- Viewing Blind: Sniper's Burial
- Chick Strand Document
- Flying Saucer Drone
- Swoop
- All the House (Haditha Massacre)
- Sunroof (Benazir Bhutto Assassination)
- Repeat Photography & the Albedo Effect
- Grand Central/Central Terminal
- Sea Lion
- Berlin Warszawa Express
- hole or space
- I Want to Have Your Baby
- ReAction
- Pupspindanceslow
- Inflorescentia
- Puss! The Booted Cat
- Knucklebones
VIEWING BLIND: SNIPER'S BURIAL (stream on vimeo)
2014, 10:00, sound, color/b&w, HD video, 16:9
After earning the moniker "America's deadliest sniper" for his many kills in Iraq, Navy SEAL Chris Kyle (1974-2013) re-entered civilian life back in Texas only to be gunned down by a young combat vet he was trying to help. Featuring a single take shot by the artist of Kyle's laying to rest at the Texas State Cemetery in Austin, SNIPER'S BURIAL is an authentic view of the SEAL mourning ritual of pinning Tridents on the deceased's casket. A necessary antidote to the Hollywood blockbuster "American Sniper" directed by Clint Eastwood, Koebel's no-budget personal cinema searches for a deeper understanding of geopolitics and the permanent war phenomenon. Like Bruce Conner's "Report" (1963-1967), it is a "meditation on violence."
SNIPER'S BURIAL riffs on the formalism of the military uniform (and culture and ethos) and is cognizant of the visual languages of Third Reich director Leni Riefenstahl on the one hand and minimalist / structural / flicker / avant-garde film (e.g., Peter Kubelka, Paul Sharits, Tony Conrad) on the other. The soundtrack samples eclectic sources, from the Village People and Daft Punk to Kyle's widow's National Rife Association speech and US military promotional videos. Curtis Mayfield's "Get Down" from a 1971 "Soul Train" episode poses a utopian counter-narrative to the dominant theme of the military industrial complex. The ongoing project VIEWING BLIND mines the gap between politics and aesthetics for novel and meaningful ways to engage issues of power, representation, subjectivity, and democracy.
"SNIPER'S BURIAL, in the best tradition of not only avant-garde cinema but documentary as well, doesn't make it easy on the viewer—not on his/her eyes, ears, or mores. The obvious demand it places on the viewer—the intensity of the flicker and the volume of the soundtrack (and playing it REALLY loud is best); but it is also demanding because it at once takes a clearly antagonistic position towards its subject but does not spell everything out for the viewer—critical without being dogmatic, in line with avant-garde film tradition without simply parroting its familiar forms." —Jonathan Walley, PhD
Funded in part by the Austin Film Society and the Texas Filmmakers' Production Fund.
Selected Screenings and Exhibitions
• Incursions Into Cosmic Fear, solo exhibition, Young Projects, June 5-Aug 15, 2015, Los Angeles, CA
• Avant to Live: New Experimental Works, Other Cinema, curated by Craig Baldwin, May 30, 2015, San Francisco, CA
• Experiments in Cinema Festival v10.36, Apr 19, 2015, Albuquerque, NM
• Aesthetics, Politics, and Avant-Garde Filmmaking, Denison University, sneak preview, invited by Professor Jonathan Walley, Feb 25-26, 2015, Granville, OH
• Experimental Cinema of Aesthetics and Politics, John Cabot University, sneak preview, invited by Professor Antonio Lopez, July 29, 2014, Rome, Italy
CHICK STRAND DOCUMENT (stream on vimeo)
2013, 1:49, silent, color, HD video
The Chick Strand short has a story. I was looking for some old document in my box of papers and came across this "bio" she had written for me when I invited her to UCSD. Upon re-reading it (after a lapse of many years), I was dumbfounded by what a significant artifact it was and felt like in the past I hadn't properly appreciated it. Breaking free of the reality that at the precise moment of rediscovery I had no time on my hands and no space for imaginative play, I immediately started working with it, I was compelled, the presence of Chick was too inviting to respond in any other way than with absolute conviction.
