SWOON

DISINTEGRATION NATION

Mash-up-videopoem by Swoon...truth and fiction in the US...TV and violence...reality and fear...

Poem by Howie Good
Concept, editing, music & voice: Swoon
Footage: 'Kansas City Confidential' (Phil Karlson, 1952 - public domain)
CCTV from the security tapes of the Kelly Thomas beating (Youtube 'Voice of OC.org)

Fact.

Kelly Thomas was born April 5, 1974 to Ron Thomas, a former Orange County Sheriff's deputy, and Cathy Thomas. Thomas, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia, was a "fixture" among Fullerton's homeless population. The death of Thomas has sparked debate about systemic reforms in treatment of the mentally ill.

Fiction.

Four robbers hold up an armored truck, getting away with over a million dollars in cash. Joe Rolfe, a down-on-his-luck flower delivery truck driver is accused of being involved and is roughly interrogated by local police.

Fact.

Kelly Thomas was a homeless man with schizophrenia who lived on the streets of Fullerton, California, before he was severely beaten by members of the Fullerton Police Department on July 5, 2011. After paramedics treated the officers first for minor injuries, Thomas was taken to St. Jude Medical Center before being transferred to the UC Irvine Medical Center, where he was comatose on arrival and not expected to recover. He never regained consciousness, and died on July 10, 2011.

Fiction.

Released due to lack of evidence, Joe, following the clues to a Mexican resort, decides to look for the men who set him up both to clear his name and to exact revenge. What he doesn’t know is that the heist involves a retired policeman who is also intent on revenge.

Fact.

Security footage of Kelly Thomas police beatings to be found on the internet.

Kansas City Confidential is a 1952 film noir crime film directed by Phil Karlson and starring John Payne. The plot was inspiration for Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs. The film is to be found (public domain) on the internet.

Fiction.

Disintegration Nation (a poem by Howie Good)

Everywhere it's gray and drizzly
like an ex-con's faded tattoos

or the emptiness of a Sunday evening
when the next day meant school.

Some doors can't be opened;
others click close behind us.

The heart silently screams.

A true story,
but with some words missing.


The ghosts of the murdered,
whose habitual condition is rage,
gather up bayonets and guns.

You travel throughout the land,
weeping in every capital.

Fact.

Disintegration Nation is a poem by Howie Good, from the collection 'Dreaming in Red' (Right Hand Pointing Press, 2011) collected especially for the benefit of the Crisis Center (Birmingham Alabama) The Crisis Center is a non-profit agency in Birmingham, Alabama offering suicide prevention, services to victims of sexual assault, day treatment for the indigent mentally ill, and other services.

Howie Good's poems slip under your skin like parasites, the ones that your high school science teacher said might be good for you These are dark poems with a bright inner-core. Good, perhaps our best contemporary noir-minimalist poet, is back with a vengeance. Here, soothsayers, wild birds, the sun, and yes, even assassins with a sense of humor, offer antidotes to the darkness that surrounds us.

(http://sites.google.com/site/rhplanding/howie-good-dreaming-in-red)

DRIFT

Film by Swoon based on the poem "For two NATO soldiers who drowned in an attempt to recover supplies from a river in the province of Badghis, Western Afghanistan, November, 2009" written and read by Paul Perry

Words & voice: Paul Perry (paulperry.ie/)
Concept, add. camera, editing & music: Swoon
Thanks : Beachfront B-roll (beachfrontprod.blogspot.be/)
Cullen McHale (youtube.com/user/CullenMcHale)

For two NATO soldiers who drowned in an attempt to recover supplies from a river in the province of Badghis, Western Afghanistan, November, 2009.
(a poem by Paul Perry)

two boys lie
head down
in water

turning
like the hands
of a dial

they make up
the body
of a cold clock

their winter numbers
frozen
no alarm-bell

rings out
no shock is captured
in the atmosphere

nor is it known
how suddenly
they fell

into the water’s gasp
or how quickly
they succumbed

to the icy
verisimilitude
their pale still

faces drawn
towards the bottom
their eyes starless

and threadbare
emerging
from the corner

of one mouth
a delicate bead of air
from the other

nothing –

at dawn
I fill
their pockets

then rinse
their hands
with light

Drift raises the question of the necessity of military actions anywhere. A bleak description of a sad accident juxtaposed with images of what boys of their age could be doing at the same time.

