiency (so to speak) from having neglected certain stimuli, of having let this or that sort of thing lapse or sit too long on the shelf untouched.

Which brings us to the clips above, a few scattered items I encountered as I've been retracing some footsteps. Each of the clips having a certain "classical" status or character. Bee Mask, I'll confess, are new to me. The performance clip here interest me because of its surprising and severe neo-anachronistic quality, the way it connects with a certain long-established that I'm surprised to see anyone's taken much of an interest in. That tradition being a particular strain of early electronic variety -- minimal, droningly tantric, of the "academic" mid-1960s pedigree (à la the Pauline Oliveros, Joji Yuasa, Otto Luening electro-acoustic altschul lineage). Just the type of thing I'd use as a "base element" for a long, multilayered mix back when I was co-hosting a "noise"/experimental music radio show in Chicago some years back -- the primary thread to mix atop and around as I/we'd work our way toward having all 3 turntables and 3 CD players going at once, working the mixing board all the while.

More to follow.