UbuWebRECENT ADDITONS
John Cage Centenary (2012) In preparation for the hundred-year anniversary of John Cage's birth, we've quietly been beefing up Cage's audio and films. In particular, we've just added a number of lectures, interviews, and Q&A's with Cage, recorded between 1969 and 1991. There are also several of papers written on John Cage in UbuWeb Papers, as well as a variety of works of his in UbuWeb's Historical section. In fact, there's so much John Cage on Ubu's site that we can't keep up with it.
Stanya Kahn "It's Cool, I'm Good" (2010) UbuWeb is pleased to present one of three films from Kahn's first body of solo video works, which continues Kahn's longstanding exploration of the blurred lines between fiction and document, performance and being, humor and distress, the scripted and the improvised. With a 22-track surround-sound audio score and over 20 locations featured, It's Cool, I'm Good creates a visceral cinematic space in which place and action, landscape and soundscape operate literally and metaphorically, signaling a tenuous relationship between experiences of trauma and moments of agency. Paralleling the ways in which jokes simultaneously compress and expand meaning, here living and and naming collapse into each other, in a narrative that unpacks more along psycho-emotional lines, creating many small arcs in place of one grand one. You can view the films of Stanya Kahn and Harry Dodge here.
Ten Women Who Use Film A special project curated by Jennifer Higgie for UbuWeb featuring dozens of works by women filmmakers of varying ages and nationalities. Included are Juliette Blightman, Jennifer Bornstein, Bonnie Camplin, Spartacus Chetwynd, Beatrice Gibson, Aleksandra Mir, Frances Stark, Imogen Stidworthy, Annika Ström and Fiona Tan.
UbuWeb: Visual Poetry UbuWeb began in 1996 as a site for visual & concrete poetry and this new section expands upon and deepens Ubu's original vision. Beginning with Ian Hamilton Finlay's seminal magazine "Poor.Old.Tired.Horse" (1962-68) and continuing to the present (Anatol Knotek's 2010 "Rotated Alphabet"), the collection spans a half-century and encompasses hundreds of artists. This first installment, consisting of nearly 100 items will continue to be updated by curator & editor derek beaulieu.
Ryan Trecartin - Any Ever (2009-2010) Ryan Trecartin’s Any Ever comprises seven autonomous but interrelated videos. The work is structured as a diptych, with Trill-ogy Comp (three movies) as one side and Re’Search Wait’S (four movies) as the other. Taken together, these videos embark on poetic, formal, and structural elaborations of new forms of technology, language, narrative, identity, and humanity, portraying an extra-dimensional world that channels the existential dramas of our own. The individual videos fit together, block, break, orbit, or attract one another in infinite shifting combinations. Any Ever’s master narrative is subjectively chosen by the viewer, read from the shifting topography of its seven parts. Included is the Trill-ogy Comp, consisting of the three movies K-CoreaINC.K (section a); Sibling Topics (section a); and P.opular S.ky (section ish). Re’Search Wait’S comprises four movies: Ready, The Re’Search, Roamie View : History Enhancement, and Temp Stop.
Die Reihe No. 1, edited by Karhlheinz Stockhausen & Herbert Eimert (1955) English edition Oswald de Andrade Revista de Antropofagia (1928-29) Samuel Beckett Krapp's Last Tape (1996) with Harold Pinter Bill Brand Four Films (1972-82) Kathy Acker Pussy (1994) [MP3] Marina Corrêa Concrete Poetry as an International Movement viewed by Augusto de Campos: An Interview (2008) Pina Bausch Café Müller (1978); Die Klage der Kaiserin aka The Complaint of an Empress (1990) William Forsythe One Flat Thing, reproduced (2007); Evidentia (2002) Ann Van den Broek Co(te)lette (2007) Gilles Jobin A+B=X (1997) Janet Cardiff A Large Slow River (2001); The Missing Voice (1999) [MP3] Susan Sontag reads from Debriefing (1979) [MP3] Quentin Crisp An Evening with Quentin Crisp (1979) [MP3] Michael Nyman Man with a Movie Camera (2002) [MP3] Roc Jiménez de Cisneros "Continuum, Expanded" (on György Ligeti), 2011 [PDF, 310kb] Jean Dubuffet Coucou Bazar Turin 1978 [MP3] Alejandra Salinas and Aeron Bergman Videoworks (2005-2010) Feliz Molina Nail Hearts Clip Epistolary Fantasy Blog from 2009-2010 [PDF, 6.7mb] Ben Vida Casette releases (2010-11) [MP3] Louis Aragon, André Breton, and Philippe Soupault Littérature (1919-1924) Morton Feldman Interviewed in San Francisco (1986) [MP3] Alain Badiou Mathematics / Aesthetics / Arts (2011) [MP3] John Cage Variations V (Film version, 1965) Andy Kaufman Stormy Justice (with Judge Tony Clifton) (undated) Luke Fowler Three Minute Wonders (2009) Simon Strong Reads selections from 'Rape vs. Murder' by #579 Michael Schumacher Soundworks based on Remixes of Remko Scha's Machine Guitars (2011) Todd Haynes Dottie Gets Spanked (1993) Bonnie Camplin Heygate for Life (2011) Cory Arcangel Urbandale (2001) Harry Partch The Outsider: The Story of Harry Partch (2002) Emile de Antonio Underground (documentary of The Weather Underground, 1976) Steve Reich A New Musical Language (documentary, 1987) David Lynch, Peter Greenaway, Wim Wenders Lumière and Company (documentary, 1995) William Wegman Fay (documentary, 2009) Sankai Juku Butoh Dance at Battersea Power Station (late 1980s) Norman Mclaren The Eye Hears, the Ear Sees (documentary, 1970) Juan Downey J.S. Bach (1970) Unnatural Science Damian Hirst, Janine Antoni and others (documentary, 2002-03) Various Artists A Chance Operation: The John Cage Tribute (1993) [MP3] Cameron Stallones (SUN ARAW) Film works (2006-11) Vito Acconci Three audio works: Interiors. Buildings. Parks. (2004) [MP3] Marie Menken Notebook (1963); Lights (1964-66) Gott schütze Österreich Sound Art Complilation (1974) [MP3] Hans G. Helms Fa:m' Ahniesgwow (1960) [MP3] Alvin Curran Natural History (1983) [MP3] Roman Oplaka 1965/1-∞ (1992) [MP3] Glen McKay Altered States: 1966-1999 Marshall McLuhan Out of Orbit: The Life and Times of Marshall McLuhan (1999) Ivor Cutler Cutler's Last Stand (2004) Salvador Dalí A Soft Self Portrait (1967) Rosa Von Praunheim City of Lost Souls (1983); Anita - Dances of Vice (1987); Aids-Trilogie: Positiv - Die Antwort schwuler Männer in New York auf AIDS AKA Positive (1990) Gutai Japanese Performance Art, 1956-1970 Tracey Emin Selected Shorts (1995-1998) Cao Fei Whose Utopia (2006) Robert Fairthorne & Brian Salt Equation: X + X = O (1936) Mark Rappaport The TV Spin-Off (1980); Exterior Night (1993) Carolee Schneemann Viet Flakes (1965) Stanya Kahn It's Cool, I'm Good (2010) Marlon Riggs Tongues Untied (1990) Superflex Burning Car (2008) Jennifer Reeves Monsters in the Closet (1993); Chronic (1996) Harry Smith Film No. 3: Interwoven (1947-49) Richard Serra Hands Tied (1968); Frame (1969) Walter Ruttmann Melodie der Welt aka Melody of the World (1929) Lillian Schwartz UFO's (1971) Sanne Sannes Dirty Girl (1967) Wim Schippers Stemmen AKA Voices (1972) David Rimmer Real Italian Pizza (1971) Terence McKenna Two Lectures on Marshall McLuhan: Riding Range with Marshall McLuhan (1995); Shamans Among the Machines (1999) [MP3] Marshall McLuhan Audio Archive (1960-99) [MP3] Gus Van Sant Allen Ginsberg - Ballad of the Skeletons (1997) Albie Thoms Marinetti (1969) Aldo Tambellini Black TV (1968) Harry Partch The Outsider: The Story of Harry Partch (documentary, 2002) James Joyce Finnegans Wake (1939) [MP3] Survival Research Laboratories Ten Years of Robotic Mayhem (1988) Samuel Beckett Murphy (1938) [MP3] Tuxedomoon The Super-8 Years With Tuxedomoon The Responsive Eye MoMA Catalogue of Op Art (1965) Owen Land (aka George Landow) Films (1965-1970) William S. Burroughs reads Junky (1953) [MP3] Henry Miller An Interview with Henry Miller (1964); Life As I See It (1956/1961); Henry Miller Recalls and Reflects (1957) [MP3] Caetano Veloso O Cinema Falado (1986) Julia Loktev Vito Acconci / Acconci Studio: Interiors. Buildings. Parks. (2004) Haroldo de Campos Readings from Galaxias [MP3] Douglas Kahn Reagan Speaks for Himself (1980) [MP3] Terence McKenna The Last Interview (1999) [MP3] Amiri Baraka Sound Poems (1964-present) [MP3] Hugo Ball, ed. Cabaret Voltaire [journal, 1916] Francis Picabia ed. Cannibale (journal, 1920) Tristan Tzara, ed. Le Coeur à barbe (journal, 1922) Raoul Hausmann, John Heartfield, and George Grosz, eds. Der Dada (journal, 1919-1920) Jim Shedden Michael Snow Up Close (documentary, 1996) Marcel Duchamp, et al. The Deadman No. 2 [journal, 1917, New York] Karel Dodal Hra bublinek (Fantasie erotique [The Play of Bubbles (Fantasie erotique)]; Myšlenka hledající světlo (Idea in the Search of Light) (1938) Eric Duvivier La femme 100 têtes (1967) Jacques Demy Les Horizons Mort (1951) Alfred Stieglitz, ed. 291 [journal, 1915-1916, New York] Francis Picabia, ed. 391 [journal, 1917-1924] Keith Sanborn Films (1999-2008) Karlheinz Stockhausen Michaels Reise um die Erde [Karlheinz Stockhausen - Cologne 2008 performance] Pier Paolo Pasolini Seeking Locations in Palestine for the Film "The Gospel According to Matthew" (1965, English hard-subtitles) Omar Amiralay A Plate of Sardines (1997) Nagy Shaker and Paolo Isaja Summer 70 (1970-71) Ryszard Wasko Chodnik aka Walkway (1973) Karlheinz Stockhausen Tuning In (documentary, 1981) Bruce Weber Broken Noses (1987); Beauty Brothers (1987)Ulrike Meinhof Bambule (film, 1970) and radio play (1969) [MP3] Bertolt Brecht Radio Plays (recorded 1963-2007) [MP3] Michel Foucault Lectures (1978-83) [MP3] Jorge Luis Borges The Craft of Verse: The Norton Lectures (1967-68) [MP3] Samuel Vriezen Soundworks and Scores [MP3] Samuel Beckett MacGowran Speaking Beckett (1966) [MP3] John Cage Speaking of Music (1987) [MP3] Ulrike Meinhof Bambule (radioplay, 1969) [MP3] Robert Wilson Stations (1982); The Black Rider, with Tom Waits & William S. Burroughs (1992) Spartacus Chetwynd The Walk to Dover (2007); The Call of the Wild (2007); Hermitos Children (2009) Robert Wilson Stations (1982); The Black Rider (with William S. Burroughs & Tom Waits (1992) De Stijl Magazine Vols 1-3 (1917-1920) William Kentridge Repeat from the Beginning (2008); Certain doubts of William Kentridge (documentary, 2000) Jan Kučera Burleska (1932) Charles Bernstein & Susan Bee Disfrutelos (1977) Darren Wershler FREE as in speech and beer: open source, peer-to-peer and the economics of the online revolution (2002); CommonSpace: Beyond Virtual Community (with Mark Surman, 2002) Matt Connors Correspondences (2011)Bruce LaBruce Super 8 1/2 (1993)
Jacques Derrida Circonfession (2004) [MP3] Helen Lee Sally's Beauty Spot (1990) David Lamelas Films (1969 - 1972) Spalding Gray Terrors Of Pleasure (1988); It's a Slippery Slope (1997) [MP3] Václav Havel The Memorandum (1966) [MP3] Maurice Lemaître L'Amour réinventé (1979); Des scènes d'amour très réalistes avec force détails et gros plans (1978); L'Amour, qu'est-ce? (1976-89); Chantal D., Star (1968) Malcolm Le Grice Little Dog For Roger (1967); Threshold (1972) Sharon Lockhart Exit (2008) Jirí Lehovec Divotvorné oko (Thaumaturgic Eye) (1939)Electronic Music Resources UbuWeb is pleased to announce the opening of a massive new section, devoted to technical resources concerning the practice of electronic and experimental sound. This is a place for information about actual methods and techniques, with little writing on aesthetics alone. It takes the form of technical/historical articles, interviews, books, small-press magazines and patents. Regrettably, most previous treatments of electronic music have tended to shy away from the details of the medium itself. In hopes of rendering the subject palatable they have removed much of its flavor, for it is precisely within the box, teeming with currents, where the true beauty resides - the other side of the panel. This first installment offers nearly 300 items, including books, periodicals, articles, interviews, media & patents.
The Films of Joseph Cornell (1936-1960) The films of the reclusive artist Joseph Cornell are as unique as his famous box constructions. Though rarely exhibited during his lifetime, these mysterious works nonetheless have had a deep and lasting influence on the world of avant-garde filmmaking . His entire body of film numbers some thirty-odd works, encompassing the incomplete and the fragmentary. It can be said that Cornell made two kinds of films in two distinct periods of activity: collage films, made by recombining found materials, and directed films,where he worked with cinematographers (including Stan Brakhage, Rudy Burckhardt and Larry Jordan) to document his fantasy/experience of wandering in New York. -Bradley Eros and Jeanne Liotta. Included here are 12 of Cornell's films.
History of Electronic / Electroacoustic Music [1937-2001] This massive selection is from a 62 CD set called "The History of Electroacoustic Music" that was floating around as a torrent, reputedly curated by a Brazilian student. It's sketchy. The torrent vanished and the collection has long been unavailable. It's a clearly flawed selection: there's few women and almost no one working outside of the Western tradition (where are the Japanese? Chinese? etc.). However, as an effort, it's admirable and contains a ton of great stuff. Take it with a grain of salt, or perhaps use it as a provocation to curate a more intelligent, inclusive, and comprehensive selection.
UbuWeb at 15 Years: An Overview Ubu's founder Kenneth Goldsmith writes: "It’s amazing to me that UbuWeb, after fifteen years, is still going. Run with no money and put together pretty much without permission, Ubu has succeeded by breaking all the rules, by going about things the wrong way. UbuWeb can be construed as the Robin Hood of the avant-garde, but instead of taking from one and giving to the other, we feel that in the end, we’re giving to all. UbuWeb is as much about the legal and social ramifications of its self-created distribution and archiving system as it is about the content hosted on the site. In a sense, the content takes care of itself; but keeping it up there has proved to be a trickier proposition." Read the entire piece at The Poetry Foundation.
The Films of Kamran Shirdel UbuWeb is pleased to present four of Shirdel's most renowned socio-political documentaries, films that courageously and frankly revealed the darker side of Iran's economic boom, analyzing the effects of a society of flush with oil money. These films were steeped in a deep social consciousness reminiscent of the best of the Italian Neo-realist tradition, the cinema that had influenced him deeply during his studies in Italy. Shirdel's furious documentaries and cinematic language were a bone of contention both under the Shah and following his exile, because they spoke up for the underprivileged and, in doing so, exposed and criticized the corruption of the mechanism of power. Because of the severe censorship, nearly all his films were banned and confiscated, and in the end he was expelled from The Ministry and put on the blacklist. Seven years after it was made (and censored), his The Epic of the Gorgani Village Boy (The Night It Rained!), after receiving the GRAN PRIX at The Third Tehran International Film Festival (1974), was immediately banned again and remained so (like his Nedamatgah (Women's Prison, 1965), Qaleh (Women's Quarter, 1966), Tehran Is the Capital of Iran (1966), and others) until after the revolution. Presented in collaboration with Bidoun: Art & Culture from the Middle East.
The Avant Garde Project Comes to UbuWeb UbuWeb is pleased to welcome the legendary Avant Garde Project. The Avant Garde Project is a series of recordings of 20th-century classical, experimental, and electroacoustic music digitized from LPs whose music has in most cases never been released on CD, and so is effectively inaccessible to the vast majority of music listeners today. The first installment is up, with new material as well as older, AGP archives to be added in the near future. [MP3 and FLAC]
Jean Cocteau - The Complete Recordings A set of historic recordings, compiled by Cocteau's sound producer Fred Kiriloff. Inlcudes Parade, Jean Cocteau's Theatre, Les Voleurs d'Enfants (The Abductors), La Toison d'Or (The Golden Fleece), La Machine Infernale (The Infernal Mechanism), La Voix Humaine (The Human Voice), Presentation of the Group of Six, Le Bel Indifférent (The Callous Beau), Les Parents Terribles, Reception Speech at the Académie Française. Plus previously unissued items, such as: L'Arbre de No‘l (The Christmas Tree), Crucifixion, Nuit de No‘l (Christmas Night) and the Preface to Les Mariés de la Tour Eiffel (The Eiffel Tower Wedding) and many others. Cocteau's collaborators included Francis Poulenc, Eric Satie, Marianne Oswald, Suzy Solidor, Edith Piaf, Jean Marais, Jeanne Moreau, Diaghilev, Picasso and more. [MP3]
Brian De Palma Dionysus (1970) Paul McCarthy Rocky (1976); Family Tyranny/Cultural Soup (1987) Marc'O Closed Vision (1954) Peter Gidal Structural Film Anthology (1976) Eugen Gomringer The Book of Hours and Constellations (1968) E.F. Burian Máj (1936) Ana Mendieta Selected Film Works (1972-1981) E.F. Burian Dionysus (1970) Andy Warhol (1982) in Conversation with Peter Gidal (1982) [PDF, 20kb] Trinh T. Minh-ha Reassemblage (1983) Jon Moritsugu Hippy Porn (1981) László Moholy-Nagy Impressionen vom alten Marseiller Hafen (Vieux Port) (1929) Norman McLaren Keep Your Mouth Shut (1944); Lines: Vertical (1960) Phil Niblock Two Arthur Russell Films (1985) Negativland The Mashin' of the Christ (2004) Tony Oursler Son of Oil (1982); Spinout (1983) Olivier Assayas Sans titre AKA Man Yuk: A Portrait of Maggie Cheung (1997) Eduardo Clark O Mundo de Lygia Clark AKA The World of Lygia Clark (1973) William S. Burroughs + Brion Gysin + P.Orridge Cold Spring Tape (1989) Karlheinz Stockhausen TRANS und so weiter (TRANS and so on) (1974) Guy Bourdin The Films of Guy Bourdin (1960s-80s) Aïda Ruilova Compilaton (1999-2002) Jane & Louise Wilson Star City / Proton, Unity, Energy, Blizzard (2000) Stephen Dwoskin Moment (1969) Rirkrit Tiravanija JG Reads (Reel 1) (2008), with John Giorno Barbara Rubin Christmas on Earth (1963) Hito Steyerl November (2004); Lovely Andrea (2007) Stuart Sherman Thirteenth Spectacle (Time) (1980) Art & Language with Red Krayola Nine Gross and Conspicuous Errors (1976) Stephen Prina Vinyl II (2000) Carolee Schneemann Viet Flakes (1965) Karlheinz Stockhausen TRANS und so weiter (TRANS and so on) (1974) Martha Rosler Domination and the Everyday (1978) Tony Oursler The Weak Bullet (1980) Sam Taylor-Wood The Last Century (2005) Arthur Omar Congo (1972) Hermann Nitsch Das 6-Tage-Spiel Des Orgien Mysterien Theaters: 5-Tag (2000) [MP3] Laura Mulvey & Peter Wollen Amy! (1980) Gordon Matta-Clark Food (1972) Willard Maas Image in the Snow (1952) Joseph Beuys Celtic (1970);
Willoughby Sharp Videoviews Joseph Beuys (1973) J. G. Ballard The Atrocity Exhibition (JG Ballard and the Motorcar) [1970]; The Unmade films of JG Ballard [1990] Rodney Graham Halcyon Sleep (1994); How I Became a Ramblin' Man (1997); The Phonokinetoscope (2001) Thomas Hirschhorn Integrated Videos 1995-1999 Amy Granat Landscape Film (2009) Phil Collins The louder you scream, the faster we go (2005) General Idea Shut the fuck up [1979] Morgan Fisher () [2003] Ian Kerkhof Ten Monologues from the Lives of the Serial Killers (1994) Vito Acconci Association Area (1971); Claim Excerpts (1971); My Word (1973); Turn-On (1974) Parviz Kimiavi Ya Zamene Ahu (Oh Guardian of Deer!) (1970) Jayce Salloum & Elia Suleiman Introduction to the End of an Argument (1990) Behnam Attar Moving Stills (1978) Salvador Dalí Television Advertisements, Spots, & Appearances (1960s & 70s) Various Artists Minutes LTM V:XV - An Homage to Burroughs (1987) Lovely Little Records 6 x 7" records (1980) John Hughes One Way Street: Fragments for Walter Benjamin (1993) Tibor Szemző Tractatus (1995) William Wegman Deodorant (1972) Rosalind Krauss Grids (1979) [PDF, 3.5mb] René Char French language documentary (1967) Nam June Paik Paik’s funeral service in Seoul Korea, March 18, 2006 Pina Bausch Die Klage der Kaiserin aka The Complaint of an Empress (1990) Christian Marclay Soundtrack to Guitar Drag (2000), Footsteps (1989), Record Without A Cover (1985) [MP3] Seth Price Policer (1998) [MP3] Michael Nyman Untitled (1982) [MP3] Walter Steding Walter Steding (1980) [MP3] Juan Hidalgo Rrose Sélavy (1977) [MP3] Gilius van Bergeijk Volume One [MP3] Jandl, Heidsieck, Chopin, Cobbing and others Poesia Sonora (1975) [MP3] Nat Roe Adult Contemporary Redux (2010) [MP3]Leslie Asako Gladsjø Pranks TV! (1988), with Joe Coleman, Karen Finley, etc.Philip Glass & Robert Wilson Einstein on the Beach: The Changing Image of Opera (documentary, 1985)La Monte Young The Well-Tuned Piano in The Magenta Lights (87 V 10 6:43:00 PM – 87 V 10 01:07:45 AM NYC) (1987)Pierre Boulez Schoenberg is Dead (1952) [PDF, 1.5mb]Jean-Noël Delamare DON CHERRY (1973)Steve Reich Ensemble Modern Plays Steve Reich in TokyoAndy Warhol Superstar: The Life and Times of Andy Warhol (1990)Mathieu Copeland Mental Map for an Exhibition (2010)Nan Goldin In My Life (1997)Alvar Aalto Technology and Nature (1996)Marina Rosenfeld Teenage Lontano (2008)Don Cherry Multikulti (1994)Jean Cocteau, Marcel Duchamp, Hans Richter 8 x 8: A Chess Sonata in 8 Movements (1957) General Idea Pilot (1977) Samuel Beckett Was Wo (What Where) (1985) George Condo Condo Painting (2000) Robert Filliou Teaching and Learning as Performing Arts Part II (1979) Llorenç Barber #2 Cuaderno de Yokohoma (Graphical Scores) [PDF, 9mb] Giovanni Fontana Sound Poems [MP3] James Lee Byars The World Question Center (1969) Obscure No. 1 - Gavin Bryars The Sinking of the Titanic / Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me (1975) [MP3] Morton Feldman Give My Regards to Eighth Street (1968) [MP3] Duplex Planet Duplex Planet Hour [MP3] Steven Jesse Bernstein Prison (1992) [MP3] Big City Orchestra Beatlerape (1993) [MP3] The Mekons and Kathy Acker Pussy, King Of The Pirates (1996) [MP3] Tape Poems Vito Acconci, Dan Graham, John Giorno, Anne Waldman, Bernadette Mayer and more (1969) [MP3] Frank Zappa Edgard Varése: The Idol of My Youth (1971) Chris Burden The TV Commercials (1973-1977) Ian Breakwell Continuous Diary (1984) Ant Farm The Eternal Frame (1976) Pablo Picasso Visite à Picasso (documentary, 1950) Weegee The Real Weegee (documentary, 1993) Beatrice Wood Mama of Dada (1993) Allan Kaprow How To Make A Happening LP (1968) [MP3] Peter Greenaway Vertical Features Remake (1978) Hiroshi Teshigahara Sculpture Mouvante - Jean Tinguely (1981) Joe Coleman R.I.P., Rest in Pieces: A Portrait of Joe Coleman (1997) M.A. Numminen Sings Ludwig Wittgenstein (1983 / 1989) & Heinrich Heine (2006) [MP3] José Lino Grünewald 49 Concrete Poems (1956-1975) Brian De Palma The Responsive Eye, Documentary on Op Art painting (1966) John Supko "This Window Makes Me Feel" (text by Robert Fitterman) (2007) [MP3] Harald Szeemann Formen der Farbe (1969) Marcel Broodthaers Un Voyage en Mer du Nord (1982, book) Steven Parrino The No Texts: Collected Writings (1979-2003) Sherrie Levine The Art at the Edge: Sherrie Levine (1988) Hans-Peter Feldmann 152 Bilder von Feldmann (1972) & 6 Bilder von Feldmann (1994) John Armleder John Armleder (1988) Hanne Darboven Schreibzeit 75/80 (1980) Niele Toroni 11 documents photographiques reunis par Niele Toroni (1975) Daniel Buren Répertoire (1998) Chris Burden B-Car (1977) Lawrence Weiner Above Beyond Below (1986) & Lawrence Weiner: Sculpture (1985) Bruce Nauman L.A. Air (1970) John Baldessari Four Events and Reaactions (1975) & Brutus Killed Caesar (1990) David Shrigley Late Night Tales Presents Shrigley Forced to Speak With Others (2006) [MP3] Greil Marcus, ed. Lipstick Traces (1989) [MP3] Jonas Mekas The Untitled Warhol Project (1987) [MP3] Markus Lüpertz Untitled Tape (1987) [MP3] Friederike Mayröcker Kolner Lesung (1988) [MP3] Terry Allen Juarez (1975) [MP3] Carl Andre 3 Vector Model (1973) [MP3] Eugen Gomringer Konstellationen (1973) [MP3] Phil Niblock The Magic Sun (1966); Portrait of and music by Sun Ra Edward Bland The Cry of Jazz (1959); Music by Sun Ra The Wooster Group South Banks Show (documentary) (1987) Pierre Hébert Population Explosion (1968); Music by Ornette Coleman Stephen Vitiello Two Mashups: Willow Smith meets Bruce Nauman & Miley Cyrus meets Steve Reich (2010-2011) [MP3] David Hockney A Bigger Splash (documentary) (1974) Hans Namuth Pollock Painting (1951) Samuel Beckett Breath (2001), dir. Damien Hirst Bob Colacello Reads from Holy Terror: Andy Warhol Close Up (1990) [MP3] Samuel Beckett Oh Les Beaux Jours (1968) [MP3] Scratch Orchestra London 1969 & The Great Learning (1971) [MP3] Sound Sculpture A collection of essays by artists surveying the techniques; applications; and future directions of sound sculpture. (1975) Otto Nebel Unfeig (1923-1924, rec. 1973) [MP3] Antonello Branca What's Happening? (Documentary with Ginsberg, Rauschenberg, Warhol, etc., 1960s) Eugenio Miccini Concerto di Poesia (1983) [MP3] Arthur Pétronio Verbophonie (1979) [MP3] John Giorno Pornographic Poem & Raspberry (1967) John Giorno Restless: An Interview by Daniel Nester (2002) Craig Dworkin & Kenneth Goldsmith Introductory Essays from Against Expression: An Anthology of Conceptual Writing (2011) Valerie Solanas S.C.U.M. Manifesto (1968) Historical Documents & Manifestos of Dada, Surrealisms & Futurisms (1912-1928) Octavian Esanu Dictionary of Moscow Conceptualism (1999/2010) Raphael Rubinstein When I Found Out You Wrote the Book I Read: Appropriation and Ethics (2010) [PDF] John Baldessari Radio Web MACBA Interview (2010) Henry Flynt Art or Brend? (1968) Henry Flynt Communism 2010, pt. 1 (2010) [PDF] Henry Flynt On Pandit Pran Nath (1918-1996) [PDF] Claire Fontaine Ready-Made Artist and Human Strike: A few Clarifications [PDF] Ornette Coleman Interviewed by Jacques Derrida (2007) [PDF]The Films of Peggy Ahwesh (1985-2009) Over the last twenty years, Peggy Ahwesh has produced one of the most heterogeneous bodies of work in the field of experimental film and video. A true bricoleur, her tools include narrative and documentary styles, improvised performance and scripted dialogue, synch-sound film, found footage, digital animation, and crude Pixelvision video. Using this range of approaches, she has extended the project initiated by 1960s and '70s American avant-garde film, and has augmented that tradition with an investigation of cultural identity and the role of the subject. Presented here are: From Romance to Ritual (1985), The Deadman (1989), Martina's Playhouse (1989), Nocturne (1998), She Puppet (2001), The Third Body (2007), Beirut Outtakes (2007), Bethlehem (2009). This UbuWeb resource is presented in partnership with Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI).
