Son of Saul, Songs from the Second Floor and The Machinist

Another week filled with films, slowly consuming everything and anything in order to regurgitate any scrap of useful information at a later interval. I’ve gotten around to catching up on a bunch of films that I definitely should have watched by now, but have continually put off, either due to knowing a particular plot point already or to the extortionate length of said films turning the watching into a commitment within itself.

For art, it’s been a very slow week, with not a lot occurring. I’ve been looking into purchasing a micro-computer, one that’s about the same size as a USB stick, in order to create desktop assemblages. This could be looked at as an extension of my Internet Surveillance, Inc. series, but in contrast to printed material the works would comprise of whole computer systems dedicated to the individual pieces. Cory Arcangel’s use of the Mac mini inspired this idea, to have the art as a whole computer rather than simply the .mov file or a jpeg image. This format would be used for the ideas that I’m currently working on for the repetitive biking game video that’s displayed alongside Samsara. I’m currently considering what else would be in this assemblage, and whether to just have one or multiple in a series of computer based works.

In contrast to this, I could instead make very simple assemblages that come back to the ideas surrounding the differences between the real and the virtual, contrasting one video with another using the desktop computer as a meeting space and medium for the files to function within. Maybe simple is the way to go, whilst highlighting the various media players’ designs, making artwork using found imagery and harnessing the inherent qualities of programs that aren’t necessarily designed to be seen as art. Although having the beginning of a work’s idea being that you simply want to explore the differences between how something is portrayed in the real vs the virtual may be too simple? Off the top of my head these could be various things, from walking around Los Angeles in real life being contrasted with Los Angeles in GTA 5, chopping down trees in games vs in reality, etc. I’ll have to think about it…

I think that’s all there is that’s going on in the ‘art section’ of my life, which is a shame. Fortunately, this weekend I’m going to the Berlin Biennale, which I’m incredibly excited about. So hopefully when I get back from that I’ll be full of ideas and inspiration.

The rest of this will probably be running through all the films I’ve been watching. The first film which was a simply lovely experience was The Secret Life of Pets. High quality voice acting and animations alongside an interesting cast of characters, both subverting and conforming to the stereotypes that are usually associated with anthropomorphic animals. A really nice film…

I was kind of disappointed in Blackhat, all the fight scenes seemed really b-movie esque. Even though the story was fine, the lacklustre camera work continually took me away from what was happening on screen. By the end I was just bored and wanted it to be over; I wanted it to be better.

In terms of films that I’ve never seen before but should have; The Goonies. It has not aged well, or I just should have seen it when I was 11. Either way, I was just bored by the PG nature of the whole thing.

I also finally watched The Machinist, an interesting film. Obviously aesthetically it was quite awesome, with Christian Bale’s transformation into a bag of bones something to be astonished by. The story being a slow descent into madness, reminding me of Memento especially.

Continuing onwards with my journey into absurdness, I watched another film in Roy Anderson’s epic trilogy, Songs from the Second Floor. Equally as beautiful and crazed as A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence, I now only need to watch the second in the series, You, the Living. I realise I’ve watched them all in a very weird way, but if you’ve seen them you’ll understand that it doesn’t really matter. I just recommend that you find the time to watch at least one of these epic metaphorical masterpieces.

I caught up with two films that have been continually spoiled for me due to referencing in other films or tv shows. The first being The Sixth Sense, which was vaguely okay. Although I knew the ending before I even watched the film, I don’t know how anyone could have watched the whole thing without realising ‘it’ by the end. ‘It’ was just so obvious. For me, as I already knew the ending, it just reinforced my annoyance with the film. I did enjoy how, as opposed to say in Fight Club, the film allowed you to work ‘it’ out via clues, but the clues were so obvious that anyone could have worked ‘it’ out.

Another film that I should have watched before it was spoiled for me multiple times in advance; Shutter Island, which was slightly frustrating. It does allow you to watch the film a second time without having watched it for the first time, if you get what I mean, but is that that much fun anyway? The film was good, although I prefer The Ninth Configuration, a very similar film by William Peter Blatty; a lot crazier and absurd than this ‘newer version’.

I watched all of the Before trilogy, another thing that I’ve been meaning to watch. I’ve been a big fan of Linklater for a while, so in order to call myself that I thought I should at least watch these series of films. They were quite beautiful, with my favourite being the first of the trilogy, simply due to the blind naivety of the two characters which was lost in the later films (which is as it should be), alongside the roaming camera winding through those European streets. All three of the films were simply lovely, full of intellectual dialogue and mindless bullshit.

