~ Author-made videopoems ~
Granite As Heirloom: A Portrait by Caleb Femi
https://vimeo.com/205223348
Caleb Femi, the Young People’s Laureate for London, is a poet-filmmaker whose latest film is
a deconstruction of the white gaze in the portraiture of the black British working-class face; it makes a play on the response to particular black facial features as something sinister, a Hollywoodised alien threat, a dread, out of place, an omen of destruction etc.
The marriage between the poem and the film work as a self-proclamation of the beauty in the black British face and a release from perceived validation of the external gaze.Although the marginalisation of ‘black’ features in modern aesthetics is a global conversation, this project centres around the aesthetics in the British working-class experience as it is one whose nuances are very much understood by me.
Watch all of his films on Vimeo.
Woke Up Asleep by Meghan McDonald
A new videopoem from Meghan McDonald, a New York-based “Sound experimenter, visual poet, micro filmmaker and absurdist,” not to mention master of the succinct Twitter bio. Here’s the YouTube description:
“Woke Up Asleep” is a poetry video about awakening from the daily routines that seem to put us all in a fear-stricken daze. “The gutless” go on silently in order, but those who choose to step out of line are seen as mad.
Talk About the Apocalypse by Brendan Bonsack
This new videopoem from Melbourne-based poet and songwriter Brendan Bonsack deploys an expert remix of footage from the Prelinger Archive, with a surprising ending that makes one want to watch it all over again.
El fin de la existencia de las cosas / The end of the existence of things by Dalia Huerta Cano
A 2013 filmpoem written, directed and edited by Dalia Huerta Cano. The voiceover is by Patrick Danse, and Luciano Rodríguez Arredondo composed the original score. See the webpage for full credits and the list of festival screenings, as well as this description:
The point of view of a boy who has a big love loss and how he faces it. A voyage that goes through his mind and his sadness, that will take him through memories and the things that are left of that intense relationship, towards a liberating destination.
Poemas Videográficos / Videographic Poems by Fernando Tavares Pereira
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Brazilian poet Fernando Tavares Pereira made these fascinating animated text videos with the help of Rafael Veggi (computer graphics, sound). For those of us who don’t know Portuguese, he was kind enough to email a translation of each as well as an explanation of the project:
The videographic poem is the record of the birth of a word. Through the experience of emotions, associations, forms, memories, everything that contributes to the formation and understanding. It’s the word behind the word.
Secret – Secreto
Portrait – Retrato
Sun – Sol – As the letter sun in Portuguese, s-o-l, as the key of sol, as a sun shining, as the sol note at the end
One – Um – The ONE is the element one and at the same time the multiplicity in time. This back and forth movement means your birth as a word.
I asked about their composition process, and Fernando replied:
The poem is born as a graphic on paper. Then I wrote a project, a script to follow, to turn the poem into movement. And so Rafael is free to create solutions on top of what I present, and many times I have counted on his talent to improve the quality of the job. I’m the pen and he’s the byte. We are a partnership to works in the same sense to create beauty and, I usually say, entertainment. In fact I see poetry as entertainment, image, cinema, more than anything else. I believe that with this poetry does not lose anything of its flavor.
The poems are numbered as an untitled movie, because they are born and nominated by themselves. They are the subject of reading and we are the observing object. The logical layout has changed and reinvented itself.
Rafael added:
The sound was arranged by me following Fernando’s guidelines.
All samples come from open source databases around the internet and then edited in Audacity software.Poems 01 and 02 animations were made on Blender, poems 03 and 04 were made in SVG/HTML/Javascript/CSS. I’ve had a great time working on them!
The fourth poem represents a deconstructed word ‘um’, which means ‘one’ in portuguese, as well as the number 1 itself.
knuckleshop by Cecelia Chapman and Jeff Crouch
Just uploaded to Vimeo, this 2008 videopoem is from the long-time video-making partnership of artists Jeff Crouch and Cecelia Chapman:
Cecelia Chapman’s work explores the image in communication and revolves around environmental and cultural transformation.