IRIS-TIME UNLIMITED (1962-1970) An occasional ephemeral two-page newspaper produced by the legendary experimental Iris Clert Gallery in Paris, featuring many of the cutting-edge artists of the day including Ad Reinhardt, Pol Bury, Lucio Fontana, CPLY and many others. Clert ran an almost anarchistic free space in Saint Germain des Prés, which featured early conceptual shows (Yves Klein's empty gallery and Arman's rubbish-strewn space) as well as being an early venue for performance art. Curated for UbuWeb by Ulysse Geissler.
Harry Bertoia - The Sonambient Discography [MP3] In the early 1970's Harry Bertoia made hundreds of sound sculptures. These sculptures represent Harry Bertoia's formation of Sonambient. Sonambient was Bertoia's term to describe the spatial and tonal environment created by these sound sculptures. By stretching, bending, striking, and in other ways moving the materials, he made them respond to wind and/or to touch to create different sounds or tones, which he then taught himself to 'play' and recorded a series of pieces. He also performed with the pieces in a number of concerts. The completed Sonambient also consists of gongs and suspended sonic-bars. Within his renovated barn, Harry made more than 360 magnetic-tape recordings.
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UbuWeb Top Ten for March 2011
Selected by John Zorn
Sound (In Alphabetical Order)
1. Karel Appel - Poeme Barbare
[Appel on UbuWeb Sound]
2. Antonin Artaud - Pour Finir Avec Le Jugement Du Dieu
3. Guy Debord - Situationisten - Tracks 1 - 6
4. Forough Farrokhzhad - Fathe Bagh
[Farrokhzhad on UbuWeb Sound]
5. Howard Finster - Some Of These Days
The Sound Of The Night Howard Finster Got Saved
6. Richard Foreman - Loops From Now That Communism Is Dead My Life Feels Empty
7. Maurice Lemaître - Improvisation Lettriste Pour Danser
[Maurice Lemaître on UbuWeb Sound]
8. Richard Maxfield - Bacchanale (1963)
[Maxfield on UbuWeb Sound]
9. Harry Smith - Interview 1965 Part One And Two
10. Tristan Tzara - L'amiral Cherche Une Maison A Louer
[Tzara on UbuWeb Sound]
Film (In Alphabetical Order)
1. Harry Smith - Heaven And Earth Magic
2. Joseph Cornell - Rose Hobart
3. Jack Smith - Flaming Creatures
4. Hermann Nitsch - Maria Conception Aktion
5. Kenneth Anger - Lucifer Rising
6. Yayoi Kusama - Kusama's Self Obliteration
7. Forough Farrokzhad - The House Is Black
8. Kiki Smith - Jewel
9. Guy Debord - Critique de la séparation
10. John Cage And Raasaan Roland Kirk - Sound??
John Zorn is an American avant-garde composer, arranger, record producer, saxophonist and multi-instrumentalist.
Ubu Moves To New Servers We're proud to announce our new partnership with CENTRO in Mexico City, who is now hosting Ubu's media files. We're in the process of switching everything over to the new servers. While you'll (finally) begin to see new media content, there will be some bumps and many inevitable 404s. Bear with us: it might take a while to get it all figured out. If you find something that's not working, please let us know and we'll fix it.
James Hoff - Topten (2008) In almost every issue since December 1997, the contemporary art monthly Artforum has asked a member of the art world to compile a list of his or her top ten favorite recent exhibitions (as well as concerts, television programs, books, and events) in a list that displays the writer's taste as well as his or her wit. With this hefty artist's book, James Hoff has reprinted the text of every column alongside the abstract designs of blacked-out photographs that once depicted the writers' picks. Inlcudes Kate Bush, David Byrne, Dave Eggers, Dave Hickey, Charlie Kaufman, Mike Kelley, Barbara Kruger, Matmos, Glenn O'Brien, Amy Sillman, Laurie Simmons, John Waters and dozens more. Also related, is the archive of UbuWeb's monthly Top Ten picks.
Listening to Films, a New UbuWeb Podcast A selection of ten films from the UbuWeb archive that are actually worth listening to (as well as seeing). Included here are excerpts from the following films: Vito Acconci's Theme Song (1973); René Clair's Entr'acte (1924) with a soundtrack by Erik Satie; Harry Dodge and Stanya Kahn's Can't Swallow It, Can't Spit It Out (2006); Jordan Wolfson's Con Leche (2009); People Like Us's Story Without End (2005); Hermann Nitsch's 6 Tage Spiel - Das Orgien Mysterien Theater. Day 3: Day of Dionysus (1998); Sun Ra A Joyful Noise (1980); Richard Serra's Boomerang (1974); David Van Tieghem's Ear to the Ground (1979); Karl Holmqvist's I'm With You In Rockland (2005). Download the MP3 podcast directly here. You can subscribe to our podcast here. UbuWeb's podcasts are produced by The Poetry Foundation.
"No money, no democracy - that's why UbuWeb is so good" An interview with UbuWeb founder Kenneth Goldsmith at Radio Web MACBA. Poet, university professor and amateur archivist, Kenneth Goldsmith is the founder and main editor of Ubuweb, the Internet's largest archive of artistic avant-garde material. An underground project that has no institutional backing or budget of any kind, Ubuweb is an influential repository that is as exhaustive as it is personal, reflecting the preferences, quirks and obsessions of its creator. Son[i]a talks to Kenneth Goldsmith about the origins, ideas and operation of Ubuweb.
Eight Flims by Alexander Kluge (1960-1977) Writer, theorist, filmmaker, and television pioneer, Alexander Kluge is one of the intellectual giants of post-war Germany. Although he directed nearly thirty films, Kluge's uncompromising politics and formal experimentation ensured that most of these critically celebrated works never reached a mass audience. Despite this groundbreaking work, it is his career as a fiction writer that has contributed most to his European renown. Kluge has treated media as a fluid field, one in which disciplinary boundaries are as questionable as the distinctions between high and low, individual and society, history and the present: all are texts up for renegotiation. Films inlcuded here are: Lehrer im Wandel (Teachers in Transformation) (1963); Frau Blackburn, geb. 5 Jan. 1872, wird gefilmt (Frau Blackburn, Born 5 Jan. 1872, Is Filmed) (1963); Porträet einer Bewäehrung (Portrait of One Who Proved His Mettle) (1964); Feuerlöscher E. A. Winterstein (Fireman E. A. Winterstein) (1968); Besitzbürgerin, Jahrgang 1908 (A Woman from the Property-owning Middle Class, Born 1908) (1972); Gelegenheitsarbeit einer Sklavin. Zur realistischen Methode, Frankfurt (1975); Die Menschen, die das Staufer-Austellung vorbereiten (Die Menschen, die das Stauferjahr vorbereiten (1977); and Brutalität in Stein (Die Ewigkeit von gestern; Brutality in Stone; Yesterday Goes on for Ever) (1960.
Films of the Vienna Actionists (1957-1995) UbuWeb presents 35 films by the Vienna Actionists. The term Viennese Actionism describes a short and violent movement in 20th century art that can be regarded as part of the many independent efforts of the 1960s to develop "action art" (Fluxus, Happening, Performance, Body Art, etc.). Its main participants were Günter Brus, Otto Mühl, Hermann Nitsch and Rudolf Schwarzkogler. As "actionists", they were active between 1960 and 1971. Most have continued their artistic work independently from the early 1970s onwards. Included here are films by Otto Mühl, Kurt Kren, Hermann Nitsch & Otmar Bauer. You can also listen to the soundworks & interviews by Otto Mühl & Hermann Nitsch in UbuWeb's sound section.
A Pause Many of you may have noticed that since the hack, we haven't been adding much new material. That's not due to a lack of new stuff -- we've got tons in the pipeline -- rather it's because, after the attack, we're up and moving to new and more secure servers. We should be settled within a few weeks and will begin posting fresh films & audio. Keep an eye here or on our Twitter feed for the latest. Until then, enjoy the vast trove that already exists here of approximately 7500 artists & several terabytes of media to cram your hard drives full with.
If We Had To Ask For Permission, We Wouldn't Exist: An Open Letter After the hacking of UbuWeb, a heated discussion broke out on the most prominent experimental film listserv, Frameworks, discussing the tactics of Ubu. There was clearly a lot of misunderstanding regarding what UbuWeb is about. Ubu's founder, Kenneth Goldsmith, was compelled has penned a response here, which can also be seen as an update to our FAQ.
UbuWeb Hacked UbuWeb's media servers were hacked in mid-October. Most of the damage has been repaired. However you might find a few links that are down. We're working on correcting it all. Ubu will be moving our media files to a new server over the next few months so hopefully the sporadic outages that we've been experiencing lately will be remedied. Thank you for all your supportive wishes during this difficult period.
John Berger - Ways of Seeing (1972) Ways of Seeing was a BBC television series consisting of visual essays that raise questions about hidden ideologies in visual images. The serie gave rise to a later book of the same name written by John Berger. It would be easy to say that Ways of Seeing is hopelessly dated -- made in 1972, the films come across as a puritan-groovy mix of Monty Python, the Open University and the Look Around You spoofs. And yet what's so remarkable about this series is that it seems more apposite, subversive and thought-provoking than ever. The Britain we glimpse in the films, already alienated by spooky BBC Radiophonic Workshop music by Delia Derbyshire, is alienated even more by the passing of time. Alienated usefully, in the Brechtian sense; we look at a capitalist society which is like, and unlike, our own. In four parts: Episode 1: Psychological Aspects, Episode 2: Women in Art, Episode 3: Collectors and Collecting and Episode 4: Commercial Art. With an essay by Nick Curie (aka Momus).
The Poetics - Soundworks (1977-1993) Historical recordings of Mike Kelley, Jim Shaw, Tony Oursler and a cast of thousands from their Cal Arts days. Concurrent with the LAFMS and punk scenes in LA, this material is, in the words of artist Jutta Koether, "garbage versions of electronic music (linked to Kelley's involvement with DAM), noise, prototrance, instrumentals, both aggressive and sad stints with a singer-songwriter style, music as a dysfunctional standup routine (half lounge, half rock). In other words, punk rock deconstructed. The result is hours and hours of a monster being created and released." Featured here are the collections Remixes of Recordings (1977-1983) and The Poetics reunion album from 1997, Critical Inquiry In Green. This release marks the beginning of a new partnership with CENTRO in Mexico City, who will begin to host the entire UbuWeb archive from this time on.
UbuWeb Podcast: The Sounds of Silence Craig Dworkin's paper Unheard Music [PDF] is a list of conceptual music that highlights a bunch of music that plays with the idea of silence: How is silent music made? Is silence really silent? How many varieties of silence are there? In this podcast, we actualize Dworkin's theories and discover that silence is anything but silent and neutral; rather, it's varietious and rich. Artists featured on this podcast include John Cage, Matmos, Steve Reich, Mieko Shiomi and many others. Download the MP3 podcast directly here. You can subscribe to our podcast here. UbuWeb's podcasts are produced by The Poetry Foundation.
The Art of Performance: A Critical Anthology (1984) Edited by Gregory Battcock and Robert Nickas, an essential long out-of-print collection of essays centered around the historical conditions that led to the rise of performance art in the 1970s and 80s. The book is divided into three parts: 1. Historical Introduction, 2. Theory and Criticism, and 3. The Artists and includes essays by Roselee Goldberg, Ken Freidman, Michael Kirby, David Shapiro, David Bourdon, Vito Acconci, Chris Burden, Les Levine and Laurie Anderson and many others. This /ubu Edition was edited by Lucia della Paolera.
The Videos of Aki Sasamoto Aki Sasamoto is a New York-based, Japanese artist, who works in performance, sculpture, dance, and whatever more medium that takes to get her ideas across. Her works have been shown both in performing art and visual art venues in New York and abroad. Besides her own works, she has collaborated with artists in visual arts, music, and dance, in which she plays multiple roles of dancer, sculptor, or director. Presented here are four videos: Everything Chidambaran (2005), remembering/modifying/developing (2007), Practicing to Leave - Conduct - Judge Mentals (2007), Secrets of My Mother's Child (2009) and Strange Attractors (2010). This feature is proudly presented with UbuWeb's newest partner, The Kitchen.
Lincoln Center Film Playlist If you missed the incredible Lincoln Center show Ubu did with WFMU and bands Growing and Blues Control, here's all the films that were shown: Fred Astaire Bojangles of Harlem from Swing Time, Fatboy Slim Weapon of Choice, Yvonne Rainer Hand Movie, The Lumière Brothers Danse Serpentine, William Forsythe Solo, People Like Us Skew Gardens, Ladislaw Starewicz The Insect's Christmas, Stan VanDerBeek Achooo Mr. Kerrooschev, Kota Ezawa The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Paul Sharits Dots 1 & 2, Lillian Schwartz Pixillation, Wim Delvoye Sybille II, Richard Kern My Nightmare, Cheryl Donegan Refuses, Kurt Kren 7/64: Leda und der Schwan, Skip Arnold Punch, Paul McCarthy WGG Test, Hamlet Hovsepian Yawning, JODI My Desktop OS X 10.4.7, Alejandra Salinas & Aeron Bergman Let 100 Flowers Bloom, Eduardo Kac Letter and Cory Arcangel Clouds.
The Great Ardor of Dada Ubu's been showing films based on the work of Kurt Schwitters every weekend as part of the 27 Senses Show at Chisenhale Gallery in London. Obviously, most of you can't be there. But here's a list of all the films that are being shown so you can watch 'em at home: Marcel Broodthaers Un Voyage en Mer du Nord (A Voyage on the North Sea), William S. Burroughs and Antony Balch The Cut-Ups, Robert Fitterman Sprawl, Hollis Frampton Zorns Lemma, Helmut Herbst Deutschland Dada, Allen Ginsberg Face to Face with Jeremy Isaacs: An Interview with Allen Ginsberg, Abbie Hoffman Abbie Hoffman Makes Gefilte Fish, Karl Holmqvist I'm With You In Rockland, Kay Rosen Sisyphus, Henri Chopin at The Garage, 02/03/95, Besancon, France, Bob Cobbing Performing Concrete Poetry, Richard Serra Boomerang, Zubi Zuva X Suite Europe Live, Man Ray Emak Bakia, Eduardo Kac Letter, Peter Rose Siren and Sara Sackner Concrete.
UbuWeb Partners with The Sound of Eye UbuWeb is pleased to partner with The Sound of Eye, a great film blog. They've been posting tons of experimental film and video, much of which has been -- and will continue to be -- mirrored on Ubu. In particular, SOE's commentary on the films is extraordinary. We're thrilled!
Music of the Spanish Avant-Garde UbuWeb is pleased to present this compreshensive overview of the Spanish musical avant-garde, which has scarcely been documented until now. This feature focuses on twelve composers and performers active from the 1950s to the present: Esplendor Geométrico, Llorenç Barber, Francisco López, José Manuel Berenguer, Josep Maria Mestres Quadreny, Eduardo Polonio, José Iges, Vagina Dentata Organ, Victor Nubla, Pelayo Fernández Arrizabalaga, Juan Hidalgo and Carles Santos. Each segment is split into two parts: musical selections and interviews. The series is produced and edited by Roc Jiménez de Cisneros for Radio Web MACBA and is presented in collaboration with MACBA.
Nine Films by Leslie Thornton. Leslie Thornton's short films combine original and archival footage, video and still images, and digital media in their investigation of the collision (and collusion) of these modes. The play that she exercises between abstract and referential imagery allows her to address moral and ethical issues as they pertain to events and as they relate to the role of art and media. By editing together controversial or transgressive material, she creates discursive cinematic spaces in which to consider humanity's inexplicable behaviors, as do fellow avant-garde filmmakers Chris Marker and Chantal Akerman. The result is a unique and strangely beautiful syntax, one that poses its critique at the same time that it mesmerizes, confounds and provokes. Thornton writes, "I see myself as writing with media, and I position the viewer as an active reader, not a consumer. The goal is not a product, but shared thought." Presented in collaboration with EAI.
The Many Sides of Gertrude Stein While UbuWeb hosts a trove of Gertrude Stein reading her own works, we also host a number of interpretations of her works. This podcast guides you through these treasures, buried deep in the bowels of Ubu's vaults. Included here are: "The Making of Americans" read (and sung) in its entirety by Gregory Laynor; Marian Seldes reading "The Making of Americans" and "Lectures in America" (1963); Judson Church's production of Al Carmines' 'In Circles' (1967); and eight interpretations of Stein's seminal texts from Geography and Plays by various sound & radio artists. Download the MP3 podcast directly here. You can subscribe to our podcast here. UbuWeb's podcasts are produced by The Poetry Foundation.
