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”.
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The second Absurdist Film Festival will premiere Saturday, January 10th in Boise, Idaho at the VISUAL ARTS COLLECTIVE
Featuring:
COLLAPSE – Boise
Eli Elliott – Los Angeles
Shay St. John – Los Angeles
Andy Heck Boyd – Boston
Dee Yamamoto – Sacamento
Will Rahilly – New York City
Goat Worship – Edmonton
Diego Agulló – Berlin
Greg Barth – London
Julie Verhoeven – London
Andy Heck Boyd had the premiere of his solo show called DIGITAL PRINCE last week at Kittery, Maine’s premier avant garde art space, BUOY GALLERY. The show runs through September 15th. Several of Andy’s prints, many of which have already sold, as well as video projections of his Absurdist Video Art are on display.
A wonderful mini-documentary on the show, and of Andy, was put together by WeLiveinNewYorkAndLA.com and can be viewed below.
A new Randy Prozac (Goat Worship) interview recently surfaced on a Spanish website. Below is the English translation link. Prozac riffs on his website design, facebook, the new world order, and rumors about subliminal messages laced throughout his various video work.
i suggest throwing your computer in the garbage if you really want to make a progressive step towards freedom. otherwise get back on YouTube and jerk off to more cartoons and funny cat videos, but keep complaining about the new world order, then go relax and completely immerse yourself in new world order video game mind control technologies that rewire your ability to process information, and then go eat the new world orders poisonous food that you paid for with non-existent worthless Illuminati ones and zeros.
FULL PROZAC INTERVIEW IN ENGLISH
Collapse productions have been shooting a series of new work and sent in a few stills to share. These “anti-comedy sketch shorts” will be featured in the upcoming Absurdist Film Festival (#2) slated to premiere in late October of 2014 and will feature artists on this site as well as a slew of recent works from newly discovered video artists who all create in the absurdist vein.
More on the festival to come, as well as news on some upcoming absurdist documentaries and films both currently in production and soon to be released.
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.
The most active page on this site for several months now has been the comment section to a Randy Prozac (aka Goat Worship) post.
It has been alleged that Randy had actually died some months ago. A newspaper clipping of his demise surfaced, and a mysterious girl named Britney Morgue was said to have taken over his website, which thankfully has remained fully functional and even occasionally updated.
While rumors that he had possibly faked his own death and was perhaps institutionalized were also suggested, it seemed many were convinced that Prozac did indeed exit stage left. Sadly it appeared no more works would surface, and many were crossing their fingers, hoping that Britney would at least keep the remaining ship afloat.
Odd back and forth comments have become a daily occurrence in the last few months which only fueled the mystery further.
“honestly, when i come to the Internet, i expect to find The Truth, and to see this level of obfuscation is just terribly disappointing.
i expect to find much more openness and transparency from a website that has clowns masturbating in their own puke.
i don’t think i will ever have the same faith in comments again.”
Today though, it appears as if Randy has stepped forward. Not only does he declare he’s still here (alive), but in extremely rare form he tilts the mask up and takes a few moments to explain the origins and motivations of his massive collection of work, both as a member of the video art group Goat Worship and his solo absurdist video projects that have followed.
For those that don’t know (and unfortunately, not to mention shamefully, this includes many, so-called, underground and experimental film curators) Randy Prozac and his former project Goat Worship, have put out some of the strongest underground absurdist cinema in the past decade, which in turn Randy has archived while adding new works, all available to view on his website SentimentalCorp.org . The website alone is arguably one of the best personal film sites in internet existence with it’s self hosted videos, interesting-engaging and mysterious navigations, as well as NO youtubes, NO vimeos, and thank god no stupid ass “facebook/twitter/tumblr” I-“cons” for the delusions of social misery-media “glory”.
To put it another way, if people still cared about art, specifically current art in the subversive vein, Prozac would have been celebrated a lot more through alternative media, articles, interviews, and screening requests. But we live in a dark period where most of the celebrated subversives of the past now spend more time curating their persona on facebook rather than creating new works or seeking out true underground works of others.
It’s perhaps because of this black-out that Prozac’s sudden surfacing is a rarity, as well as a relief for his well being, even despite his new found flip off to still admirers of his work.
And having said this, his statement below signifies a moving on, sealing the Sentimental Corp lid, having come to terms with the motivational madness which fueled the fire. Future work from Randy seems uncertain, probably unlikely, but if his ‘mask back on’ last sentence gives a hint that something might be brewing, it would likely aim to be something completely different.
Here’s Randy:
to whom it may concern,
the materials i produced were a method and process to deal with pain. i personally have no interest in goat worship or any of the video materials i created, they were made only as a ‘means to an end’ and were never fully intended to be shared, but i did share them and they remain an attached stain on me even though the internal matters have since been processed and released..
i don’t believe that clinging to aspects of the past is a healthy pattern to develop, especially when trauma and pain were involved.. i don’t believe in holding onto pain, or embracing negativity.. i once did.. i once thought i needed it and it convinced me that i needed it.. but i don’t and to be honest i hate most of the people goat worship attracts because they are often parasites who revel in their own suffering and the pain of others. i understand because that was the state the materials were created in. rather than project it onto others directly i opted to create a controlled platform where i could spit out the poison.
i didn’t want the pain i went through to.. the hatred i felt.. i didn’t want it to simply remain within me.. to crystallize into a state of being and become permanent.. cementing me into oblivion with ‘me’ projecting how ‘it’s everyone else’s fault how i feel’.. i am accountable for how i act and react to my own emotions.
