Eli Elliott

“HOMESTEAD” – The how-to performance video finale (Broich,Kaup,Elliott 45min.HD 2016)

Rounding out the trilogy of performance video featuring Kelly Broich, Eli Elliott, and Brad Kaup, is HOMESTEAD. The “how to” series started with MUSH, where the performance centered around a cooking demonstration on how you can have a high calorie diet for less than $20 a week by combining dollar store food items, then FASHION revealed how to take thrift store clothing  and turn them into high dollar fashion items, concluding with a $40,000 created garment, and now HOMESTEAD reveals how one can live for free in style by simply finding some land, staking it, then creating cardboard homes which you can decorate to your liking.

The performance takes place in a striking outdoor location, where a river runs near and  mountains serve as back drops for the pair of pilgrims, Pink Face and Roy, who stake their land and proceed to create cozy and decorative little homes for themselves.

The performance plays on a level that is somewhere between the trendy “tiny home movement” and the classic homeless/cardboard box scenario. This indeed is a murky area that rarely gets talked about as now those with money are purposely downsizing and creating very fashionable tiny homes on trailers, while declaring it to be a new fashionable trend and indeed a “movement.”

Meanwhile “tiny homes” have essentially been created for years by houseless individuals, in the form of tented encampments, wooded shacks, or inexpensive mobile RV’s and trailers. It has now become a trend to become “homeless”, as long as you build your dwelling on a trailer and make it look nice on the inside, and out.

Pink Face and Roy create their own little tiny homes, yet they do not exist in skid row, but won’t be making any of the trendy tiny house blogs either. It’s a gray area which seems to speak on the absence of in between individuals who can’t afford to play in the pretentious tiny home scene, yet don’t deal themselves the helpless/homeless card either.

In HOMESTEAD the relationship between the two characters remains a mystery, as do their choice of facial wear. Yet in this piece we see Roy engaging in more central action, rather than just serving as a sidekick for Pink Face. They both build their homes, create a kitchen area, empty their toilets (a nasty scene), and set up their individual play tents while squabbling over their choice  of women’s clothing, “is this your skirt Roy or mine?”

MUSH, FASHION and HOMESTEAD are designed to be shown on 3 separate HD screens simultaneously in a gallery setting. For inquiries contact the artists HERE

HOMESTEAD (dir. Kelly Broich. Cinematography Brad Kaup. Featuring Eli Elliott. HD, 45min. 2016)

“FASHION” Video Performance by Broich/Elliott/Kaup

In the second installment of video performance directed by Kelly Broich with Eli Elliott and Brad Kaup, comes FASHION, a surreal absurdity focusing on Pink Face’s obsession with making money through the creating of high priced “designer” garments. The garments are taken through various techniques  devised by Pink Face to provide “added value”. Pink Face cuts clothing, repairing them with neon duct tape (“rip and repair”) while assistant Roy applies sandpaper to shirt collars to “distress” the garment further. The result is clothing that goes from $10 retail to now being able to confidently place them at values in the several hundreds.

Where MUSH took rejected food that ends up in the dollar store and shows you how to create a goulash of caloric meal replacement to save you tons of money, FASHION takes rejected thrift clothing and adds necessary  uniqueness and flare, showing you how to make massive amounts of money. The techniques fall in line with the real life fashion racket, implementing methods of “distressing”, while adding avant garde original uniqueness to items such as “boy shorts”.

The vibrantly dingy visuals colorfully pop equally to MUSH as the poster paints, glitters and fish hooks turn the clothing line into an absurd looking goulash of their own; the end products proudly hang by rafters in the inexplicable dirt floor shack  the two “fashion designers” are operating out of.

Pink Face ultimately unveils the coup de gras of his spring collection. Roy proudly models the garment while a price tag is decided upon.

FASHION is the second in a three piece  video performance series. Screening/Gallery inquires contact HERE.

FASHION (2016, HD, 31m. Directed Kelly Broich. Cinematography Brad Kaup. With Eli Elliott)

“RECOVERY HOUSE” Now Showing (Monday-24hours only)

Accepted to the STRAIGHTJACKET GUERRILLA FILM FESTIVAL, the never released cult film “Recovery House” which Kelly Broich from Collapse Productions directs, and Eli Elliott stars in, makes it’s  debut today (MONDAY), and will screen ONLINE FOR FREE for a period of 24 hours. STRAIGHTJACKET is an online film festival created by Laura Grace Robles & Fabrizio Federico. 

