Politics

In this interview, Phyllis Kornfeld, author of Cellblock Visions: Prison Art in America, describes her initial interest in working with prisoners in her native Oklahoma City, stemmed from an exploration of outsider artists. Detailing her first visit to a high security prison as a ‘mind blowing and breathtaking’ experience, Kornfeld discusses how she came to her realization that prisons are fertile environments for free form experimentation with the teaching process. She learned that through personalized art education, inmates could teach themselves to make positive contributions to society. - Kyle Riley

In the words of activist Dhoruba Bin Wahad, “Historical and social events are subject to almost instant censorship by those who have better access and control over the medium of communication. It is important that there exist people skilled in the use of the technological instruments of communication who will seek out the real truth behind the headlines and tell it for all to see, know, and hear.”

This tape was shot in August 1972 by the same crew that had convened for pioneer video collective TVTV’s (Top Value Television) project Four More Years. Videotaped at the 1972 Republican Convention, it begins with the cameraman taping from inside the press area, with protestors from the People’s Band outside at the fence. There is footage of girl- and boyscout groups. A group of protestors are shown calling for non-violent blockades of the delegates' entrance. Tear gas is feared, and there are interviews with tear-gassed people and medics.

Arguably, the most successful of the four “Gerald Ford’s America” shows was “Chic To Sheik,” a TVTV tour of the private culture of the official Washington. Lead by Megan Williams, they blithely move around an official White House tea for Betty Ford at the beginning and cavort at the Shah of Iran’s birthday party at the Iranian Embassy at the end. Shot with almost open access because this was when even public people, in private, were innocents before a documentary camera. Washington Post Society Editor, Betty Beale, leads the way. A gem.

Vice President Mike Pence eagerly plays cheerleader in chief for Donald Trump. In accepting the vice-presidential nomination in 2016, Pence proclaimed, “I'm a Christian, a conservative, and a Republican — in that order,” suggesting how we might understand his role. This ground-breaking, earth-shaking video begins with a pomp-ridden televised press conference, accompanied by uplifting music. Held early in 2017 at the White House Rose Garden, it showcased the president’s announced withdrawal from the historic Paris Climate Accord.

Rosa Barba’s work Disseminate and Hold investigates man-made geographies and landscapes, and how these are often deeply enmeshed with political agendas and utopian visions.

The artwork on trial is Richard Serra's public sculpture, Tilted Arc, commissioned and installed by the U.S. government in 1981. Four years later, a public hearing was held to consider the removal of the sculpture from its site in Federal Plaza in New York City. In documenting the climatic General Services Administration hearing, The Trial Of Tilted Arc is a thought-provoking indictment of the state of the arts.

"Weeks before the 2006 midterm elections in the U.S., Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez came to the United Nations and blew everyone's minds with his "smells of sulfur" speech about Bush. It was an emperor wears no clothes moment with perfect comic timing. Bush was officially a lame duck after that speech. No matter what nutty things Chávez ever did, our nation's children will always be grateful." 

– Jim Finn

Blood and Guts in High School features actress Stephanie Vella in a series of video installations* that re-imagine punk-feminist icon Kathy Acker's book of the same title. The book received noteriety from 1978-1982 during the rise of Reagan republicanism and the emergence of punk rock. In Parnes' interpretation, each video-chapter presents a typical scene in the life of Janie bracketed by U.S. news events from the time period in which the book was written.

Baby Bush meets Tubby-land. Completed in August 2001, this project was initially just a simple comic skewering of George W. Bush and his defense policies—but after September 11th, it took on a whole new meaning. State of the Union now has a surreal documentary quality that is genuinely disturbing.

In the Queen City is a series of three videos shot in Buffalo, New York that were produced following an invitation from Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center as part of their Ways In Being Gay festival. 

An episode of The Brenda and Glennda Show, hosted by Brenda Sexual and Glennda Orgasm. Production Support Provided by Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center.

An experimental video about cultural and political disputes surrounding immigration and naturalization processes. Work In Progress explores the effects of the 1986 U.S. Immigration Reform Law and individuals who did not qualify for amnesty under this reform, therefore remaining undocumented.

