"Apart Together" (1999) by Alicia Framis

"Apart Together" (1999) by Alicia Framis. 4'10'' (sound, colour). Collection: Netherlands Media Art Institute.

Clip requires Realplayer. Artist: born 1967, Barcelona, Spain, lives and works in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

The room is completely dark, but every few seconds there is the flash of a stroboscopic lamp, and slowly but surely a recognizable image begins to take shape on your retina. A young woman is lying on a bed, wriggling herself out of her clothes. Each new image shows her more naked than the previous one. The camera is very close to her, one and a half metre away at the most. Things are becoming explicitly erotic when the woman begins to sigh more and more intensely, the situation becomes more and more electric: due to the presence of the camera; when the noises make you aware that the camera is also recording in the dark; when you notice that the camera must be hand-held, because the image is not static, and particularly when you can hear the woman\u2019s excited noises mixing with those of a man. This can only be the cameraman, who is getting more and more involved in the erotic play. Hesitating between watching curiously and keeping an appropriate distance, you try to determine your position. But it is difficult to escape from the presence of your gaze upon the scene. First and foremost because the dark intervals between the images tempt you to keep your eyes fixed on the woman. But eventually also because the lens of the camera has become an extension of your own eyes. Emphatically a sense that you share with the cameraman. And from exactly the same lack of distance, you see exactly what he sees, and what excites him so much.

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"Stromboli Pieta" (2006) by Marina Abramović

"Stromboli Pieta" (2006) by Marina Abramović, framed chromogenic print, 180 x 150 cm, edition of 7 plus 2 APs

Stromboli is a small island in the Tyrrhenian Sea, off the north coast of Sicily, containing one of the active volcanoes in Italy. Abramović has a house there. A pietà (Italian for compassion) is an artwork depicting the Virgin Mary cradling the dead body of Christ.

"Stromboli is the last permanently active volcano in Europe," she said, leaning forward intently with her dark eyes flashing. "Every 20 minutes, it's shooting out lava. Every 20 minutes. Black sand. Black beach. Everything black. It's fantastic." (source)

Photo courtesy Sean Kelly Gallery.

Also see another post on Marina Abramović.

"The Conquest of Happiness" (2005) by Oliver Pietsch

"The Conquest of Happiness" (2005) by Oliver Pietsch, Video, 45 min, Courtesy of Goff + Rosenthal, Berlin

Oliver Pietsch, an emerging video artist and filmmaker working in Berlin, demonstrates that in art and filmmaking there are no "final hits" - no conclusive imagery or idea in film that cannot be recycled, renewed and reinterpreted. Born in Munich in 1972, the artist lives and works in Berlin. He has received numerous awards for his work and has been in many group exhibitions across Europe.

Pietsch's film, The Conquest of Happiness, forty-five minutes long, took two years of research and editing to finish. It encompasses more than three hundred drug-related video clips taken from the history of film. It is organized according to the particular drug being addressed--heroin, cocaine, marijuana, etc--and set to a soundtrack devised by Pietsch. The soundtrack includes music by the Eggs, the Mooseheart Faithstellar Groove Band, Neil Young, F.S. Blumm, Neu, Pass into Silence, Pascal Schäfer, Spaceman 3, Roy Orbinson, John Carpenter, M.T. Fern, Brian Eno, and Daniel Lanois. Music is a key element of production for Pietsch, as he says it "has to work with the pictures, to hold all the different material together like glue and at the same time transport a certain feeling or point of view." Says Pietsch, "'The Conquest of Happiness' is equal parts documentation, experimental film and music clip. It is a compilation film about drug-use and its representation in movies."

There's a video of Cat Power's "Maybe Not" directed by Oliver Pietsch on YouTube.

Sources: text | image

Two works by Marina Abramović

Marina Abramović, Selfportrait with Skull (2004), Black and white photograph, edition of 3, h: 60 x w: 50 cm

Marina Abramović, Balkan Erotic Epic (detail) (2005), video projection

Marina Abramović (born 30 November 1946, in Belgrade, Yugoslavia) is a performance artist who began her career in the early 1970s. Active for over three decades, she has recently begun to describe herself as the “grandmother of performance art.” This assertion has been neither disputed nor challenged. Abramović's work explores the relationship between performer and audience, the limits of the body, and the possibilities of the mind. (source)

In her latest work, Balkan Erotic Epic, Abramovic creates new, surprising perspectives on archaic rituals that used erotic powers to influence fate and fortune. These powerful images talk to us about the disavowal of ancient practices, and about something buried deep in our consciousness.