For the second consecutive year, Art Video will present works by some of today’s most exciting artists across two venues, inside the Miami Beach Convention Center and in the outdoor setting of SoundScape Park. Organized in association with David Gryn, Director of London’s Artprojx, Art Video Nights will showcase 60 film and video works on the 7,000 square-foot outdoor projection wall of the Frank Gehry-designed New World Center. Selections drawn from the participating galleries of Art Basel Miami Beach include works by a wide array of artists, both emerging and established, from Latin America, the United States, Asia and beyond.
Outdoors, Art Video Nights will present eight screening programs from Wednesday, December 5 through Saturday, December 8. Film and video works by artists including Julieta Aranda, Guy Ben-Ner, Daniel Arsham, Theaster Gates, Jesper Just, Mauricio Lupini, Rashaad Newsome, Ryan McGinley, Robin Rhode, Sam Samore, Adam Shecter and Hu Xiangqian will be included in thematic programs. Art Video Nights will also feature a special dusk-to-dawn screening of the 12-hour long film ‘Bliss’ by Ragnar Kjartansson, presented by Art Basel in collaboration with the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) North Miami and the New World Center.
Artists presenting work for 2012 include:
Mauricio Lupini | Repeat after reading (O BA), 2011, 1’29” | Ignacio Liprandi Arte Contemporáneo
Working with Brazilian Bossa Nova and Venezuelan Onda Nueva, the series of videos Repeat after reading explores the onomatopoeic words found in both musical “new waves.”
Evandro Machado | Desmaterial, 2011, 7′ | A Gentil Carioca
With objects, drawings and photos, this animated video in black and white conjures up a simple stroll through an imaginary world.
William Kentridge | Anti-Mercator, 2010/11, 9’45” | Goodman Gallery, Marian Goodman Gallery, Lia Rumma
Anti-Mercator explores the artist’s ability to suspend time and resist the spatial linearity presented by scientists such as the cartographer Gerardus Mercator (1512-1594).
Adam Shecter | Hydra, 2006, 2’50” | Eleven Rivington
This work shows partial views from the motion study of a re-imagined, animated hydra.
Ana Prvacki | The Greeting Committee, 2012, 3′ | Lombard Freid Gallery
Ana Prvacki addresses topics such as first impressions and body language. Her characters re-enact awkward situations, such as how to point out spinach in someone’s teeth during a business lunch.
Amar Kanwar | A Love Story, 2010, 5’37” | Marian Goodman Gallery
Amar Kanwar’s short film A Love Story follows the break-up of a romance and encapsulates it in music, words, pace and visual sequences.
Sam Samore | Compendium of Perplexities, 2011, 7′ | Team Gallery
Compendium of Perplexities is a film composed of many non-narrative threads. One character continuously jumps from a balcony, but is always restrained from falling. Another eternally digs a ditch. Two men pass an unconscious woman back and forth between them.
Robin Rhode | Open Court, 2012, 1′ | Lehmann Maupin
A racket-holding actor hits snowballs against a Richard Serra sculpture.
Marie Bovo | Subak, 2010, 4’50” | kamel mennour
A watermelon rolls down narrow streets of a neighborhood in Seoul.
Hans Schabus | Echo, 2009, 3’45” | Zero…
The protagonist of Echo is on the run. Through abandoned wetlands he stumbles into the brush wood, tumbling into the wet mud.
Tim Davis | Counting In, 3’30”, 2012 | Greenberg Van Doren Gallery
Tim Davis filmed bands in their practice spaces and extracted the sections where the songs are counted in. By linking them together, Davis created a piece about the anticipation we feel for a work of art.