Selected Screenings and Exhibitions
• Experiments in Cinema Festival v9.72, Apr 19, 2014, Albuquerque, NM
• Other Cinema, New Experimental Works, Dec 21, 2013, San Francisco, California
• OtherZine, Issue No. 25, Sep 9, 2013 Chick Strand Document (online)
FLYING SAUCER DRONE (stream on vimeo)
2013, 4:31, sound, color/b+w, HD video
This composition of repurposed images and sounds (found footage) posits contemporary American aerial war technology in the context of the Cold War pursuit of ever better weaponry as self-protection, despite the reality that it was the US that dropped A-bombs on civilization. 1950 sources: Rabbit's Moon (Kenneth Anger), The Flying Saucer (Mikel Conrad), and Flying Disc Man from Mars (Fred C. Brannon). The video is a result of an invitation by Enrico Tomaselli, Art Director of Magmart Festival (video under volcano), to participate in the global project 100x100=900 (100 videoartists to tell a century) for which each filmmaker was randomly assigned a year from the 20th c.—in this case, 1950.
Selected Screenings and Exhibitions
• Incursions Into Cosmic Fear, solo exhibition, Young Projects, June 5-Aug 15, 2015, Los Angeles, CA
• LXT FILM FUND, Songzhuang Art Colony, Nov 29-30, 2013, Tongzhou District, Beijing, China
• 5th Base Gallery, Nov 3-5, 2013, London, UK
• Other Cinema, X-Perimental Sci-Fi, Nov 2, 2013, San Francisco, California
• Peras de Olmo - Ars Continua (Videoplay), Sep 25-27, 2013, Buenos Aires, Argentina
• Holdudvar Gallery, July 18-Aug 25, Budapest, Hungary
• East Art Gallery, May 3-14, 2013, Tehran, Iran
• Moscow Museum of Modern Art, Apr 26, 2013, Moscow, Russia
• Nuovo Cinema Aquila, World premiere, Apr 18-19, 2013, Rome, Italy
PUPSPINDANCESLOW (stream documentation on vimeo)
"...an encounter between a dog kennel, a toy store, a sock hop and a psychiatric ward, as imagined in a juvenile nightmare."—Roberto Tejada, PhD
Multimedia public art installation, CEPA Gallery (Center for Exploratory and Perceptual Art), Buffalo, NY, March 17-July 31, 2000
Special thanks to Lawrence Brose, Sean Donaher, and Julie Silver
PUPSPINDANCESLOW is inspired by a period in pop culture, the late 70s, and in the artist's life, ages 11 to 13, when the awareness of the existence of codes of sexuality and romance is sharp while the ability to navigate the codes is fuzzy. Pop love songs, teen dances, grooming trends, and side-long glances, PUPSPINDANCESLOW spins around the kid-come-adult's vows to resist marketplace-driven conceptions of sexual desire and romantic expectation and how the capitalist ordering of the social hardly skips a beat in the face of any such attempt on the part of the individual.
"Glittering behind the curved glass of the facing window displays was a silver-a-go-go surface that lined the entire base and walls of the installation. The faux-metallic 3-D pattern pointed to the moment when pop-art began to inform the post-hippie modernity of interior design. At the far rear of the facing showcases, two video monitors randomly alternated between rhythmically manipulated frames of Duchamp's 1927 film "Anemic Cinema"—with its hypnotic spirals alluding to the swoon of vision as caught up in the lure of the medium itself—and blunt head-on shots of standard French poodles staring straight at the viewer as they undergo fastidious grooming. Below, a series of embedded turntables spinned incessantly; on top of each vinyl LP stood a white plastic poodle, each identical on its axis, whirling to the elastic garbled tunes of Air Supply's "I'm All Out of Love," Johnny Mathis's "You Light Up My Life" and Captain and Tenille's "I Never Wanted."" —Roberto Tejada, PhD, Re-Engendered, Afterimage, Vol. 28 No. 3, November 2000
SWOOP (stream on vimeo)
2011, 7:45, silent, color, shot on Super 8 and miniDV
Inspired by a colony of cliff swallows nesting under a freeway in Austin, Texas, this film considers human-animal interactions through optical rhythms and flight patterns. Birds—cliff swallows as well as thousands of purple martins on their migration path—collide with construction of new freeways to nowhere.
