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Cover of Signals: How Video Transformed the World

Museum of Modern Art, New York

Signals: How Video Transformed the World

Stuart Comer ed. , Michelle Kuo ed.

€55.00

Since its debut as a consumer medium in the 1960s, video has shaped our opinions, our politics and our societies. On our phones and computer screens, walls and streets, it defines new spaces and experiences—spreading memes, lies, fervor, fact and fiction. In other words, video has transformed the world.

Featuring works from the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, this illuminating exhibition catalog—MoMA's first major publication on video art in nearly 30 years—explores the ways in which artists have both championed and questioned video's promise, some hoping to create new networks of communication, democratic engagement and public participation, others protesting commercial and state control over information, vision and truth itself.

Lavishly illustrated essays by esteemed scholars and artists—including Ina Blom, Aria Dean, David Joselit, Pamela M. Lee, Glenn Ligon and Ravi Sundaram—highlight video's widely varied formats, contexts and global reach. Signals is a manual for understanding the present, an era in which video has pervaded all aspects of life.

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Cover of The Illusion of a Crowd

Archive Books

The Illusion of a Crowd

Clemens von Wedemeyer

Publication including the films Transformation Scenario, 70.001, and Faux Terrain, as well as a visual essay, a glossary and texts by Heike Geißler, Fanni Fetzer, and Franciska Zólyom.

“When I visited the Elias Canetti archive at the Zentralbibliothek Zurich, I was looking for manuscripts and sketches for his major work Crowds and Power (1960). I imagined that Canetti must have made drawings, as the behaviour of the various crowd types he identified was described in such detail. I hoped that these drawings would help me transfer the group behaviour he describes to virtual figures in an animated film.

The archive of manuscripts, arranged by Elias Canetti himself, was handed over to the Zurich library and contains the notes and sketches he completed during the development of Crowds and Power, a period of almost forty years. However, in this context I found no drawings—Canetti had only made graphic lists on various themes. So where did Canetti's precise descriptions of the scenes come from?”

Clemens von Wedemeyer (born 1974 in Göttingen, lives and works in Berlin) creates films, videos and media installations poised between reality and fiction, reflecting power structures in social relations, history and architecture.

Edited by Fanni Fetzer and Franciska Zólyom.
Texts by Heike Geißler, Fanni Fetzer, Franciska Zólyom.

Cover of Ruins and Resilience: The Longevity of Experimental Film

Goldsmiths Press

Ruins and Resilience: The Longevity of Experimental Film

Karel Doing

Experimental film practice from an international and transdisciplinary perspective.

Karel Doing is an experimental filmmaker and researcher who has worked across the globe with fellow artists and filmmakers, creating a body of work that is difficult to pinpoint with a simple catchphrase. In Ruins and Resilience he weaves autobiographical elements and critical reviews together with his wide ranging interdisciplinary approach, reflecting on his own practice by positioning key works within the context of a vibrant experimental film scene in Europe, North and South America, and Asia. Doing demonstrates how experimental filmmakers have continued to renew their practice despite the almost total demise of analog motion picture film and the constant neglect of this art form by institutions and critics. Written in a fluent and accessible style, the book looks into the connections between the work of groundbreaking artists within the field and subjects such as transgression, improvisation, collectivity, materiality, phenomenology, and perception. Specifically, intersections with music and sound are investigated, appealing to the idea of the cross-modal brain, the ability to perceive sounds and images in an integrated way. Instead of looking again at the "golden era" of experimental film, the book starts in the 1980s, showing how this art form has never ceased to surprise and inspire. The author's hands-on engagement with the medium is formational for his more theoretical approach and writing, making the book a highly original contribution in the field that is informative and inspiring for academic and practitioners alike.

Cover of Duras/Godard Dialogues

Film Desk Books

Duras/Godard Dialogues

Cyril Béghin

Three dialogues between Marguerite Duras and Jean-Luc Godard from 1979, 1980 and 1987.

“The two demonstrate a profound shared passion, a way of literally being one with a medium and speaking about it with a dazzling lyricism interspersed with dryly ironic remarks, fueled by a conviction that inspires them to traverse history. Their point of intersection is obvious. Duras, a writer, is also a filmmaker, and Godard, a filmmaker, has maintained a distinctive relationship with literature, writing and speech.”—Cyril Béghin

Introduction, afterword and footnotes by Cyril Béghin.
Translation by Nicholas Elliott.

Cover of Telling Invents Told

The Visible Press

Telling Invents Told

Lis Rhodes

Telling Invents Told is the first collection of writings by artist and filmmaker Lis Rhodes.

It includes the influential essay Whose History? alongside texts from works such as Light Reading, Pictures on Pink Paper and A Cold Draft, together with new and previously unpublished materials. Since the 1970s, Rhodes has been making radical and experimental work that challenges hegemonic narratives and the power structures of language. Her writing addresses urgent political issues – from the refugee crisis to workers’ rights, police brutality, racial discrimination and homelessness – as well as film history and theory, from a feminist perspective.

An important figure at the London Film-Makers’ Co-operative, Rhodes was also a founding member of Circles, the first British distributor of film, video and performance by women artists.

Cover of L'entre-corps

CVB

L'entre-corps

Laure Cottin-Stefanelli, Peter Snowdon

Centré sur la mise en jeu du corps filmé et du corps filmant dans leurs pratiques cinématographiques respectives, la Conversation de Laure Cottin Stefanelli et Peter Snowdon a commencé par une présentation croisée de leurs films à Bozar en discussion avec Septembre Tiberghien et s'est cloturée par une exposition intitulée INNER SENSE - Bodies At Work, à la galerie de l'ERG de décembre 2018 à janvier 2019.