Simon Dybbroe Møller | The Loud Speaker, 3’55”, 2012 | Galerie Kamm
“The Loud Speaker takes place in an endless white space. An isolated relationship, between object and human. Between man and woman. We see and we hear the stuff that these relations are made of. The material. The fabric. It is laid out in front of us. The loud speaker is a giant. It is loud. It is masculine. It understands its situation. It also knows that it is helpless. Here it is. Being screamed at by a beautiful woman. An object of desire. An object made man. A man made object.” (Simon Dybbroe Møller)
Ryan McGinley | Varúð, 2012, 8′ | Team Gallery
The Icelandic band Sigur Rós gave a dozen artists the same modest budget and asked them to create whatever came into their heads when they listened to songs from the band’s new album, valtari. Varúð is Ryan McGinley’s contribution to the project: a young woman wearing a shiny golden wig skips barefoot through downtown New York.
Adam Shecter | Mysteries of Love, 2002, 3’02” | Eleven Rivington, Antony and the Johnsons
Part One of animation artist Adam Shecter’s trilogy of flash music videos for Antony and the Johnsons, featuring imagery from children’s storybooks but with an adult pop-cultural twist.
Ragnar Kjartansson | Ég anda, 2012, 6’15” | i8 Gallery, Luhring Augustine
Ég anda (“I Breathe”) is a video clip by Ragnar Kjartansson for the Icelandic band Sigur Rós. It is a training film for saving someone from choking on food.
Adam Shecter | The Lake, 2003, 4’48” | Eleven Rivington, Antony and the Johnsons
The second part of Adam Shecter’s trilogy of animated videos for Antony and the Johnsons. Lyrics for The Lake were adapted from Edgar Allan Poe, while Shecter’s images conjure up an ironic cartoon fairy tale.
Nick Abrahams | ekki mukk, 2012, 10’30” | Courtesy of the artist
A modern fairy tale charting the brief friendship between a man and a snail, as they journey beyond a field and into the woods.
Ari Marcopoulos | Detroit, 2010, 7’32” | Kavi Gupta Gallery, Marlborough Fine Art
Two teenage boys, the children of friends of the artist, improvise an incongruously aggressive composition on a collection of guitar pedals.
Mauricio Lupini | Repeat after reading (BADA DIDI), 2006, 58” | Ignacio Liprandi Arte Contemporáneo
Working with Brazilian Bossa Nova and Venezuelan Onda Nueva, the series of videos Repeat after reading explores the onomatopoeic words found in both musical “new waves.”
Drew Heitzler and Sam Sharit | ZERO, 2012, 2’30” | Blum & Poe
Drew Heitzler presents an animated version of a dream he had. The animation recalls maritime and prison tattoos..
Josiah McElheny | Island Universe, 2005-08, 19′ | White Cube
The film explores the origins of the universe, the Big Bang theory, and J. & L. Lobmeyr’s space-age chandeliers for New York’s Metropolitan Opera House.
Daniel Steegmann Mangrane | 16mm, 2008/11, 4’52” | Mendes Wood
16mm was shot on a motorized camera advancing through the southwestern Brazilian rainforest. The result is a continuous single take, a long traveling shot at constant speed through the jungle for the duration of the film reel.
Pedro Reyes | Baby Marx TV Series (Episode 1: On Surplus Value), 2011, 7’04” | Labor
Standing in front of Andy Warhol’s painting Sixteen Jackies (1962), the founders of communism and capitalism, Karl Marx and Adam Smith, debate how much praise Andy Warhol deserves.
Ruben Ortiz Torres, Emmanuel Lubezki | Como TV, 1985, 3’31” | Galería OMR
The artists recorded images from news channels directly from the monitor. As the recording process is repeated multiple times, the color and quality of the images change.
David Zink Yi | Huyano y fuga detras, 2005, 3’43” | Johann König, Hauser & Wirth
The film was shot at the market of Huancy in the Peruvian hills. The camera rotates 360 degrees, following the movement of a musician and keeping in focus his hand gestures.
Chen Xiaoyun | Love You Big Boss, 2007, 4′ | ShanghART & H Space
Love You Big Boss features an orchestra made up of a disparate group of performers in an empty theater. Each musician attempts a recital of the American anthem.
