The Force of Beauty: The Beauty of Force | Keith Sanborn | USA | 2008 | 3:00 min.
   
Based on a series of ads in 2008 on "the Star Channel" owned by the Russian Department of Defense. The ads seek to draw parallels between stereotypical feminine daily gestures of fashionable self-imaging and stereotypical activities of male soldiers. In one ad, a woman zips up her gold highheeled boots, while a soldier ties up his black combat boots. In another, a woman puts on a necklace and a soldier puts on his dogtag. These ads are sequenced, then juxtaposed with “upskirt” footage of a famous Italian fashion model, downloaded from Youtube. By means of this juxtaposition and strategic interventions in speed and chronological orientation (backwards and forwards) two forms of gendered construction of the gaze are compared and contrasted. This work is a single channel version of part of an on-going series, called Equivalences, generally presented in the format of a site specific installation.

Keith Sanborn is a media artist, theorist, curator and translator based in New York. His work has been the subject of a number of one person shows and has been included in major survey exhibitions such as the Whitney Biennial, and festivals such as OVNI (Barcelona), Video Vortex, The Rotterdam International Film Festival, EMAF, Oberhausen.

  Hapless, Helpless & Hopeless | Robert Kennedy and Peter Dowling | 2008 | 34:00 min.
    Part of a trilogy of collaborative work, borne of an improvised relationship between sound and image, between composer and video artist, the direction of the work relies entirely on this shifting, mutable process and not on any preconceived structure of screenplay, storyboard or soundtrack. The origin is a need to form a dialogue with the norms and conventions of television production in order to understand, adapt and re-define these codes into a grammar that can subsequently be used to suggest other readings, other outcomes, other problems, than those previously prescribed within the original structures.

Peter Dowling, UK; lives in Glasgow, UK. Composer and performer; studied music/composition undergraduate in England and postgraduate in Scotland; 2007 Artist in Residence, PRIM, Montréal, CA; 2006-07 research fellow, Glasgow University, UK; 2006 residence, InterAct project at RUC, Denmark. www.steadykammer.net
Rob Kennedy, UK, lives in Glasgow, UK. Exhibitions/screenings/events: Artist in residence, PRIM, Montréal, CA 2009 - Artist in residence, Location One, NY, USA, 2008 - Backup-festival Forum, Weimar, D, 2008 - 'Happy the believers', Threhold Artspace, UK, 2008 -'Something is wrong here, something should be done about it', Transmission Gallery, UK, 2007 - Art Now, Tate Britain, UK, 2004 - 'Electric Earth', British Council, 2004 – ‘Zenomap’, Venice Biennale, Italy, 2003.
 
  Je t’aime, moi non plus | Alejandra Baltazares | 2006 | 2:03 min.
   

Using a low resolution camera I become a vouyerist during a breast surgery. This extremely self-violent act is transformed into an erotic play between surgeon and patient with the aid of music.

Alejandra Baltazares majored in Plastic and Visual Arts at the National School of Painting, Sculpture and Engraving, "La Esmeralda" in Mexico City. She mainly works with video and photography, her work is a reflection on the current violent processes women have to undergo in order to achieve the beauty ideals. Her work has been exhibited at the National Center of Arts in Mexico City and was awarded by the National Funds for Culture and Arts as an Emerging Artist. She also took part in an art residency in France.

 
  Venusia | Aline Bouvy and John Gillis | 2007 | 8:00 min
    Venusia is a vision of a post-technological future. Dark and chaotic, the work is influenced by 60s French photographer and stylist Serge Lutens, and is entirely made out of an animated collage of fashion magazines. Parts of the bodies of models are used to represent corpses and other more ambiguous lumps, envisioning the co-existence of pagan ritual and hyper-elegance, in this celebrational yet macabre video. Dealing with concepts of beauty, sex and death, the work is a mystical vision of life and dessication

Aline Bouvy (L, 1974) and John Gillis (B, 1972), both based in Brussels, Belgium, have been working as a collaborative team since 2000. Their recent exhibitions include APORIE DE LA PEUR (Etablissements d'en face projects, Brussels), UN-SCENE (Wiels - Centre of Contemporary Art, Brussels), NEW BEAT (International Project Space, Birmingham). VENUSIA, their most recent animation film was commissioned by Nav Haq for DECODER, the 3rd edition of the Biennial for video art in Mechelen, Belgium.

http://www.bouvygillis.net
 
  Versions | Oliver Laric | 2009 | 6:25 min.
   