Takashi Murakami Superflat Monogram (for Louis Vuitton) (2003); Inochi (2004) Mircea Cantor Deeparture (2005)Matthias Müller Film & Video (1989-2004); Sleepy Haven (1993) Peter Greenaway Writing on Water (205) Christopher Maclaine The End (1970) Jonas Dahlberg Weightless Space (2004); Invisible Cities (2004-05) Malcolm Le Grice After Lumiere - L'Arroseur Arrose (1974) Piero Golia Killer Shrimps (2004) Raúl Ruiz Le film à venir (1997) William S. Burroughs & Brion Gysin Destroy All Rational Thought (documentary, 1992) Throbbing Gristle Interview (2005) Harry Smith Early Abstractions (1941-1957); Heaven and Earth Magic (1950-1960); Late Superimpositions (1964) Aleister Crowley The Wickedest Man in the World (documentary, 2001) Ikue Mori Bhima Swarga (2007) Elke Groen Nightstill (2007) Dariusz Kowalski Elements (2006) Takashi Ito Devil's Circuit (1998) Ernst Reijseger Do You Still? (2008), dir. Jacques Goldstein Ruth Lingford What She Wants (1994) Marina Abramoviç Dangerous Games (2008) Brion Gysin Dreammachine Plans (1958) [MP3] Tom Phillips - Irma Obscure No. 9 (1978) [MP3] Pierre Garnier Poésie Phonétique sur Spatialisme (1963-66) [MP3] Seiichi Niikuni Poésie Phonétique sur Spatialisme (1966-70) [MP3] Ilse Garnier Poésie Phonétique sur Spatialisme (1962-64) [MP3] Glenn Branca/John Giorno 'Who You Staring At?' (1982) [MP3] Christina Kubisch Sechs Spiegel (1973) [MP3] John Gibson Visitations (1973) [MP3] David Moss Terrain (1980) [MP3] Philip Corner Word-Voices (1962-88) [MP3] Ivor Cutler Looking for Truth with a Pin (documentary, 2005) John Cage / Jan Steele Obscure No. 5 (1976) [MP3] Joseph Beuys Jeder Mensch ein Künstler (1978) [MP3] Negativland No Other Possibility (1989) Bernard Heidsieck ‘Lettre à Brion Gysin’ (1974) [MP3] Eija-Liisa Ahtila Six Videos (1993-2002) Christian Marclay Record Player (documentary / performance, 2000) R. Murray Schafer RA (1983) [MP3] Phil Niblock The Movement of People Working (1973-74) Various Artists One Record Anthology of Artists' Aural Work and Music (undated) [MP3] Alain Escalle Le Conte Du Monde Flottant (The Tale of the Floating World) (2001) Tellus Tellus Tools 2xLP (2001) [MP3] Gerhard Ertl & Sabine Hiebler Definitely Sanctus (1992) Sun Ra The Berkeley Lectures (1971) [MP3] Sun Ra Reads his poetry on WXPN, Philadelphia (1976) [MP3] Ken Okiishi (Goodbye to) Manhattan (2010) Ulrike Ottinger Freak Orlando (1981) Lionel Soukaz Ixe (1980) Peter Weiss Study II (Hallucinations) (1952); Study IV (Liberation) (1954); Was machen wir jetzt? (1958) Steve McCaffery Wot We Wukkers Wont / One Step to the Next [MP3] Jeremy Solterbeck Moving Illustrations of Machines (2000) Danièle Huillet & Jean-Marie Straub Machorka-Muff (1963) Larry Wendt Sound Poems [MP3] Michael Nyman "Decay Music" Obscure #6 (1976) [MP3] Christopher Hobbs, John Adams & Gavin Bryars "New and Rediscovered Musical Instruments" Obscure #2 (1975) [MP3] David Toop & Max Eastly "New and Rediscovered Musical Instruments" Obscure #4 (1974) [MP3] Robert Mapplethorpe Arena (documentary, 1989) Robert Mapplethorpe Arena (documentary, 1989) Jasper Johns Some Ideas In Paint (1989) Karlheinz Stockhausen Helicopter String Quartet (1995) Cesare Pietroiusti Four Videos (2006-07) Speechless Concrete Poetry Journal, 8 issues (2009) John Cage The Making of One11 with 103 (1992) Barbara Hammer Sanctus (1990) Genesis P-Orridge Weird Woman (State 1) (2003-2010) Iannis Xenakis Rebonds B (2004) Sharon Lockhart Teatro Amazonas (1999) Paul McCarthy : Destruction of the Body (documentary, 2001) Marina Abramoviç Four Performances (1975-76) Thorsten Fleisch Energie! (2007) Hans Ulrich Obrist Arkipelag TV (2000) Luc Ferrari : Facing his Tautology (documentary, 2005) John Cage One11 with 103 (1991-1992) Ito Takashi Ghost (1984) Stephen Beck Illuminated Music 2 & 3 (1973) Erkki Kurenniemi Dimi Ballet (1971) Raymonde Carasco Gradiva Sketch 1 (1978) Larry Jordan Visions of a City (1978) Jean Beaudin Vertige (1969) Brion Gysin Permutation Software (2010) Joe Jones Xylophone (1976) [MP3] Blaise Cendrars Le Transsibérien (1976) [MP3] Ernst Jandl Radiophone Texte (1977) [MP3] Sun Ra A Joyful Noise (1980, documentary) Bruce Nauman Raw Material (2005) [MP3] Mauricio Kagel Ludwig Van (1969, complete version) Allan Kaprow Interview (1988, text) John Cage Interview (1987, text) Hans Ulrich Obrist The Secret Files of Gilbert & George (2000) Pierre Hébert Around Perception (1968) Man Ray The Bazaar Years [documentary] (1994) Kenny Graham Moondog & Suncat Suites (1957) [MP3] Djibril Diop Mambéty Contras City (1968) Keith Sonnier Air to Air (1975) [MP3] Survival Research Laboratories A Bitter Message of Hopeless Grief (1988) Gertrude Stein & Al Carmines In Circles (1967) [MP3] Norman McLaren Synchromy/Synchromie (1971) Karen Kilimnik Kate Moss at the Beginning (undated) Phil Niblock Max (Portrait of Max Neuhaus) (1987) John Ashbery Readings and Interviews (1951-2007) André S. Labarthe Un Siècle d'Écrivains: Antonin Artaud (2000) Henri Chopin Le Dernier Poete Du Monde [documentary / performance] (2007) Simon Morris The Royal Road to the Unconscious (2003) Delia Derbyshire Dreams (1964) Joseph Beuys Filz TV / Felt TV (1970) John Cage Mureau (1972) Yves Klein Monotone Symphony (realized by Martin A. Smith) (2010) Riccardo Boglione Ritmo D. Feeling the Blanks (2009) Maurizio Bianchi Mectpyo (1981) Carlos Rowles The History (2009) David Behrman Wave Train (1981) Seth Price Cold Soul (2009) Salvador Dalí Salvador Dalí Speaks (1960) Chuck Close Slow Pan for Bob (1973) Octavian Esanu JFL: What Does "Why" Mean? (2001/2005) Alex Hubbard Cineapolis (2007); The Collapse of the Expanded Field I-III (2007) Shirin Sabahi Swede Home (1966-2009) Yvonne Rainer Lives of Performers (1972) John Cage Birdcage - 73'20.958" for a Composer [John Cage], dir Hans G. Helms (1972) Artie Vierkant Daylight / Twilight (2010); Exposure Adjustment on a Sunset (2009) Klaus Wildenhahn John Cage (1966) Sharon Lockhart Lunch Break (2009) Carolee Schneemann Plumb Line (1968-71) Eugene Deslaw La marche des machines AKA March of the Machines (1929) Phil Niblock Annie (1969) Vito Acconci Centers (1971); Two Track (1971) Jim Davis Taliesin West (1950); Pertaining to Chicago (1957); Energies (1957) Ed Emshwiller George Dumpson's Place (1965) John Wiese Soft Punk (2007); Magical Crystal Blah Volume 3 (2005); Live In Nottingham (2007); Tiny Red Tables b/w Big American Hole (2007) Sidney Peterson The Petrified Dog (1948) Dziga Vertov Group Letter to Jane (1972) Yin-Ju Chen Three Decades of Static (2006) James T. Hong The Form of the Good (2006) Kurt Schwitters What a Beauty / Die Ursonate und Andere Lautgedichte (performed by Die Schwindlinge) [MP3] Frederic Rzewski Coming Together (1973) [MP3] David Grubbs Two Soundtracks For Angela Bulloch (2004) [MP3] Andy Warhol The Warhol Tapes (MP3) Andy Warhol Uh Yes Uh No (Jeff Gordon) (MP3) John Cage and Nam June Paik In Conversation (ca. 1985) [MP3] Revolutions Per Minute The Art Record (1982) [MP3] Art By Telephone (1969) [MP3] with a transcription by Charity Coleman (2008) Erica Baum Dog Ear (2010) Pandit Pran Nath In Between The Notes - A Portrait of Pandit Pran Nath (1986) Ferdinand Kriwet Apollovision (1969) UbuWeb at 27 Senses in London. Street Poets & Visionaries, UbuWeb's vast collection of found and outsider poems, will be on display 18 July - 22 August 2010 at Chisenhale Gallery, organized by Ubu's partner, Electra. The exhibition focuses on the period Kurt Schwitters spent in Norway during his wartime exile. Artists include: Kenneth Goldsmith / UbuWeb, Carl Michael von Hausswolff / Selmer Nilsen, Karl Holmqvist, Jutta Koether and Eline McGeorge. More info here.
Brion Gysin - An Audio Retrospective (1958-81) Currently being honored by a exhibition at The New Museum in New York, UbuWeb is pleased to present the full-spectrum of Brion Gysin's sound poetry and audio works [MP3]. Included here are his seminal permutation poems from the early 60s such as I've Come To Free The Words and I Am That I Am as well as lectures on various subjects such as Thoughts On Modern Art. The historic Poem of Poems (1958), recorded in 1958 at the Beat Hotel in Paris and considered one of Gysin's important experiments in cut-up and recording technique, is available for download, as is his more ambient works such as The Pool K III (late 50s, early 60s) and Bruits du Beaubourg (1977). Finally, a posthumous 1993 recording -- Self-Portrait Jumping -- of Gysin's songs, poems and stories, are set to music by Ramuntcho Matta and performed by Brion Gysin and Ramuntcho Matta with Don Cherry, Elli Medieros, Steve Lacy, Lizzy Mercier Descloux. You can read interviews with Gysin here and here, as well as read William S. Burroughs' The Cut-Up Method of Brion Gysin. View a demonstration of Gysin Permutation Software here.
The Ubuweb Experimental Video Project Bored to tears by the internet video mainstream, essayist, filmmaker and broadcaster Colin Marshall launched The Ubuweb Experimental Video Project, wherein he reviews every single one of the works of film and video archived on UbuWeb. No matter how short or long, how funny or serious, how prosaic or bizarre, none shall escape its duty as the subject of one of his essays. The Project is based on the assumption that all these pieces, approached with a large heart and an open mind, are interesting — or at least, they're the material for a potentially interesting review. Included here is the first installment of 34 reviews.
Five Animations by Ali Akbar Sadeghi Before there was an Iranian New Wave, there was Kanoon, which became an incubator for some of the country's most celebrated artists--including Ebrahim Forouzesh, Noureddin Zarrinkelk, and many of the protagonists of Iranian cinema, Sohrab Shahid-Sales, Abbas Kiarostami, and Amir Naderi among them. Ali Akbar Sadeghi, who is best known for pioneering a style that mixed traditional Persian coffeehouse painting with the surreal was a Kanoon leader. Featured here are five incredible and rare animations, four historical and one contemporary: Seven Cities (1971), The Rook (1974), Malek Khorshid (1975), Zal and Simorgh (1977) and Coalition (2004). Presented in partnership with Bidoun.
UbuWeb Podcast: The Sounds of Fluxus A wealth of innovative sounds from this movement, which began in the early 50s and continues through today. From the broken record compositions of Milan Knížák to Yoko Ono's recording of a toilet flushing, Fluxus strove to break down the barrier between art and life, fusing Spike Jones, vaudeville, gag, children's games and Duchamp. Feautred here are Ben Vautier, John Cage, Emmett Williams, La Monte Young, Joe Jones, Dick Higgins, Larry Miller, John M. Bennett and Alison Knowles. You can find several Fluxus audio anthologies on UbuWeb as well: Fluxus 30th Anniversary Box, Fluxus Anthology, Fluxus Anthology 2006, Flux Tellus and Fluxsweet. Download the MP3 podcast directly here. You can subscribe to our podcast here. UbuWeb's podcasts are produced by The Poetry Foundation.
Four Films by Jordan Wolfson Mixing and combining opposites, playing with analogies and ambiguity Jordan Wolfson creates a distorted mix of reality, imagination and cultural critique. He investigates the relationships of technology and media merged with his own personal experience, poetically balanced somewhere between pop and conceptual art. Included here are four works, with an exclusive showing of Wolfson's newest work, Con Leche (2009).
Archiving Ubu UbuWeb's archivist, Margaret Smith, has been pondering exactly if/how UbuWeb could/should be archived for the ages. She's parsed the site into pressing issues such as Structure and Classification, Legal and Financial, Digital Preservation. Can Smith tame Ubu (which is built on spit, tissue paper and whim) and preserve a fleeting, ephemeral gesture for eternity? Good luck! More here.
Bern Porter: A selection of Founds including Do's, Don'ts, and Gee Whizzles Presented in conjunction with the MoMA's exhibition LOST AND FOUND: The Work of Bern Porter from the Collection of the Museum of Modern Art Library (April 7-July 5), UbuWeb is pleased to present 124 rarely seen collages. Featured here are Founds, Do's, Don'ts, and Gee Whizzles. You can hear hours Bern Porter's audio here and as well as view all of his visual works here.
Four Films by Kota Ezawa Kota Ezawa meticulously recreates, frame-by-frame, animated sequences from television, cinema, and art history using basic digital drawing and animation software. His aesthetic is a highly stylized mixture of Pop Art, Alex Katz, and paint-by-numbers pictures, to name but a few of his stylistic antecedents. Included here are three works: The Simpson Verdict (2002); Lennon Sontag Bueys (2004); The Unbearable Lightness of Being (2005); and Beatles Über California (2010).
New Podcast: UbuWeb's Interviews A focus on Ubu's vast trove of audio interviews with artists. Includes excerpts of conversations with Gertrude Stein, Marcel Duchamp, William Carlos Williams, Salvador Dalí, Jacques Derrida, Harry Smith, Carolee Schneemann, Pauline Oliveros, DJ Spooky, Marcel Broodthaers, Richard Prince & Robert Gober, Lionel Casson and John Cage. Download the MP3 podcast directly here. You can subscribe to our podcast here. UbuWeb's podcasts are produced by The Poetry Foundation.
Bidoun Magazine - Music & Culture from the Middle East UbuWeb is pleased to partner with Bidoun Magazine to present the finest in Middle Eastern avant-garde historical and contemporary film & sound works. Sound artists include: Dariush Dolat-Shahi, Halim El-Dabh, Forough Farrokhzad, Ali Reza Mashayekhi, Ilhan Mimaroglu, Bijan Mofid, Vladimir Ussachevsky. Filmmakers include: Masao Adachi & Kôji Wakamatsu, Peggy Ahwesh, Mustafa Abu Ali, Forough Farrokhzad, Hamlet Hovsepian, Larry Jordan, Parviz Khatibi, Albert Lamorisse Claude LeLouch, Mohamed Ulad-Mohand, Ali Akbar Sadeghi, Sergei Parajanov, Artavazd Peleshian and Agnès Varda.
Stream UbuWeb Radio with WFMU's iPhone App Yep. Take Ubu Radio to the beach with WFMU's new iPhone app. Download it here. Please support WFMU during their annual fundraiser as they do so much to support UbuWeb.
Survival Research Laboratories Illusions Of Shameless Abundance (1989) [MP3] Earle Brown December 1952 Concert & Rehearsal at Darmstadt, Germany (1964) [MP3] Past Eroticism Canadian Sound Poetry in the 1960s (1964-69) [MP3] William Kentridge Stereoscope (1999) Ernst Jandl bist eulen? (1984) [MP3] Philippe Garrel Le revelateur (1968) Vincent Barras & Jacques Demierre Audio Works (1988-2007) [MP3] Adam Beckett Heavy-Light (1973) Karlheinz Stockhausen Interview (January 1967) [MP3] Jalal Jemison Where's Eddie (2005); Brother Boy (2006) Ryan Trecartin I-Be AREA [Version française] (2007) Ryan Trecartin I-Be AREA [Versione italiana] (2007) Deimantas Narkevicius Selected Films (1997-2005) yann beauvais d'un couvre-feu (about a curfew) (2006) Rainer Ganahl Selected Films (2002-2009) Barry Truax Pacific Rim (1990) Bernhard Günter Un Peu de Neige Salie (1993) Jorge Antunes Musica Electronica (1969-71) Audio Arts Accent for a Start (1987) Gregg Bordowitz Fast Trip, Long Drop (1993) Peter Hutton Images of Asian Music (A Diary from Life 1973-1974) Larry Jordan Hamfat Asar (1965) Mustafa Abu Ali They Do Not Exist (Laysa lahum wujud) (1974) Yin-Ju Chen & James T. Hong Suprematist Kapital (2006) Trinh T. Minh-ha Shoot for the Contents (1991) Tracey Moffatt Bedevil (1993) Bruce Nauman Flour Arrangements (1967) Paul Sharits Tails (1976) Iannis Xenakis NEG-ALE (1960) / Polytope de Cluny (1972-74) Samuel Beckett Quadrat 1+2 (1982) Walter Benjamin Aufklärung für Kinder (Children's Radio Broadcasts) (MP3) RRRecords 500 Locked Grooves (1998) (MP3) Howard Finster The Night Howard Finster Got Saved (MP3) Phil Niblock Nataliawork (1991) / G2, 44+/x2 (2002) (MP3) Ron Kuivila Hearing Things (1991) (MP3) Steve Roden and Stephen Vitiello at the Chinati Foundation (2007) [MP3] Eliane Radigue Geelriandre and Arthesis (1972) / Kyema, Intermediate States (1992) [MP3] Runzelstirn and Gurglestock Stuhlgangblockade (1990) / Bei Abwesenheit Jeglicher Genussempfindungen (1989) [MP3] Taku Sugimoto Myshkin Musicu (for electric guitar) [MP3] Nick Zedd Abnormal: The Sinema of Nick Zedd Henri Chopin Petit Livre Des Riches Heures Signistes Et Sonores D'Henri Chopin, 7" single (1987) [MP3] William S. Burroughs Burroughs The Movie (1985) Peter Rose The Indeserian Tablets (2009) Clark Lunberry MURMUR OF WORDS (2009) Karl Holmqvist All the Single Ladies (2009) Gerhard Rühm Pencil Music (2002) [MP3] Brion Gysin & William S. Burroughs Ports of Entry: A Conversation (1986) [PDF] Erberto F. Lo Bue John Cage's Writings (1982) [PDF] Michalis Pichler Statements on Appropriation (2009) Parviz Khatibi Seh Mullah (1985) Nam June Paik Etude for Pianoforte, October 1960; My Jubilee Ist Unverhemmet (1977) [MP3] Ralph Thanhauser Godard in America (1970) Eric Baudelaire SUGAR WATER (2007); [SIC] (2008); THE MAKES (2009) Marie Menken Arabesque for Kenneth Anger (1958-61) People Like Us Parade (2009) Masao Adachi & Kôji Wakamatsu Sekigun-PFLP: Sekai Senso Sengen (The Red Army/PFLP: Declaration of World War) [1971] Vanessa Place & Robert Fitterman Notes On Conceptualisms: eastcoast/westcoast (2009) Richard Maxfield Oak of the Golden Dreams (1960-63) [MP3] Jean-Claude Risset Sud (1985) Kevin Drumm Horror of Birth (2005) / Untitled (2008) [MP3] Brenda Hutchinson Violet Flames (1993) [MP3] Artavazd Peleshian The Complete Films (1966-1994) Sofía Hernández Chong Cuy Conceptualismo y Economía (Conceptualism and Economy) (2009) [PDF, 1.2mb] John M. Bennett Pod King (1992) [MP3] Jon Appleton Contes de la mémoire (1966-1996) [MP3] The Gerogerigegege Endless Humiliation (1994) & Senzuri Power-Up (1991) [MP3] George Lewis Voyager (1993) [MP3] Ghedalia Tazartes Check-point Charlie (1985) [MP3] Remko Scha Machine Guitars (1982) [MP3] James Tenney Selected Works (1961-1986) [MP3] John Robert Colombo On Found Poetry (A FOUND INTRODUCTION) (1973) Sarah Morris Capital (2005) Michael Snow Sshtoorrty (2005) Merce Cunningham Points in Space (1986) Storm de Hirsch Peyote Queen (1965) Peter Donebauer Entering (1974) Donato Mancini & Jeremy Turner Avatara (2003) Wallace Berman Aleph (1958-1976) John Baldessari Some Stories (1990), directed by Peter Kirby Danny Snelson & João Enxuto Flash Artifacts (2009) Chris Burden A Video Portrait (1989), directed by Peter Kirby Hanatarash Hanatarashi (1985) [MP3] Borbetomagus Snuff Jazz (1990) [MP3] Anthony Moore Pieces from the Cloudland Ballroom (1971) [MP3] Trevor Wishart Vox (1990) [MP3]Beth B - Three Films from 1991 Working in a variety of art forms and media, including video, feature film, and installation, Beth B creates provocative narratives that mine the violence below the surface of contemporary life. A forerunner of the explosive New York New Wave/punk scene of the late 1970s, B first garnered critical acclaim with her short films and features produced with Scott B. Presented here are three films from 1991: Thanatopsis, American Nightmare and Stigmata.
Ryan Trecartin - P.opular S.ky (section ish) (2009) Ryan Trecartin's latest in the series of three interrelated videos K-Corea INC. K (Section A), Sibling Topics (Section A) and P.opular S.ky (section ish), which also exist with an umbrella title, Trill-ogy Comp, serve as one complete side of his larger project and exhibition Any Ever.
Harrell Fletcher - Videos (2000-2006) Harrell Fletcher has worked collaboratively and individually on a variety of socially engaged, interdisciplinary projects for over fifteen years. Artist Allan McCollum says: "Harrell Fletcher... has taken it upon himself to turn the spotlight onto others. With a dedicated, empathic intelligence, he treats us to the joy and poignancy of appreciating our fellow humans by walking a difficult line between artistic skill, organizational savvy and anonymity." Featured here are 8 videos: The Forbidden Zone (2000), Blot Out The Sun (2002), The Sound We Make Together (2003), The Problem of Possible Redemption (2003), Hello Friend (PDX) (2004), If I Wasn't Me I Would Be You (2004), Babies (NYC) (2004), Where I Lived, and What I Lived For (2006).
Tape-beatles - The Complete Albums (1988-2002) - The Tape-beatles were a collaboration of varying membership that make music and audio art recordings,"expanded cinema" performances, videos, printed publications, and work in other media. They worked under the aegis of Public Works Productions. The Tape-beatles began creating works for audio tape in 1987 and espoused the use of plagiarism as a positive artistic technique. Their work drew more or less exclusively from the previously "finished" works of others, assembling fragments of these works into entirely new constructions that did not exist before the Tape-beatles made them. Also included here are the legendary homemade series PhonoStatic cassettes produced by Public Works, beginning in 1984 and ending in 1989.
Zoe Beloff - The Dream Films (2009) In 2009 the Coney Island Museum invited Zoe Beloff to create an exhibition to celebrate the centennial of Sigmund Freud's visit to Coney Island. She titled the show "Dreamland: The Coney Island Amateur Psychoanalytic Society and its Circle 1926-1972. The Society might be considered something of an urban myth. They were mostly working people from a variety of cultural backgrounds. Beloff describes them as "visionaries, who, undeterred by lack of finances or professional training, decided to explore their inner life, to share their dreams with each other and in doing so attempted to free the psyche from the constraints of class and of cultural and sexual mores of their time. Featured on Ubu are the ten films from this series.
Hamlet Hovsepian - Five Films (1975-76) Staggeringly simple films: a man itching his back, a man thinking, a man yawning, but like the works of Samuel Beckett, these minute gestures stand in as grand statements of the human condition, akin to the films of Bas Jan Ader and Marcel Broodthaers. Rarely seen, these are gems of Armenian avant-garde art and are gestures of deviance; political commentaries that positively reverse the image of isolation current among cultural pessimists, as a seizure of space in a world of standardization, of the mass society. Hamlet Hovsepian's film is not only the result of a small revolt against the deadly passivity of this society. The reduction it carries out, its silence, gives a universal turn to the meaning of emptiness, to the abstract space, and the frequently extended time. Presented in collaboration with Bidoun.
Peter Kirby - Four Documentaries Since 1985 Peter Kirby has produced and directed over 90 works, including a series of works on contemporary artists and architects. Here UbuWeb features four of his great California-based artist documentaries: Chris Burden: A Video Portrait (1989), John Baldessari: Some Stories (1990), The Secret of Life and Death: Allen Ruppersberg (1986) and Alexis Smith: Life In America (1991).
Publishing The Unpublishable, 1-50 We're halfway through this series, which asks "What constitutes an unpublishable work?" It could be many things: too long, too experimental, too dull; too exciting; it could be a work of juvenilia or a style you've long since discarded; it could be a work that falls far outside the range of what you're best known for; it could be a guilty pleasure or it could simply be that the world judges it to be awful, but you think is quite good. We've all got a folder full of things that would otherwise never see the light of day. Invited authors were invited to ponder to that question. Works by Joachim Georg Schmitt, Franck Leibovici, Christian Bjoljahn & Martin Johs. Møller, Anna Gray & Ryan Wilson Paulsen, Ryan Trecartin, Erik Belgum, Hans Ulrich Obrist & Rirkrit Tiravanija, Dana Teen Lomax, Vanessa Place, Vincent Katz, Stephen McLauglin, Vladimir Zykov, Gregory Laynor, James Carpenter, Dannielle Tegeder, Mark Peters, Mairéad Byrne, Barry Schwabsky, Eleanor Brown, Derek Beaulieu, Elisabeth S. Clark, Alan Licht, Kenneth Goldsmith, Raphael Rubinstein, Michael Coffey, Charles Bernstein, Eiríkur Örn Nordahl, Stephen Ratcliffe, Ara Shirinyan, Tom Johnson, Christian Bök, Jon Cotner & Andy Fitch, Jeremy Sigler, Mónica de la Torre, Tan Lin, Michael Scharf, Mary Jo Bang, Brian J. Davis, Brian Kim Stefans, Tim Davis, George Kuchar, Jamba Dunn, Peter Manson, Craig Dworkin, Simon Morris, Kimberly J. Rosenfield, Stephen Dirle, Claude Closky, Doug Nufer, Robert Fitterman and Bruce Andrews. The series will conclude when the 100th manuscript is published.
