Andrew Kotting - In the Wake of a Dead Dad

'An ongoing multi-media project from the brilliant Andrew Kötting (This Filthy Earth; Gallivant), this tribute to a departed father sees the artist transport an effigy of his 'deadad' to locations of emotional importance to them both. What emerges is a psychogeographic portrait of one man, the generation he represents, and the emotional legacy he has bequeathed. Along the way, Kötting discovers some new truths about his deadad - and his deadad's deadad... Shockingly irreverent in places, but breathtaking in its emotional insight and sheer creative bravado, this is a unique meditation on loss from one of the UK's most singular filmmakers.' (Edinburgh International Film Festival)

'Four years ago in an act of Dada I decided to make a large inflatable sculpture of my Deadad and take him on a journey to places of significance to either his life or mine. Once there I would inflate him using a generator and small industrial fan. I took him to many places. Then through an amazing turn of events I discovered that my Deadadad’s Deadad (my Grandad), had fathered an illegitimate child when he was stationed up in the Faroe Islands during the Second World War. This illegitimate son had sent letters to all the Köttings in the phone book, (there are only 4), and was searching for his lost family. So I made another inflatable sculpture, which I took up to the Faroe Islands to meet him. My Deadad now had company and we all set off to meet the half brother he never knew he had. Meanwhile my Deadad’s Deadad was en route to meet his illegitimate son and both were about to bear witness to their own history. Strange and unpredictable narratives have taken ‘us’ to locations all over the world including the French Pyrenees, Hollywood, Venice, The Valley in South London (home to the football team they both supported), and ultimately to the Graveyards of Mexico where they met other dead as part of the Day of the Dead celebrations.' AK

2006, UK, 65 min, video, col, sd

DVD PAL Region-Free
Language and subtitles: English
Self-published
Individual Price: £25
Institutional Price: £40 + VAT
postage and packing: UK £2, Europe £3, World £5

Semiconductor - Worlds In Flux

"Essential viewing if you have any interest in the converging worlds of audio and visual digital art . " (Kultureflash)

Semiconductor are artists Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt who make stunning, cutting-edge digital artworks in the form of sound-films, music videos and live animation . Guided by obsessive interests in landscape, architecture, geography, chaos / systems theory and artificial life forms, they explore the potential of the computer to unite sound and image (sounds generating and controlling imagery; and vice versa) . What's revealed are physical worlds in flux - cities in motion; shifting landscapes and systems in chaos . Hugely original and immensely creative, Semiconductor approach each project from a fresh angle, always looking to extend themselves and to break new ground . They have exhibited their work in gallery installations, at festivals and in live / club environments; and have been awarded numerous fellowships, prizes and residencies, notably as artists in residence at the NASA Space Sciences Laboratory UCB . This DVD offers a comprehensive overview of their work over the past five years.

www.semiconductorfilms.com

DVD PAL/ NTSC Region-free
Published by Fat Cat Records
Individual Price: £13.99
postage and packing: UK £2, Europe £3, World £5

Semiconductor Films Hi Fi Rise - Sonic Cities From Another Timeline

Brighton's Semi-Conductor have been involved in music and film for some time, having contributed to Hot Air's excellent 'Medical Milestones' series. This incredibly ambitious project has brought together artists from the cutting edge of music, art and film to produce one of the very first DVD's of experimental electronic music and accompanying film. Contributions come from : Dat Politics, People Like Us, Process, Ian Helliwell, Yvette Klein, Linear and loads more. We've given the DVD a thorough rummage and it's truly excellent, the visuals a hybrid of abstract, lo-fi, hi-tech and absurd, the content always kept to highly original. The music is specifically modified for film and the experience of sitting through the enormous volume of material is oddly cathartic. Thoroughly recommended.

DVD PAL
Published by Semiconductor Films
Individual Price: £12
postage and packing: UK £2, Europe £3, World £5

Sarah Pucill, Selected Works (4 DVD set)

Sarah Pucill’s films and photographs explore the mirroring and merging we seek in the Other; a sense of self which is transformative and fluid. Her work is concerned with the idea that as subjects we are not separate.