 

Excellent video essay on the stigma of appropriation and visual remixing. Oliver Laric's pratice is characterised by the manipulation and restructuring of existing broadcast media, using YouTube, webchat programs and graphics programs as both the raw material and also method of display for his work.

Born 1981, Istanbul / Lives and works in Berlin, Germany. Oliver Laric is the co-founder of the legendary art blog vvork.com
 
  Spam The Musical: #1 Lonely Girls | Boris Eldagsen | 2008 | 4:39 min.
   


#1 Lonely Girls is based on three emails by a Russian, Polish and African girl that are looking for a boyfriend. Imagine a teenage sleepover of three competing girls vying for our attention. The deleted scene shows a broken woman, a puppet on a string, moved by anonymous male hands, forcing her to sing a warped version of a rock song.

Boris Eldagsen’s work revolves around redemption – from the metaphysical to the erotic. He produces photography, videos and installations: poetic and haunting comments on the human condition that stem from a process that is both conceptual and sensual. Eldagsen lives and works in Berlin and Melbourne.
 
  Corina at the studio | Giovanni Cervantes | 2008 | 1:15min.
   


This video is just an introduction to Corina Lawrence's personality, Corina is a girl who talks with words and fire. She is one of the girls I feel close to. I know her from a fashion show by a friend who is a designer. At that time I understood that Corina and a camera are a fatal combination, She is made for a chaos. I think we are so different but we always did had a good time together.Giovanni Cervantes (b. 1983, Mexico City) lives and works in New York and Mexico City.

Graduated from National School of Visual Arts, UNAM (2004) and Active School of Photography (2002). In 2002 he obtained an honorary entry in the 10th National Biennal of Photography organized by the National Council for Culture and Art of Mexico. His work has been published in several magazines in the field of art and fashion in México, USA, Australia, France, Spain and UK. He has exhibited his work in México an the United States and is represented by FIFI Projects Gallery in New York.
 
  Una frase de Kerouac | Marco Casado | 2008 | 4:00 min.
   

Una frase de Kerouac –Is an allegory of a love relationship that rests on a reflection about futility. The footage was recuperated and digitalized from old VHS tapes.

Marco Casado (México, 1970) Studied the BA in Communications in Mexico, and the MA in Hypermedia in London UK. He has taken courses in film direction, photography and literature. In 1995 started working with video and sound. The majority of his work is characterized for the convergence of narrative and abstraction. He has participated in diverse collective exhibitions and video festivals.
 
  Papal Broken-Dance | Marie Losier | 2008 | 6:00 min.
    Music video Papal Breakdance by PTV3-Genesis P-Orridge. With Genesis Breyer P-Orridge and many friends.
A campy music video in the style of a scopitone from the early 1960s, with the wonderful cast of 10 boys in sexy red singlets and girls in red tutus, all dancing with joy with Genesis P-Orridge in a boxing ring…all the ingredients for a slap stick boxing match in music.

Marie Losier, born in France in 1972, is a filmmaker and curator working in New York City. She has shown her films and videos at museums, galleries, biennials and festivals. In 2009, she was invited to The Centre George Pompidou in Paris to present a work in progress on her first feature film-a portrait of on the musical genius Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, and her band Psychic TV. She was included in the 2006 Whitney Biennial and has shown her work at MOMA (NY). In 2007, she was also invited to The Berlin Film Festival to present a film she made in collaboration with Canadian Filmmaker Guy Maddin, Manuelle Labor. Marie Losier works as a film curator at FIAF/The French Institute Alliance Francaise
 
  Loose Control | Monica Panzarino and Nadine Sobel | 2008 | 4:52 min.
    In Loose Control, the artists intend to perform the complicated choreography from Missy Elliot’s music video for her hit single, “Lose Control”. The resulting interpretation is simplified to expose the conventional aesthetic of American music videos, and the repetition and monotony that often exists in them. The artists poke fun at themselves, their peers, and their culture of instant gratification.

Monica Panzarino lives and works in New York City, primarily in single-channel video and sound. Her work is often created using real-time processing and is left unedited. She is influenced by popular culture and aims to challenge its conventions and aesthetic. She received a BFA from the Institute for Electronic Arts at Alfred University in 2002, and her videos have been screened at both national and international venues including Art in General’s 5th Annual Video Marathon in New York City, the European Media Art Festival in Osnabrück, Germany, and the WRO Media Art Biennale in Wroclaw, Poland.

Nadine Sobel currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She received her BFA in 2006 from New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University. Her work examines comfort, empathy, and what we have the ability to change. She explores this using ceramics, video, performance, found objects, and mixed media in a sculptural, installation environment.