Women of the Avant Garde, Part 2 Produced by The Poetry Foundation. We continue our feature with the second podcast featuring the fabulous works done by women on UbuWeb. This time around we hear from the great sounds of Alison Knowles, Louise Lawler, Shelley Hirsch, Lauren Lesko, Forough Farrokhzad, Pauline Oliveros, Yoko Ono, Kristin Oppenheim, Jane Philbrick, Marina Rosenfeld, Gertrude Stein, Karen Finley and People Like Us. You can subscribe to our podcast here.
Intermission: Films from a Heroic Future at Montreal's Canadian Center for Architecture, November 25 to February 28, 2010. The CCA galleries are transformed into cinematic screening rooms to present a range of artistic, scientific, and experimental films on speed and space. Selected by curators from the archives of NASA, the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum (NASM), the National Film Board of Canada (NFB), and UbuWeb, the films explore the impact of velocity and technology on our past, present and future.
The Malady of Writing: Modernism You Can Dance To (MP3) In collaboration with MACBA in Barcelona, UbuWeb is pleased to present a podcast accompanying their new exhibition entitled The Malady of Writing, a project imagines a pleasurable, humorous and fun version of modernism. This podcast is based on Mark Klienberg's proposition: "Could there be someone capable of writing a science-fiction thriller based on the intention of presenting an alternative interpretation of modernist art that is readable and appreciated by the wider public?", which has actually been answered affirmatively in a certain undercurrent of artist's audio production over the past century; let's call it an unofficial unofficial history of modernism (doubly unofficial since artist's audio production has been viewed as secondary to the their plastic / marketable production). Artists featured include: Alfred Jarry and Charles Pourny, Erik Satie, George Antheil, Gertrude Stein, Salvador Dal’, Allen Ginsberg, Karl Holmqvist, Jack Smith, Karlheinz Stockhausen, The Beatles, The Mothers of Invention, The Beach Boys, Sue Tompkins, Flanagan & Allen, Gilbert & George, Kipper Kids, Laurie Anderson, Karen Finley, Chris Burden, Joseph Beuys, Martin Kippenberger, Miranda July, Seth Price, and Sean Landers.
Paper Rad - Five Videos (2004-2006) PAPER RAD is a Pittsburgh, PA/Northampton, MA collective that has bubbled under the elastic waistline of the world's slacks for over a decade, tickling its privates and filling its diapers. This collective first started churning out cortex hemorrhaging lysergia comics and moved on to bands, videos, snack foods and installations. Past videos for the band for bands have included LIGHTNING BOLT (on LIGHTNING BOLT's POWER OF SALAD LOAD 041) and the PICK A WINNER video compilation (LOAD 050). Think of this group showing up to the 80's dance party with tazers and ketamine, and you waking up at the bottom of the ball tank at CHUCK E. CHEESE. Featured here are five videos: Smells Like Burnt Speaker (2004), P-Unit Mixtape 2005 (2005), Mario Movie (2005) (with Cory Arcangel), Trash Talking (2006) and Dr. Doo in Fucland (2006).
Salvador Dalí - Je Suis Fou De Dalí! (1975) From our partner Continuo comes this very rare LP. Continuo says: "A year after the release of his Cathar audiovisual opera-poem Etre Dieu, with music composed by Igor Wakhevitch, Salvador Dalí released Je Suis Fou de Dalí, a collection of well-chosen excerpts from an interview with three French journalists: François Deguelt, Jean-Pierre Mottier and Simon Wajntrob. If truth be told, most of it is pure joke and self-promotion, and the difference is tenuous at times between surrealism and senility. But if we set aside the many scatological jokes, some excerpts are simply mindblowing, genuine audio equivalents of a Dalí Surrealist painting." Of related interest is Dalí's wonderful drug-induced "trip" to a faraway and distant land, Impressions de la Haute Mongolie (1976), as well as a book-length series of insane and eye-opening chats, Conversations with Dalí by Alain Bosquet, from 1969.
New UbuWeb Podcast: Women of the Avant Garde, Part 1
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Produced by The Poetry Foundation. Let's face it: our previous podcasts have under-represented the fabulous work being done by the women of UbuWeb. Here we hope to correct that impression and showcase several of the dozens of talented and innvovative women on our site. This, the first of two podcasts, features Kathy Acker, Beth Anderson, Laurie Anderson, Caroline Bergvall, Meredith Monk, Lydia Lunch, Patti Smith, Helen Adam, Denise Levertov, Eileen Myles and Judy Dunaway. You can subscribe to our podcast here.
Ryan Trecartin - 10 Videos (2001-2009) We're pleased to present a small retrospective of full-length works of Ryan Trecartin, about whose work Wayne Koestenbaum waxes, "Ryan Trecartin's videos depict a vertiginous world I'm barely stable enough to describe. Watching them, I face the identity-flux of Internet existence: surfing-as-dwelling. Images evaporate, bleed, spill, metamorphose, and explode. Through frenetic pacing, rapid cuts, and destabilizing overlaps between representational planes (3-D turns into 2-D and then into 5-D), Trecartin violently repositions our chakras. Digitally virtuoso, his work excites me but also causes stomach cramps. I'm somatizing. But I'm also trying to concentrate." (Artfortum Summer 2009). We couldn't agree more. Featured here are two brand new films, K-Corea INC.K (Section A) (2009) and Sibling Topics (Section A) (2009). Also includes: I-Be AREA (2007), (Tommy-Chat Just E-mailed Me) (2006), A Family Finds Entertainment (2004), What's The Love of Making Babies For (2003), Wayne's World (2003), Yo A Romantic Comedy (2002), Valentine's Day Girl (2001) and Kitchen Girl (2001). Thanks to Ryan and his gallery Elizabeth Dee in NYC for making them available to UbuWeb.
UbuWeb Partners With Continuo UbuWeb is thrilled to partner with the greatest experimental music MP3 blog on the web, Continuo. The folks at Continuo have agreed to share their trove of avant-goodies with us here at Ubu and we'll begin posting several of them shortly. For now, our first collaboration is a fantastic rare self-released 1988 cassette of the Bay Area new music composer Barbara Golden's At The Corner of Alive and Jesus (36:29), which includes an all-star cast including Robert Ashley, Maggi Payne, William Winant and many others.
UbuWeb Has A New Radio Stream! WFMU is now serving a 24-hour non-stop UbuWeb radio stream. If you don't like what's playing on the Center for Literary Computing Stream, click on WFMU's. Better yet, play 'em at the same time! Thanks to WFMU for their continuing support of UbuWeb.
Peter Gidal - 5 Films (1967-1997) Peter Gidal is both the chief theorist of the 1970s film avant-garde, and its most austere image-maker. He also is the foremost exponent of British structural cinema. Gidal's films invite audiences to consider various aspects of the mediation between the real and the reel. In his most famous work, Room Film 1973, for example, the artist's camera restlessly investigates a room in minute detail. Clouds, which depicts just sky and an occasional plane, keeps the viewer guessing as to what if anything is moving? Gidal wrote: 'The anti-illusionistic project engaged by Clouds is that of dialectic materialism. There is virtually nothing ON screen, in the sense of IN screen. Obsessive repetition as materialist practice, not psychoanalytic indulgence.' Also included here is Assumption (1997), Epilogue (1978) and the 76-minute Upside Down Feature (1967-1972). Presented in collaboration with Lux.
Dance with Camera Spanning seventy years, Dance with Camera features art works in film, video, and photography that exemplify the ways dance has compelled artists to record bodies moving in space. For Ubuweb, exhibition curator Jenelle Porter selects a range of solos danced for the camera lens. The exhibition is on view at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, September 2009-March 2010. Films include Flora Wiegmann - Adaptive Lines (2007); Oliver Herring - Nathan (2007); Fatboy Slim - Weapon of Choice (2001); William Forsythe - Solo (1997); Babette Mangolte - Watermotor (1978); Hilary Harris - Nine Variations on a Dance Theme (1966); Yvonne Rainer - Hand Movie (1966); Maya Deren - A Study in Choreography for Camera (1945); Fred Astaire - Bojangles of Harlem (1936); The Lumière Brothers - Danse Serpentine (1896).
Nam June Paik - Good Morning Mr. Orwell (1984) Good Morning Mr.Orwell is an edited version of Paik's first international satellite "installation," which was held on New Year's Day 1984. Paik's transcultural satellite extravaganzas link different countries, spaces, and times in often chaotic but entertaining collages of art and pop culture, the avant-garde and television. Good Morning Mr.Orwell, which Paik saw as a rebuttal to Orwell's dystopian vision of 1984, linked France, Germany and the U.S. The event featured vibrant performances by Laurie Anderson, Merce Cunningham, Peter Gabriel and Allen Ginsberg, among many others. Paik coordinated the event and designed the TV graphics that connected the various live and pre-recorded segments. This project can be seen as a development of Paik's thinking on the potential of satellite communication, as proposed in A Conversation, and realized with his typical pastiche of art, entertainment, and crosscultural juxtapositions.
All Avant-Garde All The Time - UbuWeb Podcast #10: Continental Drift - Focus on the French Avant-garde
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Produced by The Poetry Foundation, UbuWeb is pleased to announce the latest in its podcast series, focusing on a dozen of Ubu's hidden treasures, highlighting audio works that you really should know about about but most likely don't. With this podcast, we continue our series focusing on the sounds of different regions. Here the focus is on the avant-garde language-based audio coming out of France. Beginning with Arthur Rimbuad and Guillaume Apollinaire, we make our way through Surrealism, Existentialism, Sound Poetry, and Musique Concrete, Fluxus, and French Plunderphonics. Included here are Jacques Doyen & Jacques Lasry's interpretation of Rimbaud's Roman, Guillaume Apollinaire reading his Le Pont Mirabeau (1913), Marcel Duchamp reading his Some texts from 'A l'infinitif' (1912-20), Roger Blin's interpretation of Samuel Beckett's Ping (1966), Henri Chopin's La Digestion, Ilse Garnier's TEM-TEM (1962), Jean Dubuffet's Gai savoir, Yves Klein's Monotone Symphony (1949), Ben Vautier's Some Ideas for Fluxus (1989), Georges Aphergis' A, Lionel Marchetti's Les fleurs tombent and Xaiver Gautier's Rachel (2000), which is all the words Rachel says in chronological order from the French version of Bladerunner (1982). You can subscribe to our podcast here.
Merce Cunningham (1919-2009) UbuWeb salutes the magnificent life and work of Merce Cunningham. You can listen to his voice here and watch his dances here.
All Avant-Garde All The Time - UbuWeb Podcast #9: The Sounds of the UK from the 1960s To Yesterday
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Produced by The Poetry Foundation, UbuWeb is pleased to announce the latest in its podcast series, focusing on a dozen of Ubu's hidden treasures, highlighting audio works that you really should know about about but most likely don't. With this podcast, we continue our series focusing on the sounds of different regions. Here the focus is on the avant-garde language-based audio coming out of the UK. Beginning with Bob Cobbing and making our way through the the swinging London scene of the 60s, and the political / punk work of the 70s, and ending up with the electronics + samples of today, we cut a path through the London (and beyond) underground. Featured here are works by Bob Cobbing, Neil Mills, Lily Greenham, Cornelius Cardew, Christopher Logue, Richard Long, Art & Language + The Red Krayloa, Furious Pig, Momus, People Like Us, and Caroline Bergvall. You can subscribe to our podcast here.
Demetrio Stratos - The Experimental Years (1976-1980) In the midst of his success with the rock band Area, Stratos gradually became more and more deeply involved in the mysterious world of vocal sounds, resuming and widening his immense work on the importance of the voice in the Asian and Middle Eastern civilizations. This combined with exposure to Fluxus, the Zaj Group, and especially John Cage, to whom Stratos became a devoted performer, led him to make the seven albums of experimental vocal music found here. Albums include: Cantata Rossa per Taal al Zaatar (1976), Metrodora (1976) Cantare La Voce (1978), Le Milleuna (1979), Carnascialia (1979), Recitarcantando (1980) and La Voce-Musica (1999).
Lionel Marchetti - Radio Works, (2000-2009) Lionel Marchetti was born in France in 1967. His interest in music resides in the qualities of sound. He is one of a handful of artists who in the mid-to-late 1990s took electroacoustic music out of academic studios and into the free improvisation ring. His studio work encompasses sound collage level of poetry and refusal of genre boundaries in his music. UbuWeb presents over four hours of his gorgeous radio, electroacuoustic and musique concrete works including performances recorded at INA GRM, music for various sound installations and collaborations with Olivier Capparos, Kenneth White & Frédéric Malenfer. This is the first in a series of Marchetti works especially for UbuWeb.
Dylan Nyoukis / Blood Stereo - A Retrospective (2000-09) Dylan Nyoukis's work exists on the fringe of contemporary avant garde art and underground DIY insurrection. e founded the Chocolate Monk label in 1993, an early experimental music imprint that combined hi-jacks of outmoded media - cassette, CD-R, pen and paper - with cutting edge investigations of the limits of form, while functioning as a home for Nyoukis's own projects, Prick Decay, Decaer Pinga, Ceylon Mange, Blood Stereo and countless one-off collaborations. The Blood Stereo tracks included here explore hand-cranked 20th century technology in combination with epiglottal gymnastics and free music modes inherited as much from punk rock's mutilated aesthetic as utopian art styles. Over the years he has collaborated with artists as diverse Carlos Giffoni, Alvarius B, Jaap Blonk as Ludo Mich, Chris Corsano, Thurston Moore, Adam Bohman, Sun City Girls, Bill Nace, Anla Courtis, Heather Leigh Murray, Phil Minton, Neil Campbell, Usurper and Wolf Eyes. Many tracks on this UbuWeb compilation are from Nyoukis's record label Chocolate Monk; also inlcuded are many live tracks from festivals such as Instal, All Tomorrow's Parties, The Colour Out Of Space Festival, and No Fun.
Jozef Van Wissem - Lute Works (2008-09) UbuWeb is pleased to host some new works by avant lutist Jozef Van Wissem, whose favorite compositional device is the palindrome. The Dutch-born, Brooklyn-based lutenist plays pieces forward, then backward, creating music that is potentially without beginning or end. Although this strategy is rooted in 17th century compositional practice, it still serves his agenda of rescuing his archaic instrument from history's dustbin. Included here is A Priori (2008), which offers his unadulterated take on the instrument, performed without accompaniment or outboard effects. Its sonorities, articulated in unhurried cadences, may sound ancient, but the language of dissonant harmonies, tone clusters, and rare bluesy flourishes to which he applies them is rooted in the 20th century avant-garde, not the time of bards in tights. Also featured on Ubu is Selected Tracks from It Is All That Is Made (2009), which was commissioned by the London National Gallery to make a sound response to a painting in their collection. Van Wissem choose "The Ambassadors" by Hans Holbein.
UbuWeb's Avant-Garde Radio Stream is Back UbuWeb's 24-hour non-stop radio stream has returned, randomly pulling from our terabyte's worth of avant-garde MP3s. Thanks to the Center for Literary Computing for making this possible. Click here to listen.
The Films of Harry Dodge and Stanya Kahn (2002-2008) The collaboration of Harry Dodge and Stanya Kahn has produced an exciting series of character-driven videos whose protagonists are, above all, under pressure: economic pressure, ecological pressure, and the pressures of class and gender (and, for that matter, genre) regimes. These pressures catalyze affective mutations and a sense of dislocation, a felling of (not so transcendental) homelessness. Responding to eco-social circumstances, Dodge and Kahn work from the ethoi that the personal is political and the aesthetic is ideological. In their work, then, the aesthetic -- including, crucially, the anaesthetic, and the anti-aesthetic is leveraged politically. These videos draw attention to the aesthetic itself as a fraught category, using the heightened consciousness created by the frame only to crash it, transmitting/effecting cognitive-cosmic dissonance via their signature punk-slapstick. Included here are seven works: All Together Now (2008), Can't Swallow It, Can't Spit It Out (2006), Masters of None (2006), The Ugly Truth (2006), Let the Good Times Roll (2004), Whacker (2005) and Winner (2002). Presented in collaboration with Harry Dodge and Stanya Kahn / and the Elizabeth Dee Gallery.
Electronic Music and Films from the Middle Eastern Avant-Garde (1959-2001) In collaboration with Bidoun Magazine, UbuWeb is pleased to bring you the first installment of a trove of rarely heard and seen Middle Eastern culture. We begin by featuring six historic electronic musicians and sound poets: Dariush Dolat-Shahi Electronic music, Tar and Setar (1985) and Otashgah (1986) ; Halim El-Dabh Leiyla Visitations (1959) ; Forough Farrokhzad Radio Tehran Sessions (1962-1964) ; Ali Reza Mashayekhi Electronic Music (1970-2001) ; Bijan Mofid Shahreh Ghesseh (1967); and Ilhan Mimaroglu Electronic Music (1964-1983). We are also pleased to present three films: Forough Farrokhzad's The House is Black / Khaneh Siyah Ast (1962); Albert Lamorisse's Baadeh Sabah / The Lovers' Wind / Vent Des Amoureux (1970/1978); and Ali Akbar Sadeghi's Malek Khorshid (1975). Keep checking back for future installments: there's much more to come.
Bertrand Russell ABC of Relativity: Understanding Einstein [MP3] Hermann Nitsch Klaviersonate Für Arnulf Rainer (2001/2001) [MP3] Piero Heliczer Autumn Feast (1961) Sue Tompkins Country Grammer (2004) [MP3] Christof Migone Foutre en l'air / Perpendicular Types of Motion (1989); Identification (1990) Maurice Lemaître Toujours A L'avant - Garde De L'avant - Garde Jusqu'Au Paradis Et Au-Dela aka Ever the Avant-Garde of the Avant-Garde till Heaven and After (1970) Ivan Wyschnegradsky Quarter-Tone Music ((1934-1966) [MP3] Ant Farm Media Burn; Cadillac Ranch Four Horsemen Live in the West (1977); Two Nights in October [MP3] Suzanne Lemaître TOUTES LES FEMMES SONT DES JEANNE D'ARC [All women are Joan of Arcs] (1984) André Luiz Oliveira Doce Amargo aka Sweet Bitterness (1968); A Fonte aka The Fountain A Sculpture - A monument (1970) Stan Douglas Win, Place or Show (1998) Carolee Schneeman Snows (1967) Paul Sharits Bad Burns (1982) Paper Tiger TV Brian Winston Reads the TV News (1983) Terayama Shuji Cloud Cuckooland (1978) Ivko Šešić Krik (1978) Arnold Dreyblatt Propellers in Love (1986) Whitehouse Dedicated to Peter Kürten (1981) Ellen Fullman The Long String Instrument (1985) Jozef Van Wissem Ex Patris (2009) Samuel Beckett "How It Is", page 114 [read by Patrick Magee] (1972) Milan Knížák Broken Music (1983) Ed van der Elsken Karel Appel, componist aka Karel Appel, composer (1961) Slavko Vorkapich Moods of the Sea (1941) Klaus vom Bruch Das Schleyer-Band (1977-1978) Angus Maclise Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda (1968); Brain Damage in Oklahoma City (1968-1972) [MP3] Tatsumi Hijikata Natsu No Arashi aka Summer Storm (1973) Eugene Deslaw Montparnasse (1929) Peggy Ahwesh Beirut Outtakes (2007) Sam Truitt Transverse (2009) John Baldessari The Way We Do Art Now and Other Sacred Tales (1973) Sergei Parajanov Kievskiy Freskiy (Kiev Frescos) (1966); Hakob Hovnatanyan (1967); Arabeskebi Pirosmanis temaze (Arabesques on the Pirosmani Theme) (1985) Barbara Golden At The Corner of Alive and Jesus (1988) [MP3] Hans Ulrich Obrist & Rirkrit Tiravanija Hurricane (2008) [PDF, 212k] Clemens von Wedemeyer Otjesd/Leaving (2005); The Making of Otjesd (2005) Wilhelm Sasnal Sisters (2004); The Band (2004) Masonna Spectrum Ripper (no date) [MP3] Fat Worm of Error NZZNZZZZNNZNZNNNN (2004) [MP3] Bernard Parmegiani Chronos (1971) [MP3] Toshimaru Nakamura Various Tracks from Improvised Music from Japan [MP3] JODI My Desktop OS X 10.4.7 (2007) Karel Appel Musique Barbare (1963) [MP3] Rodney Graham Vexation Island (1997) Dara Friedman Jodie (1998) Doug Aitken Blow Debris (2000); Electric Earth (1999); Autumn (1998) Thomas Demand Tunnel (1999) Joachim Koester Pit Music (1996) Agnès Varda Plaisir d'amour en Iran (1976) Anri Sala Dammi I Colori (2003) Åke Hodell and Per Wiklund Lågsniff (1965) Frank E. Gilbreth Motion Studies (1910-1924) Walter Smetak Smetak (1974) [MP3] VerbiVocoVisual Concrete Poetry and Music (1956-1970) [MP3] Mika Tajima / New Humans Holding Your Breath (Taking the Long Way) (2008); Dead by Third Act (2009) Clemens Klopfenstein Geschichte der Nacht (1979) Ed van der Elsken Handen (1960) Claude Closky Sound Works (1989-2005) [MP3] Claude LeLouch Iran (1971) Hilary Harris Longhorns (1951); Highway (1958); Nine Variations (1966); Organism (1975) Stewart Home Cyber-Sadism Live & Stewart Home Comes In Your Face [MP3] (1996) Henri Plaat I Am an Old Smoking, Moving Indian Movie Star (1968) James Sibley Watson Lot in Sodom (1933) Hermann Nitsch Maria - Conception - Action - Hermann Nitsch (1969) Bruce Nauman Manipulating the T-Bar (1966); Art Makeup (1967-68) Jeremy Blake Guccinam (2000); Liquid Villa (2000) Patti Smith Poetry Reading, NYC 1971, St. Mark's Church, New York City Martha Rosler Martha Rosler Reads Vogue (1982) Valie Export Unsichtbare Gegner AKA Invisible Adversaries (1976) Luciano Berio and Bruno Maderna Ritratto di Città (1954) Konrad Bayer / Gerhard Rühm gemeinschaftsarbeiten 1957-1962 Hermann Nitsch Klaviersonate Für Arnulf Rainer (2001) and Orgelkonzert (1986) William S. Burroughs Call Me Burroughs (1965) James Broughton Seeing the Light, Selected Writings (City Lights Books, 1977) Henri d'Ursel La Perle (1929) Pipilotti Rist Entslastlungen AKA Pipilolottis Fehler (1988) Ernst Moerman Monsieur Fantômas (1937) Malcolm Le Grice Berlin Horse (1970) People Like Us + Ergo Phizmiz Rhapsody in Glue (2008) [MP3] Kalup Linzy If It Don't Fit (MP3, 2009) James Joyce Soundtrack to Ulysses (MP3, 1967) Stan Douglas Deux devises & Onomatopoeia (1983); Suspiria (2003) Gregory Markopoulos Christmas USA (1949) Cornelius Cardew Piano Music of the 1970s Allen Ginsberg Allen Ginsberg Sings William Blake (1969) Willard Maas The Geography of the Body (1943) Willard Maas & Ben Moore The Mechanics of Love (1955) Marie Menken Go! Go! Go! (1962-1964) André Breton First Manifesto of Surrealism (1924) [PDF, 1.3mb] Jason Nelson Eleven Digital Poems (2009) Derek Jarman Shadow of the Sun (1980) Jean Mitry Pacific 231 (1949) Marie Menken Visual Variations on Noguchi (1945) ; score by Lucia Dlugoszewski Arnaud des Pallières Is Dead (Portrait Incomplet de Gertrud Stein) (2000) Gillian Wearing 2 Into 1 (1997) Woody & Steina Vasulka Steina Vasukla Switch! Monitor! Drift! (1976); Woody Vasukla C Trend (1974); Steina & Woody Vasukla Calligrams (1970) Jacques Doyen & Jacques Lasry · French poetry accompanied by Lasry-Baschet electronic sound structures (1966) [MP3] Kenneth Kirschner Solo works and collaborations with Taylor Deupree (1997-2009) [MP3] Ali Akbar Sadeghi Malek Khorshid (1975) Albert Lamorisse Baadeh Sabah / The Lovers' Wind / Vent Des Amoureux (1970/1978) Forough Farrokhzad The House is Black / Khaneh Siyah Ast (1962) Rare Audio from Anthology Film Archives (1964-1974) UbuWeb is pleased to annouce a new project in our ongoing partnership with Anthology Film Archives in New York City. This is the first in a series of over 1,000 tapes from the Anthology historic audio collection. These recordings feature many years worth of interviews, lectures, question & answer sessions and other amazing discoveries. The first series includes: P. Adams Sitney Interviews Kenneth Anger on WNYC's "Arts Forum" (1972); Charles Levine Interviews Robert Breer (July 1970); Jonas Mekas Interviews Emile De Antonio (11/06/1969); Jonas Mekas Interviews Emile De Antonio (11/06/1969); Poetry And The Film: Amos Vogel, Maya Deren, Parker Tyler, Willard Maas & Dylan Thomas Sessions 1 & 2 At Cinema 16 (10/28/ 1953); P. Adams Sitney Interviews Sidney Peterson On WNYC's "Arts Forum" (1976); P. Adams Sitney Interviews Sidney Peterson On WNYC's "Arts Forum" (1976); Annette Michelson Interviews Yvonne Rainer On WNYC's "Arts Forum" (01/25/1974); Pauline Kael And Stan Brakhage (1964); Robert Haller Interviews Carolee Schneemann (11/30/1973); Hollis Frampton At Binghampton University, Part 1 & 2 (03/11/1972); Ken Jacobs, Larry Gottheim, Stan Brakhage: Binghampton Council Of Churches (11/23/1970) defending a Hermann Nitsch action; Harry Smith Interviewed by P. Adams Sitney (1965). You can also read selections from FILM CULTURE Magazine (1955-1996) including many of the artists featured in the audio archive.