More about Swoon:

website: http://www.swoon-bildos.be/

[2nd MULTIMEDIA SHOWCASE]
© Park  2013

ROCH FOROWICZ

Detection II, 2012

The “Detection” project consists in registering the emission of heat produced by the humans bodies and by the architecture. Thermovision technology permits detection and imaging of changes in heat radiation emitted by physical bodies.
Through precise scanning of changes in body temperature we can effectively register physiological correlates accompanying emotional states which might result from religious elation, illness, nervousness, fear or sexual arousal.
“Detection” reflects the issue of potential infiltration of further levels of our private lives.
Project in its final form would become a 3 channels video projection displayed simultaneously on a plain surface in the gallery room. Each projection channel would display two opposing frames presenting communication centres – architecture and moving silhouettes of people. The displayed material would be registered by mean of the thermovision technology described above, which permits for detecting and imaging changes in heat radiation. Thanks to its properties, the thermovision camera used during project implementation would permit exact registration of the heat emitted by objects within the frame. This would result in detection of the actual anomalies that make an individual or a group of people act at a given moment in a manner that is different than usual or different from others’ behaviour.

The soundtrack was composed by Hubert Napiórski, on the basis of recordings made at the locations where video material was registered and on “Solfeggio frequencies” used so as to provide subliminal stimulation of the audience.

Watch the video here: http://www.environment.pl/detection2.html

More about Roch Forowicz:

website:http://www.environment.pl/

About Hubert Napiórski: 

http://www.astipalearecords.pl.tl

[2nd MULTIMEDIA SHOWCASE]
© Park  2013

RALPH KLEWITZ

WZ33_Mont5, 2012

Linguistics terms, underlined or crossed-out, are rhythmically combined with colour planes. Whilst the video plays, the triads and the terms randomly change; the components fade in/out, merge, blink, succeed and appear/disappear.

The audio track is a composition of various sine waves stretched in echo rooms. These emerge and dissolve independently, fuse into each other and some of them are superimposed.

More about Ralph Klewitz:

Contact: http://about.me/ralphklewitz

[2nd MULTIMEDIA SHOWCASE]
© Park  2013

PAUL BECK

A Thousand Pound Bomb



More about Paul Beck:
wbsite: http://www.paulbeckproductions.com/

[2nd MULTIMEDIA SHOWCASE]
© Park  2013

MARCANTONIO LUNARDI

TRILOGY OF DECADENCE  1 - Laboratoire Italie, 2011

A voice in control, an image in black and white. An aseptic, scientific environment, similar to the object on the foreground.
The main characters in this work by Marcantonio Lunardi are three small worms which fight in order to avoid falling down a vial placed below them.
However, they are not alone, as there is also the strong, charismatic voice of a politician who has been omnipresent on the parliamentary life in Italy for the past twenty years: Silvio Berlusconi.
The artist has chosen not to show his face. His voice, his discourse is all that remains. The delay between what is heard and what is seen creates a short circuit which helps us in understanding the meaning of what the politician is saying; the animal, thus, become a metaphor for the Italian people.
"Laboratoire Italie" is the strong image of a Country that struggles against an economic but mostly moral crisis where art seems to be the only way to assert disagreement.