Mauricio Lupini | Repeat after reading (DIBA DUDA), 2006, 55” | Ignacio Liprandi Arte Contemporáneo
Working with Brazilian Bossa Nova and Venezuelan Onda Nueva, the series of videos Repeat after reading explores the onomatopoeic words found in both musical “new waves.”
David Adamo | Anniversary Waltz, 2007, 3’54” | Ibid
The video is the result of a careful study of a video blog in which a middle-aged woman dances to Strauss’s Anniversary Waltz. Dressed in a white tuxedo, the artist plays the part of the woman’s fantasy dance partner.
Jesper Just | Sirens of Chrome, 2010, 12’38” | James Cohan Gallery, Galleri Nicolai Wallner, Galerie Perrotin
Shot in Detroit with a cast of African-American women, Sirens has a two-part structure. The first follows a car with four women as they drive across a depressed urban landscape. The second sees the women in a mysterious balletic showdown in a deserted parking lot.
Jack Early | What to do with a drunken sailor?, 2011, 5’44” | McCaffrey Fine Art
What to do with a drunken sailor? is a short film written and performed by artist Jack Early, featuring the song “It Don’t Rain in Beverly Hills.” Presented in the format of a 1980s video clip, the artist – as the sailor – disembarks from a ship and travels to Brooklyn.
Takeshi Murata and Billy Grant | Night Moves, 2012, 6’01” | Salon 94
In Murata’s new video, a collaboration with Billy Grant, computer generated scans are utilized to recreate an everyday environment in high tech 3D. The result can be seen as an homage to both Walt Disney’s The Sorcerer’s Apprentice and Bruce Nauman’s Mapping the Studio.
Terence Gower | New Utopias, 2010, 17′ | Labor
New Utopias depicts a lecture, filmed in the style of 1950s Walt Disney documentaries, in which different utopias are analyzed.
Sefer Memişoğlu | Breeze, 2011, 8’18” | NON
The film starts with an iconic scene from the film The Seven Year Itch in which Marilyn Monroe is standing on a subway grate. This is followed by historical images found on the internet.
Michael Sailstorfer | Raketenbaum, 2007, 1’30” | Johann König
In the middle of a field, fruit trees are catapulted into the air by compressed air cartridges attached to their roots.
Mauricio Lupini | Repeat after reading (SA BA DA BA), 2011, 1’29” | Ignacio Liprandi Arte Contemporáneo
Working with Brazilian Bossa Nova and Venezuelan Onda Nueva, the series of videos Repeat after reading explores the onomatopoeic words found in both musical “new waves.”
Guy Ben-Ner | Foreign Names, 2012, 4’48” | Konrad Fischer Galerie
Foreign Names employs a candid camera. The artist records waiters who are equipped with a microphone, calling the customers by their names to take their order. Editing all “foreign” names together, a poem is created.
Cao Fei | Shadow Life, 2011, 10′ | Lombard Freid Gallery
Using techniques of traditional Chinese shadow puppetry, Cao Fei references memories of a Chinese Spring Festival Gala celebration that ran on China’s Central Television during her childhood.
Mircea Cantor | Sic Transit Gloria Mundi, 2012, 3’43” | Yvon Lambert
The trajectory of a flame running along a wick, which a woman unwinds across the hands of beggars bowed down in a circle.
Andrea Bowers | Shadows (Aztec Dancers at Protest March, Los Angeles, 2011), 2012, 5’05” | Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects, Praz-Delavallade, Andrew Kreps Gallery
The video footage for Shadows focuses on a group of traditional Aztec Dancers. The camera highlights the shadows of the dancers rather than their bodies. This piece continues the artist’s interest in dance as a political gesture.
