While AVA has been silent lately, some of us on the road, some writing for forthcoming projects (and yet others continuing to create video art at a pace I’m still trying to catch up with), it sucks that a reason for a new writing is yet another RIP…

This time it’s Amos Vogel, who sort of wrote the Bible document of underground film, entitled FILM AS A SUBVERSIVE ART. I once wrote a letter to Nick Zedd in the mid 90′s asking his recommendations for learning/seeing more underground things, the first recommendation he listed in his handwritten letter back to me was Vogel’s book.

For a while it seemed to be out of print, and even when the internet gave birth to Amazon and online booksellers I recall used copies going for a few hundred bucks. It since went down in price, but now I see it’s going for 50 or so used, perhaps due to the recent passing.

Jon Jost whose short film was featured in Vogel’s book, wrote a nice, and concise write up over on his blog, both on Amos Vogel and the state, or non state, of subversive art cinema

His death comes at a time when the commercialization of everything in the name of  “the Market Economy” has bludgeoned the kind of cinema he supported into a near-death coma.   I imagine he looked at the “independent” cinema which in its various guises and labels of the last few decades, as a sad denouement for the kinds of work he dreamed of, a sign that indeed the insidious forces at work in “the Market Economy” reduced most young filmmakers to imagining that a modest shift in television sit-com formulas constitutes “creativity.”

Jon’s blog post here - http://cinemaelectronica.wordpress.com/2012/04/29/rip-amos-vogel/

Mike Kelley was an artist – drawing, painting, performance, installation and video, whose work often had the Absurdist vein running through it. He became “known” in the “art world” in the 80′s/90′s, garnering much recognition, having his work shown in major galleries/museums.

Despite being accepted and hoisted high within the realms of said institutions, ultimately it may have been the societal Absurdism overall, especially in relation to the art world, that leaned him towards calling it quits. He died yesterday, apparently killing himself.

Mike Kelley was a friend of a friend. I saw him around 6 years ago and have around 2 hours or more of Kelley on videotape, as part of a live discussion/interview. I never forgot, and often times it re-occurs in my head, this one point in the interview, towards the end, where Kelley breaks down. The topic at the moment was abuse, and with much of Kelley’s artwork the breakdown was open to one’s own interpretation. Was it his own abuse? Abuse brought onto him – abuse in general? And then the sudden break down, a burst of letting go, almost uncontrollably; it shocked the hell out of me.

As is usually the case, depression has been hinted at the reason for calling it quits. Perhaps no longer feeling it worth the efforts to channel it through his art, he possibly decided then, that since there wasn’t anything left, it was time…

Since many of our resident crew here, this flock of Absurdist Video Artists, are, to be honest, fucked up in their own right, dealing with similar issues, it’s likely after hearing this news, many stopped there manic’ness for a moment to reflect on their own potential outcomes once the music doesn’t feel like being played anymore.  It’s taking me a few hours and counting to process this. We often think that art is the answer, the remedy to avoid going this route. An alternative or a needed supplementation for the meds. And now we see after all of Kelley’s work, the outcome was what it was. For added frustrations we are all left with Kelley’s final comments, apparently from only a week ago, the last sentence being the most pertinent.

But Fontana, who saw Kelley last week for dinner, said that Kelley’s art-world accomplishments had a price, as he had been actively struggling with what it means to succeed in a world that has become more materialistic and foreign to him.

“He had a deep discomfort in seeing what the art world is now,” Fontana said. “He didn’t like the fact that everything has become so corporate. He said to me: ‘If I were to start now, I would never become a visual artist.’

“If I were to start now, I would never become a visual artist”.  Great.

A CALL TO ARMS.

Really though, this last sentence was the reason that this site, and this movement, was brought together. And why it needed, and needs to continue, to solidify itself.

Minus the Trecartin exception, we realize the over glorified institutional art halls aint going to be allowing most of us in anytime soon. Yet we still exist, we still create, many of us constantly, and even if you do “get in” and receive the art world accolades, the suicidal tendencies still lurk right around the corner, maybe even more so being locked inside the machine. The reality of the overall fraud, both in the mainstream and in the art world, you really can’t escape, so why try.

