~ August 2016 ~
River Étude by Sandra Louise Dyas
What mysteries lie hidden in a single name? As if in answer to the OTTERAS videopoem Navn Nome Name and its celebration of a telephone book’s worth of names, Iowa-based artist Sandra Louise Dyas set out to pay closer attention to one great river of a word, as the Vimeo description explains:
River Étude is an experimental video poem inspired by the Mississippi River and John Cage. When I was very little, I learned how [to] spell Mississippi and Dubuque by singing the letters. Life offers you nothing to hang onto. To survive you must learn how to let go and swim. Become the water. Stop resisting.
Afternoon by Max Ritvo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iv_oKqPwidA
American poet Max Ritvo‘s death of cancer at 25 was widely mourned on social media last week. As the New York Times noted, much of his work was devoted to chronicling his struggle with Ewing’s sarcoma, which he contracted at 16. The above video is one of a pair of animations by Nate Milton produced to accompany an NPR podcast, as the YouTube description explains:
Ritvo visited the Only Human podcast for the second time during what he called his “farewell tour”. His debut collection, “Four Reincarnations” will be published later this year. Listen to the episode here: http://www.wnyc.org/story/max-ritvo/
See also the other animation, “Poem to My Litter.”
2016 Video Poetry Summer Camp for Teen Girls Wraps Up
On Sunday, July 31, seven teen filmmakers, all female, showed off their video poems in front of an appreciative audience. This year, our second running the Media Poetry Studio camp, students ranged in age from 12 to 16 years old. Each student gave a short introduction, talking about inspiration, writing poems, learning videography, filming, and editing.
Our students’ videos this year displayed a diverse range of themes. Almah Galan’s “What I See” focuses on social justice and includes an interview with her great-grandfather, while Caila Bigelman’s “A Game of Chess” features her own, fanciful drawings. Rachel Schultz’s impressionistic, untitled video deals with the passage of time, while Carol Liou’s video (also untitled) questions the value of sacrifice. Emilia Rossmann’s video is a touching reflection on the loss of loved ones, while Dasha Dedkovskaya’s depicts one person’s struggle with insomnia. Finally, Shachi Prasad takes a philosophical look at the price of being gifted.
David Perez explains ISO, shutter speed, and aperture.
Lessons began each morning in our outdoor classroom at San Jose’s History Park. Students spent the mornings writing, listening, reading and critiquing each other’s work. Our goal for the first day was for each student to write a haiku, which she turned into a short video that afternoon. MPS co-founder and former Santa Clara County Poet Laureate David Perez, along with special effects and videography teacher Jennifer Gigantino, introduced them to film techniques, and worked with the students throughout the two weeks. For the rest of the two weeks, we coached the students in writing and filming their videos.
Students use paper frames to define subjects.
For inspiration, I brought art and photography books for the students to browse. The books range from the classic, 1955 collection The Family of Man, edited by Edward Steichen, to pocket editions of Magritte and Chagall’s paintings. The students marked pages that stood out for them with Post-It notes. Going over the books after camp was over, I could see where many of their ideas began. For example, a drawing of a building reminded Caila of a chess piece; Almah was struck by Dorothea Lange’s famous “Migrant Mother.” Magritte’s eerie “The Musings of a Solitary Walker” inspired Dasha.
Students created a community of artists and writers on the first day. The supportive spirit continued throughout the camp. It was a pleasure to see how the girls jumped in to help each other, from acting in each other’s videos to holding the camera still in order to get an extreme close-up (of each other’s eyes – eyes were a theme this year!) to offering help with setting up scenes.
Videography teacher Jennifer Gigantino working on haiku videos with students.
Our curriculum this year included some wonderful teachers new to Media Poetry Studio: the fabulous Mighty Mike McGee, a well-know spoken-word poet who performs around the world, and the talented Freya Seeburger, a cellist who runs JAMS (Juxtapositions Avant Music Symphony). Mike gave a presentation on using spoken word techniques in voicing video poems, and Freya composed original music for each student’s poem. Freya also gave us a mini-concert, playing the music she created and offering commentary about her creative process. Much of that beautiful, haunting music is heard on the students’ videos.
Erica Goss setting up the camera for Almah Galan’s video.