Rashaad Newsome | Shade Compositions (San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Preview), 2012, 25′ | Marlborough Gallery
Combining improvisatory orchestral music and live video-mixing, Newsome divides his twenty-one black female performers into groups akin to instrumental sections. The performers then enact his choreographed sound score comprised of repeated sequences of culturally specific or stereotypical gestures, movements, and vocalizations
Daniel Arsham | Tearing up the Museum, 2011, 2’16” | Galerie Perrotin
Using a scale replica of the New Museum in New York, Daniel Arsham appears to be tearing up the museum: the video is played in reverse in order to achieve this effect.
Mauricio Lupini | Repeat after reading (BIM BOM), 2006, 47” | Ignacio Liprandi Arte Contemporáneo
Working with Brazilian Bossa Nova and Venezuelan Onda Nueva, the series of videos Repeat after reading explores the onomatopoeic words found in both musical “new waves.”
Julieta Aranda | Springtime, 2010, 1’23” | Galería OMR
Julieta Aranda analyzes the way in which the accident as an unexpected event generates new forms of behavior.
Melanie Smith | Elevador, 2012, 7’49” | Galeria Nara Roesler
Elevador is a film shot in the building in Mexico City where the artist lives. Each time the door of the elevator opens, a tableau of escalating oddities appear.
Sam Samore | Glossary of Delusions, 2010, 6′ | Team Gallery
Meditating on passion, death and madness, Sam Samore presents a film of disconnected scenes where characters enact their own demises.
Dineo Seshee Bopape | The Problem Of Beauty, 2009, 7’19” | Stevenson
The 31-year-old South African artist Dineo Seshee Bopape describes her film as “an orchestral drama, a mess of sound and image.”
Julika Rudelius | Rituals, 2012, 14′ | Galerie Michael Janssen
Julika Rudelis filmed young, androgynous men posing amid traffic in the city of Guangzhou. The discrepancy between the poses and the surrounding scenery reveals the artificiality of the gesture itself.
Theaster Gates | Sun Salutation, 2011, 4’41” | Kavi Gupta Gallery
Sun Salutation was filmed during a performance at the Rubin Museum of Art in New York. It features singers and musicians from the Black Monks of Mississippi, who perform among the objects in the exhibition.
Yoshua Okon | Canned Laughter, 2009, 9’56” | Mor Charpentier
Depicting a fictional factory that produces canned laughter for sitcoms, the artist refers to the theory of laughter by French philosopher Henri Bergson, as well as to manufacturing sites in the Mexican city of Ciudad Juárez where the film was shot.
Jordan Wolfson | Untitled, 2007, 3′ | Johann König
Jordand Wolfson films a vintage Apple computer placed at the edge of a highway, and combines the footage with a text borrowed from the prologue of the documentary film Painters Painting. The New York Art Scene 1940-1970.
David Zink Yi | Pneuma, 2010, 1’23” | Hauser & Wirth, Johann König
Pneuma features Cuban trumpeter Yuliesky Gonzalez Guerra. In a single take, Guerra is seen walking from the blurry background directly toward the camera until his face fills the frame in perfect focus. The ancient Greek word “pneuma” means spirit, breath, and air.
Chen Xiaoyun | Bi, 2007, 5’30” | ShanghART & H Space
A row of trucks is circling a person stuck in mud/sludge: a metaphor for the feeling that there is no way of getting out or changing the world.
Sam Samore | Archipelago of Enigmas, 2012, 16′ | Team Gallery
A shaky handheld camera follows a young woman moving around Bangkok. As the film progresses, her character transforms. The protagonist’s travels via ferry or taxi are set against the turgid, muddy Chao Praya River and the city’s heavy monsoon days and nights.
Hu Xiangqian | The labor song I night, 2012, 7’12” | Long March Space
In The labor song I (looks like “ich”) night the artist performs an a cappella song with three hired actors, all wearing security guard uniforms.
Pierre Bismuth | Following the left hand of Jacques Lacan, 2012, 5′ | Team Gallery
Pierre Bismuth’s Following the left hand of Jacques Lacan traces the furious movements of the French psychiatrist and philosopher’s right hand as he delivers a lecture.