All Avant-Garde All The Time - UbuWeb Podcast #8: The Sounds of Los Angeles in the 1970s and Beyond
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Produced by The Poetry Foundation, UbuWeb is pleased to announce the latest in its podcast series, focusing on a dozen of Ubu's hidden treasures, highlighting audio works that you really should know about about but most likely don't. With this podcast, we kick off a series focusing on the sounds of different regions. Here the focus is on the very rich scene emerging out of Los Angeles. Blending genres such as punk rock, visual art, performance art, experimental music and innovative poetry, we focus mostly on the late 1970s. Featured here are Chris Burden, Paul McCarthy, The Kipper Kids, Mike Kelley with Sonic Youth, John Baldessari, David Antin, Eleanor Antin, the Los Angeles Free Music Society, and Benjamin Weismann. You can subscribe to our podcast here.
Tony Oursler - Synesthesia: Genesis P-Orridge & Synesthesia: Alan Vega (1997-2001) Tony Oursler's Synesthesia project features interviews with twelve legendary figures in the downtown music, performance and art scenes. One video features Genesis P-Orridge, performance artist and vocalist for the iconoclastic English industrial band Throbbing Gristle in the late 1970s, pioneered industrial music. P-Orridge, who went on to form the experimental band Psychic TV, continues to work in music, art, and performance in New York, and is undertaking a long-term "Pandrogeny" project involving a radical identity transformation. These conversations reveal fascinating insights and anecdotes from some of the most influential figures in the experimental rock and art underground of the 1970s and '80s, from pre-punk innovators to post-punk icons, from industrial and avant-garde music to noise bands and No Wave. The other features Alan Vega, one half of the influential pre-punk synthesizer/drum machine duo Suicide (with Martin Rev), helped pioneer electronic music in the early 1970s. Vega, who began his career in New York as an artist known for light sculptures, also ran an art space that was a meeting ground for some of the most important artists in the underground New York art and music scenes.
1000 Avant-Garde Films UbuWeb now hosts 1000 avant-garde films by over 500 artists in our Film and Video section. To celebrate, we've upgraded our streaming player so that finally, UbuWeb videos can be viewed full-screen as well as embedded in your web pages and blogs. Ubu would like to salute Max Fenton for making this all possible.
C. Spencer Yeh - Audio Works (2005-2009) Yeh is active both as a solo and collaborative artist, as well as with his primary project, Burning Star Core. As an improviser, Yeh is focused on developing a personal vocabulary using violin, voice, and electronics. As a sound artist/composer, Yeh works with all aspects available surrounding a work, aurally and physically, as elements key to the cumulative experience. He is concerned not only with the sensual aspects of 'sound organization,' but the gestural qualities as well. Yeh has collaborated with a deep and ever-growing list of artists and groups, including Tony Conrad, New Humans with Vito Acconci, Evan Parker, Thurston Moore, Amy Granat with Jutta Koether, Justin Lieberman, Don Dietrich and Ben Hall (as The New Monuments), Prurient and Jandek. Included here are several full-length albums, assorted singles and radio works, featuring solo and collaborative works.
Brian Joseph Davis - Audio Works (2004-2008) UbuWeb is pleased to feature soundworks from this innovative young Toronto-based artist. Extending the vocabulary of Pluderphonics, Davis' brilliant media deconstructions are pointed and hilarious at the same time, with each concept perfectly matching its aural form. Included here is Minima Moralia, punk rock versions of Adorno tracts; 10 Banned Albums Burned Then Played is exactly what it sounds like, and includes discs by everyone from Stravinsky to the Sex Pistols to 2 Live Crew; Greatest Hit is a collection of single tracks composed from entire "Greatest Hits" albums (imagine all 22 songs of The Carpenters' 1968-1983 playing simultaneously); the hilarious Yesterduh, where passersby were stopped and asked to sing, from memory and with no practice, the Beatles' "Yesterday"; Original Soundtrack, a piece derived from the sounds of 20 DVD menus; Voice Over, a script composed from over 5000 film taglines then performed by a professional voice over artist; and Eula, where a women's chorus sings the End User License Agreement.
Momus - The Creation Records (1987-1993) "Okay, this is quite a big decision, but I've taken it. Six Momus albums -- the ones I recorded for Alan McGee's Creation label between 1987 and 1993 -- are out of print. Creation doesn't exist any more, and in theory Sony owns the rights to these albums, but isn't doing anything with them and probably never will. In the meantime, only Russian pirates are profiting, charging punters for illegal downloads." - Momus. Included here are The Poison Boyfriend (1987), Tender Pervert (1988), Don't Stop The Night (1989), Hippopotamomus (1991), Voyager (1992) and Timelord (1993).
All Avant-Garde All The Time - UbuWeb Podcast #7: Punk Versions of Monkey Chants and Other Ethnopoetic Marvels
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Produced by The Poetry Foundation, UbuWeb is pleased to announce the latest in its podcast series, focusing on a dozen of Ubu's hidden treasures, highlighting audio works that you really should know about about but most likely don't. This time around we focus on our Jerome Rothenberg-curated trove of Ethnopoetic treasures, focusing on sound. Included here are examples of and by Ella Fitzgerald, Slim & Slam, Glossolalia (speaking in tongues), Tuvan throat singers, Indonesian ketjack, Sainkho Namtchylak, Inuit Throat Music and the punk rock vocal band Furious Pig. You can subscribe to our podcast here.
Frans Zwartjes - Twelve Films (1968-1971) The incomparable Frans Zwartjes is a filmmaker, musician, violin-maker, painter and sculptor. In the late-60s he was one of the first Dutch visual artists to take up film, initially to document his performances and soon after as an independent medium perfectly suited to his way of creating visual art. His mind-bending works caused a furor, with psychological black-and-white imagery of heavily made-up and over-dressed actors from his circle of friends. Focused on sexually-loaded power games, hysteria, psychosis and cruelty, his films are largely edited 'in-camera'. "My own motor system determined the film style", Zwartjes stated in an interview. Zwartjes's oeuvre includes over forty films and his style has left a strong stamp on at least two generations of experimental filmmakers in Holland. You've never seen anything quite like this. - Film Anthology Archive. Included here are Birds, One (1968), Sorbet 3 (1968), Anamnesis (1969), Visual Training (1969), Behind Your Walls (1970), Living (1971), Spectator (1970) , Spare Bedroom (1970) , Seats Two (1970) , Pentimento (1979) , Bedsitters (1972) and Audition (1973)
Henri Michaux -Images du monde visionnaire (1964) Rarely seen, Images du monde visionnaire, was an educational film by Henri Michaux and Eric Duvivier "produced in 1963 by the film department of Swiss pharmaceutical company Sandoz (best known for synthesizing LSD in 1938) in order to demonstrate the hallucinogenic effects of mescaline and hashish."
Ce film se propose de montrer les types d’images, et leurs façons spéciales d’apparaître et de disparaître, qu’un sujet quelconque, soumis à l’action de certaines substances psychotropes, voit défiler en son imagination avec une clarté extrême et sans l’intervention de sa volonté. Deux genres de visions, dont on a ici accusé les différences plutôt que les ressemblances, correspondent donc à deux hallucinogènes.
Sten Hanson - Soundworks The Swedish composer, Sten Hanson, was leader of the Fylkingen language group from 1968 and in charge of the Text-Sound Festivals which were held for many years. He has been working with experimental music, literature and art since the beginning of the 1960's, cultivating both instrumental, vocal and electro-acoustic music for performance on radio and television, on outdoor occasions or from the concert platform. Featured full-lenth albums on UbuWeb include a compilation spanning nearly 40 years, Text-Sound Gems & Trinkets; Autobiography from 2001; The Sonosopher Retrospective (1998); The John Carter Song Book (1988); and Secret Connection featuring works from 1975-1983.
Focus on Vito Acconci A poet of the New York school in the early- and mid-1960s, Vito Acconci (b. 1940) moved toward performance, sound, and video work by the end of the decade. UbuWeb is pleased to feature a number of Acconci's works, across serveral mediums, focusing mainly on his 1970s output. Video works include Conversions (1971), Pryings (1971), Open Book (1971), Undertone (1972), Seedbed (1972), Theme Song (1973); as well as an interview, Willoughby Sharp Videoviews Vito Acconci (1973); Sound pieces a number of full-length works including The American Gift (1976); The Gangster Sister From Chicago Visits New York (A Family Piece) (1977); Under-History Lessons (1976); Ten Packed Minutes (1977); and The Bristol Project (2001); Works from the UbuWeb Anthology of Conceptual Writing include RE; READ THIS WORD; Points for Motion; and INSTALLMENT (INSTALLATION): MOVE/REMOVE.
Paul Chan - Three Videos (2002-2006) In 2002, Chan was a part of the American aid group Voices in the Wilderness that broke U.S. sanctions and federal law by working in Baghdad before the U.S. invasion and occupation. In 2004 he garnered police attention for The People's Guide to the Republican National Convention, a free map distributed throughout New York to help protesters to get in or out of the way of the RNC. Most recently Chan collaborated with the Classical Theatre of Harlem and Creative Time to produce a site-specific outdoor presentation of Samuel Beckett's play Waiting for Godot in New Orleans. Featured here are RE:THE_OPERATION (2002); Baghdad No Particular Order (2003); and Untitled Video on Lynne Stewart and Her Conviction, The Law, and Poetry (2006)
All Avant-Garde All The Time - UbuWeb Podcast #6: Politics As Unusal
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Produced by The Poetry Foundation, UbuWeb is pleased to announce the latest in its podcast series, focusing on a dozen of Ubu's hidden treasures, highlighting audio works that you really should know about about but most likely don't. This time around, in conjunction with the US election season, we feature a quick tour of UbuWeb's audio / visual political landscape. Selections inlcude Christopher DeLaurenti's Live in New York at the Republican National Convention Protest, September 2 - August 28, 2004; Abbie Hoffman's Malachy's Bar and Grill; Cornelius Cardew's Smash The Social Contract; Alejandra Salinas and Aeron Bergman's film Grace Lee Boggs, 91-year old activist; Red Shadow (The Economics Rock & Roll Band)'s Understanding Marx; Allen Ginsberg's C.I.A. Dope Calypso; Ezra Pound's Canto XLV ("With Usura"); and Amiri Baraka's Dope from 1978. You can subscribe to our podcast here.
Dariush Dolat-Shahi Electronic music, Tar and Setar (1985) and Otashgah (1986) [MP3]
Forough Farrokhzad Radio Tehran Sessions (1962-1964) [MP3]
Ali Reza Mashayekhi Electronic Music (1970-2001) [MP3]
Halim El-Dabh Leiyla Visitations (1959) [MP3]
Ilhan Mimaroglu Electronic Music (1964-1983) [MP3]
Bijan Mofid Shahreh Ghesseh (1967)
Vladimir Ussachevsky Film Music (1962-1967) [MP3]
Gwilly Edmondez Sounds & Films
Nurse With Wound Shipwreck Radio (2004) [MP3]
Colin Anderson Whistles the First 19 Articles (1949) [MP3]
Tony Oursler Synesthesia: Alan Vega (1997-2001)
Dennis Oppenheim Dennis Oppenheim in Conversation, The Whitney Museum of American Art, 2001 [MP3]
Chris Mann maybe if you hit it hard (2008)
John Cage Lecture on Nothing (Performed by Kaegan Sparks), 2006 [MP3]
L'Atelier National du Manitoba The Tragedy of the Winnipeg Jets (2006)
Shana Moulton Whispering Pines 6,7,8 (2006); The Mountain Where Everything is Upside Down (2008)
Craig Baldwin Sonic Outlaws (1995)
Chris Burden Big Wrench (1980); A Twenty-Year Survey, Newport Harbor Art Museum (1988)
Patrick Bokanowski L'Ange (The Angel) (1982)
Cory Arcangel Clouds (2002); Video Ravingz (2002); Naptime (2002); f2 (2005); Mario Movie (2005)
Peter Greenaway A Walk Through H: The Reincarnation of an Ornithologist (1978)
Derek Jarman Wittgenstein (1993)
Hallgrímur Vilhjálmsson Serenade for six German Sirens, op.43 (2008) [MP3]
Ward Teitz Concrete Poetry Sculptures (1989-2008)
Dara Birnbaum Damnation of Faust Trilogy (1983)
Anthony McCall & Andrew Tyndall Argument (1978)
Frans Zwartjes Six More Films: (1978) Spectator (1970) , Spare Bedroom (1970) , Seats Two (1970) , Pentimento (1979) , Bedsitters (1972) and Audition (1973)
Kathy Acker Redoing Childhood (2000) [MP3]
Marina Rosenfeld Emotional Orchestra (2005) [MP3]
Lawrence Weiner & Peter Gordon Deutsche Angst (1982) [MP3]
Robert Nelson Oh Dem Watermelons (1965); The Awful Backlash (1967)
Eduardo Kac Digital and Holopoems (1985-1996)
Andy Warhol The Cars: Hello Again [Music Video, 1984]
Adbusters The Production of Meaning (2006)
Alain Robbe-Grillet N. a pris les dés ... aka N. took the dice (1971)
Ken Nordine The Eye Is Never Filled (2005)
Paul Sharits Video Interview with Gerard O'Grady (1976)
Ron Rice Chumlum (1964)
James Turrell Passageways (documentary, 2006)
Marina Corrêa Concrete Poetry as an International Movement viewed by Augusto de Campos: An Interview (2008)
Derek Jarman Four Early Films: Journey to Avebury (1971); Garden of Luxor (1972); Ashden's Walk on Møn (1973); Stolen Apples for Karen Blixen (1973)
Ken Jacobs Ontic Antics Starring Laurel and Hardy: Bye, Molly (2005)
Jennifer Reeves The Girl's Nervy (1995)
Stan Brakhage & Mary Beth Reed The Garden Path (2001)
Jonathan Meese Scarlettierbaby's Revolutions Parfum: Dictatorship of Art (2008)
Jesper Just Bliss & Heaven (2005); A Vicious Undertow (2007)
Andreas Gursky Gursky World (documentary, 2002)
Meredith Monk Ellis Island (1981); Book of Days (1989)
People Like Us Nine Additional Films [see features column] (1999-2008)
VALIE EXPORT ...Remote... Remote... (1973); Mann & Frau & Animal AKA Man & Woman & Animal (1973); Syntagma (1983)
Nick Zedd War is Menstrual Envy (1992)
Takeshi Murata Silver (2006)
Francis Thompson NY, NY: A Day in New York (1957)
Ken Jacobs A Tom Tom Chaser (2002)
Nam June Paik Lessons from the Video Master (Documentary, 2006)
Jose Luis Castillejo The Book of I's (1969)
Bernard Heidsieck 50/70
Tony Oursler EVOL (1984)
Lev Manovich Soft Cinema (2004)
Rebecca Horn An Erotic Concert (1998)
Brian Eno 14 Video Paintings (1981 & 1984)
Robert Irwin Primaries and Secondaries (2008)
Emile de Antonio Painters Painting (1969)
Michael Snow One Second in Montreal (1969)
Åke Hodell 220 Volts Buddha [MP3]
Philip Corner Word-Voices (1962-1988) [MP3]
Henri Chopin Cantata for Two Farts & Co. and Les Mirifiques Tundras & Co. [MP3]
Bernard Heidsieck Poème-Partition X LP [MP3]
Taniel Morales Sin Cabeza - Necropsia [MP3]
Art Worker's Coalition Documents 1 (1969) and Open Hearing (1969)
Sound Sculptures Published by Wergo in 1985, Sound Sculptures is a gorgeous, state-of-the-art overview of Austria and West Germany's instrument builders and sculptors. [MP3]
Hollis Frampton Two Interviews (1978)
Roni Horn Saying Water (1999) [MP3]
Yves Klein Conference á la Sorbonne (1959) [MP3]
Michael Snow Two Radio Solos: Short Wavelength (1980) and The Papaya Plantations (1980) [MP3]
Dieter Roth Die Radio Sonata (1976) [MP3]
Ben Patterson Tells Fluxus Stories (1962-2002); Drip Music; 370 Flies [MP3]
Russian Futurists from the GLM Collection [MP3] (1920-1959)
Gertrude Stein (read by Marian Seldes) from The Making of Americans and Lectures in America (1963) [MP3]
Jean Dubuffet Musique Brut (1971)
Francis Alÿs When Faith Moves Mountains (2002) and The Politics of Rehearsal [AKA Ensayo 2, 2005] (2005)
Robert Smithson and Nancy Holt Mono Lake (1968-2004) and Swamp (1971)
Lawrence Weiner A Little Bit of Matter and a Little Bit More (1976)
Maurice Lemaître Amour réinventé (1979-1989)
Karl Holmqvist I'm With You in Rockland (2005)
Hollis Frampton Manual of Arms (1966); Heterodyne (1967); Artificial Light (1969) ; Noctiluca (Magellan's Toys: #1) (1974); Matrix [First Dream] (1977-79)
Chris Marker Junkopia (1981)
Matthew Buckingham Three Dots & Sandra of the Tulip House or How To Live in a Free State (2001)
Ange Leccia Stridura (1980)
Su Friedrich Scar Tissue (1979)
Vito Acconci Seedbed (1972)
Kipper Kids Audio Works (1977-83)
Chris Burden Audio Works (1977-82)
Guy de Cointet Audio Works (1976-92)
Douglas Huebler Audio Works and Radio Interviews (1977-78)
New Humans New Humans (2005); Disassociate (2006); Undercover (2007); Collaborations with Vito Acconci and C. Spencer Yeh (2008) [MP3]
Michael Snow Wavelength (1967); La Région Centrale (1971); Breakfast (Table Top Dolly) (1976); Presents (1981); So This Is (1982); Prelude (2000)
Yukio Mishima & Domoto Masaki Yûkoku aka Patriotism aka Rite of Love & Death (1966)
Gary Hill Mirror Road (1976); Bathing (1977); Soundings (1978); Electronic Linguistic (1978); Sums &' Differences (1978); Windows (1978); Objects with Destinations (1979); Black/White/Text (1980); Site/Recite (a prologue) (1989)
Tehching Hsieh One Year Performance, No. 2 & No. 3 (1980-82)
Vito Acconci The Red Tapes (1976)
Johan van der Keuken De Meester en de Reus aka The Master and the Giant (1980)
Hollis Frampton Snowblind (1968); Paindrome (1969); Ordinary Matter (1972); Autumnal Equinox (1974)
Cindy Sherman Doll Clothes (1975)
William S. Burroughs Shotgun Paintings (date unknown)
Oliver Payne & Nick Relph Mixtape (2002)
Oliver Payne & Nick Relph Comma, Pregnant Pause (2004)
William Wegman & Man Ray Man Ray, Man Ray (documentary, 1978)
Ture Sjölander & Lars Weck Extracts from "Monument" (1967)
Raymond Pettibon The VHS Tapes: "Weatherman '69 - The Whole World is Watching", "Sir Drone", "Judgement Day Theater - The Book of Manson" and Citizen Tania (1989)
Alejandra Salinas and Aeron Bergman Two New Videos: Let 100 Flowers Bloom (2008) and Big Kahuna (2006)
Alejandra Salinas and Aeron Bergman Three New Sound Works: LoreleiTube, Imperfect Reliability and Traditional Visual (2008)
John Cage "American Masters" John Cage: I Have Nothing to Say and I Am Saying It (1990)
Paul Shartis Epileptic Seizure Comparison (1976)
Art Safari Relational Aesthetics (2004)
Philippe Garrel Les Hautes solitudes (1974, with Jean Seberg and Nico)
Åke Hodell Lågsniff (1965)
Pina Bausch Documentary (German language, Directed by Anne Linsel, 2006)
Ken Jacobs Window (1964)
Richard Serra Surprise Attack (1973)
Yervant Gianikian and Angela Ricci Lucchi From the Pole to the Equator (1987)
Standish Lawder Corridor (1970, music by Terry Riley)
Standish Lawder Colorfilm (1971, music by the Mothers of Invention)
Jon Rose Great Fences of Australia (2002)
Henry Cowell New Musical Resources (1938/1969) [PDF, 56mb]
The Complete Gertrude Stein's "The Making of Americans" Read by Gregory Laynor (2008) [MP3]
Merce Cunningham, Nam June Paik & John Cage Time and Space Concepts in Music and Visual Art (1978)
Yvonne Rainer Privilege (1990)
John Baldessari Some Stories [Documentary] (1990)
Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster Parc Central (2006)
Paper Rad P-Unit Mixtape 2005 (2005)
Marcel Broodthaers Un Voyage en Mer du Nord (A Voyage on the North Sea) [1973-74]
Richard Serra Railroad Turnbridge (1976)
Joan Retallack Fast Forward (2008) [PDF]
Paul Sharits Epileptic Seizure Comparison [1976]
Mairéad Byrne Example As Figure [PDF]
Bernard Heidsieck Interview (2008) [PDF]
Richard Serra Prisoners Dilemma (1974)
Jean Baudrillard Suicide Moi (1996) with Mike Kelley, George Hurley and others [MP3]
Vito Acconci Soundworks (1976-2001) [MP3]
Mike Kelley & Paul McCarthy (with Violent Onsen Geisha) Sod and Sodie Sock, Studio C, Comp O.S.O. (mid-90s) and "The Gobbler" (1997) [MP3]
Dieter Roth Musik (1973-1991) [MP3]
Jon Rose Syd and George / Serinette Exotique (2007) [MP3]
Peter Greenaway & Tom Phillips A TV Dante (1983)
Jack Chambers The Hart of London (1970)
Mary Ellen Bute Passages from James Joyce's "Finnegans Wake" (1965-67)
Mark Leckey Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore (1999)
Philippe Parreno The Boy from Mars (2005)
Tracey Moffatt Night Cries: A Rural Tragedy (1989)
Tracey Moffatt Nice Coloured Girls (1987)
Anri Sala Now I See (2004)
Erkki Kurenniemi Electronics in the World of Tomorrow (1968)
Joyce Wieland Rat Life and Diet in North America (1968)
Beat Streuli Brussels 05/06 (2006)
Nam June Paik Edited for Television (Documentary, 1975)
yann beauvais Still Life (1997) / Hezraelah (2996)
Ian Hugo Bells of Atlantis (1952)
Lillian Schwartz Pixillation (1970)
Robert Whitman Shower (1964)
Robert Nelson The Awful Backlash (1967)
Martha Rosler Secrets from the Street: No Disclosure (1980)
Martha Rosler If It's Too Bad to Be True, It Could Be DISINFORMATION (1985)
Marcel Duchamp Jeu d'échecs avec Marcel Duchamp (1963)
Erica Baum Photographic Works (1997-2008)
Barry Schwabsky Two Poems Circa 1992 (PDF)
Derek Beaulieu How To Write / How To Edit (PDF)
Eleanor Brown Le A Play on Words (PDF)
Marcel Broodthaers Le Corbeau et le Renard (1967)
Janek Schaefer Audio Works (1985-2003)
Jean Baudrillard The Violence of the Image (2004)
Jeremy Blake Century 21 (2004)
Forum Lenteng Massroom Project (2005)
Ange Leccia Perfect Day (2007)
Ernie Gehr Eureka (1974)
Jennifer McCoy & Kevin McCoy Soft Rains & Our Second Date (2003)
Alex Bag Untitled Fall '95 (1995)
Yvonne Rainer Writings by and About Yvonne Rainer from October (1976-1999)
George Brecht Book of the Tumbler on Fire (1978) [PDF, 314mb]
Scott MacDonald Screen Writings (1985) [13.4mb, PDF]
Stan Douglas Television Spots / Monodramas (1987-1991), Der Sandmann (1995), Nu•tka• (1996)
Jackson Mac Low Audio Works (1955-2004)
Claes Oldenburg Fotodeath (1961)
Seth Price "8-4 9-5 10-6 11-7" (8 Hour MP3 Audio File, 2007)
Vito Acconci Willoughby Sharp Videoviews Vito Acconci (1973)
All Avant-Garde All The Time - UbuWeb Podcast #5: An UbuWeb Grab Bag
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Produced by The Poetry Foundation, UbuWeb is pleased to announce the latest in its podcast series, focusing on a dozen of Ubu's hidden treasures, highlighting audio works that you really should know about about but most likely don't. Featured here gems ranging from Marie Osmond incanting Hugo Ball's 1916 sound poem Karawane to Charles Bernstein 1975 oratorio 1-100 where, yep, whispers and screams the first one hundred numbers in, urm, numerical order. Other artists include Joseph Beuys, Terry Fox, Hugo Keesing's Chart Sweep, Todd Colby, Steve McLaughlin, Kelly Mark and Komar & Melamid. You can subscribe to our podcast here.
