[terminal pharmacy]

i think we had a thread dedicated to ubuweb on the old board

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by Glice

I couldn't find a thread dedicated to this site, so it's probably a good idea to start one. I've only been seriously ploughing through it this last week or so, I'm amazed at how much there is on there. Unfortunately, my conversational French is rubbish, so the Lacan bit is lost on me, but there's plenty elsewise on there.

Vito Acconci, for instance.

there is too much at times, and your conversational french is irrelevant: everyone that ever mattered is there (in the past tense). today, i would not know who to turn to: an excess of sophists.

Originally Posted by terminal pharmacy

i think we had a thread dedicated to ubuweb on the old board

and did anything good ever come out of it?

i have the headphones on, while stereolab is playing in the outer world, i'd sniff out a link for other planets. especially if they are happier than this one (i doubt it, but here goes a challenge out suppose).

and no, i'd detest a world shaped by the futurists. who else there?

[atsonicpark]

Been finding all kinds of great films on here.

Ryan Trecartin's completely insane videos and http://www.ubu.com/film/bokanowski_angel.html are just amazing.

[atsonicpark]

http://www.ubu.com/film/
What are your ubuweb film archive reccomendations?

I went through a very brief period where I was trying to go through all of these, I went from a-c and stopped early in the c's and decided there was just too many amazing things to see. At this point, I'm looking for the absolute most insane stuff, just anything on there that has blown your mind. The weirder, the better, I'd really appreciate it. Right now, I kinda want to see weird video art stuff...

Here's some of my personal favorites, I've put a star next to the ones I HIGHLY reccomend, and a lot of the following people don't have their best work on ubu so I made a note of that too.

Mine:
-derek bailey (this is a long, and amazing, look into improvisation; Derek Bailey is one of my all time favorite guitarists)
-matthew barney (I kinda don't care for the Cremaster Cycle, but these documentaries are HILARIOUS, showing barney to be silly, ugly, ridiculous, stupid prick!)
-stan brakhage (none of the really good stuff is on ubu, but check out DOG STAR MAN if you haven't; in my top 10 favorite films ever)
-william s. burroughs (really interesting videos here)
-sophie calle (I'm not familiar with her really, but the film on ubu is really interesting, a road movie/documentary type thing.. sounds kinda boring but is really fun to watch)
-captain beefheart (This is a bit oddly-labeled on the site, as it's really Anton Corbjin's documentary about Don Van Vliet, but I had to list this, because Beefheart is my favorite musician of all time, and this documentary is insane. David Lynch is in it, btw... Lynch is a huge Beefheart fan, there is an MP3 of him reading some of Vliet's poetry floating around)
-*jack chambers ("Hart of London" is one of my all time favorite films, and it's on there in its entirety)
-salvador dali (a bit obvious but..)
-maya deren (another obvious one, I'm not sure what's on ubu as her page isn't loading at the moment, but if you haven't seen "Meshes of the Afternoon", what are you waiting for? It's an absolute masterpiece, even if most of her work doesn't do anything for me. Her ex-husband made a great documentary about the secret lives of cats)
-*toshio matsumoto (simply my favorite experimental filmmaker; his short "Phantom", in particular, is brilliant beyond words. I put homages to him in all my work. Check out "Funeral Procession of Roses", which I don't think is on the site -- it was the inspiration for Kubrick's editing in "A Clockwork Orange")
-ikue mori (love her)
-*jon moritsugu (he doesn't have much to look at on ubu, but I highly reccomend checking out his stuff that isn't on there... specifically if you're a Gregg Araki fan; Jon made Araki-like films, except they're way more surreal and trashier.. highly reccomend "Mod Fuck Explosion", "Scumrock", "Terminal USA", and "Fame Whore" if you get a chance to see them)
-phil niblock (all-time favorite drone artist, by far; too bad the clips on here are in real media format -- what the fuck?)
-oliver payne/nick ralph ("Comma, Pregnant Pause" is absolutely insane and ridiculous and.. uh.. fun, check it out)
-*shuji terayama (another one of my all-time favorite directors, period; hours and hours of amazing visuals. Again, his best stuff isn't on ubu, but the 7-volume "experimental image world" is definitely worth a few looks)
-*ryan trecartin (at the moment, this is the most insane director I've seen. I don't even know what to say about this guy. Check out "A Family Finds Entertainment". Within 5 minutes, you'll probably be blown away and simultaneously wanting to kill somebody. Easily some of the most off-the-wall, pretentious, self-indulgent, ridiculous art ever created. Is it >good<? I don't think so. In fact, a part of me hates it... Yet I highly reccomend it, and I keep coming back to it, because there's just something about it that makes it compelling. I dare you to try to make it through the 2-hour long "I-Be Area", which probably has more dialogue than any movie I've ever seen, with every single silence deleted, about a billion cuts a minute, and random video defects every few seconds. This stuff REALLY hurts my brain)
-william wegman (Okay, this guy has a lot of boring shit that involves him dressing up his dogs and making them act out stupid stories. Pass. But if you get a chance, check out the 2-disc set "Video Works", which is like 4 hours of a guy sitting around by himself, for the most part, doing random crap. Sounds boring, but look into it)
-*frans zwartjes (this is my latest find, really amazing stuff. Really reminds me of some of Andrzej Zulawski's stuff. "Living" is one of my favorite films ever now)
-zubi zuva (RUINS side project, all acapella group, great shit)

[atsonicpark]

whoa, that kuchar stuff is amazing, watching now...

