cloud.love: a two-day screening event at DAM Gallery

The Internet is slowly but surely changing our lives: whether it's how we react to a "ding," the way we receive images, how we make art, how we fall in love, or how we fuck. As much as we are using it, it also reprograms us. From the Cloud and URLOVE both explore the impact the Internet has from two different perspectives: our evolving relationship to images and to, broadly, eros.

From the Cloud, 24 November 2014, 7pm
Cory Arcangel, Hilary Basing, John Michael Boling, Jennifer Chan, Jacob Ciocci, Jesse Darling, Feminist Frequency/Anita Sarkeesian, Mike Goldby, Faith Holland, Daniel Johnson, Eva and Franco Mattes, Jillian Mayer and Lucas Leyva, Lorna Mills and Yoshi Sodeoka, Gracie Nesin, Sebastian Schmieg, Hennessy Youngman.

URLOVE, 25 November 2014, 7pm
Cheryl Donegan, Martha Colburn, Bobby Abate, Kimmo Modig - Shawné Michaelain Holloway - Georges Jacotey - Jennifer Chan, Beth Siveyer, Angela Washko, Genevieve Belleveau, Faith Holland, Jesse Darling, John Walter, Lora Hristova, Jimmy Andrews and Loren Schmidt, Samuel Fouracre.

Screenings last approximately 90 minutes.

Curated by Faith Holland & Valentina Fois.

Both events are free of charge; please RVSP at [email protected]
Press enquires: [email protected] / Faith Holland [email protected]

From the Cloud

Curated by Faith Holland

In February 2005, YouTube was launched and forever changed our relationship to moving images, both as viewers and producers. But even well before then, the web had made a large variety of new materials accessible to see and to download, as well as upload. “From the Cloud” is a video program that looks at found footage "films" in the Internet Age. The proliferation of archived photographs, digital images, and videos made available to everyone online as well as an exponential increase in production has changed the way artists interact with pre-existing material. The artists in this program both pull material from the cloud and implicitly comment on the cloud by doing so.

FEATURING:

New American Classic, Jennifer Chan, 2011, digital video, color, sound, 1:44 min.
Is it sculpture or furniture?

A Total Jizzfest, Jennifer Chan, 2012, digital video, color, sound, 3:22 min.
A sample of the richest and sexiest men in computer and Internet history.

Baby, Daniel Johnson, 2012, digital video, color, sound, 5:10 min.
Excerpted and looped from Justin Bieber’s music video “Baby,” in “Bieber Fever,” Bieber encircles us in all his glory while a symphonic slowed-down version of his song plays. As he spins, more and more about his gestures, posturing, and the environment emerges.

Electric Sweat, John Michael Boling, 2007, digital video, color, sound, 54 sec.
This video is a valentine to hardware that raises technolust to the level of technoromance.

Am I Evil?, Jacob Ciocci, 2011, digital video, color, sound, 4:14 min.
In her essay, “Mirror Horror”, Trinie Dalton describes, “In early times, since mirrors were rare commodities, only qualified shamans had mirrors. But in 1438, when Guttenberg started a mirror-making business, anyone untrained in magic could use and be tempted by one. This proliferation of mirrors perpetuated myths of witchcraft, since some theorized that mirrors were being used for maleficence by those corruptible, vain and immoral enough to admire their own reflections.”
The good witch (Harry Potter?) tries to understand his reflection but the mirror shatters as soon as he touches it. The evil witch (Wicked Witch of the West?) tries the same thing but the mirror again shatters. The mirror always shatters just before a fixed identity can be sustained. A mirror is magic in much the same way many newer image-making tools are magic: for a brief moment you are put under a spell, you believe in it. But the longer and the closer you look, everything begins to fall apart. That is the real magic. This is the 3rd piece in Ciocci’s ongoing series “Trapped and Frozen Forever,” an investigation into the relationships between online and off-line images: images trapped (not tangible) on-screen and images frozen (not moving) in the physical world. In this iteration Ciocci has scanned section by section each of the 2 large collages on the wall, using them as the basis for the animated projection.

