Anthony Discenza
Saturday, February 10, 2007
I received a little brown package, all the way from California, with two of Anthony Discenza's works yesterday. Moving Image and Object 8242600.
Moving Image stills
Object 8242600 stills
A few words Anthony wrote about he's practice back in June 2003:
Between the relentless spread of consumerism and the rapid advancement of technology, we find ourselves exposed to ever-greater amounts of visual stimuli. From television, movies, and the internet, to an endless sea of magazines and other print media, a steady stream of highly mediated imagery assaults us. In the constant battle for viewer attention, more and more of our information, regardless of its content or context, arrives in the form of elaborately manipulated visual sequences formally and structurally indistinguishable from mass entertainment. The result is a profound level of alienation, a gradual poisoning of our own experience as the logic of the spectacle colonizes our own internal narratives.
As a visual artist complicit in the production and consumption of images, I find this situation both fascinating and deeply problematic. I'm particularly concerned with the violence which informs our media over-exposure. By this, I'm not necessarily referring to specific violent images or content, but rather to the dissociative effects produced by the speed, quantity, and extreme disparity of the imagery we consume. My work attempts to expose this violence while acknowledging its seductive, anaesthetizing force.
I work mainly with visual material appropriated from commercial film and television. Using re-recording, compression, and signal degradation to break down the original information, I look for ways to collapse media imagery into itself, to arrest it within a moment of simultaneous destruction and reification. Through this collapse, I'm trying to uncover layers of meaning not apparent in the original context. At the same time, I'm interested in revealing the world of images around us as a very "real" space--one which shapes our world view in all sorts of potent but invisible ways. Finally, my goal is to destabilize the act of viewing itself, in the hopes of revitalizing the ways we engage with this both ubiquitous and unseen world of images.
Anthony Discenza
June 2003
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at 4:15 PM
Guy Debord
Misc films of and/or with Guy Debord.
Self-proclaimed leader of the Situationist International, Guy Debord was certainly responsible for the longevity and high profile of Situationist ideas, although the equation of the SI with Guy Debord would be misleading. Brilliant but autocratic, Debord helped both unify situationist praxis and destroy its expansion into areas not explicitly in line with his own ideas. His text The Society of the Spectacle remains today one of the great theoretical works on modern-day capital, cultural imperialism, and the role of mediation in social relationships.
After the dissolution of the Situationist International, Debord was tangentially implicated in the assassination of his friend and publisher Gérard Lebovici. The accusations infuriated Debord, and he consequently prohibited the showing of his films in France during his lifetime. Debord continued writing, and in 1989 he published his Commentaries on the Society of the Spectacle, arguing that everything he wrote in 1967 was still true, with one major exeception: the society of the spectacle had reached a new form, that of the integrated spectacle. The prospect of overturning the society of the spectacle seemed more unlikely than ever. In December of 1994, at the age of 62, Debord killed himself. The French press, who had always repudiated the significance of the Situationist International, suddenly made him a celebrity.
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at 1:04 AM
The Tiger Lillies & Alexander Hacke - The Mountains of Madness [+Extras] (2006)
Saturday, February 3, 2007
Synopsis
H.P. Lovecraft, born on the 20th of August 1890 in Providence, Rhode Island, was hardly known as an author during his lifetime. After his death his reputation as master of the macabre was immortalized and his work is considered a classic of horror-literature. On the 18th of August 2005 the World premiere “Mountains of Madness” was dedicated to this master by the artists Alexander Hacke (known as bassist of Einstürzende Neubauten), Berlin Icon Danielle de Picciotto and the legendary English group The Tiger Lillies. This humorous and darkly melancholic production combines an unusual combination of varieté, opera and gypsy- music with sinister industrial sounds and clashes - the brilliant falsetto-voice of Martyn Jaques, the singing saw, the accordion as well as the upright bass are entwined by Alexander Hackes electronic soundscapes- a new experience for the Tiger Lillies, who have never been accompanied by electronic instruments before. The beautiful illustrations of Danielle de Picciotto influenced by Italian and Dutch renaissance “Natura Morta” still-lives and modern toy-catalogues make up most of the stage-set together with the light-design by Lutz John, usually known for his expressive work with the German pop group “Wir Sind Helden”.
Extras
* Interview with directors Alexander Hacke and Danielle De Picciotto
* Short documentary "Tiger Lillies visit H.P. Lovecraft's grave"
Notes
Should be standalone-compatible
Not my rip, thanks to the original uploader.
As this is mainly a concert, he didn't touch the audio, 448kbit/s 5.1Channel AC3 sound.
Screenshots
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at 11:04 AM