Pocket cinema: documentaries on John Cage
I’ve dug out few documentaries about composer and artist John Cage covering his life and music, I think most people would find highly recomendable… Needless to say in what amount Cage has influenced contemporary music scene, media art and, of course, modern dance.
… and these films are John Cage: I Have Nothing to Say and I Am Saying It (1990) by Allan Miller, Peter Greenway: ‘Four American Composers (1983) – John Cage, The Making of One11 by Henning Lohner (1992), Opus 20 Modern Masterworks: John Cage by Klaus Lindemann (2006) and John Cage: In Love with Another Sound (1992) by Miroslav Sebestik.
John Cage
Body cinema: Returning Home, documentary about Anna Halprin
American postmodern dance pioneer Anna Halprin has been one of the formative persons in careers of dancers and choreographers such as Trisha Brown, Yvonne Rainer and Simone Forti.
Her approach to kinesthetic awareness is based on natural recharging through movement initiation and ritual embodiment. Therefore, I’ve picked up documentary Returning Home (2002) by Andy Abraham Wilson. In April, 2010 a second documentary on Anna Halprin titled ‘Breath Made Visible‘ was launched in US.
Photo above by Rudy Bender (c): Anna Halprin
From the Experiment in the Environment, 1962
Taken from: l’O petille
Photo bellow: Anna Halprin, video still
Interview with Howard Chaykin: Jazzy narratives and stylish colour-blindness
Howard Chaykin is my first interviewed comic book artist from this year’s edition of Funny Comic Show Festival, held in November in Zagreb. I grabbed some of his time after two days seminar on comic book labour, he led at the beginning of the festival.
Chaykin is considered among experts as one of the most innovative storytellers, influenced by jazz and politics, but always on the edgy side of controversy during the history of comic books.
Photo above: Howard Chaykin (taken from F-book)
Photo bellow: American Flagg!, First Comics (c)
Interview with Abigail Stiers and Alexander Gross: On technology, algorithms, DIY and inventing things
In May this year I had an opportunity to partake at the first regional Wearable Technology workshop at Digital Media Lab Ljudmila.org in Ljubljana (Slovenia), organized my MoTA – Museum of Transitory Art. The workshop was led by MFA intermedia students from the University of Maine (USA), Abigail Stiers and Alexander Gross.
Since, Abby and Alex were for last three months lecturers at the CIANT – International Centre for Art and New Technologies in Prague (Czech), it was really nice to talk about their own work, the perception of technology and DIY scenes in USA and Europe, and the generation gap between new media art and fine art. Oh, we talked a little bit about Arduino, too.
Photo: Abigail Stiers, taken from CIANT (c)