[Glice]

Originally Posted by atsonicpark

http://www.ubu.com/film/
What are your ubuw
-*ryan trecartin (at the moment, this is the most insane director I've seen. I don't even know what to say about this guy. Check out "A Family Finds Entertainment". Within 5 minutes, you'll probably be blown away and simultaneously wanting to kill somebody. Easily some of the most off-the-wall, pretentious, self-indulgent, ridiculous art ever created. Is it >good<? I don't think so. In fact, a part of me hates it... Yet I highly reccomend it, and I keep coming back to it, because there's just something about it that makes it compelling. I dare you to try to make it through the 2-hour long "I-Be Area", which probably has more dialogue than any movie I've ever seen, with every single silence deleted, about a billion cuts a minute, and random video defects every few seconds. This stuff REALLY hurts my brain)

I made it about 10 minutes into it. I don't think it's pretentious, just not very good. It made me think of someone who'd watched some Troma and Divine David but missed the humour in both

[atsonicpark]

No, it's definitely pretentious, I've read some interviews with him and he thinks his films represent the decline of the economy and the stock market and all this nonsense.

[Glice]

I suppose I'd generally refuse to say anything's pretentious; I can't really justify masses of the art I like if I call anything pretentious. He might be delerious and mis-led, or he might be taking the piss (which is more callous than pretentious). He's probably a total cock. I just don't think that 'pretentious' is an adjective that really sheds any light on anything, and it's the easiest thing to say about something that isn't immediately appealing (or unappealing).

I mean, it looks to be fairly meticulously scripted, and the shots are carefully chosen, as it all seems to be in the same house. 'Carefully chosen' and 'well-chosen' are two different things. There's some sort of filmic self-awareness and a very static sense of satire going on. I didn't watch much, but the lack of an ostensible narrative always strikes me as indicative of a fervent imagination - these aren't simply 'random' shots. It's definitely a low-budget film, but even so, co-ordinating a film like this takes a lot of effort and planning.

This sounds like I'm defending a shit film - I'm not - but the fact that UBU have deigned to put his works on their site suggests that either there's a cabal of people who've co-erced UBU into endorsing it or that there are people out there, for whatever reason, who have decided there's some merit to his work. I know fuck all about film, but I do genuinely feel that pretentious is the worst, laziest criticism of anything.

I'm sure people must've criticised your work as pretentious, and I doubt you care. This isn't me slagging you off, but I just want to say that I think you're much more inclined to say things are pretentious when they operate close to your field(s) of operation than things that are legions away.

[atsonicpark]

Interesting post.

He is involved heavily in the "art world", doing "installation pieces", and all that shit; all of his actors are other artists, and from what I've read he is just making up stuff as he goes along. Some of the dialogue is absolutely amazing, though, that's what really holds his work together. I dunno. It's interesting stuff, and it certainly seems like it took a long time to make.

I've been called pretentious a lot, I just find it funny.

[pbradley]

Originally Posted by Glice

I just don't think that 'pretentious' is an adjective that really sheds any light on anything, and it's the easiest thing to say about something that isn't immediately appealing (or unappealing).

Ha!

[pbradley]

At a certain point, anything that attempts to risk itself, regardless of the conclusive quality, is susceptible to being called pretentious by one person or another.

[Glice]

I don't even think it's necessarily just risk - pretentious things are usually things that are familiar yet repulsive (SYG calling people hipsters) or things from which a person feels entirely alienated (my family and David Lynch films). I don't believe that there is any risk in making art-house films any more, and I certainly don't think there's any risk in listening to Animal Collective (or whoever).

[atsonicpark]

You just helped me come up with a line for my next scene I'm filming.

"I'm feeling... risky."

[pbradley]

Then I suppose ASP's stuff would fall under the alienating category, which is what I was particularly thinking about. Perhaps in being alienable, certain familiar elements are risked (i.e. experimented, omitted, etc.) in composition rather than critical impact.

[atsonicpark]

Funnily enough, I showed my film at a film festival Sunday and this smarmy arty dude (who was the official "reviewer" for the festival) told me that I was absolutely brilliant, best film he'd seen all weekend (of about 30 films), compared me to a bunch of French directors I'd never heard of (he wrote down all their names for me though), and said I needed to keep doing what I was doing, and he was going to write about me on the internet and in the newspaper.

I just said "well, I don't really know what I was doing, I was just bored." And he gave me a weird look, like I was pulling his chain and then he stopped talking to me.

[atsonicpark]

Also, at same festival, this COMPLETELY MINDBOGGLINGLY hot chick and I were carrying on this really great conversation about underground cinema and at one point she said she didn't like Nintendo and the conversation got awkward and died down.

It was a really awkward day.

[atsonicpark]

Originally Posted by Glice

I made it about 10 minutes into it. I don't think it's pretentious, just not very good. It made me think of someone who'd watched some Troma and Divine David but missed the humour in both

Glice, you'll be happy to know that Ryan recently won a $150,000 prize for his films. Haha.


http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/33...-wolgin-prize/

[Glice]

Funnily enough, I've spent the whole evening arguing about funding for the arts. Fair play to him, and fair play to anyone, anywhere, making money out of the arts. Especially those who do so in spite of the general disapproval of both the public and the so-called cognoscenti.

Just need to sort out the same for myself...

[Toilet & Bowels]

why what are you going to do?

[Glice]

I'm going to kick your fucking head in with a golden boot paid for by an Arts Council trust. I'm also going to film it and put it on youtube in the name of community cohesion.