Bracketed by the Fall of Berlin Wall and the Collapse of the World Trade Center, a decade that saw the ossification of the neoliberal project, the rise of third-wave feminism, the proliferation of digital media, and even, perhaps, the “end of history": postmodernism; the emergence of internet; the commercialization of gangsta rap, and independent film; AIDS activist; digital cinema, the Gulf War; rave and riot grrrl cultures; reality television; MTV. A new diagrammatic system.

On September 22, 2018 artists Ligorano Reese installed a 2500 pound sculpture of the word Truth carved in ice on the National Mall in front of the U.S. Capitol.

This time lapse video is compiled from over 8 hours of footage. The soundtrack includes Donald Trump over the past 2 years on the Russia investigation and obstruction of justice.

Editing: Marshall Reese & Nora Ligorano
Music composition and performance: Leo Wexler-Mann
Audio Mix: Bill Seery
Rotoscope: Shannon Lee
Colorist: Gavin Guerra
Ice: IceLab, Baltimore MD

Linda M. Montano: 14 Years of Living Art is a video catalog of the artist’s exhibition, performance and workshop in Montreal in 2003. Produced in the context of a retrospective exhibition at the Liane and Danny Taran Gallery, the video presents a close view of Montano’s signture art/life counseling performance, interviews with participants, and views of the artworks in situ. It also documents Montano’s performance pedagogy during her all-night sleepover workshop which was collaboratively hosted by La Centrale and Rad’a.

Now Let Us Praise American Leftists is an experimental video animation that seeks to eulogize and ridicule the American leftist movement of the past century. Foregrounding the exclusionary nature of American leftist politics, and its persistent refusal to allow more diversity in terms of race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation to enter into the larger political daialogue, the video presents representations of American leftists as they are: men with mustaches.

In this reinterpretation of the mikveh — a purifying ritual bath performed by Jewish brides about to marry — the filmmaker and his husband’s immersions are disrupted by a government who refuses to recognize their marriage. While the couple is required, again and again, to prove their relationship legally exists, the mikveh they share helps them overcome unforgiving bureaucracies and return to what truly matters.

"You are invited to Jim’s party! Snake optional."

--Cinematexas Festival (Austin, 2001)

"Three more sing-alongs, this time with swans, a snake, and the Red Army Chorus."

--L.A. Freewaves Festival

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

The Sun Quartet is a solar composition in four movements, a political composition in four natural elements, an audiovisual composition in four bodily mutations: a sun stone where youth blooms in protest, a river overflowing the streets, the burning plain rising in the city. And, finally, the clamor of the people that shook Mexico after the night of September 26, 2014. The disappearance of 43 students from Ayotzinapa opened a breach in the Mexican political body.

Abscam (Framed) frames the FBI sting operation known as "Abscam" by mixing FBI surveillance footage of Congressman Michael "Ozzie" Meyers with footage shot by Lord at the Motel where the original sting occurred—in the process, inserting the artist into this moment in history.

A performer lip-synchs to archival audio featuring the voice of author and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston as she describes her method of documenting African American folk songs in Florida. The flickering images were produced with a hand-cranked Bolex so that the lip-synch is deliberately erratic and the rear-projected, grainy, looped images of Masai tribesmen and women, recycled from an educational film, become increasingly abstract as the audio transforms into an incantation. 

Reading the billboards, the cars, the people, and the graffiti of the street as cultural signs, Rosler extracts the network of social power and domination that determines whose culture gets represented where, asking whose culture is reported in the press and whose is forced to exist in the street?

The two-part video Gender Cruise on the Circle Line involves Brenda and Glennda leading a group of drag queens, drag kings, and other gender nonconforming people on a three-hour ride on the Circle Line boat around Manhattan.

An experimental documentary video project about individuals who have been transformed from so called “ordinary” citizens into activists, Witness To The Future seeks connections that unite people of all cultures, communities, races, and economic classes as they struggle for environmental and social change.

Do Not Circulate, an experimental short film, attempts a structuralist and materialist approach to unraveling the entrails of a collective media memory. Paced by an essay as a relentless voiceover, the film rips footage that challenges the materiality, ownership and legal boundaries of documentation.