“The mood of the festival is that of a no-holds barred electric circus where the films chosen will represent the cream of the Les Enfants Terribles of Cinema.”

Recovery House was shelved for some years due to director dissatisfaction and overall frustrations over stolen copies being distributed.

Director Kelly Broich explains:

“We filmed “Recovery House” on the spur of the moment without any thought and I wrote it as we went along over the course of a few weeks. We spent a long time editing the mess of footage and I came to conclusion that while it had its moments, it was deeply flawed from poor structure, to inconsistent lighting — sort of everything is wrong minus the acting. After it was whittled down to 45 minutes from 90, I decided I hated it and would never release it.

Somehow a copy of it was leaked and DVDs made and it’s become popular in the ‘stoner community.’ I’ve even heard reports of a Los Angeles ‘heroin house’ where about 30 junkies get high every night and watch it.

I’ve been told Joaquin Phoenix is a fan of it and has given screenings at his house.
I still hate it. It’s a failure. And now somehow a UK-based film festival is screening it. if you ever come across a DVD of it, please throw it in the garbage where it belongs.”
Kelly Broich

Nevertheless Eli Elliott who stars in the film submitted it to STRAIGHTJACKET,  a festival he surmised was the real deal (Broich begrudgingly agreed) and it was accepted.

Go to this link —  STRAIGHTJACKET GUERRILLA FILM FESTIVAL — and click on the FILMS tab, then look for RECOVERY HOUSE.

Let us know what you make of it.

Eli Elliott’s Social Cinema

The latest trend in online cinema has been what’s being referred to as “Social Cinema”. It refers to Instagram’s video uploads which are limited to 15 seconds. The most popular being a high budget TV-like series called “SHIELD 5” which involve episodes which are all 15 seconds long.

(Update – Instagram just announced they are increasing video length to 60 seconds within the next few months.)

Rather than complain about the new state of online cinema, a few have decided to dive in and subvert the trend.

Eli Elliott has been taking much of his previous work and giving it brand new life through 15 second Social Cinema films. He also has been creating new works under the tight structure that the time limit requires. The results are a flurry of new viewership and a recycling of older works no longer sustainable in the dying festival circuit, and viewed much less nowadays in the landfill which YouTube has become.

Ferguson Ulrich: Does Social Cinema make sense for an alternative film/video maker to partake in?

Eli Elliott: Yeah. You can complain about it and take the hoity-toity attitude just like everyone did when YouTube first came out. No one wanted to put their experimental films on YouTube because they thought they were “above it all.” Of course these same people now all have YouTube channels! It’s like where the fuck were all of you 10 years ago when the window was wide open to subvert this online platform with experimental/underground works?  Their avant garde attitude wasn’t experimental film forward thinking at all as they didn’t understand the digital environment and how to swim within it to maintain vibrancy in alternative cinema/film/videomaking.

FU: Are there many Social Cinema experimental works on Instagram currently?

EE: Collapse Productions have also been uploading their previous works, along with creating new social cinema films and they are all killer. Some others here and there, but surprisingly very few are subverting it. But as like before, a windows opened and not many are paying attention to it let alone climbing through it. I make it a point to upload one freshly and usually carefully edited piece a day and Collapse has been doing the same.

FU: What’s it say that we are at a point where “Social Cinema” is actually a thing and that 15 second films are being created?

EE: Yeah it’s the digital environment and the massively sped up situation we exist in. Remember it was only 10 years ago when YouTube set their video upload limit at ten minutes. Part of their reasoning was that the attention span of the viewer was thought to be tapped out at the 10 minute mark. So now we have gone from a 10 minute attention span tap-out, to a 15-60 second attention span limit!!!

FU: So now the latest is that Instagram is pushing the limit to a whopping 60 seconds!

EE: Yeah just when I was getting better at forming 15 second films they’re jacking it up to 60 seconds! But the 15 seconds actually made sense as far as viewership went. They get viewed easily, everyone has 15 seconds. But 60 second films will inevitably be viewed much less, as now even that seems a struggle for many in this day and age of Social Media aka “Social MindNumbia”.

FU: What’s your Instagram handle and how do people find your pieces and Collapse’s works on Instagram.

EE: It’s elliott_eli and Collapse is collapse_productions. I also created the hashtag #SocialCinemaBrut to separate the typical Social Cinema stuff and establish a sort of outsider Art Brut section for the experimental video works, the weirder things, and alt pieces, etc.