Mauricio Kagel: 1931-2008 UbuWeb mourns the loss of the great composer, filmmaker and artist. You can hear his music here and view his films here. He will be missed.
Stan VanDerBeek - Films: 1959-1972 UbuWeb is pleased to present 14 films by the legendary filmmaker Stan VanDerBeek (1927-1984). "A pioneer in the development of experimental film and live-action animation techniques, he achieved widespread recognition in the American avant-garde cinema. VanDerBeek was also intimately involved with the artists and art movements of his time; he filmed Happenings and merged dance with films and videos. VanDerBeek was a preeminent thinker, scientist, artist, and inventor who forged new links between art, technology, perception, and humankind." (www.eai.org) Presented in collaboration with Guild & Greyshkul, EAI and re:voir
Judy Dunaway - Soundworks: 1990-2002 Judy Dunaway is a composer, improvisor and conceptual artist who is primarily known for her sound works for latex balloons. Since 1990 she has composed over thirty works for balloons as instruments and has also made this her main instrument for improvisation. Included here are three unrelased baloon works: "For Chorus with Balloons" (2000), 40 Days and 40 Nights (1999) and Surabaya (6:07); Shar: Pop Music, a collaboration with Ilja Komarov; the legendary Duo for Radio Stations, simulcast on WFMU (New Jersey) and WKCR (New York) in 1992; five collaborations with Evan Gallagher Little Band; and The Dead, a score for artist Diane Torr's Crossing the River Styx (1990).
Roulette TV, Part 2 32 more streaming and downloadable episodes of Roulette TV from the 2000 season. Artists include Billy Bang, Chris Cutler, Michael Gordon, Zeena Parkins, Shelley Hirsch, Christian Marclay, Ikue Mori, Sainkho Namchylak, Phil Niblock, Pauline Oliveros, William Parker, Elliott Sharp, Jim Staley and many others. The first series of Roulette TV is below. This is presented in partnership with the legendary New York City experimental music organization Roulette. Founded in 1978, is a major New York City venue for contemporary music and intermedia art.
Alix Pearlstein - Videos: 2000-2005 Presented in conjunction with her solo show at The Kitchen in New York City, September 5-October 18, UbuWeb is pleased to present four videos works. Alix Pearlstein's performance based videos subject highly charged narratives to minimalist structures - at once pressuring emotionality and artifice. Characterized by deadpan humor and a streamlined aesthetic, her approach is direct and intimate. Pearlstein's earliest videos, in which she appears most often as performer, exhibit a deliberately low-tech, grunge sensibility that is countered by the cool, stylized elegance of her later works. Included here are Two Women (2000), Forsaken (2003), Crash (2004) and All Day and a Night (2005)
Roulette TV (2008) UbuWeb is pleased to announce a partnership with the legendary New York City experimental music organization Roulette. Founded in 1978, is a major New York City venue for contemporary music and intermedia art. We are happy to present ten videos from the 2008 season of Roulette TV. Roulette TV is an on-going, innovative video series which presents unique contemporary music in compelling and engaging performances given by the creators themselves. Each performance is followed by an insightful interview with the artist. This series includes performances by: David Behrman, Marilyn Crispell, Andrew Cyrille, Joan La Barbara, Oliver Lake, Phoebe Legere, Margaret Leng Tan, Kathleen Supové, Blue Gene Tyranny and Lois V Vierk. Future archive plans include several seasons of Roulette TV as well as Roulette's extensive concert audio archive.
Cheryl Donegan - Videos: 1993-2007 Cheryl Donegan defines a generation of artists, many of whom are women, who first engaged in a new conceptual art practice in the early 1990s. Her work integrates the time-based, gestural forms of performance and video with forms such as painting, drawing, and installation. Provocative and irreverent, her body-based, performative video works put a subversive spin on issues relating to sex, gender, art-making, art history, and pop culture. Presented here are fourteen videos from her early ground-breaking Head (1993) to her most recent mediation on Carolee Schneeman and Coroline Bergvall's works, Refuses (2007).
Keren Cytter - Videos: 2003-2008 "Keren Cytter's videos have a distinctly literary flavour. Although her medium is tape and she makes countless references to cinematic and televised forms, her scripts often involve long soliloquies and multiple voice-overs that would seem more comfortable unravelling over the pages of a novel. Cytter, who writes all her own scripts, deliberately uses an over-poetic and non-realistic spoken language to enhance the artificiality of the filmmaking process. This eloquent and expressive speech is at odds with the videos' documentary style, which includes lots of wobbly, hand-held, out-of-focus shots, culminating in the camera getting knocked over." - Frieze Magazine. Included here are five videos: MFPIG (2003), Nothing (2003), Continuity (2005), Der Spiegel (2007) and Les Ruissellements du Diable (2008).
Guy Ben-Ner - Videos: 1999-2007 Although shot at home and usually with his children, Ben-Ner's films are far from home movies. They are sequences of carefully planned scenes, each film is in fact preceded by a copious storyboard drawings. The interest in the works of the mid-1960 and early 1970s' body artists such as Bruce Nauman, Vito Acconci, and Dennis Oppenheim, and the fascination with filmic situations in which the director, the cameraman, the leading actor and the stuntman are all one and the same, led Ben-Ner to deepen his interest in the early films of Harold Lloyd, Charlie Chaplin, and specially Buster Keaton. Included here are four videos: Stealing Beauty (2007), Moby Dick (2000), Wild Boy (2005) and Berkeley's Island (1999).
Janek Schaefer - Soundworks and Videos (1995-2008) A retrospective of the audio and visual works of this U.K.-based composer and artist. Sound works included are: Recorded Delivery [1995], fragmented noises of a sound activated dictaphone traveling overnight through the Post Office; His Master's Voices [1997], T.S Eliot poem 'Burnt Norton' is played 3 times at once on the 3 tone-arm Tri-Phonic Turntable; Love Song [2003], sing the word Love seven separate times at seven different pitches; Skate - Random Play Record [2001], an LP that is never the same twice; and Minneapolis 'Office Max' Messages [2003], a simple collage of the messages Schaefer found left on the display model of a mini digital Dictaphone he bought at Office Max in Minneapolis. Films include The Freedom of Speech [2006], a work for typewriter and voice about the erosion of our freedom of speech; Vacant Space [2006], an installation using location recordings and panoramic photographs collected in a series of empty interiors around the world; Extended Play [2008], an installation for 3 x Cello EP's, 3 x Piano EP's, and 3 x Violin EP's played at either 33, 45, or 78rpm using nine retro record players, playing continuously; and Two by Two by Two by Two by Too many by Too much [2007], an audio /visual response to global warming.
Michael Smith and Joshua White - Collaborative Works (1997-2005) In conjunction with Mike's World at the ICA in Philadelphia, Mike Smith and Joshua White's retrospective at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, UbuWeb is pleased to present a retrospective of their video works including The MUSCO Story: 1969-1997, video documentation of a fictitious lighting design company with origins in the psychedelic oil-projection shows of the late '60s; Open House (1999), about an artist who, in response to skyrocketing SoHo real estate values, has decided to sell out after living in extended-adolescent squalor for 20 years; QuinQuag (2001-2002), a spoof of a utopian artists' colony; and Take Off Your Pants (2005), a meditation on internet life in the form of six-sided kiosk that serves as a relentlessly cheerful information booth purporting to take you to a miniature "virtual" world that conflates the internet and a Disney ride. Michael Smith is a video and performance artist who invokes the routines of popular comedy to articulate the banality and hype of mass consumer culture, and the isolation of those whose inner lives are defined by it. Smith chronicles the trivial dreams and adventures of his eponymous alter-ego, the deadpan "Mike," a postmodern Everyman who believes everything and understands nothing in his media-saturated world.
People Like Us - Films: 2002-2007 Five full-length films which employ recycled materials from a variety of sources. We Edit Life (2002) explores the theme of technology, using documentary, industrial and educational film footage from the Prelinger Archive and The Internet Archive.;The Remote Controller (2003) uses found footage sourced from educational films to explore the way human body and machine interface in the 20th century; Resemblage (2004) was created using film from the LUX archive by artists Alan Berliner, Lawrence Jordan, People Like Us, Semiconductor and the Estate of Stan Vanderbeek; Story Without End's (2005) narrative is from a public domain film of the same name made in 1950 about the development of microwave radio transmission and the transistor; Work, Rest & Play (2007) is a video triptych exploring the themes of labour, leisure and industriousness; and live at the WFMU Record Fair (2003). The work has been carefully constructed using industrial and documentary film footage from 1940-1975. You can also hear People Like Us' complete audio work featuring hundreds of MP3s in UbuWeb Sound.
Three Videos by Ryan Trecartin UbuWeb is pleased to feature three full-length videos by Ryan Trecartin: I-Be AREA (2007), (Tommy-Chat Just E-mailed Me) (2006) and A Family Finds Entertainment (2004). Writing this year in The New York Times, Holland Cotter says of Trecartin: "[He uses] very basic digital tools to create a highly personal narrative art, almost a kind of folk art... ...For queer artists of Mr. Trecartin's generation, cross-dressing, cross-identifying and cross-thinking are part of a state of being, not statements of political position. Like the work of John Waters and Jack Smith, his art is about just saying no to life as we think we have seen it and saying yes to zanier, virtual-utopian possibilities."
All Avant-Garde All The Time - UbuWeb Podcast #4: The Tellus cassettes
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Produced by The Poetry Foundation, UbuWeb is pleased to announce the latest in its podcast series, focusing on Ubu's hidden treasures. This podcast gives a guided tour of UbuWeb's collection of the Tellus Cassette Magazines comprising nearly 1,000 MP3 files recorded between 1983 and 1993. This podcast features narrated selections from the series including Louise Lawler, Jerome Rothenberg, Gregory Whitehead, Glenn Branca, Harry Partch and Paul Bowles. You can subscribe to our podcast here.
Stockhausen's Originale: Doubletakes, The Film (1964) Premiered in Cologne during the autumn of 1961, this is a documentary of the U.S. premiere production of Originale, a Happening by German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen. Filmed at the "2nd Annual Avant Garde Festival of New York," the stage production was directed by Allan Kaprow. An all-star cast of performers include Nam June Paik, Charolotte Moorman, Jackson Mac Low, James Tenney, Max Neuhaus, Alvin Lucier, Dick Higgins, Alan Kaprow, Allen Ginsberg, and many others.
Christopher DeLaurenti: 4 Protest Symphonies To celebrate May Day and the 40th anniversary of May '68, UbuWeb is pleased to present 4 full-length audio pieces based on various protest actions by this Seattle-based composer. "N30: Live at the WTO Protest, November 30, 1999" is an aggressively edited orthophonic "you are there" recording. Spattered by pepper spray, enshrouded in tear gas and pelted with rubber bullets, Delaurenti was engulfed in maelstrom of drums, slogans, chants, screaming and violence. "N30: Who guards the Guardians?" is a 57-minute radiophonic work depicting how law enforcement acted and reacted on that unforgettable day in Seattle history when thousands gathered in Seattle to protest the World Trade Organization. "Two Secret Wars" presents audio recorded at an Anti-War Rally in Seattle on December 8, 2002; and "Live in New York at the Republican National Convention Protest, September 2 - August 28, 2004" welds combative field recordings of the various protests and art actions with police transmissions, NOAA weather alerts, radio broadcast anomalies (splashes and sprays of tape hiss, enigmatic numbers glossolalia, crude phase encoding), and wild card audio snatched from the airwaves into a vivid soundscape of dissent.
Tellus Audio Cassettes (1983-1993) UbuWeb is pleased to present the entire run of the legendary New York-based Tellus audio cassette magazine. Originally a subscription-based bimonthly publication, the series took full advantage of the popular cassette medium to promote cutting edge music, documenting the New York scene and advanced US composers of the time. Highlight issues include: All Guitars! (1985), The Sound of Radio (1985), Just Intonation (1986), Audio By Visual Artists (1988), The Voice of Paul Bowles (1989) and Flux Tellus (1990). Featuring hundreds of artists including Marcel Duchamp, Alison Knowles, Sonic Youth, Joan Jonas, George Brecht, Pauline Oliveros, John Zorn, Richard Prince, Glenn Branca, Harry Partch and Mike Kelley. Tellus cassettes were edited by Joseph Nechvatal, Claudia Gould and Carole Parkinson. This UbuWeb feature is presented in conjuction with Continuo's Weblog. Produced for UbuWeb by Steve McLaughlin
Dada Magazine, Issues 1, 2, 3 (1917-1918) Attempting to promulgate Dada ideas throughout Europe, Tristan Tzara launched the art and literature review Dada. Appearing in July 1917, the first issue of Dada, subtitled Miscellany of Art and Literature, featured contributions from members of avant-garde groups throughout Europe, including Giorgio de Chirico, Robert Delaunay, and Wassily Kandinsky. Marking the magazine's debut, Tzara wrote in the Zurich Chronicle, "Mysterious creation! Magic Revolver! The Dada Movement is Launched." Issue 2 appeared in December of 1918. Issue number 3 violated all the rules and conventions in typography and layout and undermined established notions of order and logic. Printed in newspaper format in both French and German editions, it embodies Dada's celebration of nonsense and chaos with an explosive mixture of manifestos, poetry, and advertisements - all typeset in randomly ordered lettering. Included is Tzara's "Dada Manifesto of 1918," which was read at Meise Hall in Zurich on July 23, 1918, and is perhaps the most important of the Dadaist manifestos. See also Helmut Herbst's film Deutschland Dada (1969), Hans Richter's films and Tristan Tzara's sound poems in UbuWeb Sound which is strewn with historical and rare recordings from dozens of Dadaists.
Dinner With Henry Miller (1979) Dinner With Henry is a rare, 30-minute documentary about Henry Miller. It is exactly what the title implies: footage of Henry having dinner. With him at the table is the film crew, and actress/model Brenda Venus, to whom Henry was enamoured in the final years of life. Henry - at age 87 - spends the majority of his time speaking on a number of subjects, the most persistent of which is Blaise Cendrars. Occasionally, he complains about the food. That is all: a curious "slice of life" for any Miller fan who likes to imagine being at the table with him.
David Cronenberg on Andy Warhol (2006) A guided tour of the "Andy Warhol / Supernova: Stars Death and Disasters, 1962-1964" exhibit at the Art Gallery of Ontario, conceived and narrated by renowned filmmaker David Cronenberg. Cronenberg says, "Andy was making underground films when I was making underground films. And I was more inspired by him than by Hollywood. He created himself: He was an outsider, a Slovakian, Catholic, gay, an artist, poor; an outsider in his own family, a triple outsider like Kafka, with his nose pressed against the New York window. And, he became the ultimate insider, the center of his own world, and drew people to him. He became a huge example of the invention of an identity." Commentary by David Cronenberg, Mary-Lou Green, Dennis Hopper, David Moos, James Rosenquist and Amy Taubin.
Gilbert and George No Surrender (BBC Documentary, 2007)
The Wooster Group Rhyme 'Em To Death (1993)
John Baldessari I Will Not Make Any More Boring Art (1971); John Baldessari Sings Sol Lewitt (1972); The Meaning of Various News Photos to Ed Henderson (1973)
Anne Tardos Sound Works
Tacita Dean Kodak (2006)
La Monte Young, editor An Anthology of Chance Operations (1963)
Robert Smithson text of "Hotel Palenque" (1969-72)
C.C. Hennix Electric Harpsichord No. 1
Antonio Gaudí Documentary (1984)
Tellus 15: The Improvisors (1986) John Zorn, Bill Frisell, Christian Marclay, Fred Frith and many others
Tellus #17 - Video Arts Music (1987) Jean Paul Curtay, Ann-Sargent Wooster, Woody Vasulka, Peter Rose and many others
Tellus #20 - Media Myth (1988) Crawling With Tarts, Nicolas Collins, Joseph Nechvatal and many others
Nam June Paik Beatles Electroniques (1966-69)
Dan Graham Performer/Audience/Mirror (1975)
Ben Lewis Art Safari: Matthew Barney (2005)
Maria Anna Tapeiner The Body as a Matrix: Matthew Barney's Cremaster Cycle (2002)
Tellus 10: All Guitars! (1985) Lee Ranaldo, Butthole Surfers, Bob Mould, Thurston Moore and many others
Tellus 2 (1984) Kiki Smith, David Garland, Jamie Dalglish, Willoughby Sharp and many others
Tellus 12: Dance (1986)
Lynda Benglis Female Sensibility (1974)
Hollis Frampton Gloria! (1979)
Ben Lewis Art Safari: Matthew Barney (2005)
Terayama Shuji Photothèque imaginaire de Shuji Terayama, les gens de la famille Chien Dieu (photographs; 1975)
Salvador Dalí Radioscopie De Jacques Chancel - Interview (French language; 1971)
John Roach Simultaneous Translation (2007)
François Dufrêne Crirhythms, Osmose-Art and various works (1958-70)
Carolee Schneeman Meat Joy (1964)
Ulay Action in 14 predetermined Sequences: There is a Criminal Touch to Art (1975)
Mike Kelley Test Room Containing Multiple Stimuli Known to Elicit Curiosity and Manipulatory Responses (1999)
Michael Taylor Lecture on Alfred Jarry's Ubu Roi (2008)
Tellus 23: Paul Bowles Historical musical and literary works
Tellus 16: Tango with Carlos Gardel, David Garland, Fast Forward and many others (1991)
Tellus 13: Power Electronics with Merzbow, Rhys Chatham, Controlled Bleeding and many others (1986)
Tellus 26: Jewel Box with Catherine Jauniaux & Ikue Mori, Sapphire, Mary Ellen Childs and many others (1992)
Ryan Trecartin I-Be AREA (2007)
Richard Serra Hand Catching Lead (1968)
C.C. Hennix Dutch National Radio Broadcast (2005)
Hollis Frampton Nostalgia (1971)
Group 180 Works by Reich, Szezmo, Rzewski and others (1980, 1985)
Jaap Blonk Vocalor (1998)
Alexander Ross (painter) Grandfather Paradox (1989)
Charles Simonds Five Films (1972-74), with Rudy Burckhardt
Tellus 5-6: Audio Visual Issue with Louise Lawler, Richard Prince, David Wojnarowicz and many others (1984)
Sophie Calle & Greg Shepard No Sex Last Night aka Double-Blind (1992)
Tuli Kupferberg No Deposit, No Return (1964)
Sam Taylor-Wood: Video Works (1998 - 2003) Sam Taylor-Wood makes photographs and films that examine, through highly charged scenarios, our shared social and psychological conditions. Taylor-Wood's work examines the split between being and appearance, often placing her human subjects - either singly or in groups - in situations where the line between interior and external sense of self is in conflict. Films here include: Brontosaurus (1995), Knackered (1996), Method in Madness (1998), Hysteria (1999), A Little Death (2002), Breach (2001) Mute (2001), Pietà (2001), Still Life (2001) and Ascension (2003). Presented in partnership with Art Torrents.
All Avant-Garde All The Time - UbuWeb Podcast #3: The Sound of Aspen Magazine
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Produced by The Poetry Foundation, UbuWeb is pleased to announce the latest in its podcast series, focusing on Ubu's hidden treasures. This podcast gives a guided tour of UbuWeb's collection of audio featured on Aspen Magazine: the Multimedia Magazine in a Box, published between 1965 and 1971. Artists featured include Samuel Beckett, William S. Burroughs, John Cage, John Cale and The Velvet Underground, Marcel Duchamp, John Lennon, Yoko Ono, Jackson Mac Low, Morton Feldman, Gordon Mumma and Angus Maclise. You can subscribe to our podcast here.
Alan Licht - Conceptual Soundworks (2003-2004) Four previously unavailable compositions. Includes "Rashomon" where the film Rashomon by Akira Kurosawa was shown with the sound turned down. The audience was asked to read the subtitles aloud, together; "Twilight of the Idols," in which the audio levels of Led Zeppelin's untitled fourth album are manipulated; and two outtakes from his A New York Minute CD, "Bridget O'Riley," a mashup of Blondie and The Who's "We Won't Get Fooled Again" and "A New York Minute," the original uncut version, consisting of a month's worth of weather reports from a New York AM radio station. You can also read three of Alan Licht's conceptual written works [PDF] in UbuWeb's Publishing the Unpublishable series.
The Western Round Table on Modern Art (1949) Rare proceedings and documentation from this important conference that took place in San Francisco in April of 1949. Participants included Marcel Duchamp, Frank Lloyd Wright, Arnold Schoenburg, Mark Tobey, Darius Milhaud, Alfred Frankenstein, Gregory Bateson, Kenneth Burke, Robert Goldwater and Andrew C. Richie. Documentation includes over 9 hours of audio tape, transcriptions and photographs. Organizer Douglas MacAgy writes, "The object of the Round Table was to bring a representation of the best informed opinion of the time to bear on questions about art today (1949). A set of neat conclusions, as to the outcome of the conference, was neither expected nor desired. Rather, it was hoped that progress would be made in the exposure of hidden assumptions, in the uprooting of obsolete ideas, and in the framing of new questions." Curated for UbuWeb by Colby Ford.
Five Rare Books From the 1960s by Bern Porter Several of Porter's books from the 1960s are gathered here on UbuWeb, three of them for the first time anywhere, with an essay by Porter's collaborator and literary executor, Mark Melnicove. Titles include: Aphasia (1961), cut and assembled commercial and soft news language into a found poetry that is still original and fresh; Scandinavian Summer (1961), where Porter cut out pages from Scandinavian, Russian, and American newspaper archives at random, bound them together, and called the result a book; 468B Thy Future (1966), a book written entirely in computer code; The Wastemaker (1926-1961) where texts are divorced from their sources and disguised in a new tone, not intended by the original author; and Dieresis (1969) where the photographs in the book are the modern equivalents of ancient ideograms, capable of being read as texts. Melnicove writes in his introduction: "As reproduced here on UbuWeb, you can all but touch the books. What was prohibitively expensive almost fifty years ago for Porter -- the full-color reproduction of his pages -- is today's electronic commonplace. You can view his titles as a series of double-page spreads, not so foreign from the experience of holding and turning a Bern Porter book with your 'real' hands." See also Porter's UbuWeb Sound page and Porter's page in our Historical section.