Arnold Schoenberg, op. 11 - I - Cute Kittens, Cory Arcangel, 2009, digital video, color, sound, 4:21
Arnold Schoenberg's Drei Klavierstücke, op. 11-I played by cats on pianos.


Apocalypse Now, Jesse Darling, 2012, digital video, color, sound, 1:06 min.
A roundup of the year 2012, made especially for the end of the world.

No Fun, Eva and Franco Mattes, 2010, online performance, color, sound, 15:46 min.
For No Fun Franco Mattes simulated committing suicide in a public webcam-based chat room. Thousands of random people, unwillingly recorded, watched while he was hanging from the ceiling, swinging slowly, for hours. The video documentation of the performance is an unpredictable, at times disturbing, sequence of reactions: some laugh, some are completely unmoved, some insult the supposed corpse, some take pictures with their mobiles.

Money2, Lorna Mills and Yoshi Sodeoka, 2012, digital video, color, sound, 1:16 min.
Money2 by Lorna Mills and Yoshi Sodeoka is a brief, merciless video assembled from Lorna Mills's found and altered animated gif collages. These looping animations play against a soundtrack by Plink Flojd, a super audiovideo collective started by David Quiles Guillo with co-founders Yoshi Sodeoka and Eric Mast. The video is the cacophonous, dysfunctional, absurd, idiotic sequel to Pink Floyd's classic “Money.” The band’s original version from the 70’s exhorted their audience to reject wealth and conspicuous consumption, while at the same time launching them into the stratosphere of commercial success. Pink Floyd's "Money" remains an enormously popular song, despite the fact that all of the ideas about capitalism embedded in the song are now four decades out of date. Money2 expands the original imagery to include the darkness, desperation, folly and anxiety that surrounds wealth and the lack of it. By pairing a mashed, mangled musical version with found, then re-arranged, animated gifs, Pink Floyd’s “Money” is revived and buried alive at the same time.

Erased de Kooning, Mike Goldby, 2011, digital video, color, sound, 2:58 min.
In this video, Goldby brings an image of a de Kooning drawing into Photoshop and, as Robert Rauschenberg did 60 years ago, erases all the markings. But what is at stake when this is just a digital file, with another exact copy of the image available again to download or one can simply undo using ⌘Z?

Only Girl, Hilary Basing, 2011, digital video, color, sound, 3:53 min.
My performances on camera aim to equalize identities through the adoption of their different characteristics and gestures. Only Girl explores the gestures of femininity and the breakdown of information through mimicry as I imitate drag queen Raja’s imitation of Rihanna’s Only Girl (In the World).

Search by Image, Recursively Starting with a Transparent PNG, Sebastian Schmieg, 2011, digital video, color, silent, 4:04 min.
With near-scientific method, Schmieg begins with a transparent PNG image file and allows Google’s Search by Image to visually free associate. The result is an insight into how Google’s algorithm “sees.”

Analog Internet, Faith Holland, 2012, digital video, color, sound, 5:12 min.
Analog Internet is a video-sculpture that reveals a pyramid of three-dimensional rendered CRT televisions, each with a different cat video appropriated from YouTube playing. This is the core of the Internet: an Egyptian site of worship for cats. Considering the Internet’s obsession with cats, Analog Internet re-imagines having the same relationship to cat videos in physical, not digital, space.

All Y’all, Gracie Nesin, 2011, digital video, color, sound, 4:51 min.
All Y'all is one of a cycle of nine commemorative 'songs' called White Witch/Bluff City—a diaristic narrative about codeine, boarding school, the Athenian courtesan Phryne—dreams, shreds, parts. It's impressionistic, creepy-trill, a drunk/dull/sleepy recollection of prostitution both low and courtly, reenacted and past-life-ephemeral, a punchy Southern Gothic poem about After Empire sung somewhat underwater, smoked and muffled by a blue, New Age cloud, all collapsed and hilarious: yesterday today and tomorrow.