The Book of Life is another beautiful child friendly film that tells a ‘nice’ story, with colourful animations and a fairly exciting Romeo and Juliet type sub plot. I enjoyed it for what it was.

There Will Be Blood is another of these films that I’ve always meant to watch. The whole experience was breath-taking, watching Daniel Day-Lewis gradually change and contort into a husk of a man, with capitalism slowly oozing and infecting everything that it came into contact with, was simply astonishing; both the beginning and ending scenes demonstrating what one will do for and in spite of money. Quite incredible. I’ve now seen all of Paul Thomas Anderson’s feature films, which just makes me wanting for another.

Black Swan was quite good, I kind of wanted it to be more of a mind fuck than it was, with only the ending just beginning to get seriously messed up. It does show that Natalie Portman can be very good when she’s pushed to.

The Purge was okay, more of an interesting concept than anything. I think I just wanted more Ethan Hawke in my life after watching so much of him in the previous days. I doubt I’ll be watching any of the sequels.

The King’s Speech was very well done, making me care about what was happening which is an impressive feat within itself.

Finally, I managed to watch Son of Saul. A deeply distressing film based in 1944 in an Auschitz concentration camp and centred on a prisoner forced to burn the corpses of the dead. What I gained from the film, rather than being incredibly horrified, was how rushed and hurried everything was, how no one knew what the fuck was going on. For the majority of the film the protagonist simply walks around, being forced into various jobs whilst blindly walking into a conspiracy that he doesn’t seem to care one way or the other about. It was a very good film and seemed to capture this terrible moment in history very well whilst harnessing an interesting ‘over the shoulder’ filming technique.

In terms of tv, I’ve been ‘shopping around’ for a new series to get into. I watched a few episodes of Horace and Pete, starring Louis C.K. and Steve Buscemi as bar owners in New York, which is everything you’d expect from a comedy drama written by Louis C.K. based in a bar!

I also began watching Morel Orel, a cartoon focused on a deeply religious child who inadvertently gets himself into trouble as he takes various Christian sermons a little too literally. This religious parody works well with the Claymation aesthetic, similar to Robot Chicken but even more satirical as its focus is on religion. This is fun as a little thing on the side.

Hannibal is another series that I’m not fully into yet, at the moment it feels a little too like Dexter, a series that I mostly regret watching. Although you can’t not enjoy Mads Mikkelsen’s deadpan stare.

In other, non tv related news, I finally have a house that I’m going to live in during the upcoming academic year. This is exciting within itself, alongside the fact that it’s in New Cross which is good; lots of things happening, etc…

As mentioned earlier, I’m going to Berlin this weekend for the biennale which is very exciting. So many of my favourite artists have work being shown; Jon Rafman, Simon Denny, Timur Si-Qin, Hito Steyerl, Josh Kline… The list simply goes on. I’ve also never been to Berlin, so it’ll be really interesting simply to go and experience the city, alongside all this amazing art.

So I think that’s my week of lounging around basically. Not a lot of stuff occurred which was a bit of a shame, but as I keep saying, it is the holidays… Which is very slowly dwindling away in front of my face.

Oh and this week’s isthisit? went well, featuring three artists and focusing on ‘the internet’ as a general theme. Neale Willis’ video/sound piece was created from the sounds of deleted tweets; which is interesting within itself! This was put together with a painting by Stacey Davidson, who’s practice is loosely inspired by internet memes and internet culture in general. They’re a mixture of found imagery attached to the canvas alongside very subtle mark making. The final work to accompany these two was a gif by Servgi Tan, a self-portrait of herself which to me looks as if she’s blindly looking into her computer screen, watching a film or consuming her daily dose of social media whilst slowly falling asleep. Is she tired because of the endless memes and tweets? Or is it something else? I don’t know, but you can see for yourself here: http://isthis.wixsite.com/isthisit

I’m really enjoying this curatorial process, which is making me want to do something else like this, be it curating an exhibition AFK or otherwise… Or maybe just another internet based exhibition with more of a theme based approach? Maybe I’ll look into it... Anyway.

Enjoi.

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TRAVELOGUE, Pantha Du Prince and Bojack Horseman

I sadly once again missed last week as Latitude slightly took over my weekend. It’s also to do with the weather being so lovely recently, making it harder and harder to write and actually produce meaningful work. A lot of the last two weeks has consisted of sitting outside, listening to podcasts and music whilst indulging in tv shows and films when the sun starts to go behind the clouds. It’s been a very relaxed time, so don’t expect much to have happened.

