Artist Tom Sachs has announced the release of A Space Program, a narrative film made in conjunction with his 2012 Space Program: Mars project at the Park Avenue Armory. The film will premiere next month at SXSW in Austin. (more…)
Matthew Barney is interviewed in The Guardian this week regarding River of Fundament, which premieres in London later this month. In the interview, Barney discusses his work with Norman Mailer, the public’s incredulous reception to the movie thus far, and Barney’s atypical, cinematic narrative style that will continue to carry out his reputation for producing ambitious works in the future. “It’s to do with the way my brain is wired,” he says. “It’s a type of slowness I have with regard to resolving things and connecting the dots. The specifics really come quite late. There is a willingness for the work to develop organically.”
Takashi Murakami’s debut film Jellyfish Eyes is set to premiere in the United States next week, bringing some of the artist’s signature characters to the silver screen. The film, which centers around a series of magical creatures that only children can see, will show in select cities May 1st through the 5th. (more…)
“Picasso Baby,” the final cut of rapper Jay Z’s marathon performance at Pace Gallery earlier this month, will premiere this Friday on HBO. Directed by music video veteran Mark Romanek, the film will document the 6 hour performance, which included cameos and interactions with Marina Abramovic and Alan Cumming, among many more. “Concerts are pretty much performance art,” Jay Z says, “but with this smaller venue you can get a bit more intimate. You can feel the energy of the people.” (more…)
Boléro, a collaboration between artist Marina Abramovic and Belgian choreographers Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and Damien Jalet, is set to open tonight in Paris. Interpreting Ravel’s immediately recognizable work for dance, the work debuts at the Palais Garnier alongside Maurice Béjart’s “Firebird” and versions of “Afternoon of a Faun” by Nijinsky and Jerome Robbins. “In my own work I am completely in control, but the interesting thing with collaboration is to give up part of yourself, the ‘I,’ ” said Abramovic. “It’s very liberating to be in a new field, dance, to let things come to you and not to make decisions.” (more…)
Artist David Hockney’s first multi-channel video work, The Jugglers, June 24th 2012 (2012) will have its American debut next month at The Whitney Museum. Depicting a set of jugglers moving against a blue and white backdrop, the video employs 18 separate channels of video, using intense lighting to alter perceptions of depth and space. “In this new video installation David Hockney surprises us once again, exploring how multiple perspectives can transform our experience of the moving image. Hockney mines the histories of cinema and painting through the lens of technology, to create a new way of seeing.” said curator Chrissie Ilessaid. (more…)
Francis Alÿs, REEL-UNREEL (2011), via David Zwirner
In REEL-UNREEL, the recently completed film by Belgian artist Francis Alÿs, two Afghan boys race through the streets of Kabul, dodging traffic, pedestrians, and other children while military helicopters fly overhead. Mimicking a game hoop-rolling, they push two large film canisters, a trail of film spilling out behind them as they go. Winding through the streets and up into the hills of the Afghani capital, the reels of film take their fair share of abuse as they are dragged through dirt, puddles, and even a small fire before being mistakenly rolled straight off a cliff. (more…)