All Avant-Garde All The Time - UbuWeb Podcast #2: The World of Outsiders
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Produced by The Poetry Foundation, UbuWeb is pleased to announce the latest in its podcast series, focusing on Ubu's hidden treasures. As the site has grown so large, these occasional audio guides might shed some light on things you may have overlooked, forgotten about or simply never knew about. This podcast gives a guided tour of UbuWeb's collection of outsider audio. Artists include Antonin Artaud, Jim Roche, Bern Porter, Francis E. Dec, Benjamin Weismann and Sean Landers amongst others. You can subscribe to our podcast here.
Julian Schnabel - Every Silver Lining Has A Cloud (1995) With the Oscars just around the corner, it's nice to remind ourselves that not everything Julian Schnabel touches turns to gold. This record was made between his art star days and his current Hollywood reign with such great players as Funkadelic keyboardist Bernie Worrell, Golden Palomino drummer Anton Fier, and jazz arranger Henry Threadgill, but was universally panned upon its release in 1995. As one reviewer put it, "Schnabel can be described as a cross between Michael Bolton and Leonard Cohen, but unfortunately he writes songs like Bolton and sings like Cohen instead of the other way around... a combination of treacly sentiment, pretentious poesy, tuneless croaking, and minimalist melodies."
Harun Farocki - Selected Works (1967-2001) Born in 1944, Farocki has made close to 90 films, including three feature films, essay films and documentaries. He has worked in collaboration with other filmmakers as a scriptwriter, actor and producer. Featured here are ten of Farocki's films: Die Worte Des Vorsitzenden (1967), Inextinguishable Fire (1969), Wie man sieht (As You See) (1986), Leben-BRD [How to Live in the German Federal Republic] (1989), Images Of The World And The Inscription Of War (1989), Schnittstelle/interface (1995), Arbeiter verlassen die Fabrik [Workers leaving the Factory] (1995), Stilleben (Still Life) (1997), I Thought I Was Seeing Convicts (2001) and The Creator of Shopping Worlds (2001). Also featured in Jill Godmilow's What Farocki Taught (1998), a remake of Farocki's Inextinguishable Fire. A collaborative film with Helke Sander Break the Power of the Manipulators (1967/68) is also featured. This UbuWeb resource runs concurrent with Farocki's solo show at Greene Naftali Gallery (Jan. 10-Feb. 9) in New York City. Harun Farocki - Selected Works (1967-2001) is a collaboration with UbuWeb's partner Art Torrents.
Henri Chopin (1922-2008) UbuWeb mourns the loss of the great pioneer sound poet, who passed away on January 3, 2008 at his home in England. You can hear his audio, watch videos of him or read his 1967 manifesto "Why I Am The Author of Sound Poetry and Free Poetry." He will be missed.
Publishing the Unpublishable, First Series (001-032) What constitutes an unpublishable work? It could be many things: too long, too experimental, too dull; too exciting; it could be a work of juvenilia or a style you've long since discarded; it could be a work that falls far outside the range of what you're best known for; it could be a guilty pleasure or it could simply be that the world judges it to be awful, but you think it's quite good. We've all got a folder full of things that would otherwise never see the light of day. Invited authors were invited to ponder to that question. The works found here are their responses, ranging from an 1018-page manuscript (unpublishable due to its length) to a volume of romantic high school poems written by a now-respected innovative poet. The web is a perfect place to test the limits of unpublishability. With no printing, design or distribution costs, we are free to explore that which would never have been feasible, economically and aesthetically. While this exercise began as an exploration and provocation, the resultant texts are unusually rich; what we once considered to be our trash may, after all, turn out to be our greatest treasure.
365 Days Project 2007 Complete: December 31 ended this year's run of the 365 Days Project. Thanks for visiting, reading and listening through this very fun year of sharing. A huge mountain of gratitude goes out to all the contributors who shared this year! You can view the archived site for both 2003 and 2007 editions here (mirrored at WFMU). -- Otis Fodder, Curator
All Avant-Garde All The Time - UbuWeb Podcast #1:
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Produced by The Poetry Foundation, UbuWeb is pleased to announce the second in its podcast series, focusing on Ubu's hidden treasures. As the site has grown so large, these occasional audio guides might shed some light on things you may have overlooked, forgotten about or simply never knew about. This podcast explores the mass of recordings by Giorno Poetry Systems (aka The Dial-A-Poem Poets), a series of double LPs put out back in the 70s featuring artists such as Patti Smith, Laurie Anderson, Philip Glass, Meredith Monk, John Cage, Richard Hell, Frank O'Hara and hundreds of others. UbuWeb's introductory podcast, a general introduction to the site and to sound poetry, can be found here. You can subscribe to our podcast here.
Komar & Melamid and Dave Soldier "The People's Choice Music" (1997) Komar & Melamid's Most Wanted Painting project was extended into the realm of music. A poll, written by Dave Soldier, was conducted on The Dia Foundation's web site in Spring 1996. Approximately 500 visitors took the survey. Solder used the survey results to write music and lyrics for the Most Wanted and Most Unwanted songs.
The Most Wanted Song: A musical work that will be unavoidably and uncontrollably "liked" by 72 ± 12% of listeners.
The Most Unwanted Song: Fewer than 200 individuals of the world's total population will enjoy this.
More details and liner notes here.
Yvonne Rainer Film About A Woman Who... (1974)
Robert Whitman Performances from the 1960s
Sean Landers The Man Within (1991) [MP3]
Chicago '82: A Dip in the Lake John Cage, Glenn Branca, Meredith Monk, Charlemagne Palestine, Harold Budd and many others (1982) [MP3]
Mike Kelley Extracurricular Activity & Superman Recites Selections from 'The Bell Jar' and Other Works by Sylvia Plath (1999 - 2000)
Gordon Matta-Clark Conical Intersect (1975)
Gordon Matta-Clark Splitting, Bingo/Ninths, Substrait (Underground Dailies) (1974-1976)
Paul Lansky Artifice (1976) [MP3]
Martin Kippenberger Greatest Hits [MP3]
Joseph Beuys Art into Society - Society into Art (at the ICA, London. May, 1974) [MP3]
David Soldier & Kurt Vonnegut A Soldier's Story [MP3]
Tellus #7 The Word
Tellus #8 USA/Germany
Tellus #9 Music With Memory
Tellus #11 The Sound of Radio (1985)
Tellus #14 Just Intonation (1986)
Tellus #22 False Phonemes (1988)
Bas Jan Ader Selected Works (1970-1971)
Robert Fitterman Sprawl (Video, 2007)
Jean/Hans Arp Soundworks (1913-1961)
Ronald Nameth Andy Warhol's Exploding Plastic Inevitable with The Velvet Underground (1966)
Doron Golan Four Films (2007)
Alvin Lucier The Only Talking Machine of its Kind in the World (1969)
Tony Oursler Sucker (1987)
René Viénet Chinois, encore un effort pour être révolutionnaires a.k.a. "Peking Duck Soup" (1977)
Dan Graham Rock My Religion (1982-84)
Survival Research Laboratories A Plan for Social Improvement (1988)
René Clair BBC Documentary
The Kitchen Presents Two Moon July (1986): Laurie Anderson, Philip Glass, Dara Birnbaum, David Byrne and others
Kenny G Meets John Zorn Kenneth Goldsmith & Jonathan Zorn (2007)
Jonathan Zorn All Talk (2003-2005)
François Girard Le Train (1985)
Survival Research Laboratories A Plan for Social Improvement (1988)
René Clair BBC Documentary
Dan Graham Rock My Religion (1982-84)
The Kitchen Presents Two Moon July (1986): Laurie Anderson, Philip Glass, Dara Birnbaum, David Byrne and others
Mona Hatoum Measures of Distance (1988)
Simon Morris sucking on words: Kenneth Goldsmith (2007)
Sara Sackner Concrete! (2006), A documentary about the Sackner Archive for Visual and Concrete Poetry
David Van Tieghem Ear To Ground (1979)
Maurice Lemaître Le film est déjà commencé?, (1951)
Peter Campus Three Transitions (1973)
Survival Research Laboratories Virtues of Negative Fascination (1985-86)
Stephen Dwoskin Dirty (1966) - Music by Gavin Bryars
György Ligeti: Portrait, A Documentary by Michel Follin (1993) [French language]
Ken Jacobs Blonde Cobra (1963) & Little Stabs at Happiness (1960)
Nobuhiko Obayashi Experimental Films (1960-68)
Maja Ratkje Live in Paris, 2005 (video)
William S. Burroughs French Television Interview (1990)
Hy Hirsch Come Closer (1952)
Cheryl Donegan Refuses (2007)
Jean Rouch Cimetieres dans la falaise (1951) & Les Maitres fous (1955)
Carpi Cioni Three Short Films (1960-1962)
Alexander Hammid Bezucelna Prochazka (Aimless Walk, 1930) & Na Prazskem Hrade (At Prague Castle, 1932)
Shuji Terayama & Shuntaro Tanikawa Video Letters (1982-83)
Sidney Peterson The Lead Shoes (1949)
Nicole Dextras Frozen Words (2007)
Lance Wakeling SIC, NOTES FRMDELOM A KEYLOGGER (2006/2007)
Joseph Nechvatal viral symphOny (MP3)
Andy Warhol Warhol's Cinema: A Mirror for the Sixties (1989)
J.G. Ballard Shanghai Jim (1991)
Robert Kramer Ice (1969)
Kay Rosen Sisyphis, 1991 (video); Interview, 2007 (video & MP3)
Peter Weiss Was machen wir jetzt (1958)
Contemporary Chinese Experimental Music 1997-2007 (MP3)
Alec Finlay: Assorted Visual Poems and Bookworks
Orson Welles: The One Man Band (1995)
The Itchy & Scratchy Orchestra Harvard Concert: pieces by Cornelius Cardew and Christian Wolff (2007)
Joseph Cornell Rose Hobart, 1936
Joseph Beuys Abstract Energy LP, 1985 (MP3)
Luigi Russolo Selection of Historical Audio Works (MP3)
Pandit Pran Nath Ragas of Morning and Night LP 1986 (MP3)
Wolf Vostell De/Collage LP, 1980 (MP3)
Sonic Arts Union Ashley, Lucier, Mumma, Behrman - LP, 1971 (MP3)
Lautpoesie: An Anthology 1974-1986 (MP3)
Jacques Derrida On Religion (MP3)
Tadanori Yokoo 3 Animation Films (1964-65)
Piotr Kamler Animated Films (with Bernard Parmegiani, Francois Bayle, etc) (1969-93)
Werner Nekes & Anthony Moore Hynningen (1975)
Jacques Lacan Télévision (1973)
MoMA: Writing in Time Fitterman, Goldsmith, Bergvall & Byrum (2007)
Banksy The Punking of Paris Hilton (2006)
Anton Corbijn Some YoYo Stuff: An observation of the observations of Don Van Vliet (1993)
Abagail Child Mayhem, Mercy, Perils (1986-1989)
Jean Cocteau Autobiography of an Unknown (1983 - French language)
Robert Frank Energy and How to Get It (1981)
Larry Jordan Carabosse (1980)
Maya Deren The Complete Films (1943-1958)
Joseph Beuys Filz TV (1970)
Lawrence Weiner Nothing to Lose (1976)
Alexander Kluge Selection of Films (1963-1977)
Yves Klein Anthropometries of the Blue Period and Fire Paintings: Two Film Performances (1960)
John Cage The Norton Lectures (1988-1989)
Marcel Duchamp Interview (French, 1961)
Marcel Duchamp Les Mémorables d'Marcel Duchamp (French radio broadcasts, 2005)
Edgard Varése Les Mémorables d'Edgard Varése (French radio broadcasts, 2005)
Pierre Guyotat Progenitures (2000)
Dieter Roth The Music of Dieter Roth (1973-1991)
Berliner Dichter Workshop Dieter Roth, Gerhard Rühm and Oswald Weiner (1973)
Racter The Policeman's Beard is Half Constructed (facsimile edition, 1984)
Clausfriedrich Claus Geran Radio Feautres (2000)
Derek Bailey On the Edge: Improvisation from Around the World (1992)
Tim Hecker Pluie (1994) [MP3]
Robert Frank Me And My brother (1969)
Paul Glabicki Films (1978-84)
Julian Beck Interview (1984) [MP3]
Eiríkur Örn Nordahl Recent Sound Poems [MP3]
Concrete Mass Art and Money Broadcasts (2006) [MP3]
R. Henry Nigl Shout Art [MP3]
Mairead Byrne SOS Poetry (2007) [PDF]
Jas Duke Poems Of Life And Death By Jas H. Duke (1977-1990) [MP3]
Unamunos Quorum Strange Visitors (2006) [MP3]
Pierre Coulibeuf Balkan Baroque (1999)
Seth Price Stay at Home/Go Home (2003) [PDF]
Martina Pfeiler Sounds of Poetry: Contemporary American Performance Poets (2003), PDF (3.3mb)
Scott MacDonald Introduction to "Avant-Garde Film" (1993)
Ron Rice The Queen of Sheba Meets the Atom Man (1963)
UbuWeb Featured at NADA Art Fair Miami, December 5-9 If you happen to be in Miami this week for the art fair, please make sure you stop by the London-based Brown Gallery Booth F8 at the NADA Art Fair (at the Ice Palace Film Studios, 1400 North Miami Ave).
Four Films by Gordon Matta-Clark: Includes Tree Dance (1971), Fresh Kill (1972), Day's End (1975) and Office Baroque (1977). Gordon Matta-Clark's (1943-1978) artistic project was a radical investigation of architecture, deconstruction, space, and urban environments. Dating from 1971 to 1977, his most prolific and vital period, his film and video works include documents of major pieces in New York, Paris and Antwerp, and are focused on three areas: performances and recycling pieces; space and texture works; and his building cuts.
Audio Selections from The Sackner Archive: Hundreds of MP3s ripped from rare sound poetry LPs, tapes & 45 RPM vinyl. The Ruth & Mqrvin Sackner Archive of Visual & Concrete Poetry in Miami Beach is the world's largest collection of text-based art. Of the audio files here, curator Matthew Abess states: "The work presented here comprises a portion of the Sackner's tremendous compendium of sonic works. The range of geographic origins runs the circumference of the globe. The time span is nearly a century. It witnesses histories: of poetry, literature, music, visual art, technology, politics, religion, theoretical contentions and practical abstention." Artists include John Cage, Merzbow, Anton Bruhin, Laurie Anderson, Bob Cobbing, Lily Greenham, Velemir Chlebnikov, Aleksej Krucenych and Jean Jacques Lebel among dozens of others. UbuWeb is also pleased to feature a full-length documentary about the Sackner Archive, Concrete! directed by Sara Sackner.
Five Films by Jonas Mekas Mekas, born 1922, is considered by many to be the godfather of American avant-garde cinema. Presented here are Happy Birthday to John (1972), a film record of John Lennon's 32nd birthday party; Zefiro Torna or Scenes from the Life of George Maciunas (1992), a video diary of Fluxus founder George Maciunas; and Scenes from Allen's Last Three Days on Earth as a Spirit (1997), a video diary of Ginsberg in the days immediately before and after his death. Also included is a short, Hare Krishna (1966), with a soundtrack by Ginsberg.
Make Perhaps This Out Sense Of Can You: Bob Cobbing (1920-2002) A celebration highlighting the works of Cobbing on UbuWeb: films, sounds, writings, interviews and critical writing about him [PDF]. As curator Matthew Abess writes, "Cobbing was an assiduous innovator in the sphere of language. Alternately a landscape gardener, farmer, steward's clerk at a hospital, and teacher of Esperanto, Cobbing fluidly traversed dissimilar vocations with the same dexterity apparent in his boundary-dissolving performances with and of the plasticity of the word. When asked about the development of his intermedia praxis, Cobbing remarked, 'I commenced as a painter; later wrote poetry; studied music; began to realize all three were one activity (together with dancing, which is, perhaps, the key to them all)." This UbuWeb resource is presented in conjunction with the exhibition of the same name at the University of Pennsylvania's Van Pelt Library, The Ruth & Marvin Sackner Archive of Visual and Concrete Poetry and the Kelly Writers House at UPenn, where Suddenly Everyone Began Reading Aloud, a tribute to Cobbing took place October 11th featuring the poets Charles Bernstein, chris cheek and Maggie O'Sullivan. You can hear the event here.
Vision #4 - Word of Mouth (1980) Twelve artists from California, New York and Europe were each invited to prepare a twelve minute talk on any subject. Artists include: Tom Marioni, Robert Kushner, Marina Abramovic/Ulay, John Cage, Daniel Buren, Joan Jonas, Bryan Hunt, Chris Burden, William T. Wiley, Brice Marden, Pat Steir and Laurie Anderson. Originally a double LP.
Selections from FILM CULTURE Magazine (1955-1996) 24 seminal articles from FILM CULTURE, which served as a forum for the New American Cinema, discussing the works of pioneering filmmakers like Maya Deren, Ron Rice and Paul Sharits, and providing important context for largely unseen films through its essays on film history, contemporary art and poetry. Authors and subjects include Hollis Frampton, Luis Buñuel, Stan Brakhage, Tyler Parker, Donald Sutherland, Rudolf Arnheim, Taylor Mead and many others. Selected and edited by Kareem Estefan. Presented in partnership with Anthology Film Archives.
COLAB: All Color News Sampler (1978) & Colab Compilation (1980) Two rarely seen compilations from the New York-based Collaborative Projects (aka COLAB) formed in 1978. All News Color Sampler is a remarkable collection of clips from the feature news program for cable TV. Hard, gritty, this is the early political and socially oriented work by artists now well-known as sculptors and filmmakers. Potato Wolf, Colab Compilation was an artists' cable TV show produced by Collaborative Projects from approximately 1979-84. Artists include John Ahearn, Tom Otterness, Scott and Beth B, Kiki Smith, Peter Fend and many others.
Mary Ellen Solt: An Appreciation & Flowers in Concrete Mary Ellen Solt (1920-2007) became known in academic and poetic circles worldwide after the publication in 1968 of her influential book Concrete Poetry-A World View. Included here is an appreciation by critic A.S. Bessa and the full cycle of her influential and beautiful concrete poems Flowers in Concrete (1966).
Salvador Dali - Impressions de la Haute Mongolie - Hommage á Raymond Roussel (1974-1975) Salvador Dalí's romance with film and the visual arts is a relatively well-known chapter in the life of the original and controversial Spanish (Catalan) artist (1904-1989). However, his explorations of video art with the production of the "documentary" Impressions de la haute Mongolie. Hommage a Raymond Roussel (1974-75) remain an episode of his long and successful creative career only acknowledged by the specialist. The "videografía", narrates the exploration of Dalí to the remote land of Mongolia in search of the Great White Mushroom. Salvador Dalí, a consummate expert in media manipulation, invites the spectator to become his accomplice and partner in what it seems a drug-induced "trip" to a faraway and distant land where wonderful treasures are hidden. By means of advanced technology in film and the visual arts of the time (video, electronics, macro photography), Dalí strives to reveal optically the metamorphoses of matter with the purpose of revealing a new artistic reality.
UbuWeb Radio Listen to a 24-hour continuous stream from UbuWeb's MP3 archives. All avant-garde, all the time. Thanks to the Center for Literary Computing for providing technical support.
The 365 Days Project, Part 2 (2007) UbuWeb is pleased to be co-hosting and archiving the second installment of Otis Fodder's magnificent 365 Days Project. The first project was completed in 2003 and can be accessed here as well. 365 days of cool and strange and often obscure audio selections. Some words to describe the material featured would be... Celebrity, Children, Demonstration, Indigenous, Industrial, Outsider, Song-Poem, Spoken, Ventriloquism, and on and on and on. The best thing to do is to simply listen. UbuWeb's archive will be updated monthly. For day-to-day updates, be sure to visit UbuWeb's partner WFMU's Beware of the Blog.
Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About UbuWeb An in-depth sit-down interview with UbuWeb founder Kenneth Goldsmith on Archinect tracing the history, breadth, philosophy and scope of UbuWeb.
Shirley Clarke - Shorts (1953-1982) A survey of short films by American independent filmmaker Shirley Clarke (1919-1997). Films include, "A Dance in the Sun" (1954), a portrait of dancer Daniel Nagrin; "A Moment in Love" (1957); "Bridges Go-Round" (1959) with two alternative soundtracks, one electronic music by Louis and Bebe Barron, the other jazz by Teo Macero; "A Scary Time" (1960) produced by UNICEF with a soundtrack by Peggy Glanville-Hicks; "Savage / Love" and "Tongues" (1981-82), a collaboration with Sam Shepard and Joseph Chaiken.
Alejandra & Aeron A survey of audio and film works from the collaborative team of Alejandra Salinas and Aeron Bergman. Wildflowers is a series of video text-animated portraits showing citizens of Detroit rejecting politics, opting instead to work on changing concepts of "common sense". The sound works range from found Riojan folk sounds to a study of the social, political, formal and aesthetic properties of sound environments in Porto, Portugal and Northern Spain.
Stan Brakhage: The Test of Time (MP3) A series of 20 half-hour long radio broadcasts by Brakhage recorded at KAIR, Univeristy of Colorado in 1982. Includes long passages of Brakhage musing on subjects such as film, poetry, theater, and other arts. Includes music, lectures, readings, and sound pieces by Edgar Varèse, Peter Kubelka, Kenneth Patchen, Charles Ives, Kurt Schwitters, Robert Duncan, Ed Dorn, Glenn Gould, James Joyce, Virgil Thomson, Gertrude Stein, Olivier Messiaen, Louis Zukofsky, William Faulkner, Charles Olson, Henry Cowell and many others. You can also read The Brakages Lectures (1972) and view the short film Legendary Yarns and Fables: Stan Brakhage on UbuWeb.
Her Noise: Women in Experimental Music (2007) A video documenting the development of the Her Noise project between 2001 and 2005 and features interviews with artists including Diamanda Galas, Lydia Lunch, Kim Gordon, Jutta Koether, Peaches, Marina Rosenfeld, Kembra Pfhaler, Chicks On Speed, Else Marie Pade, Kaffe Matthews, Emma Hedditch, Christina Kubisch and the show's curators, Lina Dzuverovic and Anne Hilde Neset. The documentary also features excerpts from live performances held during the Her Noise exhibition at South London Gallery by Kim Gordon, Jutta Koether and Jenny Hoyston (Erase Errata), Christina Carter, Heather Leigh Murray, Ana Da Silva (The Raincoats), Spider And The Webs, Partyline and Marina Rosenfeld's 'Emotional Orchestra' at Tate Modern. Her Noise celebrates the occasion of Electra, the London-based arts agency, new partnership with UbuWeb.
/ubu Editions, Third Series (Spring 2007): Edited by Danny Snelson UbuWeb is pleased to present the latest installment of our ongoing series of full-length e-books. Titles for this series include works by Steve Benson, Maurice Blanchot, Mairéad Byrne, Terence Gower & Mónica de la Torre, Dick Higgins, Bernard Nöel, Severo Sarduy, Claude Simon, Rosemarie Waldrop, Robert Wilson, and Monique Wittig. This new series of /ubu editions presents eleven out-of-print works from 1957 to 1994 - and also includes three newer titles (1999-2007). Of the historical republications, there are three works of poetry, three works of prose, one opera libretto, one work of critical theory, and one manifesto - though each piece blurs these genres. Seven were written in English, four appear in translation, and one is bilingual. Two authors could be considered language poets, two are associated with Tel Quel, one arguably initiated Fluxus, another arguably initiated the new novel. Four are women, nine are men. One title was changed for its /ubu publication.