TRILOGY OF DECADENCE 2 - Suspension, 2012

"Suspension" express the author’s mood squeezed between the social condition and the political situation around him.
This work is based on a waiting condition: the Italian citizens expect long since that something changes.
Today each home, each family has one or, many time, more TV. But TV, since the late ’80, became a sounding-board of a culture full of superficiality, degrade, destruction of each ethic form.
At the beginning the voice of the leader is clear but quickly becomes distorted, chaotic, incomprehensible and changes in a continuous background noise that accompanies the daily life of all Italian families. The meaning of his words becomes unimportant because citizens feel his speech like a disharmonic interference with their lives.
Each protagonist observes the viewer with an attitude of expectation and an underlying question: “Will anything change?”
But change seems impossible because TV get the upper hand. The final epiphany of the leader dominates the viewer, transforming him in a player of the drama on the screen.

TRILOGY OF DECADENCE 3 - Last 21 days, 2012

In twenty-one days, Italy has seen change its political system. Silvio Berlusconi, after 17 years of government, is forced to resign by international economy.
There are days when the national media overwhelmed the citizens of numbers, graphs and languages unknown to most. But the people have the perception that the set of data unintelligible, radically affect on their daily lives, on their freedom of movement.
The actors of this story lose their shape and are replaced by the spectrum curves of the respective voices. The graphs thus generated are similar to those of marketplace whose laws are apparently different from the biological laws, but they really are derived from human impulses such as fear or elation.
The cash of a small shop in the suburbs becomes the simulacrum of an economy that does not exist anymore while the money disappears in the slow performance of a stock index.

translation: Giulia Negrello

 

 Default

Default is a work of art on the disillusionment of a system which has reached a turning point. A man, alone, sits among the ruins of an abandoned factory in front of a phone. His hand holds the receiver and brings the handset to his ear. A series of answering machines, whose metallic tones, like a filter between the citizens and their Country, direct him in a vital suspension made only with waitings. His request for being heard is mediated with a series of numbers, recorded voices and impersonal sentences which bring him in a compulsive carousel of information and pauses. Suspended in this non-place, where time expands and the collapse of society seems impending, a man can only wait for an answer which will never arrive. Mistaking a key, a timetable or a sentence means starting afresh. In the loop of the pre-recorded answers the nature of a Country is subtended, which is not able any more to speak to its citizens, more and more faraway, inadequate, absent. The key to read this work lies in the static nature of the picture, which is based on the symbolic elements introduced by the author. Under the ecclesiastic vaults of a factory of the early XIX Century, a liturgy takes place. The phone from the Sixties, emblem of the economic boom and the table, covered in white cloth to symbolise a sacred banquet, are the ritual props of this celebration. The phone call becomes a metaphysic event, like a prayer devoted to a faceless and nameless entity whose answered cannot be always trusted. From the point of view of the citizens, what the Countries usually call a default, becomes the communication gap in which the inability to comply with the terms of the social contract is resolved. 

 

More about Marcantonio Lunardi:
website: http://www.marcantonio.eu/en/

[2nd MULTIMEDIA SHOWCASE]
© Park  2013

LEO MORRISSEY

zz project 

This project was an action that took place in order to remove the image of a swastika from a sidewalk that had been placed there when the sidewalk had been installed and the concrete was still wet. I found this image in the sidewalk while walking in my neighborhood. It was hard to determine how long the image had been there but by locating numerous dated mason stamps on sidewalks in the neighborhood and taking into account the similarity between these other sidewalks and the concrete at the location of the swastika, I would estimate it had been there well over 30 years.

Continuing related collaborations: The action was documented by a filmmaker and sound artist that I am collaborating with and there are several other projects currently being worked on related to this action.

This is a short film documenting zz project that took place on 5-1-2011.

 

 

 

 

 

 [2nd MULTIMEDIA SHOWCASE]
© Park  2013

LEO MORRISSEY & TOHM JUDSON

 Paloma, 2011





Stationary movement, 2011



More about Leo Morrissey and Tohm Judson:
website: www.judson-morrissey.com

[2nd MULTIMEDIA SHOWCASE]
© Park  2013

KEVIN LOGAN

A dull-witted army, 2011



More about Kevin Logan:
webiste: www.kevinlogan.co.uk
Blog: http://theearoftheduck.wordpress.com/

[2nd MULTIMEDIA SHOWCASE]
© Park  2013

FRANCESCA FINI

WITH AN HELMET

WITH AN HELMET is a performance and videoart project conceived as a work-in-progress. The original idea comes from a reflection on the state in which the country is. We are prey to an hopeless and soporific resignation. Our dull look accompanies the degenerative process that poisons the political world and civil society. The crisis and its "cure" are killing us. The surreal world of technicians is grotesquely lost in numbers, light years away from our lives, unable to include in the calculations the coefficient of flesh and blood, the suffering of real people.