"On the other hand, she shoots images from freeway constructions together with flying cliff swallows ("Swoop"), a species which finds new habitats in these concrete constructions. Then editing with a rhythm inspired by Dziga Vertov's editing, she accomplishes a meditative and very poetic film. No: "power to the poetic!" - this is no contradiction for Caroline Koebel." —Klaus W. Eisenlohr, Curator of "Drift and Dwell"
Read the full essay by Curator Klaus W. Eisenlohr at www.richfilm.de
Selected Screenings and Exhibitions
• Incursions Into Cosmic Fear, solo exhibition, Young Projects, June 5-Aug 15, 2015, Los Angeles, CA
• Other Cinema, Experimental Response Cinema's Best Western: The Texas Kick-Ass Sampler, Dec 13, 2014, San Francisco, CA
• Peras de Olmo – Ars Continua, The Friendship State: TX Experimental Filmmakers, Sep 28 and Oct 9-10, 2013, Buenos Aires, Argentina
• CineMarfa, The Friendship State, TX Experimental Filmmakers, May 3, 2013, Marfa, TX
• Zeitgeist Multi-Disciplinary Arts Center, The Friendship State: TX Experimental Filmmakers, Apr 27, 2013, New Orleans, LA
• 5th International Video Art Fest, Apr 24-28, 2013, Camagüey, Cuba
• Austin Film Society, The Friendship State: TX Experimental Filmmakers, Feb 22, 2013, Austin, TX
• Microscope Gallery, The Friendship State: TX Experimental Filmmakers, Nov 5, 2012, Brooklyn, NY
• New Media Art and Sound Summit (NMASS), curated by Scott Stark, June 14, 2012, Austin, TX
• Experiments in Cinema v7.9, North American premiere, Apr 16-22, 2012, Albuquerque, New Mexico
• Urban Research on Film at the Berlin International Directors Lounge, European premiere, Feb 13, 2012, Berlin, Germany
• Festival Cine//B, Museum of Contemporary Art (MAC), World premiere, Nov 9, 2011, Santiago, Chile
PUSS! THE BOOTED CAT
1995, 13:00, sound, black and white, 16mm, available on 16mm and on digital video
“An odyssey into the imagined world of the feline as highwayman-cum-avenging-goddess-of-sex-and-tightly-laced-boots. Framed by quaint silent-movie-style graphics and a DJ-worthy mix of music and noise, Puss shoots cows, strokes her cats, and parties.” — Marina Rosenfeld, Los Angeles Weekly
Puss! The Booted Cat is an erotic short that laps up various incarnations of the classic fairytale Puss-In-Boots. The tale, popularized in 17th c. France by author Charles Perrault, is here transformed into a contemporary adventure of unrequited love, lands-titles-and-goods-to-be-conquered, identities-to-be-claimed, and feminine feline power. The heroine, who is both the woman Mademoiselle Puss and Puss the cat, battles loss and misfortune with irrepressible rebellious energies. At last she is able to relax in her throne of the Bubastis Queendom, enjoying music, dance, and a most unusual mushroom—it had once been the ogre whose vengeance is the catalyst of this particular episode in one of her nine lives. The film's black-and-white images, intertitles, nonsynchronous sound, low tech "tricks," and theatricalized acting style borrow from early cinema even as its modern day references, fast paced editing, and feminist sensibility place it paws down in the present.
Featuring Jenifer Maslow and Mark Hessler with a cameo by Caroline Koebel.