We are also grateful for Elaine Levia, whose skills went far beyond her job description as “aide” – Elaine helped with writing, recording, filming and editing. Videography expert Jennifer Gigantino ushered the students into the mysteries of Adobe Premiere and After Effects. Students were particularly intrigued with masking, a technique that allows one layer of video to show through another. You can see how the students used masking in their videos.
Co-founder and poetry teacher Jennifer Swanton Brown gave us a wonderful ekphrastic lesson using art postcards; this lesson resulted in the seeds for quite a few of the students’ final poems. And last but certainly not least, I give huge thanks to my partner in this endeavor: David Perez, one of the hardest-working people I know, for his intelligence, creativity, energy, and artistic excellence.
Vocal recording.
One of the best things about Media Poetry Studio is its location: History Park in San Jose. We use the Edwin Markham House, an old-fashioned two-story house that Edwin Markham once lived in. We all agreed that the spirit of Markham, a well-known poet who died in 1940, gave the house a special quality.
We could not be more proud of our talented students. Once again, we are grateful for the support of the video poetry community and our funders, including major support from the City of San Jose’s Office of Cultural Affairs, Macy’s, and our fiscal sponsor, California Poets in the Schools. Thanks to Poetry Center San Jose for the use of Markham House. We could not have done this without you.
Group photo in front of Markham House.
Call for submissions: Atticus Review
The Mixed Media section of the Atticus Review seeks videopoems/filmpoems/cinepoems and short or experimental films of all lengths, shapes, sizes and types. We’re also interested in remixes, mashups and interactive/digital literature. Submissions can be sent via the submission manager at the Atticus Review.
Feel free to contact Mixed Media Editor Matt Mullins at m-mull@hotmail.com if you have any questions or queries.
Kumukanda by Kayo Chingonyi and Sean Graham
Coming-of-age rituals are at the center of this powerful, uniquely collaborative poetry dance film from director Fiona Melville and producer/creative director Nathalie Teitler for the Dancing Words project, featuring poet/dancer Kayo Chingonyi, poet/dancer/choreographer Sean Graham, and a composition by Gemma Weekes (who is also an accomplished British writer).
According to the Wikipedia page on the Lovale/Luvale people of Zambia and Angola,
In Zambia the Luvale people hold the ‘Makishi festival’ to mark the end of the ‘kumukanda’ (or ‘initiation’). Every 5 years or so, boys from the same age group (young teenagers) are taken into the bush for 1–2 months where they undergo several rites of passage into manhood. These involve learning certain survival skills, learning about women and how to be a good husband, learning about fatherhood, and also they are circumcised. The Luvale consider uncircumcised men to be dirty or unhygienic. It is said that in some very rural areas where the kumukanda is maintained in its strictest traditional sense that if a woman is to pass by the boy’s ‘bushcamp’ whilst they are undergoing kumukanda then she must be punished, even killed. To celebrate the boys’ completion of the kumukanda the Makishi festival welcomes them back to the village as men.
Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll
This “experimental visual poetry” directed by Katie Williamson stars Walter McCord in an imaginative riff on Lewis Carroll’s great nonsense poem. The soundtrack includes, if I’m not mistaken, a track by the Master Musicians of Jajouka.
Quattro Ottobre (October Fourth) by Francesca Gironi
A unique piece even by the highly eclectic standards of the poetry-dance film genre. For one thing, the dancer/choreographer, Francesca Gironi, also wrote the text. For another, video artist Jack Daverio‘s imagery complements and expands the text in such a way that this could easily be characterized as a videopoem senso strictu. It’s described on Vimeo as an “Ironic dialogue between poetry and video art. Self escape becomes hyper presence.” The music is by Luca Losacco.
