Metamorphosis: Robert Lansden at Cris Worley Fine Arts in Dallas

My article on Robert Lansden's "Metamorphosis" has been published by Glasstire. Click the link below for the article:

Glasstire

Robert Lansden draws small, repetitive marks that link into larger pictures that look like strange fabrics, blooms, and topographical data. Lansden bases each picture on an algorithm, and the marks are typically triangles or rectangles that the artist makes with pen, gouache, or watercolor. The rules of his algorithm make for an operation that is not wholly deterministic. That is to say, the algorithm allows for variance in the output—variance that results in the illusion of gashes, folds, peaks, and vales. (Read more.)

"The Mock Destruction of the World" Podcast

Thanks to Rob and Chad of The Clubhouse podcast for this interview at Dallas Video Festival. I had just walked out of a theater, was adjusting to the light, when I got signaled over for a talk. No time for preparation, but candor is always best. Even candor with a stammer. Taped on 10/18, my interview starts at the 1hr, 22min. mark. 

The Clubhouse, Episode 6-13
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/episode-6-13-dallas-videofest/id674600956?i=354826958&mt=2

"The Mock Destruction of the World" played as part of The Texas Show at Dallas Video Festival. The Texas show is a juried event, and was the closing number on October 18, at Angelika Film Center in Dallas. You can find program info here: Prekindle 

Always a pleasure and a challenge to try to describe the movie. Here is what I put down for press materials"

Pictorially, "The Mock Destruction of the World" plays out like a dark and peculiar dream. I would also add, a funny dream. It is the story of an unusual toymaker, who shows his hospitality for the processes of malfunction and decay through the creation of nightmarish toys. What the toymaker says about his work is actually generous and affirmative. He believes decay is a creative process.

I've included a brief excerpt from one of the toy maker's speeches and some pictures. 

"I think the initial discomfort someone feels when they see someone disfigured . . . birth defect or severe burns . . . is they see or get a sense of the end of humanity. I mean, just a glimpse of that final image, probably not a whole thought. But that speck of doubt, it reveals just how fragile flesh and bone really is, how fragile our sense of beauty.

We see, in a sense, our own destruction. As a kindness, we might think, 'There but for the grace of ...Whatever... go I.' A way of sympathy for the afflicted that is also a term of hope that our own good luck continues.

We like to think our lives will go on and on. Hospitality for decay or blisters or some catastrophe of bone is pretty rare. We make an enemy of deformity and decay . . . an enemy of death. And so, faced with such distortions, we feel an urge to combat them."

Occiput: Lucia Simek at the Reading Room

My article on Lucia Simek's two channel video "Occiput" has been published by Glasstire.

The sense of inevitability in highway driving that Simek evokes through editing is occasionally cracked open by surprises. Click the link below for full article.

Link: 

Occiput: Lucia Simek at The Reading Room

Proyector Videoart Festival

I'm excited that the Tropic Pictures film "Other Wounds" will play at Proyector International Videoart Festival in Madrid, Spain on September 20. The screening will take place outdoors at Cinema Usera. I'm grateful to Sabrina Durling-Jones de Miranda for the artful translation into Spanish and to the organizers for selecting this film. (More info on the 9/20 program in the link below.)

Link:
Cinema Usera

A Quick Look at a Long Drive

I put 230 miles on my truck yesterday, out gathering footage for the forthcoming Tropic Pictures movie "One of the Rough" -- a poetic road movie. See some of the footage in this link.

Link: Quick Look: One of The Rough

Sex and Death in Mexico: The Films of Carlos Reygadas

My article about Mexican filmmaker
Carlos Reygadas has been published by Glasstire.

Reygadas' images are, by turns, beautiful, hallucinogenic, brutal, erotic, and subversively funny.

Find the full article here:
Sex and Death in Mexico 

An Errand of Hip and Chin

I'm proud to show a  quick look at the forthcoming Tropic Pictures film "An Errand of Hip and Chin."
It's an art film. It's a Hula Hoop movie. It's . . . not easily categorized.  But I bet you find it interesting!

Here is the link:
"Errand of Hip and Chin"

And here are a few film stills.