Eija-Liisa Ahtila | Fishermen (Etudes, no. 1), 2007, 5’40” | Marian Goodman Gallery
The first of a series of short studies or etudes, this film was shot in West Africa and observes the local fishermen, who attempt to overcome the strong and heavy waves to launch their boats out to sea.
Jumana Manna | Blessed Blessed Oblivion (censored), 2010, 23′ | CRG Gallery
Inspired by Kenneth Anger’s Scorpio Rising (1963), Blessed Blessed Oblivion (censored) weaves together a portrait of male thug culture in East Jerusalem, manifested in barbershops, auto shops, and body building.
Nate Boyce | Reliquary House (excerpts), 2011, 2’58” | Altman Siegel
Reliquary House (excerpts) is a video that was part of a multimedia performance. Boyce uses computer-generated imagery to transform sculptures from the Museum of Modern Art New York’s collection into kinetic apparitions.
Ragnar Kjartansson | Bliss, 2012, 12 hours | i8 Gallery, Luhring Augustine
Special screening in collaboration with Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) North Miami and New World Center. International premiere.
Bliss is a 12 hour video work by Ragnar Kjartansson, filmed at his performance at Performa 11 in New York in 2011. It features the final aria of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, with full cast in period costumes, scenery and orchestra.
Kudzanai Chiurai | Creation, 2012, 5’16” | Goodman Gallery
“The spaces within which conflicts have been taking place vary to the extent of our own understanding of what defines conflict. Our understanding of resolution is therefore also brought to the fore as we question the validity and nature of force used in our attempts at peace.” (Kudzanai Chiurai)
Shilpa Gupta | Untitled, 2012, 3’42” | Chemould Prescott Road
The video by Mumbai-based artist Shilpa Gupta features an endless stream of thread being released from the ground below.
Karl Haendel (in collaboration with Petter Ringbom) | Questions for My Father, 2011, 11’17” | Yvon Lambert, Harris Lieberman, Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects
The film builds upon a series of drawings Karl Haendel began in 2007. The subjects face the camera and ask things they always wanted to know about their fathers but never voiced.
Stanya Kahn with Llyn Foulkes | Happy Song for You, 2011, 5’07” | Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects
A collaboration between Stanya Khan and Llyn Foulkes, this work features Foulkes as he is covered in blood and dust, and also includes a headless figure wearing a wig and carrying a mummified dog.
Gonzalo Lebrija | The Distance Between You and Me II, 2008, 2′ | Travesía Cuatro
The artist stands in a deserted landscape with his back to the camera and appears to be running away, distancing himself from the viewer as quickly as possible in a reflex action that seems to result from an almost animal-like instinct.
Jessica Mein | Blackout, 2012, 2′ | Galeria Leme
The video animation Blackout is a short sequence of over 700 drawings, collages, frames and visual material of power lines in Dubai and its surroundings, produced and manipulated by the artist.
Muntean/Rosenblum | Performance at Galerie Georg Kargl, 2010, 5’44” | Team Gallery
A video of a performance in which a young man shouts through a megaphone while standing on top of a pile of broken crates and used art-packing materials.
Gigi Scaria | Panic City, 2007, 3′ | Chemould Prescott Road
In Panic City, a city rises and falls according to a programmed symphony. It seems as if the buildings gasp for breath as they move to the music.
Ruben Ortiz Torres | Retrospective in a New York Minute, 2011/12, 3’04” | Galería OMR
This video is the result of an attempt to present a retrospective of Rubén Ortiz Torres’s work to busy pedestrians in Manhattan.
Stephen Willats | Still Life with Vases and Diagrams, 2011, 3’53” | Victoria Miro
The objects featured in this film – vases, for example – are monumental as contemporary buildings and symbolically representative of people.
Nina Yuen | The School, 2012, 4’10” | Lombard Freid Gallery
Through a diaristic series of events and original voices, themes such as memory, childhood, rites of passage and loss are re-examined as the artist narrates the film using a varied collection of found texts and original material.
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