The one piece of work that I did manage to actually ‘finish’ was creating an online shop for myself. ‘Online shop’ being a loose term to describe the creation of a Redbubble account and uploading all my designs to the site. This is something that I’ve wanted to do for a while, with the designs being a combination of my work from Internet Relations alongside random Vaporwave designs that I create for my own personal t-shirt use. The beauty of Redbubble is that you can have these designs printed on all sorts of things, from t-shirts to iPhone cases, which fully embodies the ideas embedded within the original artwork. It also, in a purely capitalist sense, makes me some money if/when people do buy the products. The various designs can be accessed through my website here: http://www.bobbicknell-knight.com/#/double-dipping/ Each design can be put onto any piece of clothing, the images on my website are simply examples.

I’ve also been thinking a lot about new ideas alongside the concepts that I wanted to fabricate at the beginning of this summer period. Last weeks ‘tree’ idea; showing various real life trees being chopped down contrasted with video game trees living on for all eternity, hasn’t been created yet as I’ve slightly moved on from the initial concept. I’m currently considering creating a looping film with footage taken from a downhill mountain biking game from the PlayStation 1 era of videogames. These games, in contrast to newer video games on the market, were never updated, never ‘patched’, as the console couldn’t actually connect to the internet. This keeps the game ‘pure’, unable to be changed or distorted, with the original discs living forever with the same mountain biking man seemingly cycling down the same mountain for all eternity. I like the idea of using something from a bygone era, an era where it was impossible for a large company to access something of yours remotely, as it wasn’t connected to the internet. In the video that I’m envisioning the biker would go down a hill, with trees either side, with the path (seemingly) never ending, the loop continuing on until the television is ultimately unplugged. This makes me think of various works by Jon Rafman, one of which, titled Leviathan, shows the fastest Skyrim ‘speed run’ displayed on a silicone covered Alienware laptop. No one is going to stay and watch the whole thing, who knows if the game is actually completed or not?

I also like the idea of contrasting this with something, something that shows how changeable real life can be, how much ‘everything’ is ‘moving forward’. At first I thought that the tree being chopped down could embody this idea, or maybe various car crashes? Contrasting the endless mountain biking with horrific real life crashes? I later thought about displaying the film Samsara, a feature length movie that looks at the various aspects of the world, alongside the endless biking. For me, this film fully embodies ‘everything’ that’s occurring in this world, so there may be too much content embedded within the film to show as a piece of re-appropriated artwork. I still need to think about it, and actually start to make something. I think the sun is just way too inviting right now to do anything indoors, and that’s probably okay as it’s the holidays.

I still really want to write up a contract for no screen time. It’s slowly changed from writing it for me to writing it for the first world society that we’re living in. It’ll function as a downloadable document for anyone to use. This will have the look of a serious document, which can actually be used for said purpose, but in actuality it’ll be satirising people who make the comment that we should be living in a ‘screen-less’ society, whilst getting their ‘message’ across using YouTube or online forums. So this will have an outwardly serious tone, but an underlying note of cynicism and sarcasm. I just need to spend a few days researching these documents, or get one to repurpose as my own. I want to get this done.

In other news, I’ve been invited to take part in a group exhibition called TRAVELOGUE in Mantua, Italy. It’ll be the first time my work is exhibited outside of the UK, which is exciting within itself. The work that was ‘requested’ to be featured was Simulated Ignorance, a seemingly simple work that I created earlier in the year that features a 17-minute car journey occurring in first person mode in GTA5. In contrast to how you usually see the GTA games portrayed in ‘the media’, within this video the ‘player’ drives around ‘normally’, not crashing into anyone whilst conforming to traffic lights and speed limits. The video will be displayed alongside the controller pictured in the original ‘in situ’ photograph too, simulating some sort of control that the viewer of the work ultimately never has. I’m really excited for the show, and although I won’t actually be able to go, I look forward to seeing the documentation of the event. Oh and I’m also going to take part in a text interview for it too, which will be equally exciting.

I also heard back from an opportunity I had applied for ‘The Ten Human Years of Preta Eshana’. It sounded interesting and weird. I applied with my sound piece for the video Utopian Realism. I’m not entirely sure if I will have to create a new piece of work for this, or whether the piece of music I submitted will simply be part of the final project… I’m sure I’ll find out soon enough though, for now I got in and that’s just generally good to know.

 https://soundcloud.com/bob-bicknell-knight/test

In the past week my opportunity isthisit? finally got accepted to CuratorSpace after waiting for literally 3 months. I basically bought into the site rather than simply having the free version and heard back with two days. I doubt that’s any coincidence, but whatever. Now that it is viewable on the site I’ve been getting so many submissions, which is really exciting, allowing me to properly curate the different works, leading to more interesting micro exhibitions as well as better works created by established artists. I’m actually really excited about the continued expansion of the site and want to keep going for as long as possible, basically until I stop getting submissions.