More the reason to Fuck it All. To have fun; share, relish and support one and others work. Understand, and always remember, the core reality is truly, Absurdism.

Understanding this starves away not only the temptations to call it quits, but also the “where in the fuck am I going with this” reoccurring mindfuck that likes to enter the head after looking back on the hours of absurdness poured into video piece after video piece.  Where’s anyone going with anything. The game eventually ends, hero or loser, outsider or insider, dirt is dirt and that’s where we all end up. In the meantime it may as well be about creating, and for us through that channel of the human absurdist existence.

Kelley wouldn’t start as a visual artist today  because the hope that existed when he was coming up in the 70′s, the idea that maybe art would matter in the future, just doesn’t exist today. It’s way over the top absurd how far out of hand things have gotten. The gluttonous flooding of crap is piled so high that even in the high speed easy access digital landscape (or because of it) it’s still difficult for the art to seep through and when it does it’s usually through a fluke crack that miraculously penetrates the system.

What’s relevant now is creating small art-fuck eco villages (whether online or physical) to hang out at and participate in. Let everyone else eat themselves.

There’s nothing left to aspire to as far as Mike Kelley acceptance/recognition. His death is a reminder of this, as well as a call to action to start fresh, with new direction, and a different hope; focusing on creating and not allowing the fraudulent seemingly never ending materialism to do us all in.

http://www-tc.pbs.org/s3/pbs.videoportal-prod.cdn/media/swf/PBSPlayer.swf

http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/02/01/2620309_p3/mike-kelley-influential-la-artist.html#storylink=cpy#storylink=cpy

Watch Memory on PBS. See more from ART:21.

This is how the Absurdist B Sides end up being created. They are works that have spilled over the sides and onto new surfaces, where a new audience resides. An audience which wouldn’t have been reached otherwise.  This new “audience” is forced, and sometimes fooled, into experiencing Absurdism in a different way or a different medium, usually more “accessible”. This exposure would have never been accomplished if the work remained inside the familiar glass. And in some cases the real satire is revealed as such, not in the work itself but in the reaction and comments about the work.  (original post about “B-SIDES” here)

ELIENATION and ZED ARCHIE

A few years back Eli Elliott ventured into the satirical video response world of YouTube where his compulsion to respond creatively spilled him over onto a new surface: the audiences of two very popular YouTube personalities. He mocked a video vlogging war which was occurring during the time, involving a self inferring ZEN master of sorts who was hawking for money to write a book, and a rational thinking YouTube personality who called out the Zen masters fraudulent antics, eventually declaring “CHECKMATE” to his opponent as thousands of viewers eagerly watched the back and forth YouTubian drama unfold. Elliott then stepped in, satirically mocking  the situation, and the comments that resulted from his new audience ranged from “best YouTube spoof EVER” to further riled up reaction regarding the heated vlogger war taking place.

You of course needed an insider understanding in order to comprehend Eli’s mocking, which proved that a new surface had, in fact, been breached; for the first time it was an actual mainstream crowd which was forced to view Elliott’s work, but in a setting or theme which was familiar and easy for them to digest.

When emailed about this Eli responded that it sort of scared him, as suddenly people were messaging him saying how he should definitely do more of these: “basically they were urging me to become a popular “thing” on YouTube…where you create the funny-ha-ha effect type videos..thinking of that pressure to please masses in that way made me stop  after a few of these..”

Your videos are brilliant. What a pity that you’ve not made a video in over a year.

­

Truly one of the greatest videos to ever hit YT..lfmao…lol…lol….great

lol even zen liked it.. mad work man.. u seemed to express urself like nicholas cage a bit in that.. was cool.

 

Follow up spoof video: “ZED ARCHIE TRAILER”

When they’ve immersed themselves fully in their usual outlets for creation, a holding capacity seems to be breached, and when that compulsion hits, then an overflow occurs.   They often find themselves blindly branching out to places they normally would never have bothered with, out of sheer compulsion to do so, rather than some sort of engineered “creative exploration”.

