Serial Studies
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Careless Reef part 1: Preface
Directed by Gerard Holthuis.
The Netherlands, 2005, 35mm, black & white, 4 min.
Holthuis’s Careless Reef is a four part work about the world under the surface. Preface is an introduction, a film about seeing that asks what we see in a face, and how we decode what we see.
Begin in 1994, Bouquets is a series of what Lowder calls “ecological” films. Editing in-camera and filming frame by frame, Lowder picks and gathers graphic elements, weaving images of flowers, gardens, and people into a rich and exquisitely intricate bouquet.
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Museum Piece
Directed by John Smith.
Germany, 2004, digital video, color, 12 min.
In Hotel Diaries, Smith investigates European hotel rooms he is visiting in a series of late night recordings. With his unique combination of understated humor and sharp observation, Smith elegantly relates personal experiences to contemporary world events. While the Iraq war continues, a day’s sightseeing and features of a German hotel provoke Museum Piece’s stream of thoughts about events large and small.
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Sans Titre Beijing
Directed by Yann Beauvais.
France, 2006, digital video, color, 5 min.
In this ongoing untitled series, Beauvais visits Beijing in early December and discovers an army has taken over Tiananmen square, beating, scratching, and breaking up the snow and ice that remain after a snow storm. The task is difficult, the cacophony great. The work is not overwhelmingly effective but by sheer numbers and perseverance the ice is removed. We are drawn not so much to the efficiency of the gestures but the domestication of the bodies which oppress, evoking other more chilling memories.
Hovering in a helicopter above contemporary Shanghai, Barbieri marvels at the soaring skyscrapers of an emerging megacity, giving vision to the “story of the most rapid, sweeping, and drastic changes to the urban fabric and architecture of a single country seen in the history of humanity.”
Abu Kifan is the name of a reef near Safaga in Egypt. Part 2 of Careless Reef slows down time to offer us a closer look at a mysterious sub-aquatic oceanscape.
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Sans Titre Sao Paulo
Directed by Yann Beauvais.
France, 2006, digital video, color, 6 min.
Avenida Paulista in Sao Paulo. Men working on a blind wall of a building, between sky and ground.
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B&B
Directed by John Smith.
UK, 2005, digital video, color, 6 min.
The perception of an Anglo-American hotel room is coloured by new revelations about the “War on Terror” and the “special relationship” that exists between Britian and the USA.
In this installment of Italian photographer Olivo Barbieri’s aerial studies of major cities, a tilt-shift lens engenders selective and surreally sharp focus. The already uncanny world of Las Vegas is transformed into a spectacularly miniature toyscape, creating what Barbieri describes as “the city as an avatar of itself.”
In this visual exploration of the underwater world of the Red Sea, Holthuis bombards our senses. Egyptian performer Abdel Basset Hamouda’s rapturous music and Holthuis’s exuberant cutting charge the vibrant imagery—a mesmerizing and exhilarating experience.