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SCOTT ARFORD
Scott Arford has long been one of the leading figures of new media arts in the San Francisco Bay Area. His works include sound and visual performances, multichannel sound and video installations, and low-frequency spatial-acoustic explorations. He was awarded an Honorable Mention in the 2005 Prix Ars Electronica. In 1995 Arford founded 7hz, a warehouse/performance space, and until 2002, It was one of San Francisco’s leading venues for noise and experimental music, featuring numerous international artists including Francisco Lopez, Blechdom from Blectum, Zbigniew Karkowski, Mayuko Hino, and John Duncan.

http://www.7hz.org/

T/R
T/R, an ever-changing acronym, is the solo noise project of Joshua Churchill, a local cross-disciplinary artist whose experimental sound performances, installations, and recordings fuse live processing and manipulation of found/altered electronics and field recordings with light and space to create an immersive sonic environment.

http://joshuachurchill.com/tr.html

SKULLCASTER
Skullcaster presents remote-composed synaptic squall for pulse generator and the bent little circuits of a talking teacher children’s language toy. A.K.A. Shaun from local brutalsoundfx damnbient electro-sludge combo Earwicker.

http://www.myspace.com/skullcaster

“The government must resign! Kick them out!” In December 2001, Argentina was in a state of siege—thousands of people filled the streets banging on pots and pans, protesting decades of corrupt leadership that resulted in devastating economic ruin. Director Fernando Solanas opens with this astounding scene and, in ten incisive chapters, shows how the Argentine government systematically betrayed its people through disastrous policies, saddling the country with “never-ending debt.”    

Interviews with everyday people reveal the human cost extreme poverty, chronic unemployment, starvation and lost life savings.Solanas coins the term “mafiocracy” to describe the people from politicians and magistrates to businessmen and union leaders who took kickbacks and made corrupt deals with astonishing impunity. For years, valuable state-owned utilities and industries were privatized and sold for a pittance, a process many Latin Americans call neoliberalism. Startling editing, compelling footage, pointed chapter headings “A Chronicle of Treason,” “The Republic Deteriorates” and the intense on-camera presence of Solanas himself convey his fury towards those responsible for Argentina’s social disaster, including corporations, the IMF and even a complicit, relentlessly upbeat media. Though Memoria Del Saqueo focuses on the systematic despoiling of Argentina, it also offers a measure of hope: with solidarity, protests, and resistance, citizens, can hold their government accountable for its failures. 2004, Argentina, Spanish with English subtitles, 120min.

This collection of videos somehow came together by itself rather than being a result of a pre-defined concept. They all somehow happen to explore certain heavily romantic moods and subjects. Nostagia, melancholy, romance, mystery and death. Their tempo is slow, but hypnotizing. The artists’ choice of subject is not restricted to local themes, they choose reference points understandable for audience anywhere in the world. After all, moving images are an international language.

Short film Mary (2000) by Daniel Pitin is inspired by real events from 1914, when souffragette Mary Richardson, cut up painting Venus with the Mirror by Velasquez at the London National Gallery. Fake silent movie, grothesque and surreal parody, is accompanied with score of Griffith’s Intolerance.

Michal Pechoucek is already an established video artist with a unique vision. His captivating movies made often of slowly moving images bear a trademark of returning back to bleak seventies in socialist Czechslovakia. Pram Room (2004) explores mysteries of vacant rooms typical for the concrete ghettos in all formerly socialist countries accompanied an by industrial soundtrack. Some of those mysteries may be very creepy.

Black Angel (2005) by Radim Labuda (that’s me) is an ambient remix of a randomly shot urban scene. Deserted scenery of an underground station becomes witness of a mysterious apparition of a fragile otherworldly creature with an accordion.

Mark Ther’s beautifully shot filmic narrative Small Blonde with his Red Suitcase (2005) is generously colourful nostalgic reverie, supposedly based on a story from a randomly found scrap of paper. Pathos of the romantic soundtrack rolls in waves across the daydreaming of two women in a rich baroque room, pondering on a mystery of a small blonde boy with a red suitcase.

Fake documentary about Marilyn Monroe by Sylva Malova titled Shakespearean Actress (2004) balances between reality and fiction in search of small private fragments of the big story. These are acted out by fictional characters. The illusion is almost seamless, you can only guess by small details if the footge is new or original. Malova’s fiction delivers yet another misleading view into our mass media drenched world. I’m very curious, if her reconstruction can be convincing even for american audience.

I could say come and grab a czech beer, but beer is not what this collection should be enjoyed with. I recon it goes best with red wine.

Radim Labuda