Peter Rose: Vox 13 Eleven films created between 1983 and 2000, Vox 13 offers a grand circumnavigation of the subject of language. These films consider what it means to read, what it means to listen, when it is that we speak, how words acquire meaning, what it means to write, who we listen to, how we listen, what speaks, other ways we can speak, what the voice is, where language can be found, what words do to time, what holds stories together, and how light shapes language.
Francis Bacon - The South Bank Show (1985) Part of The South Bank Show series, David Hinton directs this BBC documentary about British painter Francis Bacon, known for his horrifying portraits of humanity. The program consists of a series of conversations between Bacon and interviewer Melvyn Bragg, starting with commentary during a side-show presentation at the Tate Gallery in London. Later in the evening, Bacon is followed through various bars hanging out, drinking, and gambling. In another segment, Bacon provides a tour of his painting studio and a glimpse at his reference photographs of distorted humans. The artist discusses his theories, influences, and obsessions. This title won an International Emmy Award in 1985.
David Schafer: Audio Works (1999-2007) A survey of Schafer's oeuvre, from his radically altered plunderphonic pieces -- including densely layered remixes of easy listening, pop, soft and classic rock records -- to his geeky "General Theory Expo", a continuous play of a reading by a female voice actor of a Jacques Derrida lecture from 1966. Schafer conceptually explores ideas about how the structures of space and sound data, controls, oppresses, stimulates, or enlivens the listening subject. On these tracks, Schafer works with voice actors and with various degrees of superimposition that border on, or fully engage, the noise side of things.
The Films of Irene Moon and the Begonia Society Irene Moon has been creating music, film and musical lectures since the mid-90s. Her films are head- ing combinations of completely factual information with neo-Dada homemade New Wave music, insect sound samples, microphotography, animations and so much more. Included here are her Films of the Auk Theater, a touring theater that performs absurd, classical and heavily stylized theater in rock clubs and music venues. All of the short Auk plays are from 2004-2005. Also: The Super 8 series: Early films from Moon with soundtracks created from field recordings of insects and equipment commonly found in a laboratory environment.
Samuel Beckett - Audio Works (MP3) New additions to the UbuWeb Samuel Beckett archive: France Culture Radio Broadcasts (L'IMAGE par Denis Lavant, MALONE MEURT par Jérôme Kirchen, LE DEPEUPLEUR par Serge Martin, L'expulsé (Roger Blin), Actes sans paroles, 01.10.63 (Roger Blin), Bing, 1965 (Roger Blin), CENDRES (1966, Seyrig, Blin, Martin, Seminoff); A Swedish version of Embers; Cette fois (Jean Bollery); A Piece of Monologue (English version, David Warrilow), Solo (French version, David Warrilow). Also see Samuel Beckett in UbuWeb Film.
Igor and Gleb Aleinikov - Five Films (1984-87) The brothers Igor and Gleb Aleinikov belonged to the first generation of independent filmmakers in the Soviet Union, who no longer worked within the studio system, but founded the 'Parallel Cinema'. Their films, like Western experimental film in the 60s, deliberately refused to conform to professional standards, and were thus rejected not only officially, but also by many filmmakers.
John Cage - For the Third Time (1978) John Cage speaks with a laryngitis-ridden Richard Kostelanetz about the techniques he used in "Writing Through Finnegans Wake" (1977) and "Writing for the Second Time Through Finnegans Wake" (1977). Kostelanetz whispers the entire interview, as Cage describes his work in full volume. Several other Cage videos can be viewed here and numerous Cage MP3s & audio files are available on Cage's page in Ubuweb Sound. See Cage's score for his Songbooks (1970). Listen to his Norton Lectures (1988-89).
People Like Us & Ergo Phizmiz - Boots! (2006) (MP3): These recordings document a collaborative research and development process between People Like Us & Ergo Phizmiz culminating in a live performance using vintage turntables and vinyl dubplates, a CDr album ("Boots!"), a 10" vinyl record ("Honeysuckle Boulevard"), and a CD album ("Perpetuum Mobile"). Using the internet and file sharing as our primary means of communication and collaboration, we experimented and explored our collaborative practices over a period of almost a year. The files available here constitute the research sketches, the CDr, and the live performance. We would encourage others to use the dubplate files to create new juxtapositions and recontextualisations.
Avant-Garde All the Time: The UbuWeb Poetry Foundation Podcast (2007) (MP3) A short (11 minute) interview with UbuWeb founding editor Kenneth Goldsmith introducing the site to a general listenership, with a specific focus on UbuWeb's sound archives. Full MP3 recordings of the excerpts featured on the podcast include: bpNichol 060173; Marie Osmond performing Hugo Ball's Karawane; Guiallme Apollinaire Le Pont Mirabeau; Gertrude Stein The Making of Americans: Parts 1 & 2; The Dial-A-Poem Poets; Patti Smith Parade; Ogden Nash Word About Winter; Charles Bernstein 1-100. The podcast was produced by Curtis Fox for The Poetry Foundation.
Rick Moody - Audio Works (1999-present) (MP3): These pieces represent a small sampling of Moody's audio work that he's done over the years, mostly for radio. Collaborators include Kurt Hoffman, Sherre Delys, Chris Abrahams, Hannah Marcus, Tianna Kennedy, Sharanu Pardeet, Anna M. Saxon, Amy Dissanayake, David Rakowski and John Lurie. Rick Moody is an American novelist and short story writer best known for The Ice Storm (1994). His most recent book is The Diviners (2005).
Music Overheard (MP3): An audio response to the exhibition Super Vision at The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston, December 10 2006 to April 29 2007. Editor Damon Krukowski says, "In constructing an audio response (you could call it a soundtrack) to Super Vision, I followed this lead. Rather than look to the latest computer-based electronica-the futuristic sounds of tomorrow-I wanted to gather work made by traditional means, which would not have been possible outside today's digital audio environment. Thus CD 1 (curated by Bhob Rainey) poses the question: What happens to the sound of acoustic instruments, once musicians are familiar with the tools and techniques of electronic music? And CD 2 (curated by Kenneth Goldsmith) asks a related question about our ur-instrument, the body: How do we hear the body's sounds, now that technology has given us superhuman ears?" MP3s include Greg Kelley, Sean Meehan, Charles Curtis, Bhob Rainey, Taku Unami, Chris Corsano, Liz Tonne, Ellen Fullman, Gregory Whitehead, Language Removal Services, Henri Chopin, Matmos, John Duncan, Caroline Bergvall, Paul Dutton, Lauren Lesko, Christof Migone, Miya Masakoa, Jim Roche, People Like Us and Leif Elggren & Thomas Liljenberg. Presented in collaboration with The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston and PennSound.
4 American Composers: Directed by Peter Greenaway. Feautring John Cage, Meredith Monk, Robert Ashley and Philip Glass. Based on London performances under the aegis of the New York/Almeida Festival, this set of four one-hour documentaries, originally produced in 1983, introduced these avant-garde composers and their music to a general public. It is a tribute to the filmmakers' accomplishment (and a sorry comment on how we honor our own prophets) that the set provides no less valuable an introduction for audiences over two and a half decades later. Rarely seen and out of print, Greenaway's films make a perfect companion to Robert Ashley's set of composer portraits Music With Roots in the Aether, produced in the mid-70s.
Terayama Shuji - Experimental Image World (7 Volume Collection): Poet, playright, theatre director, filmmaker, essayist, agitator and lover of all things anarchistic, chaotic, and truthful, TERAYAMA SHUJI (1936-1983) is one of Japan's most revered and respected artists. In the heady and extremist Japanese art scene of the late '70s, Terayama created a number of unforgettable and highly controversial films. EMPEROR TOMATO KETCHUP is his epic, sexually revolutionary and hallucinatory work from 1972 in which "magical women act as the initiatory, yet protectively maternal sexual partners to children. The children, in revolt, have condemned their parents to death for depriving them of self-expression and sexual freedom; they create a society in which fairies and sex education are equally important and literally combinable." -- Amos Vogel, Film as a Subversive Art
Music With Roots in the Aether: UbuWeb is pleased to announce the relaunch of the AVI's, RealVideo and MP3s of Robert Ashley's Music with Roots in the Aether, a seminal series of interviews and performances conceived and realized by Robert Ashley in 1976, consisting of 14 hours worth of video and audio. Subjects and performers include: David Behrman, Philip Glass, Alvin Lucier, Gordon Mumma, Pauline Oliveros, Terry Riley, and Robert Ashley. Robert Ashley says: Music with Roots in the Aether is a series of interviews with seven composers who seemed to me when I conceived the piece-and who still seem to me twenty-five years later-to be among the most important, influential and active members of the so-called avant-garde movement in American music, a movement that had its origins in the work of and in the stories about composers who started hearing things in a new way at least fifty years ago."
The Films of Groupe Medvekine Between the March strikes in 1967 at Rhodia in Besançon and work standardisation at the Peugeot factories in Sochaux, there occurred -- under the impetus of Chris Marker and his friends -- the constitution and action of the "Medvedkin Groups" for producing, directing and distributing political films. "A necessary caution: the "democratization of tools" entails many financial and technical constraints, and does not save us from the necessity of work. Owning a DV camera does not magically confer talent on someone who doesn't have any or who is too lazy to ask himself if he has any. You can miniaturize as much as you want, but a film will always require a great deal of work - and a reason to do it. That was the whole story of the Medvedkin groups, the young workers who, in the post-'68 era, tried to make short films about their own lives, and whom we tried to help on the technical level, with the means of the time." - Chris Marker
Seth Price "Title Variable" UbuWeb is pleased to present a retrospective of Price's 'Title Variable' audio project, from 2001 to the present. In an ongoing series of music compilations, each concentrating on a technologically transitional but culturally ill-defined moment within the recent history of digital music production, Price suggests how production tools have changed music, both in distribution and who controls it as much as in structure and sound. From early video game soundtracks to New Jack Swing to Industrial music, Price exploits the genre of "mix tapes" as sound art. As a mass form operating outside commercial channels, the mix tape seems to stubbornly and perversely retain its purchase on the imagination long after actual mix-tapes have slipped free of storage constraints and lost any clear definition.
UbuWeb Film & Video Relaunch UbuWeb announces a relaunch of its film and video section. Greatly expanded with liner notes and links, we're now hosting over 300 avant-garde films and videos. New additions include works by artists such as Vito Acconci, Alexander Calder, Merce Cunningham, Groupe Medvedkine, Helmut Herbst, Fernand Leger, Bruce Nauman, Charlemagne Palestine, Shuji Terayama, David Wojnarowicz, Richard Serra, Piero Heliczer, Paul McCarthy and many more.
The Films of Maurico Kagel (1965-1983) Whether in the classical music hall, the theatrical stage or film/video, Kagel's neo-dada performances and wickedly original techniques always opens one's eyes and ears to the pure possibilities of sounds and their production. Although this aspect of his varied productions is little known in the US, Kagel's output as a filmmaker is tremendous. He just about made a film or video each year in the 60s and 70s, and has only begun to slow down in recent times. Films include "Antithese" (1965), "Match" (1966), "Solo" (1967), "Duo" (1967-68), "Hallelujah" (1969), "Ludwig Van" (1969), "Blue's Blue" (1981) and "MM51 / Nosferatu" (1983). You can also listen to Kagel's music here.
Pianoless Vexations (MP3) 8 hours of MP3s recorded live at The Sculpture Center, NYC on June 11, 2006. Vexations was composed by Erik Satie in 1893 and consists of a short motif repeated 840 times. Vexations was first performed publicly by John Cage and several other pianists over the course of 19 hours in 1963. As the title conveys, artists performing in Pianoless Vexations used any instrument except the piano to perform Satie's original composition. Instruments included laptops, drums, guitar, French horn, violin, trumpet, saxophone, viola, recorder, toy piano, harpsichord, mandolin, bass, film projectors, voice, dulcimer and more. Artists include Randy Nordschow; Hay Sanders; Bruce Pearson and Marco Navarette; Daphna Mor, Rachel Begley, and Nina Stern; Bruce Arnold Jazz Trio; Alan Licht and Angela Jaeger; String Messengers; Rusty Santos; Amy Granat; Greg Kelley; Miguel Frasconi; Bethany Ryker; D. Edward Davis and Erik Carlson; Zachary Seldess; Charles Waters and Katie Pawluk; Andrew Lampert and Steve Dalachinsky; Margaret Leng Tan; Trudy Chan; David Grubbs; Goddess; Matthew Ostrowski; Kenta Nagai; Stephin Merritt and Ethan Cohen; Rick Moody, Hannah Marcus, and Tianna Kennedy.
Allen Ginsberg Face to Face: An Interview (1995)
Stephen Montague John Cage at Seventy: An Interview (1985)
Werner Schroeter Der Tod der Maria Malibran (1972) [German language]
Situationist Documentary On the Passage of a few People through a Rather Brief Moment in Time: The Situationist International 1956-1972
Louis-Ferdinand Céline Television Interview (1961) (French) & "Un siècle d'écrivains" Louis-Ferdinand Céline - Un diamant noir comme l'enfer (1998)
René Viénet Can Dialectics Break Bricks? (1973)
Gilbert & George The Ten Commandments of Gilbert & George (1995)
Marina Abramoviç Balkan Baroque (1998)
Hollis Frampton Zorns Lemma (1972)
Jean Genet Un Chant d'Amour (1950)
Martha Rosler Semiotics of the Kitchen (1975)
Pipilotti Rist Video Works (1988-1999)
Wim Delvoye Sybille II (1999)
George Kuchar Films 1965-1986
Toshio Matsumoto Experimental Film Works, 1961-1987
Richard Foreman Strong Medicine, 1981
Jean Epstein La glace à trois faces, 1927
Segundo de Chomón Selected Works, 1902-1914
Carlfriedrich Claus Menschliche Existenz als Experiment, 1997
Willard Maas Andy Warhol's Silver Flotations, 1966
Marie Menken Glimpse of the Garden, 1957
Bruce Andrews & Dirk Rowntree Prehab (2005) (MOV)
Laurel Beckman Beatbots
Beth Anderson Audio works from Peachy Keen O, 2006, MP3
Guy Debord Films
Brian Kim Stefans Kluge (2006)
Softpalate Gertrude Stein 3 New Interpretations of Stein's "Geography & Plays" by Robert Quillen Camp, [N]+Semble (Talan Memmott), and Ergo Phizmiz
Cinema of Transgression Early 1980s Lower East Side Films: Kern, Moritsugu, Pfahler, Wojnarowicz, etc.
Walerian Borowczyk Short Films, 1957-84
Jerry Tartaglia Ecce Homo, 1989
Erik Satie Pièces pour Guitare, (played by Pierre Laniau, 1982) (MP3)
Penelope Umbrico Recent Web Works
Stefan and Franciszka Themerson Films, 1937-1944 (AVI)
David Rimmer Surfacing the Thames, 1970 (AVI)
Agnes Varda Black Panthers - Huey!, 1968 (AVI)
Jorge Luis Borges The Mirror Man (AVI)
Cornelius Cardew "Towards an Ethic of Improvisation" (1971)
John Cage & Morton Feldman In Conversation, 1967 (MP3)
Bernd Alois Zimmermann Musique pour les soupers du Roi Ubu (1968) (MP3)
Hermann Bohlen Gekaut!! (Bis es von alleine herunterläuft) (MP3)
Eric Rosolowski WMD (2006)
Ghérasim Luca Radio France Broadcasts: Passionnément & Une vie une oeuvre (2005) [MP3]
People Like Us & Felix Kubin Molaradio, 2004 [MP3]
Vienna Actionist Films 1967-1970 (MP4): Eight vintage films by Otto Muehl and Otmar Bauer. Includes Meuhl's Manopsychotisches Ballett (1970), Investmentfonds (1970), Psychotic Party (1970), Stille Nacht (1969) and Der Geile Wotan (1970); and Bauer's Zeigt (1969), Impudenz Im Grunewald (1969) and 20.September (1967). Cinematography by Hermann Jauk, Jörg Siegert, Otto Muehl and Kurt Kren. You can also listen to Otto Muehl's Psycho Motorik & Ein Schrecklicher Gedanke, LPs (MP3) from 1971 as well as two interviews by Hermann Nitsch (MP3), one from 1975 and the other from 1999.
FluxFilms (1962 - 1970): UbuWeb is pleased to announce the return of FluxFilms. Dating from the sixties and compiled by George Maciunas (1931-1978, founder of Fluxus), this is a document consisting of 37 short films ranging from 10 seconds to 10 minutes in length. These films (some of which were meant to be screened as continuous loops) were shown as part of the events and happenings of the New York avant-garde. Made by the artists listed above, they celebrate the ephemeral humor of the Fluxus movement.Films by Nam June Paik, Dick Higgins, George Maciunas, Chieko Shiomi, John Cavanaugh, James Riddle, Yoko Ono, George Brecht, Robert Watts, Pieter Vanderbiek, Joe Jones, Eric Anderson, Jeff Perkins, Wolf Vostell, Albert Fine, George Landow, Paul Sharits, John Cale, Peter Kennedy, Mike Parr, Ben Vautier. (MPEG)
Ferdinand Kriwet Hörspiels: Three unreleased legendary Hörspiels from the late 60s and early 70s, originally broadcast on German radio: Apollo America (1969), a sound collage of the events of Apollo 11, mostly recorded off of New York radio; and Voice of America (1970), a snapshot of American media at the beginning of the 1970s. Also included is an early work for mulitple voices, Jaja (1965). You can browse Kriwet's prescient visual works in UbuWeb's Historical section.
Aram Saroyan Feature: UbuWeb celebrates the groundbreaking 1960s concrete poetry of Aram Saroyan by hosting The Street, a film based on Saroyan's life during that period. Other works by Saroyan on UbuWeb include three full-length books of classic concrete poetry: Pages (Random House, 1969), Aram Saroyan (Random House, 1968), and Cloth: An Electric Novel (Big Table, 1971). Saroyan chronicles his making of these poems in his essay Flower Power and his historical postition is noted in Mary Ellen Solt's 1968 "Concrete Poetry: A World View : United States" in UbuWeb Papers. Finally, you can listen to some very rare audio recordings made by Saroyan in the mid to late 1960s.
Ethnopoetics Update: UbuWeb Ethnopoetics editor Jerome Rothenberg has supplied us with a fresh batch of poems and essays including: Yunte Huang's essay with visuals of poems inscribed on walls by Chinese immigrants at Angel Island, San Francisco; Dennis Tedlock's A Conversation with Madness (translation) from The Human Work, the Human Design: 2,000 Years of Mayan Literature; an essay by Greek artist Demosthenes Agrafiotis on traditional writing systems & art making (French); Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's concrete poetry translation of an Ojibwa poem Song of the Owl; Dinita Smith on Incantations, a handmade book of original writings in Tsotzil by Mayan women; Ambar Past's Introduction to the Tzotzil Mayan Incantations book; and The People's Poetry Language Initiative -- A Declaration Of Poetic Rights And Values. Stay tuned for Ethnopoetic Sound updates including Ethel Waters’ "That Dada Strain" (1922) and "The Signifying Monkey: Two Versions of a Toast."
Primary Texts of American and British Conceptual Art (1965-1971): Dozens of documents, statements, interviews and theories of conceptual art by the first wave of artists. Including texts by Art & Language, Terry Atkinson, Robert Barry, Mel Bochner, Daniel Buren, Victor Burgin, Dan Graham, Hans Haacke, Doublas Huebler, Joseph Kosuth, Robert Morris, Sol Lewitt, Adrian Piper, Bruce Nauman, Ed Ruscha, Lawrence Weiner and many others.
Steve Roden "Soundwalk" (2005) [MP3]: Recordings documenting a live five-hour performance by Los Angeles-based artist Steve Roden aka In Be Tween Noise. Roden writes, "On the evening of the event, the audience entered the space to find few old rugs covering the dance floor, and a couple of small lamps with low watt bulbs. From my windowless little cardboard shelter hidden in a corner, i had no idea what was going on in the space; and most of the visitors assumed they were listening to a pre-recorded installation... the piece was playing through speakers located roughly 10 feet above the audience and reflecting off a dome ceiling back down to the listeners below."
Real Audio Files Fixed: Following our server issues over the past six months, the RealAudio files sprinkled throughout our Sound section had disappeard. Finally, we've found them and hooked them back up again. They should all be now working but if there's still a few broken links, let us know and we'll fix them.
Henri Chopin Videos: UbuWeb is pleased to present four films of sound poet Henri Chopin (b. 1922): Henri Chopin at Home (13.9 mb, .MOV), Henri Chopin at The Garage (293.9 mb, .MOV); Henri Chopin Live at Espcace Gantner (204.3 mb, .MOV); Undated Henri Chopin Performance (19.3 mb, .MOV). Also see UbuWeb's vast collection of Chopin MP3s. All videos courtesy of Erratum
Roland Barthes: "Comment vivre ensemble" (1977) and "Le Neutre" (1978) [MP3]: Over 36 hours worth of lectures by Roland Barthes (1915-1980). The audio material available here represents the whole lectures given by Barthes during his first 2 years' teaching at the Collège de France in 1977 and 1978, and also his inaugural lecture about the question of power (and the way it is inscribed in the core of the language).
Jacques Lacan Hours of archival material from French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan (1901-1981). Includes his 1973 film Télévision (1973), the complete Radiophonie (1970), as well as numerous other lectures dating from 1966-1970. Also included are nine audio recordings of the legendary Séminaire. From 1953 to 1980, Lacan's Séminaire was the laboratory, the work-in -progress for his Return to Freud project. The Séminaire was a singular place and moment, almost weekly, every year from November to June. Without any connection with university, it was public and open to everyone. Curiously, despite Lacan's famous verve for grandiloquence and his matchless improvising oral style, none of the 500 sessions have been cleanly and officially recorded (neither audio nor video) until now, presented here on UbuWeb. (audio and video is in French)
Gertrude Stein MP3s In conjunction with our partners at PennSound, UbuWeb is pleased to host a number of audio recordings by Gertrude Stein made during the years of 1934-1935 with liner notes by Stein scholar Ulla Dydo. Selections include: "The Making of Americans: Parts 1 & 2", "Matisse", "A Valentine to Sherwood Anderson", "If I Told Him: A Completed Portrait of Picasso", "Portrait of Christian Bérard", "Madame Recamier: An Opera", "How She Bowed To Her Brother" and "Interview (1934)."
Elana Mann & Adam Overton Conversation Pieces: February 13-17, 2006 [PDF]
Kenneth Goldsmith & Conceptual Poetics Essays by Perloff, Dworkin, Bök and others (2005)
Mauricio Kagel ACUSTICA for experimental sound-producers and loud-speakers (1971) [MP3]
Steve Benson The Ball // 30 Times in 2 Days (2006) [PDF]
Craig Douglas Dworkin Legion (II) (2006) [PDF]
Fluxus Anthology 2006 A collection of music and sound events assembled by Walter Cianciusi for Fluxlist (2006) [MP3]
A Trove of Archival Performances by Charlotte Moorman UbuWeb is proud to host the audio archive of Charlotte Moorman (1933-1991), containing hours worth of unreleased works and collaborations by Nam June Paik, John, Cage, Earle Brown, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Terry Jennings, Toshi Ichiyanagi, Jackson Mac Low, David Behrman, La Monte Young, Sylvano Bussoti, George Brecht, Dick Higgins, Giuseppe Chiari and others. The selection is curated by Stephen Vitiello, with special thanks to Barbara Moore / Bound & Unbound.
People Like Us: The Complete Recordings 1992-2005 UbuWeb now hosts the complete works of the UK-based People Like Us. The brainchild of Vicki Bennett, these hundreds of MP3s feature solo works and collaborations with Matmos, Negativland, Wobbly, The Evolution Control Committee, Ergo Phizmiz, Irene Moon, The Jet Black Hair People, Xper. Xr., Messer Chups, Kenny G and Tipsy.
Jelle Meander & Maja Jantar Maiandros Sonoros (2005); Live in Geneva & Brussels (2004) [MP3]
Steve Roden Soundwalk (2005), [MP3]
Momus Fakeways (2002), [MP3]
Adolf Wölfli Gelesen und vertont (1978), [MP3]
John Cage Mureau (1972), [MP3]
Mike Kelley Interview (1996) [PDF]
Jerome Rothenberg How We Came Into Performance (2005) [PDF]