the world has too much selfish cruelty and too many people who’ve developed no sense of compassion. people who are mental/emotional sewer rats looking for any piece of rot to validate why they should remain in that fixed state of perpetual bitterness and automated loathing.. i am aware that i have expressed and endorsed hatred and misanthropy and that it was a reactionary aspect of myself, but it was not the core.. and as i said, it is the part of a person that holds onto all the manufactured reasons why i am justified in feeling my hate..because it makes a person feel the illusion of strength.. but it’s not a real strength.. letting go of it was.
i leave the materials (goat worship etc) online because maybe they can serve some function, perhaps those that resonate with that toxic state of being can see the process i went through in order to let go of it, although i doubt that, i know it would be easier to mock me, or to laugh like a heartless sociopath and feel nothing but juvenile emotional cancer. i know all about it and good luck with that.
the materials i produced were also a reflection of a sickness that i see, but that doesn’t make them any better than what they articulated through visual metaphor. i can only hope they don’t contribute more to the neutralization and desensitization of peoples hearts and minds, even though i know that they probably do.. i chose to make fun of my pain and that is what goat worship primarily was, i laughed at the hurt to reduce the impact of it within myself.. i would not want it to be viewed externally as a form of validation or celebration of the negative aspects of the self..even though it was that at the time, a transmutation occurred and i am still working through the residual radiation.
and that is what it was.. an ugly healing process and no healing process is pretty.
now i put the mask back on..
Love always,
Randy Prozac
FROM MY RECENT glimpses around the interwebs it doesn’t seem as if “STUCK FILMS” have hit the trendy blogosphere worlds which seek to find the unusual and then mock it up, so the regular internet surfer can have a grin and reaffirm his or her, usually false sense of, “normalcy”.
Though the world of “stuck” does have it’s own Yahoo group and some decent playlists on YouTube exist, unless you were looking for them or had a stuck fetish, you’d probably miss the world of Stuck films. I came across them thinking I had stumbled on someone’s performance art (which I believe I did), but learned the main thrust of these films is more fetish, as I began noticing the same theme throughout the various performance videos, which basically entail, a human becoming STUCK in something.
It seems the most common form of stuck films to be that of, usually women’s feet becoming stuck in large homemade sticky glue rat trap like floors. Lifting and contorting and curling of the toes takes place as the stuck performer struggles to free themself. Yet it quickly becomes clear, they are STUCK.
The preferred performance, which I’ve learned from various comments from videos, is for the foot performer to struggle, be in angst and slight agony over her stuck situation, as opposed to pretending to enjoy the stuck experience (which many stuck foot novices make the mistake of in their early videos).
Another criticism, as illustrated in the video below and the comment that follows, is the commercialization of stuck art, using cheap glue rather than the preferred rat trap glue, thus trying to capitalize on fast and quick fetish commerce. See the comment that follows this video. UPDATE – this video was deleted from it’s original source, likely due to said criticisms. The comment below was from the original upload.
“Disappointing that a veteran of the stuck community would not use real glue. Would love to see Camilla glued in the rat trap stuff. I still have some of your drawings on old floppy discs back when this was starting out. Now that Sticky-Site is down I suggest you build up your web site with some of your art work (you are a good artist).”
But going well beyond the foot stuck scenarios, are full body stucks. These performances involve the majority of the torso becoming stuck in something. One performer which stands out is Jan Bailey. She (technically “he”, crossdresser it seems) will manage to maneuver into a tight spot, become stuck, and then struggle to get out. During the struggle phase, a number of actions may occur. Pants slipping down, arms flailing around, and again bringing in the feet, this time within a larger context, the toes may curl and contort as the struggle to un-stuck the whole body ensues.
Below we see Jan get stuck inside a ladder, and to make the situation seemingly worse (though not for the viewer), the pants fall down revealing tight white undies.
Stuck films in a way are somewhat of a mocking of standard performance art, though without the intention. The intention here is more fetish, and interesting ways to execute the fetish.
Nonetheless, many stuck pieces are better than much of the current “performance art”, perhaps because of the clear motive for execution, and the often pretentiousness of movement found in typical P.A. is absent here, and in it’s place is a more honest drive to execute the most solid stuck possible.
The audience is also clearly more in tune due to the fetish nature of the act, while even putting in requests for new stucks. This happens frequently with Jan and she obliges, welcoming the performance challenge.
See Jan Baileys stuck work here on her YT Channel – UPDATE – This is Jan’s new YouTube channel, as the old one seems to have been deleted. Most of Jan’s videos from the old account appear to be here, and hopefully new works will follow.
Absurdist Video Artist Brian Bress did a MocaTV video interview a few months ago, and an accompanying article from the KCET blog also came out. The article goes more in depth regarding Bress’s latest video art paintings, but also, surprisingly gives a nod to his original video work which we’ve championed here for some time now.
In Brian Bress’ one minute and ten second video, “World Report” (2006), Bress sits onscreen dressed as a news reporter, rhythmically chanting “Bangladesh,” until he changes the words to “dish, dish, this your dish, this your dish it’s super delish
The video interview focuses completely on 2011-2012 works, mainly incorporating video into painting, or to “force video to occupy the space of a painting.”
Currently Bress has a show running through July in Rome:
Opening May 16- July 21, 2013 — Brian Bress, MACRO, Rome, Italy
Here’s Brian Bress interviewed by MocaTV which despite the annoyingly canned and standard fare quick cut intro which all such “internet TV” series feel the need to employ, the actual edited interview footage does a real good job at holding on to the the work for a number of seconds allowing the viewer to at least get a taste of the piece, in silence, no background music, just the work doing it’s own thing. Very nice, very rare.
Read also the accompanying article here – Playing Paint: The Video Art of Brian Bress
And, of course, Brian Bress and his Absurdist Video Art trigger, WORLD REPORT:
ABSURDIST VIDEO ART 