Pucill’s individual cinematic language emerged in the 1990s in the context of visual arts and experimental film. Focusing on the materiality of film and the body, she creates a vivid and unsettling psychic world that sets up the imaginary as a potential site of resistance. for more information on Sarah Pucill see her Luxonline section (link)

DVD 1: Early Shorts. You Be Mother (1990), Milk and Glass (1993), Backcomb (1995), Mirrored Measure (1996)
DVD 2: Swollen Stigma (1998), Cast (2000)
DVD 3: Stages of Morning (2004)
DVD 4: Taking My Skin (2006)

DVD PAL Region free
Publisher: Sarah Pucill
Individual/ institutional price: £20 per DVD, £80 for the set
Plus postage and packing per single DVD: UK £2, Europe £3, World £5, for set: UK £5, Europe £7, World £10

Ruth Novaczek Selected Film and Video 1990-2005 (2 disc set)

'the films conjure a poetic sense of residues...echoed and recontextualised through juxtaposition with a fractured soundtrack and self-ironic, gravelly voiceover...throwing us back to our darkest nightmares and most glamorous dreams, recontextualising this imagery for a twenty first century, transnational audience'
Rosie Thomas 'Growing Up In Americana' Next Level (Ed.02 Vol.4)

These films are 'remixes' of selected work on film and video made over 15 years. Experimental in structure and subject matter, the early work deals primarily with notions of identity, often with an ironic or comic angle. The later, short films and videos are experiments with abstraction and poetic subjects, employing catchphrase and metaphor, music and rhythm.

This body of work uses a stock of images, used and reused, much of it degenerated, with editing and context revisited and revised. The original footage in these films is drawn from super 8, 16mm, Hi8 and miniDV sources; which trace not only technical but textural developments over the past 15 years

Disc One Earlier Works 1990-1996: Rootless Cosmopolitans, Cheap Philosophy, Cactus Babylon, Talk Israel

Disc Two Short Films 1996-2005: 50 50, Drive She Said, Easy Listening, Trilogy, Series One and Two, Episode, Sense

DVD PAL Region free
Publisher: Ruth Novaczek
Individual Price: £25
Institutional Price: £40 + VAT
Plus postage and packing: UK £2, Europe £3, World £5

Paul Bush - Working Directly/ Pixilated

Two new DVDs of work by acclaimed British animator Paul Bush. They include many extras not seen before and a new essay by Gareth Evans.

Paul Bush – Working Directly
Animations made by scratching directly into the surface of film.
His Comedy 1994 8 mins
Still Life with Small Cup 1995 4 mins
The Albatross 1998 15 mins
Secret Love 2002 3 mins
Extras include a commercial, a pilot for an imax film about London, an interview clip about the making of His Comedy and the complete storyboard of The Albatross.
Total length 38 mins

Paul Bush – Pixilated
Pixilated, an archaic word meaning enchanted, bewitched, magical, insane, and the stop frame animation of objects and people.
Furniture Poetry 1999 5 mins
Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde 2001 5 mins
Pas de Deux de Deux 2001 5 mins
While Darwin Sleeps 2004 5 mins
Extras include five pixilated commercials, a short documentary about the making of Pas de Deux de Deux, an interview clip for Canal plus, Haunted House installation at the South London Gallery and early films including the forerunner of Furniture Poetry.

DVD PAL Region Free
Publisher: Paul Bush Films
Individual Price: 19.99 each or both DVDs for £35
Institutional Price: £70 each or both for £135 + VAT
plus post and packaging: 1 DVD UK £2, Europe £3, World £5, 2 DVD UK £3, Europe £4, World £6

Christopher Maclaine, Beat Films

This VHS PAL video contains the four films of 1950s West-coast beat filmmaker Christopher Maclaine and contains a text by Stan Brakhage recounting his friendship with Maclaine.

"Dating from 1953, this may in fact be the first genuine 'beat' film, profoundly inventive and advanced for its time. Macaine's outlook is bleak and his techniques are crude, creating a film which is deliciously inept, but glorious. One of cinema's starkest evocations of the Cold War period and its effect on creative thought, situated in the beat milieu of 1950s San Francisco but speaking in direct terms to generations of lost souls."
Mark Webber

"With Maclaine, we are going back to the source of the Beats; he was the filmmaker who chronicled the movement as it happened and created a center of one of the aspects of the Beat myth eight years before the grand epic of 'Beat' became nationally known with Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac. [...] I have seen The End more than fifty times, and there are moments when I still begin to tremble at the psychological blockages and outright terror of it. Unquestionably, it is Maclaine's masterpiece."
Stan Brakhage

"One can feel behind the film's images and its sounds the movements of a complex and beautiful spirit, the movements which lead you to your own unexpected, exalted, chance discoveries. The beauty of The End is stronger than the crooked silliness of governments, the blabberings of sociologists and politicians."
Jonas Mekas

Tape contains: THE END 16mm 1953 35' , THE MAN WHO INVENTED GOLD 16mm 1957 14' , BEAT 16mm 1958 6', SCOTCH HOP 16mm 1959 6'

VHS PAL
Publisher: Re-Voir Paris
Individual Price: £19
Institutional Price: £28 + VAT
Plus postage and packing: UK £2, Europe £3, World £5

David Lamelas: Films 1969-1972/2004

This DVD features for the first time 9 films produced between 1969 and 1972 by Davis Lamelas, (1946, Buenos Aires), a pioneer of 70’s conceptual cinema.