Original music by Azalia Snail
Made possible in part by a grant from the Russell Foundation.
Athens International Film and Video Fest Experimental Film Award.
Distributed by the Film-Makers' Cooperative
Selected Screenings
• Turbidus Film #5 – Caroline Koebel (US), Lyndsay Bloom (US), Quimu Casalprim (E/DE), Fylkingen, curated by Daniel A. Swarthnas, Nov 2, 2013, Stockholm, Sweden
• Avant Cinema 3.8: Caroline Koebel, Austin Film Society, curated by Chale Nafus and Scott Stark, Apr 29, 2010, Austin, TX
• Moment of Motion: Films by Caroline Koebel, Oct 9, 2007, Artist's Television Access, San Francisco, CA
• Shots and Cuts: Films by Caroline Koebel, curated by Carolyn Tennant, Jan 18, 2007, Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center, Buffalo, NY
• IV Chilean Festival of International Short Film, Santiago, Chile
• Culture & Communication in the Borderlands, Universidad Iberoamericana, Tijuana, Mexico
• MIX: New York Lesbian and Gay Experimental Film/Video Festival, New York, NY
• Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center, Venice, CA
• A Tongue of Her Own (1896-1996) Festival, San Pedro, CA
• The Politics of Womanhood, Intersection Gallery, San Diego, CA
• Contemporary Feminist Film/Video, curated by Jennie Klein, Doris Ulmann Gallery, Berea, KY
KNUCKLEBONES: SELF-SUSTAINING MEMBERS OF THE HUMAN SPECIES
1992, 13:00, sound, black and white, 16mm, available on 16mm and digital video
“A haunting evocation of the body under stress.”—Kathy Geritz, Pacific Film Archive
“The soundtrack adds industrial, metallic noise and piano and vocal loops and even a little opera. Mixed into this is prose-poetry reminiscent of Exene Cervenka's solo work.”—Pete Sheehy and Andy Spletzer, The Stranger
“An angry nihilistic froth...comparable to the disturbing, arty works of Luis Buñuel and David Lynch's tamer Eraserhead. There is the metaphor of a tethered, brutalized elephant, and the film flows with the nearly bi-cameral mind of the alienated...Knucklebones is an effective, sadistic example of cinematic manipulation.”—Frederic Kahler, Seattle Gay News
Knucklebones follows the course of hysterical outburst to instances of alienation and isolation. From a 1903 newspaper, “While fifteen hundred persons looked on in breathless excitement, an electric bolt sent the man-killing elephant staggering to the ground. With her own life, she paid for the lives of the three men she had killed.” The film combines archival with Super8 and 16mm original footage and intertext in an experiential exploration of gender, sexuality and identity.
Featuring Katherine Crockett, prior to becoming a Martha Graham Dance Company soloist.
Also with Caroline Koebel, Stephanie Oxley, Holly Van Voast, and Robert Wyrod.
Made possible in part by the Ayoka Chenzira Artist Mentor Workshop at Film/Video Arts and a residency at Visual Studies Workshop
Distributed by the Film-Makers' Cooperative and LUX
Selected Screenings
• Shots and Cuts: Films by Caroline Koebel, Jan 18, 2007, curated by Carolyn Tennant, Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center, Buffalo, NY
• Robert(a) Beck Memorial Cinema at the Collective: Unconscious, Apr 20, 2004, curated by Ghen Zando-Dennis, New York, NY
• Survivors: Moving Pictures, Resisting Confinement, Pleasure Dome, Toronto, Canada
• Mapping the Body, Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, CA
• Anthology Film Archives, New York, NY
• The Novitiate and Transfigured Body, Other Cinema, San Francisco, CA
• 31st Ann Arbor Festival of Independent and Experimental 16mm Film, Ann Arbor, Michigan
• Reel Time: New American Independent Short Films, The Head Gallery, Dublin, Ireland
• Illicit Response: Mostly recent films by Julie Murray, Greta Snider, Jennifer Montgomery, Caroline Koebel, and Lisa Mann, Los Angeles Filmforum, Los Angeles, CA
INFLORESCENTIA
1997, 13:00, sound, color, 16mm, available on 16mm and digital video
"Inflorescentia takes the traditional association of female sexuality with nature and through a sensorium of taste, touch, sight, and sound fragrantly explores and divinely disrupts this relationship." –Jennie Klein
Attempting to fissure prevailing relations between spectator and screen, between sight and touch, desiring subject and object of desire, Inflorescentia uses poetics, humor and erotics as means to voice "the body" and to take stock of cinema as one of the multiple transgressive sites for female pleasure. Its influences are productions by gay men, including Sergei Paradjanov, Derek Jarman and Jean Genet.