Too Many Dicks, Feminist Frequency/Anita Sarkeesian, 2010, digital video, color, sound, 1:19 min.
It is no secret that the majority of video games these days star overly muscular men often carrying big swords, guns, baseball bats, chainsaws or other phallic weaponry. Many games normalize this extremely macho form of masculinity while uncritically glorifying war or military intervention. Sadly too many games tend to celebrate grotesque displays of violence instead of providing opportunities for creative, less violent, innovative forms of conflict resolution. Today with the growing dominance of the first person shooter genre players are encouraged to really participate in the destruction, testosterone and gore up close and personal.
Not only are these games dominated by male characters but even the few women characters who do get staring roles are often made to replicate overly patriarchal, violent, macho behavior (but inside of a hyper sexualized female body). Not surprisingly the vast majority of game producers, designers and writers in the industry are still men.

On Beauty, Hennessy Youngman, 2011, digital video, color, sound, 5:11 min.
Is beauty still relevant in our future age where information is mad valuable and neoliberalism is the number one pop tune that seems like it will always be playing every time you turn on the radio forever into infinity? Well I don't got answers to these questions, but that don't stop me from enwisening y’all to this shit!

#Postmodem, Jillian Mayer and Lucas Leyva, 2012, digital video, color, sound, 14:37
#PostModem is a comedic, satirical sci-fi musical based on the theories of Ray Kurzweil and other futurists. It's the story of two Miami girls and how they deal with the technological singularity, as told through a series of cinematic tweets.


URLOVE

Curated by Valentina Fois

I am not sure what love is and am certainly even more unsure as the internet takes over my life, impacting the way we see our bodies and touch each other. Reality is in opposition to virtuality; virtuality is inseparable from reality. Sometimes I feel that technology makes our bodies strange to themselves, like glitches, still images, and videos; at other times I think they could have never been more real than when they find a dimension, their own dimension, online. From self-obsession, private encounters, and romantic expectation, to pornography, here is a medley of what I have discovered online, which I want to share with you in an act of love.

FEATURING:

HEAD, Cheryl Donegan, 1993, Safe sex action painting to an alternative rock beat, digital video 2:49 min.
Donegan emerged in the 90’s with video works that were direct, irreverent performances, infused with an ironic eroticism.

DEEP 4 U, Kimmo Modig, 2014, digital video, 5:28 min.
Performers & lyrics by: Shawné Michaelain Holloway and Georges Jacotey. Edited by: Jennifer Chan. Directed by: Kimmo Modig.
"I'll Be Missing You" is a song Puff Daddy recorded with Faith Evans and 112 in 1997 to pay their respects to Notorious BIG, who was shot dead the same year.
When I was 16, IBMY made me realize that songs -and later, art works- are platforms for self-expression, instead of altars for passive consuming. You can take a thing someone made and use it in your own way. I was lucky enough to get together a dream team for this piece: Jennifer Chan, Shawné Michaelain Holloway, Georges Jacotey.
Check out the whole story with FB chat screencaps etc: http://kimmomodig.com/deep4u.html

Mouth Piece, Lora Hristova, 2014, digital video, 10:00 min. With thanks to Alex Braun.
Mouth Piece centers on experiences of passivity and the sexual touch. The carnal exploration of this silent gateway oscillates between aching tenderness and cold investigation, the erotic and the revolting. Heteronormative gender roles are performed, reversed and repeated in what could be seen as a play in three acts. Echos of pornographic gestures suggest the deep and complicated relationship between violence and sex that is grappled with in explicit material as well as during private encounters.

And They Wonder Why We're Romantics. 2013-2014, Angela Washko, digital video, 4:05 min.
An attempt to understand representations of flora in film, video games, advertising and television results in an artist's quest to embody and enact their communicated feminine affect in physical space. And They Wonder Why We're Romantics combines the artist as archivist + media critic with the artist as failed performer of romanticized media-derived femininity.

Second Love, Beth Siveyer, 2014, digital video, 2:27 min.
Using an avatar for performance in a digitally realistic landscape, Second Love explores the relationship between cybersex and virtual reality.