This major artist introduced the notion of real time information through his piece at the 1968 Venice Biennial entitled Office of Information About the Vietnam War; whilst the film A Study of Relationship Between Inner and Outer Space produced at Camden Arts Center London in 1969 explored the organisation of cinematic production within the exhibition space.

This DVD offers also a booklet in French, Spanish and English with notes on every film and an interview with David Lamelas.

The disc includes: A Study of the Relationships Between Inner and Outer Space (1969, 16 mm, 19’35’’), Time as Activity: Dusseldorf (1969, 16 mm, 12’55’’), Reading of an Extract from «Labyrinths» by J.L.Borges (1970, 16 mm, 3’52’’), Reading film from « Knots » by R.D.Laing (1970, 16 mm, 12’09’’), «Interview» with Marguerite Duras (1970 16 mm, 5’13’’; installation), Gente di Milano (1970, super 8, 2’25’’; installation), Cumulative Script (1971, 16 mm, 10’22’’; installation), To pour milk into a glass (1972, 16 mm, 7’35’’) and Film 18 Paris (1970/2004, video, 9’26’’)

DVD Multi-region PAL
Publisher: bdv (Paris)
Individual Price: £25
Plus postage and packing: UK £2, Europe £3, World £5

A document of the Yoko Ono retrospective art show with John Lennon as guest artist, "This is not here" held at Everson Museum, New York, 1971. The film begins with Yoko's speech at the press conference that continues throughout the film as she talks about "radical art", a non-violent one, and advocates "total communication". Many important art objects and installations of Yoko's are seen as the camera goes along with Yoko and John through the installations.

Allen Ginsberg and George Maciunas were among two of many guest artists who participated in the exhibition. At the end a "piano piece" by Yoko in which people including John and Yoko are just hitting continuously the surface of a closed piano is over- whelming. TI 
DVD multi-region NTSC
Individual price: £50, institutional price: £100 + VAT
Plus postage and packing: UK £2, Europe £3, World £5

Combining the comical and the absurd, I created six funny faces to animate the images of Japanese vowels: A I U E O NN in "Image", "Letter", and "Voice". A I U E O NN Six Features is a video piece in which I have simultaneously examined the relationship of words in the Japanese and Roman alphabets with sound and image. The words are very basic letters of vowels which do not have any particular meaning. They are visual representations, yet the form of Japanese hiragana and the Roman alphabet is quite different. The sound comes from an undistorted voice which is initially synchronized with the image, but is later de-synchronized. The images are distorted from the real' image with a computer (System G developed by Sony). The DVD version is a longer piece adding 4 different versions not in the original video. TI

DVD multi-region NTSC
Individual price: £20, institutional price: £80 + VAT
Plus postage and packing: UK £2, Europe £3, World £5

WVLNT (Wavelength For Those Who Don't Have The Time)
A new DVD by Michael Snow

Wavelength has been acclaimed as a classic of Avant-Garde filmmaking since its appearance in 1967.

In February 2003 Snow created a new work consisting of simultaneities rather than the sequential progressions of the original work. WVLNT is composed of 3 unaltered superimpositions of sound and picture.

Originally 45 minutes Now 15!!

DVD Multi-region NTSC
Publisher: Art Metropole
Individual Price: £30 + VAT
Plus postage and packing: UK £2, Europe £3, World £5

Takahiko Iimura: MA, A Japanese Concept

Four films by Takahiko Iimura: MA: Space/Time in the Garden of Ryoan-Ji (1989), The Making of <MA> in Ryoan-ji (1989), MA: The Stones Have Moved (2003-4) and MA (intervals) (1975~77).

A Japanese concept of MA was not so familiar to me. The meaning of MA was not clear, yet we could use it in many situations. It was, indeed, a very mysterious word. Frankly to say, it was too Japanese to handle it. However, in 1970s, I found an interest in the concept of MA, when I thought a lot on time in film. Because the time in film was considered as a duration of time rather than a clock time of N+1. It is a kind of duration that Henri Bergson called "duree". This concept was a starting point in the film-making. (T.I.)

DVD multi-region NTSC
Individual price: £150 + VAT
Plus postage and packing: UK £2, Europe £3, World £5

Takahiko Iimura: Observer/Observed

Observer/Observed and Other Works of Video Semiology

1975-2003, 21min., black and white. with Takahiko Iimura, and Kazuyo Yasuda

A video trilogy of "Camera, Monitor, Frame", "Observer/Observed",and "Observer/Observed/Observer" is to create a semiology of video as a video work rather than a written text.

The main aim is a study of the structural relationships of video and language using English. Based on the feedback system of video, I assigned the system into the relation of the observer and the observed using the words as "I" and "You". What I am concerned is the structure of "seeing" involved for both the observer and the observed as in a sentence of "I see you", which is posited by the closed-circuit system of video. The video is the remake of 1975-76 version in shorter length without changing the concept.