I’ve been continuing to submit to lots of things recently too, it’s a very good way of procrastinating, as it’s still ‘working’, just admin work that can be done without really thinking. At some point I’ll either be incredibly disappointed with the amount of rejections I get or incredibly swamped by emails to reply to.

Last week’s isthisit? #12 only featured one artist, Jamie Rose, with various videos from a series titled Caine Comparisons; vaguely detailed breakdowns of Michael Caine’s acting performances. You can view last week’s exhibition here: http://isthis.wix.com/isthisit#!12/j9rzk

This week’s exhibition #13, had work from 3 artists, Ben Galyas, Marissa Wedenig and Aidan Johnson (Clerk 37). The works all revolved around Galyas’ video work, which was made up of various images flashing up on the screen. Mostly images from popular culture, pixelated slightly, making it seem like they’re clippings taken from newspapers. This creates a stream of consciousness which becomes even more chaotic with the addition of Clerk 37’s incredibly frenzied footwork/drum and bass soundscape. This is ‘topped off’ with Wedenig’s stylised painting that focuses on late night texts with newly formed relationships. I feel that each piece works well with one another, forming this fast paced environment to experience. Even though my curatorial instincts might not be that good, I’m still enjoying this process a lot, especially being submitted work that I would never really encounter by people that live in far off places. You can see this week’s here: http://isthis.wix.com/isthisit And if you are an artist and reading this, do submit by clicking on the ‘open call’ part of the website.

It was an ‘interesting’ experience to go to Latitude. It’s a festival that I used to go to about four or five years ago that I used to love, but now it’s kind of like I’ve ‘changed’ with age, but it’s stayed the same. It has the same crappy bands accompanied by a bunch of young teenagers jumping around and creating mosh pits to indie music. It doesn’t really work. Although it was nice to go and sit in the sun for a couple of days, overall it was a depressing nostalgia trip.

I did manage to see one or two interesting things however. One of my favourites, simply for the performance aspect, was Pantha Du Prince. A German producer of various genres of music. Although the music was interesting within itself accompanied by complex aesthetic visuals, throughout the performance the three artists would put on different hats and masks. They first appeared wearing these inverted dome shaped hats, somehow enabling the musicians to reflect the light and the smoke simultaneously. They then proceeded to wear different featureless masks. I really enjoyed this performative aspect and made me appreciate the music more. Definitely one of those times when it’s better to see it live.

Seeing Loyle Carner was good, although I couldn’t really relate to anything that he was singing/rapping about, so I kind of just relaxed into the sounds behind his voice. Probably a mistake, but does it matter?

I also saw Lapsely that day, alongside Beirut, music to lounge around to (in my opinion) rather than standing around, being crushed into a ball. So good, but bad because of the setting.

Seeing Sophie on Saturday was a huge let down. I’m a big fan of his work, alongside various artists coming under the PC Music label, but seeing it live just wasn’t that interesting; especially when incredibly young people are jumping around in front of you, making you feel incredibly inappropriate.

I had the same problem with various other acts throughout the weekend; Mura Masa, Roots Manuva and Jamie Woon. All interesting people to listen to when you’re sitting down having a beer, but not so great when teenagers are leaping around. I’m sure they’re having a good time, it’s just, I’m not. Maybe I’m being too pessimistic about the whole thing…

Other than Latitude, I’ve been going on a lot of walks by the beach recently, either alone or with others. It’s really nice to go from living in London to living so close to the beach and being able to simply go and experience it whenever you want. Maybe I want to make some work about the beach at some point, the serenity of it, the power… We will see.

Other than that I’ve watched a few things, I finished Seinfeld, which ended up being very funny. Although as I learned more about the characters, rather than liking them, I began to hate them. They’re actually terrible, selfish, self-obsessed people who you would not want to be associated with. I’m sure that’s the point of course.

I started to watch Lady Dynamite, an incredibly knowing and meta show centred around an actress getting over a mental breakdown. It’s surprisingly funny and sharp.

Alongside this I watched all of season 3 of Bojack Horseman; something that I’ve been waiting for since season 2 came out around this time last year. The whole thing is quite beautiful, depressing and incredibly heartfelt. If you haven’t watched the show because it’s an animation, you’re really restricting yourself. I can’t wait for season 4.