….(In some cases) they choose to create in an entirely different medium altogether.

original post on B-Sides HERE

BOYD PAINTINGS

Due to a wrist injury forcing a break from animating, but more so I believe the aforementioned compulsory spill over effect, Andy Heck Boyd began painting, and in turn cranking out, work after work after work. He recently picked up his video cam and has begun showcasing his B Side outlet for Absurdism, which has reached a new surface of outsider art afficiondo’s, many who likely never saw the video art animated side of Boyd, but are now willing to not only view, but also shell out money for many of Andy’s canvases. Here’s a montage of recent artwork starting with “Inside Bugs Bunny’s Dumpster” and ending with “Pretty Girl Go Poo” (aka”Girl Shitting”).

the hyougono heckler with

the Peter the Painter wanted to hole him,

was consistently practising the first of the primary

and imprescriptible liberties of the pacific subject by circulating

BuzzCoastinWTF

still from “Epti Spirit Channeling 2″ by Dick White

Creative impulsion is a common thread that The Absurdists featured on AVA all have in common.  It’s what drives them to continually pump out massive amounts of work usually unseen in the practice of “regular” artists. But it is also what leads many to go overboard;  creating in ways which stray them from the Absurdist Video Art side of things, in which they’re good at, and more at home with.

When they’ve immersed themselves fully in their usual outlets for creation, a holding capacity seems to be breached, and when that compulsion hits, then an overflow occurs.   They often find themselves blindly branching out to places they normally would never have bothered with, out of sheer compulsion to do so, rather than some sort of engineered “creative exploration”.

Just as water is poured into a glass reaching the rim to full capacity, it’s at this point the pouring needs to cease. But if there is a compulsion, if one cant’ help oneself, then the pouring will continue, and water will spill over the sides, down the exterior and onto a new surface, unfamiliar to the bubbled interior world of the original glass container.

This is how the Absurdist B Sides end up being created. They are works that have spilled over the sides and onto new surfaces, where a new audience resides. An audience which wouldn’t have been reached otherwise.  This new “audience” is forced, and sometimes fooled, into experiencing Absurdism in a different way or a different medium, usually more “accessible”. This exposure would have never been accomplished if the work remained inside the familiar glass. And in some cases the real satire is revealed as such, not in the work itself but in the reaction and comments about the work.

The irony is that The Absurdists didn’t intend to “reach a new or different audience.” They basically were just restless.  In some cases, instead of setting up lights and gathering the usual co-conspirators to create, they simply pull the trigger on a cheap webcam, and warp into some other world.  In other cases they choose to create in an entirely different medium altogether. And in others the medium and the set ups are the same, but the theme and content are completely different, usually in response to something.

Here is the first round of B-sides from AV artists who’ve overflowed into different territories or immersed themselves onto different mediums.

DICK WHITE EPTI

With constant filming, writing, and editing, you’d think this American Films/Collapse co-founder would have his plate full. But somehow his compulsion for Absurd expression, spilled over and gave birth to Dick White, a mystical “medium” average joe who’s been chosen by “the other side” to communicate important cryptic messages like, everyone should start wearing yellow. 

This webcam based creation spurred thousand of views, all emanating from a new surface. And in turn it spawned dozens of comments, both siding with Dick, empathizing with his new found gift as a medium, and those who became furious with Dick, calling him out as a fraud with bad editing skills.

You are so gifted. I pray for the power to do this..

I do mediumship, this makes me want to vomit. I have had spirits come to me, and never was I not myself. never had I channeled to have to speak to them. this is ridicioulous.

Do you realise what a complete and utter fool you have made yourself look. You tried one of the most amateurish attempts at ‘attention seeking’ that i have ever seen. You dont even know how to operate editing software. BUSTED.

Watch as “Dick” responds to the negative comments received in the first video, while attempting to further convince the new audience of his channeling skills, as a strange image emerges after the 3 minute mark and he instructs followers to partake in a 3 day fast.

Bro, i dont know if you reviewed this video before uploading it and shit, but around 3:30 or so theres some sorta something hovering to your right side..its like your image and shit and its like your tryin to get the fuck away from the epti dude who’s taken over your body and all that..crazy shit man!