Here’s some SocialCinemaBrut works from Elliott:
https://www.instagram.com/elliott_eli/

MUSH by Kelly Broich

MUSH (2016, Kelly Broich with Eli Elliott. Photographed and Post by Brad Kaup. 22min.)

Invoking a combination of the pretentious foodie culture  with the cheap food reality that many Americans rely on, Kelly Broich’s latest piece takes the form of a cooking show where calories are simply separated between “solids” and “liquids”. This is apropos to the state of quick food culture where cheap pre-packaged meals from the dollar store hardly resemble real food, but rather are simply solid forms glued together with fillers and gums, marketed as “meals” be it a waffle and sausage breakfast or a turkey and tater tot dinner. It all goes down the same chute so why not just combine it all together and treat your taste buds to everything that the visually enticing  box covers promise?

It happens to be a coincidence that the latest documentary buzz is the recently released film “City of Gold” where Los Angeles food writer Jonathon Gold goes around L.A. in search of “the next great, cheap, aromatic meal.”  The Chicago Tribune writes: “The selling points here, as with any food documentaries, are the many close-ups of glorious-looking food bubbling on a stove.”

With MUSH we get the real deal of cheap food, which is “bubbling” in the bowls as Chef Pink Face (Broich) and his assistant Roy (Eli Elliott) mash the solids together with large bricks they find on the ground in the dilapidated shed where the performance takes place.

The dish is equally “aromatic” as the viewer visualizes the stench created as Roy slurps up samples from the resulted meal which is a combination of frozen pizza, waffles, Gatorade, clam chowder, chocolate milk, pork beans, whip cream, among other things.

For art gallery inquiries contact AVA’s facebook page.

Absurdist Experimentals – Three Recent Pieces

Three experimental pieces have recently surfaced. The first is an absurdist work from Collapse called “It’s A Man”, next is a work from Eli Elliott titled “Teacher/Student”, and finally a bizarre video featuring, and called, “Doll Abuse”.

Please “like” our page on Farcebook.

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Polar Circum Whirls” Eli Elliott, 2014

A long dormant Eli Elliott finally emerges with a new piece, and while it only clocks in just over a minute or so, it’s a strong resurfacing. A word re-arrange on the Circumpolar Whirl (aka “Polar Vortex”), Polar Circum Whirls hints at some of his own personal head spinning cyclone’esque conundrums 2014 seems to be delivering.

AVA for MAY – Eli Elliott’s Absurdist Three

DSC_1149

Eli Elliott released a small slew of varying Absurdist works in May, ranging from movements in nature to nostalgic environments to his now and then autobiographical dry humor monologue pieces taken from real life circumstance and/or situation.

SPRINGS IN MY STEP FOR THE BEE’S OF ST. BURG experiments with slow motion and distorted rhythm while photographing movement in a way that is somewhat mesmerizing, and the totality of it all together, somewhat absurd.

 

RUNNIN’ DOWN A DREAM is an observational (and/or anthropological?) piece capturing the absurdity of a scene; the nostalgic cover band music from 30 plus years ago still being celebrated, the lost souls brown bag harboring about and the stereotypical American party time environment during a period where the media environment speaks of the bad only going to get worse.
For best quality change the viewer quality to that of “720p”.

 

 

 

 

MY ART OPENING tells the tale of a failed art gallery opening, created by our filmmaker and apparent artist (drawing/sculpting), Eli. It’s one of his “experimental autobiographical” pieces which he creates now and then, and it is rather humorous in both the delivery and the actual event, or non-event.  Change the player to “720p” for the preferred viewing.

 

 

 

 

To keep up with Eli Elliott’s Absurdist video art work, check his YT channel out at http://www.youtube.com/user/Elienation

Various Video Art – Febuary 2013

ELI E / KELLY B . “Moonscape of Failed Hope Finds a Yesteryear of Good Fortune”
Continued from their recent sessions.




TYKYLEVITS. “Se hänelle kertokaa”




BUZZ COASTIN. “SEE THE MAN AT TURD & PUNCH BOWL”
a video mix mashter of current event reality sewn together with commentary and mirrored with b-movie fictionality.




ANDY HECK BOYD “HELL HOLE (2013)”
a video art piece comprised completely of animated internet GIF’s, backed by random audio from television and cinema.