I’ve also started to watch Jessica Jones, which has its interesting moments. I like the idea of someone having very minimal super powers, something that can give you an edge over your opponent but not entirely. For some reason I want it to be darker, grittier, although it has a small element of that, I want more. By the time I finish it maybe that will have kicked in? Only time can tell.

On top of this I watched The Jinx, a short documentary series looking at the accused murderer Robert Durst. It was okay, although I wasn’t really that drawn in by the premise, I think I liked Making a Murderer more, although it is really hard to concentrate on anything in this heat, so maybe I should re-watch at some point?

Obviously I’ve also watched a bunch of films, not as many as I’d have liked as I was slightly Seinfeld obsessed for a while. One of the most enjoyable films of the past few weeks was The Nice Guys, just a really good action comedy. It made me think a lot of the Starsky and Hutch remake with Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson, with the aesthetic of Boogie Nights and the drug addled-nuss of Inherent Vice. I was just smiling throughout the whole thing, definitely an enjoyable light film that can be loved for what it is.

A very weird and kind of shit film was The Voices. Centred around Ryan Reynolds slowly going mental. You can enjoy it for what it is, a crap comedy crime film. You just have to relax into how not very good it is and you’ll have an ‘okay’ time. Definitely not worth your time.

A simply beautiful film that I’m incredibly surprised that I hadn’t seen before was Brokeback Mountain. It’s been on my list for so long, and is referenced in some many things, I’m just happy to have finally seen it. It’s incredibly saddening, lovingly filmed with quiet observations telling a heart-breaking story.

Black Dynamite was an interesting film, a B movie Blaxploitation action film about standing up to ‘The Man’ with kung fu and a thirst for revenge. I’ve been a fan of the animated series for a while, but had never really got around to watching the film that spawned said show. It’s a very weird film, one that I’m unsure if I’d recommend... It’s such a mix of various film genres that you just have to relax into and appreciate it for what it is. It’s fun and loose.

Exam is one of those ‘sci-fi but not overtly sci-fi’ films. Set entirely within one room, eight candidates have to answer one question which is on a piece of paper in front of them. It’s unfortunately not as clever as it thinks it is, which is kind of a shame, as I enjoy the premise.

I also watched Central Intelligence, which was kind of fun actually. I laughed at least six times, it had some fun characters… It was what it was, I didn’t expect anything more from it.

Another film that comes under the heading ‘enjoyable but forgetful’ was Keanu, an action comedy centred around a stolen cat that keeps changing hands. It was fun for a while and kept me entertained. I did enjoy how Keanu Reeves makes a brief voice acting appearance as the cat in question called Keanu, but apart from that nothing particularly special was occurring.

Unfortunately, I watched the terrible Man of Steel, which was just dull with a tedious plot.

I then went onto watch Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice which was even worse. The plot was dull and longwinded and the central premise didn’t really make sense to me; surely Batman is clever enough to realise that Superman wasn’t the route of all evil? That’s 3 hours of my life (it seems that I may have accidentally watched the extended cut) gone. The reason why I watched both of these terrible films was so that when I watch Suicide Squad at some point in the future I can understand the lore, but in reality, I probably shouldn’t have bothered.

The last film of the week, Platoon, was very good. I feel a little like once you’ve seen one of these war/army/Vietnam films you’ve seen them all; moments of monotony and idle chat interspersed with flashes of extreme violence and moral crises. However, all the films that come under that particular banner (Apocalypse Now, The Thin Red Line, Full Metal Jacket, etc) are all really good and worth watching.

I think that may be all the films I watched, pitiful considering I missed last week’s post, but never mind.

I’ve been slowly chipping away at The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, hardly making a dent in the epic masterpiece. The quests are already incredibly interesting, with every choice tinged with a murky grey that makes you feel uncomfortable, even though it’s ‘just a videogame’. That’s what I love about Role Playing videogames (and videogames in general); you’re actually making these terrible decisions. In film you’d be watching the characters making these awful decisions, but in a videogame you are the person making the decisions and you get to see those decisions change the world around you in various ways; creating your own unique experience.

I think that might be the end to the last two weeks, unless I think of anything else I’ve done. Lots of sitting around, lots of sun. That’s about it. I want to make some progress in the next week in my various projects, but I feel that does depend on how the weather is slightly, as the heat makes it quite impossible to actually think properly. So I guess I’ll see how it goes, keep applying for things and keep attempting to create.

Enjoi.

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