Quattro Ottobre was a finalist at the Doctorclip poetry film festival as well as in the Carbon Culture Review Poetry Film Competition 2016, judged by Zata Banks, who describes it as “A strong example of a dance-led poetry film incorporating sound design, visual layering and a voiceover poem about the self.” (Click through for biographies for Gironi, Daverio and Losacco.)
navn nome name by OTTARAS
Sound poetry and concrete poetry elude most efforts at translation — except for translation into videopoetry, as in this new release from OTTARAS (Ottar Ormstad and Taras Mashtalir) and Alexander Vojjov. I’m sure knowing Norwegian would add layers of meaning but even without that, I found the visualization of names as planetary objects or one-celled organisms intriguing and delightful. Here’s the Vimeo description:
NAVN NOME NAME (2016) is based on Ottar Ormstad’s “telefonkatalogdiktet” (‘the phonebook poem’). It is his third book of concrete poetry, published in Norway by Samlaget (2006). For this language research project, Ormstad read (!) the phonebook of Oslo 2004 and selected names on a poetic basis. In the book, the names are presented visually as concrete poetry. Most of the names are strongly connected to Norwegian and describe phenomena in nature.
NAVN NOME NAME is the second work of a collection of video poems created by the Norwegian-Russian duo OTTARAS (Ottar Ormstad and Taras Mashtalir) in collaboration with Russian video artist Alexander Vojjov. In the video, Ormstad reads names selected by the Russian-American composer Mashtalir. Through this work, Norwegian language turns into international sound poetry. Ormstad’s collection of family names present in Oslo’s phonebook at the time of reading are exposed and read by the author while performing to Mashtalir’s pulsating music. Is everyone connected to each other in the sphere that is shaping before the viewer’s eyes? How do names and language relate to the atmospheric scapes Vojjov creates of numbers, geometric forms and abstract shapes?
NAVN NOME NAME exists in different versions made for screening and live performance. Raising awareness of electronic poetry and sonic ecology, attracting new audience to a potent yet to come genre is the inspiration for this collaboration.
The video is produced in HD 16:9 in color, stereo.
Duration: 06:05 mins
Animation: Alexander Vojjov
Music: Taras Mashtalir
Concrete poetry, voice & production: Ottar Ormstad
© Ottar Ormstad 2016
Kickstarter to support video, dance and text installation “Digitized Figures”
Last summer I shared a video called Portlet from the on-going collaboration between dance and video artist Kathleen Kelley and poet Sarah Rose Nordgren—their Digitized Figures project. Now they’re preparing the world premiere of an interactive installation, and they’re asking for a little help.
The Campaign
Hello All! — We’re Kathleen Kelley and Sarah Rose Nordgren, a dance choreographer/media artist and poet who make up the collaborative team Smart Snow.
This campaign is raising money for a new performance installation that we’ve been developing for the past two years. Digitized Figures will have its world premiere at the Vanderbilt Republic’s gorgeous Gowanus Loft in Brooklyn, NY, and will be performing this fall 2016 from Friday October 14 – Sunday October 16 and Friday October 21 – Sunday October 23. (See the Facebook event page for tickets and details!).
Your support is absolutely crucial to making this ambitious new work possible. Our $5,000 Kickstarter goal reflects only about 25% of the funds it will take to present this piece at the Gowanus Loft. Your contributions will go directly to covering the project’s production needs which include (but are not limited to):
- renting necessary equipment such as projectors, monitors, and speakers
- hiring our production team (technical director, stage manager, production assistants, projection designer)
- paying our dancers
- hiring a costume designer
- supporting our press, publicity, and marketing efforts
Whether you can contribute $1 or much more, we are incredibly grateful for your support in bringing Digitized Figures to fruition!
The Work & Collaborators
Kathleen Kelley and Sarah Rose Nordgren have been collaborating formally and informally for 17 years, ever since they met each other at a party in high school and recognized each other as artistic soul-mates.
Since then, Kathleen has gone on to perform internationally as a dancer and to produce many live performances and dance films, and Sarah Rose has become an award-winning poet and writer. However, this will be their first large-scale performance and video installation they’ve produced as a collaborative team!
Digitized Figures will be the culmination of years of conversations and shared ideas between the two artists. As women working at the intersections of art and technology, both Kathleen and Sarah Rose share an interest in the mirrored relationship between technological and evolutionary processes, and the “natural” and the “human” inside of digital spaces.
In our commitment to create art that pushes the forms of dance and poetry into new technological territories, Digitized Figures introduces a completely new form which we call “choreographed text.” This form, in which text moves and “dances” across the screen, invites the viewer into a new relationship with language itself, presenting it as digital material saturating the performance environment.