“Divorce,” the short video piece by director Kelly Broich (who may also be one of the strangest satirists working today), featuring Fran Valentine and Eli Elliott, is yet another astute critique of one of our social institutions. I don’t know, but after watching this video I fear that by the time the Collapse cult is through with us we’ll be stripped of all our illusions (and clothes) and forced into a nude identity-crisis.  This time the folks at Collapse have chosen to challenge one of our culture’s oldest and most sacred institutions, marriage.

Valentine repeats “Divorce, divorce, divorce” over and over again until the word seems to lose all meaning, though the emotional significance to the viewer is undoubtedly striking. The word divorce is practically a demonic word to many. Nobody likes saying it or hearing it, but hearing it reiterated in this way, combined with the short looped minimalist electronic soundtrack, achieves the effect of reminding us that it’s just a fucking word like any other.

Near the end the video flashes to an artfully done experimental fight montage consisting of quick choppy cuts showing Elliott and Valentine in a kitchen, and ends with the strong yet simple statement, “Get the fuck out of my house!” — definitively bitch-slapping  two-hundred thousand years of patriarchal oppression. On a subjective level,  roughly fifty percent of viewers will relate to being trapped like a caged lunatic in an asylum of marital dysfunction.  

Today over half of all marriages end in divorce.  The rest in death. Divorce is a pandemic sweeping our country like mouth herpes. The chart to the left cites the most common reasons for divorce.

However, not all hope is lost. There exists an effective tool for fixing nearly any relationship, no matter how far gone. I’m talking about the how-to book entitled The Magic of Making Up, which can be purchased for thirty-nine dollars at http://www.magicofmakingup.com.

Other books make ridiculous claims, but none of them really do the trick. The methods found in The Magic of Making Up are based on years of exhaustive, peer-reviewed, focus grouped research in the field of relationship repair. I bought this book last year and it was worth every cent. I have never felt more loved.  

Don’t let divorce rip apart your marriage and drive you to drink or into a second-marriage which will statistically probably end in divorce. Remember life is short—YOU ARE GOING TO DIE—just like most of today’s marriages. I highly recommend watching “Divorce” with your mate to remind them of what can happen.

Brian Burks is a relationship critic at Healing Hearts.

Book Link: The Magic of Making Up – Only $39

Collapse: http://www.facebook.com/fran.valentine?ref=ts#!/collapsetheater

What scares the shit out of me is that I know a Jerry Jeffers who fits our protagonist’s profile. He’s on SSI, takes psychotropic meds and always has a “business” dealio to offer. Gadzooks you fucks, get out of my head! – clvngodess

COLLAPSE Theater (American Films) continues to churn out new work, while performing re-edits on often missed older works. The latest re-issue is from 2005, entitled LOVE FLOATS MY BOAT.  This piece was a gem in its original form, and now tighter and somehow even more bizarre, it made a fresh debut this New Years Eve at an art gallery in Boise, Idaho.

Featuring Kelly Broich and Brett Netson, with cinematography by Casey Broich, LFMB is about “Jerry Jeffers”, a groupie who wants to set up a concert for his favorite one hit wonder band, JACKPOT, so he enlists the help of an angel investor, “Burtrom Casey”.  Burtrom meets Mr. Jeffers  at his home on Ray Way (an actual mobile home in a trailer park where American Films shot most of their early work, now occupied by Collapse actor Sam Stimpert).  While listening to Jeffers stammer on about the concert proposal, while Jeffers dances around, plays with scissors and tries to learn Spanish from tape, Burtrom eventually calls him out as an unstable, crazed lunatic of sorts, and denies him the deal. A melee ensues where Jeffers goes from getting more and more pissed, to settling back down and trying to start over. Jeffers attempts to sit up straight, put the music aside, and talk some business, “okay, let me tighten up, we’re doing business now!” 

In typical American Films “what the fuck” fashion, the message of art versus commerce takes an absurd twist. The would be investor Burtrom suddenly switching gears, pulls out…The Book of Mormon. Passages are recited and Jeffers is carefully monitored by Burtrom for any signs that the message of Mormonism is sinking in.

“Loved the Mormon bit. Backmasking & apophenia! I knew there were references I didn’t even notice as such.”  – from demiurge, Kenneth Freeman.