MY HEART WILL GO ON + ON, Bobby Abate, 2010, digital video, 5:20 min.
A karaoke sketchbook animation for a conditional re-write of TITANIC'S icy classic. For this tenuous journey, the original song's melodramatic orchestration has been down-produced to syncopated simplicity before crossing an emotional bridge fashioned from a sample of MAMA by PAUL MAURIAT (1967). In this animation's iceberg-white haze of raised-ranch bliss, one might come to discover that the heart might always go on and on and on, even if it strays of course.

Shaving Cream, Faith Holland, 2014, digital video, 3:20 min.
Porn Interventions is a series of site-specific videos made for RedTube. The works invoke pornographic tropes but defy porn viewers' expectations. The videos are uploaded to RedTube using the site's own vernacular clickbait, with tags such as "solo girl," "BBW," "amateur," etc. For Shaving Cream, I sexily apply whip cream, but then shave it off.

#selfieaffirmation, Genevieve Belleveau, 2013, digital video, 4:58 min.
#selfieaffirmation is a series of six-second looping videos posted to the social media app Vine. These brief self-portraits play on the trope of self-affirmation mirror mantras that aim to develop inner love through positive manifestation. It raises the question whether the collective consciousness of the internet can help an individual manifest their highest self and deepest desires. If the selfie is posted to garner positive affirmation from a perceived audience does that have the same effect as the individual’s private affirmation of ideal selfhood?

Darling's Room [Karaoke Vape Version RAW], Jesse Darling, 2014, digital video, 5:41 min.
Soundtracked by a special collaboration with Ana Caprix, JD rewrites Drake's Marvin's Room in netspeak subtitles, vape nonchalance and vogue gestures in a meta-music video for the lounge karaoke song at the end of the night that never was.

Realistic Kissing Simulator, 2014, Jimmy Andrews and Loren Schmidt, digital video, 0:46 min.
Local multiplayer games are an exciting, broad space to explore in games, and perfect for an arcade setting. Historically these games tend to have a narrow focus on themes of power, competition, dominance, and violence. We wanted to make a playful multiplayer experience which is compelling and tactile, but which has no explicit goals or traditional hooks. With our Kissing Simulator, we also hope to explore how sex can be incorporated into games in a more meaningful way—not a power trip, not a quicktime event, not an exploitative or demeaning act, but rather as a playful, consensual act.

Crystal Dick, John Walter, 2013, digital video, 2:44 min.
Crystal Dick is the phenomenon of losing an erection during sex due to the use of crystal methamphetymine, commonly associated with sexual orgies that may include the consumption of Viagra and other drugs to help keep an erection during sex. Party and Play (P'n'P) sessions can increase risk of sexual transmission especially of HIV. Suffering from crystal dick may put the affected party in the position of being the receptive partner during sex and because of the level of drug taking in the circumstances decisions about safe sex can become compromised. A link between recreational drug use during sex, or 'chemsex', and the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV, is well established.

Cats Amore, Martha Colburn, 2002, digital video, 2:30 min.
A film revealing our animal instincts in a hot display of dancing half-human female cats and hungry-for-love dogs. Half naked/half furry cats bump and grind their hips and transform into human-like manifestations with too much make-up and sexy clothes. Meanwhile, panting, obsessed dogs look onto these scenes of seduction with drooling mouths and popping eyes. This film uses flat collage animated puppets and hand coloring of the film. Soundtrack is a french version of “I Wanna Be Your Dog” by Jacque Berrocal and friends.

D.M.S.R. Interlude, Samuel Fouracre, 2014, digital video, 5:29 min.
Billboard Liaison Interlude is an extract from a multi-channel, digital urban saga entitled D.M.S.R (Dance.Music.Sex.Romance), which investigates experiences of love and betrayal through character appropriation and the reconstruction and subsequent aestheticizing of romantic relationships. In DMSR the urban (and urbane) world is re-built using digital 3d software, with reference to cinematic and CGI conventions. The environment is empty of all people but the main players, throwing the self-involved state of romance into sharp relief.