Can we continue to believe in the "national values" when all around us these values ​​appear systematically ignored by the same representatives of the institutions? Is it possible to wave the flag when every day before our eyes, the country sinks into the hole left by yet another corrupt treasurer, by the latest political mummified in a chair pretending to be alive on talk shows, by yet another maneuver to "rescue " us that seems made ​​for dissolving the latest material and spiritual resources of this country? 

Can Art regain his place in society? Can make a difference through his intrinsically non-violent instruments and its language that speaks directly to the unconscious rejecting the banality of contingency and inviting reflection on a more extensive and comprehensive level?

WITH AN HELMET - wag the flag (2012)

written, directed and performed by Francesca Fini

This is the first video of the project WITH AN HELMET

Therapeutic electrodes, set to high, determine strong and uncontrollable muscle contractions that make the flag dancing on my skin to the tune of the national anthem. What is left in a diseased country is just the mechanical and grotesque rhetoric of the national anthem and the respect demanded but devoid of any genuine feeling.

This videoperformance is one of the episodes of a larger project, open and traveling, that will grow with guerrilla performing throughout 2013. 

WITH AN HELMET - fair and lost (2012)

written, directed and performed by Francesca Fini

This is the second video of the cycle "With an Helmet".

In this second video I'm wearing the electrodes on both arms and I try to wear makeup. Involuntary contractions caused by electrical impulse are very strong and the makeup spreads all over my face, uncontrollably, turning me into a monster. In the background we hear the chorus of Nabucodonosor by Giuseppe Verdi, which has a very strong symbolic value in the history of my country, bringing along the ghosts of old struggles for freedom that no one remembers anymore. "My country, fair and lost". Even crying is involuntary, caused by the black pencil and mascara entering the eyes because I cannot calibrate the movement of the hand. A mechanic cry that, through those close details of my eyes, it is automatically transmitted to those who watch the video, in a sort of empathic conditioned connection, unconscious and therefore completely useless.

WITH AN HELMET - live performance (2012)

written, directed and performed by Francesca Fini

The protagonists of the performance are offered naked and vulnerable to the audience.

They wear working helmets as an ironic transposition of the legendary helmet of Scipio that, in this case, relates the rhetoric of the Roman glorious past, of which there remains not even the dust, with the unheard sufferings of the true heroes of everyday life in this country. They are the ones who live "with an helmet" and sometimes die with it, in factories and dockyards, while what is left of their stories is hastily hidden under the carpet of this diseased country. On their arms I place electrodes that cause strong involuntary muscle contractions forcing the workers to a grotesque dance that makes the flag moving on its own, to the beat of the national anthem. What is left in a dying country is just the mechanical and grotesque rhetoric of the national anthem and the respect demanded but devoid of any genuine feeling. A collective weariness and resignation that turns into hysteria when the puppeteers also discover their wires and the simple act of drinking a glass of wine becomes a fight against a greater, dark and invincible power.

More about Francesca Fini 

With an Helmet : http://withanhelmet.blogspot.it/

website: www.fransecafini.com

[2nd MULTIMEDIA SHOWCASE]

© Park  2013

2nd Multimedia Showcase > date

From 12th to 28th February

Featuring works of:

FRANCESCA FINI
KEVIN LOGAN
LEO MORRISSEY
MARCANTONIO LUNARDI
PAUL BECK
RALPH KLEWITZ
ROCH FOROWICZ
SWOON

Get connected!