One of those references is Burtrom’s vomiting cut in between his readings from the Book of Mormon. Current event relevancy is worth mentioning since an individual running for the U.S. Presidency, the barely hanging on to lead front runner Mitt Romney, has all the generic image qualities for the “President brand”; the only problem is that little purple elephant that no one can seem to get past: he’s a Mormon. The reason no one can get pass it is the same reason Burtrom’s vomiting is placed on a level playing field to that of his reciting of Mormon passage. Both acts come out as incoherent gibberish. The Book of Mormon is filled with complete and utter nonsense.

LOVE FLOATS MY BOAT does a 360 on the viewer; it initially settles us in on believing the lunatic here is the nervous poverty stricken penny saving Jeffers.  But then the true lunacy is revealed: money and religion.  There is a shot of Jeffers sitting in disbelief, glasses resting on nose, mouth open staring silent at the preaching nonsense before him; suddenly we relate to his situation, as we see the convoluted driving force behind Burtrom Casey. And eventually Jeffers does, in fact, figure out the game: Mormons don’t do business unless you’re a Mormon.

LOVE FLOATS MY BOAT (2005/2012)

I closed off 2011 with the last film festival viewing being that of the long running “Spike and Mike’s Sick and Twisted Festival of Animation.”  Short animated works by a variety of filmmakers who set out to shock, gross out, and ensue hilarity through their creations.

While most of our Absurdist artists here are more the type to use a long screwdriver and slowly churn the screw to produce a form of twisted absurdism that fucks with the head in a subtle but strong way, the spike/mike animators will just use a power drill, driving in the screw direct to produce a quick and easy shot of twisted absurdity. The kind you don’t have to think much about. It’s shit/piss/and penis filled material and that’s how it should be for their form of not always easy, but at least quickly digestable, cinema. And it was a huge relief to see that the animation did actually deliver on the sick and twisted front in the latest Spike and Mike installment, which closed out 2011, opening up hope for a twisted cinematic 2012 and beyond.

The last time I went to a Spike and Mike festival was probably a decade or so ago. And it sucked. I remember one guy in the audience would actually stand up after several of the shorts finished and yell aloud: “THAT WAS NOT SICK, NOR WAS IT TWISTED!”  And the rest of the audience agreed. Much of the work felt mainstream and you wondered what the hell these shorts were doing in the festival.

The selection process seemed to mirror the times and the attitude of alternative cinema everywhere. This was a time, a decade or so ago, when underground cinema seemed to be dying on all fronts. At the usual so called “alternative” film festivals it was “mumblecore” that was being touted as the new underground. A hipster/poser cinema movement where the message was basically the celebration of hipster/poser’ism.  Online works by outsiders, weirdos, and up/coming cinematic deviants were being ignored. No one really knew how to handle the technology from Digital Video to eventually YouTube, so a wave of mediocrity swept through screening venues and festivals which were once home to more transgressive works. The early 2000′s laid the cement down for nearly a decades worth of venue fluff.

But the much needed cracks in the concrete have been forming over the last few years. And now, sprouting up from the cracks, is a new wave of twisted transgressiveness many artists, and audiences, have been yearning for.

Watching the latest Spike and Mike’s Festival of Animation reminded me of shows from the late 90’s, when underground works were still being produced and celebrated on screen. I actually took note at the end of each film to see the production date, as if having to blink twice making sure these indeed were new works, and then surprised that, yes, most I noted were.

As mentioned things have been picking up for the underground. And this latest Sick and Twisted fest convinces me further that the lamecore movement of the past decade has in fact died, and we are at the beginning of a new decade of true, new underground works both in the “long screw” artistic Absurdism celebrated on this site, as well as the straight up screw, shit-piss and penis underground.

    “Bear Killin’,” the short video piece directed by video artist Kelly Broich, featuring performance artist Anne McDonald, is one of the strangest clown videos I’ve seen this month. The film shows a female clown knifing and then ripping apart a stuffed Winnie the Poo holding a heart that says “I Love You.” It is tempting to apply meaning to this film, even if no real meaning exists. The symbolic imagery seems to suggest a sort of deconstruction of childhood motifs common to Western culture.

