Humor

“A spoof on current art attitudes [that] stretches the definition of what can be considered art. Because the late 1960s and early 1970s were periods of innovation, using the human body as art, making process equivalent to product... [etc.], Baldessari questions that very sense of originality and exploration by taking it to its (rather mundane) limits. By taping a stick at one end, then picking it up at the other, he is both questioning and spoofing what constitutes art.” —Marcia Tucker, “John Baldessari: Pursuing the Unpredictable,” John Baldessari (New York: New Museum, 1981)

Taped during the summer months in New York City and Provincetown, Massachusetts. This vacation video explores the restrictions imposed by dietary fears and the need to appease fresh and rotten appetites. Encompassing both the splendors of a maritime nature and the land locked decadence of the delicacy dependent, the viewer is catapulted from a big city environment to a resort town mentality of mellowness and salt encrusted habits.

It's the season of joy once again and this video depicts the tasty and the troublesome in big, heaping spoonfuls.  Witness a social whirlpool of whipped confections and stripped confessions tastefully prepared in soupy symbolism.  See man and domesticated mammals share in the bounty of a cosmopolitan cornucopia.  Feast your eyes and ears on the snap-crackle-and-pop culture of a city simmering in smut. Swallow it all in the 4:3 format and good luck in the digestive department.

A young painter, and his somewhat slower roommate, talk of paranormal occurrences in a room of charcoal canvasses and ephemeral renderings. Eavesdrop on the improbable and the impossible (BUT TRUE!).

An ex-student of mine opens up in the privacy of her home and shows me her etchings (watercolors) as we talk of art and things that slip under the fabric of daily attire. - George Kuchar

Frozen in time and place, yet celebrating birthdays left and right, I ponder the technology that sends me out into the world via magnetism—a magnetism that not only attracts images and sound but also the particles of nothing that become something when activated by a dust mop. A meditation on white spots and black holes that suck and purr when plugged in or turned on.

Clouds abound in this short meditation on vaporous masses that flow across the borders of our windowpanes, leaving in their wake the wreckage of discarded diets and sugar coated emptiness. Into those holes that surround us with the sweetness of puffy dough we plunge into a landscape of desolation and rebirth, never again to deny the terror that piles up in the sky like a malignant mound of virgin pudding. A mass of revolving turbulence hell-bent on defying gravity in the name of vertical instability and electrical insanity. A supercell for the supersized who flee its windy wrath.

There is no future in reproduction. I have no concern with any species extending itself through time. You think you have given birth to a baby, when really you have given birth to a bus driver, or tax collector. Instead I'm interested in the placenta, the real mother of us all, forgotten discarded. The softest machine, all lipids and blood, that blooms and rots like any vegetal/floral martyr. That umbilical cord did not connect you to your mother. It connected you to that most partial of objects — the placenta — part you, part mom, all martyr and garbage.

A trip to Las Vegas and a hike down a red carpet of star trodden footprints highlights this glimpse of glamorous glitz as flash bulbs pop to ignite titans of tinseltown as they rub shoulders with brethren of lower voltage.

In this attempt to resolve the on-going crisis, Burns and Discenza find themselves in, variously, a childrens adventure playground, a garage and a yard. They utilize a mechanical digger to dig the soil, they toil at skipping and pogo-ing, they vacuum each other. Eventually a type of surgery is performed.

This title is also available on HalfLifers: Rescue Series and HalfLifers: The Complete History.

A young communist girl named Sharambaba resists her suitor in a carriage. She speaks of what he calls her "fantasy world". All of the dialogue is played backwards with accommodating subtitles.

This title is also available on Jim Finn Videoworks: Volume 1.

In this wide-screen travelogue the viewer shares in the excitement of a Texas film festival, the cuisine of the not so rich and famous, and the thrill of attending exclusive enclaves of energized art. The natural world is glimpsed here and there behind an urban tapestry of towering titillations and seductive visualizations. Sit back, relax, and witness a nation in the throes of frenzied festivities to the goods of creation.

Deaf Dogs Can Hear is an autobiographical work that traces the tragic yet humourous episodes of the artist as a young girl, and her pet chihuahua. Her love for this deformed and unattractive pet only grows deeper as one tragedy after another befalls the dog and the creature becomes repulsive to all eyes but its owner's.