For the past ten years Chapman has been collaborating with artist Jeff Crouch, with performer Christa Hunter, and with sound artists she meets online to produce short new media video.
The music here is by Crouch, as are the drawings. Rarely does one see an ekphrastic poetry video that succeeds as a separate artwork in its own right. Perhaps part of the key here is that Crouch’s sketches satisfy what I think of as the Konyvesian imperative: “In a successful videopoem, the work’s elements contain a collaborative property, an original incompleteness.” (Tom Konyves, In Retrospect: A Manifesto and its Underpinnings, p. 3.)
accidentals (recalculated) by Ian Gibbins
Math and poetry merge in this brilliant videopoem by Ian Gibbins. Here’s the Vimeo description:
… the probability that accidents do happen, if you slip and fall, fly too close to the sun, if your car runs off the road, if you cut your finger, miss a secret assignation, catch (or not) a slip of the tongue, when words fail, when all you have left is abstraction, operators, a lasting approximation, a mathematician’s code …
This video was a finalist in the Carbon Culture Review 2016 Poetry Film Contest: carbonculturereview.com/news/2016-poetry-film-contest-winner-and-finalists/
ななつめの窓 / Seventh Window by Shuhei Hatano
“My eye is your finger,” reads the Vimeo description of this silent, black-and-white videopoem by Tokyo-based filmmaker Shuhei Hatano. Made in July 2015, it was part of an exhibition of hand-held films in Kunitachi, Japan called 92TOUCH. There’s also a version with only the English titling.
At the border by Jan Baeke
This videopoem from Public Thought, the collaborative team of Dutch poet Jan Baeke and designer and media artist Alfred Marseille, was screened at ZEBRA 2016. Completed last July, it is sadly more relevant than ever: a “Poetic reflection on the ambiguities of the refugee crisis, media coverage, extremist propaganda and EU politics,” as Baeke and Marseille describe it. (Click through for the text.)
Song for Koko by Tommy Becker
A poetic music video or a musical videopoem? Tommy Becker‘s videos for his Tape Number One project are hard to categorize, which is why I haven’t featured them here as often as I should. They blend “the artist’s poetics, songwriting, performance, costuming with found footage and computer design,” according to the statement on his website.
“Song for Koko” is from 2015. The accompanying text on Vimeo reads:
An elephant escapes from the circus and begins a rampage down a city street. His trunk tosses aside everything in his path. We cheer for him. Why? A man sits on an alligator and attempts to tie his mouth shut. The alligator contorts his body, throwing the man off before turning to bite. We are unsympathetic. Why? We take our children to the zoo to look at the monkeys. The children complain about their inactivity and we feel a sense of betrayal as we admit to ourselves that our observations are a fraud. What’s important in these situations of conflict and captivity is that we are seeing animals as equals. They are no longer the lesser species. A life force is being held against its will or once again running wild through the streets. The moment the lion lunges at the tamer we understand his motives. We relate viscerally to his oppression as we connect to the soul of its being.
Moments That Breathe by Meghan McDonald
An author-made video from 2015 by Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter Meghan McDonald, who evidently stumbled upon the idea of videopoetry herself, judging by what she wrote on YouTube:
This little tidbit is an idea I’ve been crafting for a while. It is intended to literally bring an imagery aspect to poetry (like a music video, but with poetry). I also wanted to incorporate beautiful moments that take place every day that may be overlooked.
Last year she uploaded six more videos to her Poetry Videos playlist, in addition to going busking across the U.S. Definitely someone to keep an eye on.
Bayside Reporter by Ian Gibbins
Australian videopoet Ian Gibbins is a retired neuroscientist with three books of poetry under his belt and a penchant for experimental video and electronic music. His Vimeo description for Bayside Reporter reads:
Suspicions of criminal activity along the beachfront… Filmed between St Kilda and Port Melbourne, Victoria. Sounds were recorded beside the Yarra River, on trams between the City and Middle Park, and along the beachfront itself. A version of “Bayside Reporter” was published in Australian Poetry Members Anthology 3, Digital Edition, 2014. Here is the link.
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