DVD multi-region NTSC
Individual price: £120 + VAT
Plus postage and packing: UK £2, Europe £3, World £5

60s Experiments, Takahiko Iimura
DVD including Kuzu (Junk)(1962), Ai (Love)(1962), On Eye Rape (1962) and A Dance Party in the Kingdom of Liliput (1964).

DVD multi-region NTSC
Individual price: £100 + VAT
Plus postage and packing: UK £2, Europe £3, World £5

Seeing/ Hearing / Speaking - Takahiko Iimura (2002)
A multimedia/interactive DVD: 'Seeing / Hearing / Speaking' has two parts, a new video, 'Seeing/ Hearing / Speaking', and three 'Other Related Videos' produced during 1978-2001.

Based on a sentence taken from the seminal book of Jacques Derrida, French philosopher, 'Speech and phenomena' translated by David B. Allison, I produced first video 'Talking to Myself' in 1978(revised in 2001). The video was highly appreciated as 'the strongest, most effective statement one could make from the work of Derrida' by Professor Allison. The sentence I quoted, that Derrida calls 'phenomenological essence', is that I hear myself at the same time that I speak.

The new DVD, not just a transfer of video, extends further with text, and graphics, which work interactively. In 'Hearing / Speaking', for instance, you can choose among the monitors with the picture of face, head, ear and mouth in the video-installation, and can read/see different programs.

'"Seeing / Hearing / Speaking" DVD, which I have enjoyed very much indeed. It is, I think, a true masterpiece...because through your DVD one becomes able to grasp not only the theoretical or intellectual aspect of your relationship with Derrida's thought, but the ' vertigo' (as Allison says) of the 'deconstruction' (to use Derrida's jargon) of your own identity, i.e. a feeling, not an abstraction: a pre- or proto-theoretical full way of understanding and of living, i.e. an intuition of the 'difference' or 'differance' in Derrida's sense.' Daniel Charles, author of 'John Cage'

DVD multi-region NTSC
Individual price: £80 + VAT
Plus postage and packing: UK £2, Europe £3, World £5

Fluxus Replayed, Takahiko Iimura

1991, B/W, sound, 30min DVD NTSC Region free

Individual Price: £30
Institutional Price: £70 + VAT

Destroying a violin by Nam June Paik, and rolling up with bandage all over the body of the players in a concert by Yoko Ono, with such radical actions Fluxus (an art group organized by George Maciunas) shocked not only art world, but also a society at large. A historical document of international avant-garde group, Fluxus performances in New York, 1991, which reproduced the performances in early 1960s, an origin of art-performance, with the works of the main artists: Nam June Paik, Yoko Ono, Dick Higgins, George Brecht, Allison Knowles, Ben Patterson, Jackson Mac Low and Emmett Williams. --T. I.

"Taka Iimura is a senior figure among contemporary Japanese artists and has been working with film, sound and video since the 1960s. He was one of several Japanese who, coming from a 20th Century tradition of avant-garde intervention, contributed to the Fluxus group in the 60s." Mike Leggett (Leonardo Digital Review)

John Cage Performs James Joyce, Takahiko Iimura

1985, sound by and with John Cage, B/W, 15min, DVD NTSC Region free

Individual Price: £20
Institutional Price: £40 + VAT

Document of a voice performance by John Cage who 'reads', 'vocalizes' and 'whispers' in three different manners his artificial language taken from 'Finnegens Wake' by James Joyce. Cage freely composed the letters according to a chance operation using the I-Ching. --T. I.

"Roaratorio is one of the classics of Cage's oeuvre and in Iimura's 15-minute recording,  John Cage Performs James Joyce, Cage presents the core of the spoken part of the work. Its composition, like many of his other works, is aided by the I-Ching." Mike Leggett (Leonardo Digital Review)

Filmmakers, Takahiko Iimura

1969, color, sound, 30 min, DVD NTSC Region free

Individual Price: £25
Institutional Price: £50 + VAT

This is a film portrait of filmmakers whom I was most interested in at the time; Stan Brakhage, Stan Vanderbeek, Jack Smith, Jonas Mekas, Andy Warhol, and Takahiko Iimura, shot during my first visit in U. S. A., 1966-1968, and then completed in Japan, 1969 with "comments" literally pointing out in words what I see in the picture at the moment (like an English lesson). Each filmmaker's part is about 5 minutes (200 feet) (except Iimura, 50 feet) without editing but in camera, most is shot without looking through the viewfinder. A part of Jonas Mekas is shot by himself and Akiko Iimura. Intentionally the film "borrowed" the technique of the filmmaker in his part (ex. frame-by frame shot at the part of Jonas Mekas as he has often employed it in his film). Collection of Anthology Film Archives, New York. --T. I.