We created the text, video, and choreography for Digitized Figures over a period of months through our artistic correspondence, sending lines of poetry, movement, and notebook sketches back and forth between New York and Cincinnati that eventually became the three core videos in Digitized Figures. Along the way, we’ve had the chance to present bits and pieces of the installation as a works in progress at various venues in Cambridge, MA, Brooklyn, NY, Iowa City, IA, Cincinnati, OH, and Montclair, NJ. We’re so excited to take what we’ve learned from these smaller showings and finally create the fully realized version of the installation with the addition of interactive video, four live dancers, and a completely new component that allows viewers to impact the performance through the use of tablets.
What a fascinating collaboration! Click through to read the rest, view all the images, and of course to donate if you can.
Call for submissions: 5th International Video Poetry Festival in Athens
From The +Institute [for Experimental Arts] website, here’s the announcement of the fifth annual poetry film.video festival in Athens:
The +Institute [for Experimental Arts] and Void Network
present
the 5th International Video Poetry Festival 2016
Winter 2016
at Free Self-Organised Theatre EMBROS / Athens / GreeceThe yearly International Video Poetry Festival 2016 will be held for fifth time in Greece in Athens. Approximately 2500 people attended the festival last years.
There will be two different zones of the festival. The first zone will include video poems, visual poems, short film poems and cinematic poetry by artists from all over the world (America, Asia, Europe, Africa). The second zone will include cross-platform collaborations of sound producers and music groups with poets and visual artists in live improvisations.
The International Video Poetry Festival 2016 attempts to create an open public space for the creative expression of all tendencies and streams of contemporary visual poetry.
It is very important to notice that this festival is a part of the counter culture activities of Void Network and + the Institute [for Experimental Arts] and will be non-sponsored, free entrance, non commercial and non profit event. The festival will cover the costs (2000 posters, 15.000 flyers, high quality technical equipment) from the incomes of the bar of the festival. All the participating artists and the organizing groups will participate voluntary to the festival. This year is the first time where it will be a submission fee for the participation to the festival in order to cover the expenses of the festival. The submission fee is 5 euro for the participation. Each artist can send more than one work. (1 to 3 video poems)
Void Network started organizing multi media poetry nights in 1990. Void Network and +the Institute [for Experimental Arts] believe that multi media Poetry Nights and Video Poetry shows can vibrate in the heart of Metropolis, bring new audiences in contact with contemporary poetry and open new creative dimensions for this ancient art. To achieve this, we respect the aspirations and the objectives of the artists, create high quality self organized exhibition areas and show rooms, we work with professional technicians and we offer meeting points and fields of expression for artists and people that tend to stand antagonistically to the mainstream culture.
Please click through and scroll down for information on how to submit. The deadline for submissions is November 20, 2016.
(And thanks to the festival organizers for their kind words about Moving Poems, by the way. It’s always a pleasure to help spread the word about events showcasing poetry films and videos—the more innovative and eclectic, the better.)
Poetry film workshop in Bristol, 14-15 October
Bath Spa University is sponsoring a Liberated Words Two-Day Poetry Film Festival, led by the accomplished filmpoem makers Chaucer Cameron and Helen Dewbery. Here’s the Facebook event description:
The workshop is generously sponsored by Bath Spa University so the cost is just £10
Booking: to reserve a place contact Chaucer by email: chaucer.cameron@gmail.com
The workshop covers:
- understanding what poetry film is or can be
- viewing poetry films from around the world
- knowing where to find still and moving images
- creating images and film yourself
- where to find music and sound or get it made
- putting it all together
- where to send/show finished work
We will finish day one of the workshop making a group poetry film together. On day two, with support and collaboration, you will have the opportunity to make a poetry film of your own. We will include using archive material, still images and moving film, and using words on the screen and voiceovers. You will be encouraged to bring your own ideas and skills, and push into new realms of what poetry and poetry film can be.
It is useful, but not essential, for you to bring a laptop, and camera or mobile phone capable of taking video. If you do not have a laptop you will not be able to make your own poetry film on the day – but there is still plenty you can learn and experience – so don’t let that put you off.
An practical online handbook is available for all participants.
Please bring a packed lunch. Coffee, tea and snacks are available in the YHA café.
The workshop will be held October 14 – October 15 in the conference room, YHA Bristol, The Grain House, 14 Narrow Quay, Bristol BS1 4QA. See Facebook for more information.