George Barber doffs his cap to the 20th anniversary of Scratch Video with What’s That Sound?, a mesmerizing montage of questions, answers, and the cries and screams of people caught in a disaster movie. The work uses as its starting point, the film Airport '77 where, improbably, a jumbo jet sinks to the bottom of the sea. What follows is a clever amalgamation of absurd linguistics, cries and shouts, highlighting the artist’s permanent fascination with speech, and human reaction to out-of-the-ordinary situations.

A wonderful and humorous example of early image processing, Parry Teasdale and Carol Vontobel perform to camera as their faces are morphed together, forming an image of one person. 

A pro-domme gives her friend a freshly shaved head. In return she gets a buzz cut. A client gets to be a (bound) fly on the wall.

This title is also available on Chicago Sex Change: 2002-2008, A collection of Minax's early videos that together create a punk-documentary tapestry of young queer life in Chicago in the early 2000s.

Meet local San Francisco artists and the pets of the culturally inclined, as George prepares to take a trip.

"This piece is sort of a prologue to East by Southwest. I prepare for that trip while visiting local artists here in San Francisco. You get to see unique sculpture by Mike Rudnick and meet the offspring and pets of the culturally inclined. There is also a gallery encounter with the late filmmaker, Curt McDowell, who attends an opening of his photomontages."

--George Kuchar

A black cat and a polka-dotted string puppet frolic amid the painted backdrops of a happy universe, while outside, in the real world, the reality washes away amid the onslaught of H2O and granulated granite. A merging of the plastic and the profane.

"I don't put myself into my movies because that would be too much--my pictures reflect my own feelings.  So hopefully it's entertaining.  Otherwise I can't bear looking at them, ha ha!"
–– Mike Kuchar

In this dream-portrait of Mike Kuchar, he floats through his memories as the sea, space and sky drift past. Wrapped in odd costumes, he frolics with the imaginary creatures surrounding him, and recalls the creatures of his own imagination.

This black and white drama of romance, adventure and outer space intervention was mounted at the San Francisco Art Institute. The plot concerns two groups of missionaries who depart for a tropical island inhabited by a population of attractive denizens who are ruled by a libido-fueled queen. She in turn is guided by the Star People who have their own carnal urges and the result is volcanic. The $400 budget guarantees cheap thrills and makes an explosive vehicle for the queen of these dime store dynamos: Linda Martinez (our Sharon Stone).

A month-long video workshop at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee results in a loud and action-packed drama. Layers of subplots revolve around the central theme of the violent and emotional body climax in redemption.

A photographer comes to my home to take pictures and gets a lensful. His mouth and his shutter snap away as I aim my finest attributes at his cold and hard equipment.

Take a joyride through comfortable suburbia—a landscape molded by seductive television and corporate America (and keep in mind: disaster is another logo for your consumption...). This is the age of the "culture jammed" consumer preened with Friends hair, Survivor courage, and CNN awareness. A generation emptying their wallets for the most important corporate product of all: lifestyle. The psychological road trip across a slightly battered America travels at One Mile per Minute.

Joe Gibbons plays Dr. Joe Baldwin, the self-styled child education expert. He prepares Zoe, from birth, for acceptance into a coveted “gifted-only” kindergarten program. He brings to each lesson an assortment of modified educational books, games and toys. These sessions, along with monologues analyzing her development, are recorded in hopes of proving that “genii [his term] are not born, but made.” What becomes evident is one man’s misguided quest to manipulate pitted against one child’s exuberant resistance to being controlled.

Director’s statement:

In Precious Products we are subtly reminded of this country’s obsession with consumerism and narcissism. George, with his ever-present video-8 camera, attends an opening of Precious Products—an exhibition of artworks satirizing art as commodity. He leaves the art world of San Francisco to spend a Christmas holiday with friends in their opulent home. Ironically, this is the home of a celebrity (another kind of commodity), Russian defector/ballerina Natalia Makanova. Surrounded by all the luxuries of life and Makanova’s image, George muses about death.