    The stuffed toy bear, a source of bedtime comfort to so many children is dismembered by a clown, of all things, the traditional source of entertainment at birthday parties, fairs and circuses. This revolting clown then proceeds to try on Winnie the Poo’s head. After trying on the freshly butchered skin, we hit our dramatic finale when the heartless clown tears open Winnie’s heart.

    The video is fascinating and disturbing, unnerving and thrilling; it is painful, yes, yet it can also be therapeutic if embraced with open legs.

    Thankfully this video was short because it aggravates my coulrophobia, but a perverted, courageous side of me wanted to overcome my fear of this multicolored monster so I proceeded to watch the homicidal clown kill Winnie the Poo over and over, again and again and again.  

Just look at this thing. Notice the mismatched gloves? One for killin’ and one for fashion? Who does it think it is?

The Collapse clowns don’t stop here…

Meet Boner Salad—part of Kollapse for Kidz.

“I’m your friend!”

    This video is disturbing with the acidy pedophiliac basement feel, but easier to digest thematically… Boner Salad is revealing and demystifying the bitter truth of the world, and he’s doing it to our children: he’s waking them up to the realities they certainly won’t understand as toddlers and will probably never understand as adults.

  ”Life is meaningless, there is no God, and babies are bad,” says Boner Salad in a delightfully sardonic voice. Boner’s message to the “kidz,” and the moral of this video piece seems to be that the more babies we create the faster we eat the earth. We must accept the simple truth that life is ultimately meaningless, God’s laws are nothing short of arbitrary dogma, and His word amounts to nothing more than fairy tales with which we abuse our children. It is time to throw off the cultural and religious blinders that are directing us toward species suicide.  

    But maybe not. Maybe Boner Salad is just a dickhead who likes to scare little kids.

I fired off Facebook questions to both Broich and McDonald for more clarity as to the motives and inspirations behind these pieces. This is what I received in return:

   “Many in the Collapse cult are undergoing a metamorphosis,” said McDonald. “These are no longer costumes. Clowns are who we are becoming, who we want to be, clowns are who we really are… inside.”

    Broich sent back a clown painting made as a child with a simple “artistic statement”: “It is a 1989 self-portrait of my true inner-clown.”

From the above painting we can see that Broich’s genius was obvious even as a child, though nobody of significance noticed in time to save him from himself.

Brian Burks teaches ancient Esperanto at Carrington College and is a freelance art critic.

After having watched the short film “The Commercial Network,” I find it difficult to watch TV commercials in the same way.  Ads that once seemed silly–or inane at worst–have now taken on a creepy, even sinister air.  Leave it to Idaho filmmaker/playwright/satirist Kelly Broich to take something as commonplace as a TV ad and expose it as one more symptom of the festering soul of our runaway capitalism.

The premise is simple:  Three dumb American men decide to waste the evening away in front of the TV watching something called “The Commercial Network,” which is exactly what it sounds like.  Interestingly, the commercials are real ones we are all too familiar with:  the Kia gerbils, Alec Baldwin credit cards, Carl Jr.’s, etc.  But with Broich adding a sense of foreboding that grows with each passing commercial, once innocent ads now seem sleazy and absurd.  The three viewers are perversely affected by the commercials, and with this dark new context, it hit me like a Louisville Slugger to the forehead:  Yes, that Carl Jr (aka Hardee’s in the east) commercial where the Greek gods and goddesses are worshipping a cheeseburger IS fucked up.  (I must add that Carl Jr.’s/Hardee’s have been running the worst commercials in the history of the medium, presumably due to their target demographics, which is apparently dickheads of the male variety.)

“The Commercial Network” is an experimental film in the best possible way, and its twisted humor—a hallmark of any Broich/American Films production—is what keeps it from veering anywhere near pretentious territory.  It is a bizarre indictment of commerce at its trashiest, and in a hilarious way, it exposes idiotic commercials as for what they might potentially be:  thirty second spots of evil.

Joey Goebel is the author of the satirical novels, The Anomalies, Torture the Artist and Commonwealth.

http://www.joeygoebel.com

Goebel books on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Joey+Goebel