Featuring a cast of poets, filmmakers and performance artists: Gloria Alvarez, Noelle B., Mila Chistoserdova, A.J. Escobar, Angelica Garza, Kate Haug, Nadja Muzhik, and Beverly Tang.
Distributed by the Film-Makers' Cooperative
Selected Screenings and Exhibitions
• Incursions Into Cosmic Fear, solo exhibition, Young Projects, June 5-Aug 15, 2015, Los Angeles, CA
• Turbidus Film #5 – Caroline Koebel (US), Lyndsay Bloom (US), Quimu Casalprim (E/DE), Fylkingen, curated by Daniel A. Swarthnas, Nov 2, 2013, Stockholm, Sweden
• Flesh, Balagan at the Brattle Theatre, program with Mike Kuchar and Stan Brakhage, Aug 7, 2012, Boston, MA
• Avant Cinema 3.8: Caroline Koebel, Austin Film Society, curated by Chale Nafus and Scott Stark, Apr 29, 2010, Austin, TX
• Film-Makers' Cooperative Benefit, Millennium Film Workshop, Dec 6, 2008, New York, NY
• Shots and Cuts: Films by Caroline Koebel, Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center, curated by Carolyn Tennant, Jan 18, 2007, Buffalo, NY
• Centre for Contemporary Art, Ujazdowski Castle Kino.Lab, Sept 30, 2004, Warsaw, Poland
• Robert(a) Beck Memorial Cinema at the Collective: Unconscious, Apr 20, 2004, curated by Ghen Zando-Dennis, New York, NY
• Poèticas femeninas: Espacios a la Experimentaciõn, Museum of Contemporary Art & Design/Museo de Arte y Diseño Contemporáneo, San Jose, Costa Rica
• 2nd Bangkok Experimental Film Festival (BEFF2), Bangkok, Thailand
• OFF 2: Fiction Overdose Festival, Rome, Italy
• 12th London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival, British Film Institute, London, England
• Forum on Media Arts and Technology, École du Louvre, Paris, France
• Euro Underground Film Festival All-Erotic Edition, Krakow, Poland; Prague, Czech Republic; Berlin, Germany; Sofia, Bulgaria
• Philadelphia International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, Philadelphia, PA
• 5th MiX Brazil: Festival of Sexual Diversity, São Paulo, Brazil
ALL THE HOUSE (HADITHA MASSACRE), PART 3 of FLICKER ON OFF
(stream on vimeo)
2008, 5:50, sound, color/b+w, 16mm and web to digital video
All the House (Haditha Massacre) collects and reconfigures far-ranging source materials to ponder the November 19, 2005 killing by US Marines of 24 unarmed civilians in Haditha, Iraq. Featured is ten-year-old Iman Walid, who witnessed the slaughter of her family. The Atlantic City massacre scene from Godfather III by Francis Ford Coppola is re-shot with a Bolex 16mm camera and then hand processed.
Part 3 of Flicker On Off, a trilogy applying the idiom of experimental film and artist's video to big-budget movies in order to speak about world affairs in what could be described as an alternate essay format.
The Flicker On Off trilogy is made possible in part by residencies at Squeaky Wheel / Buffalo Media Resources and the Experimental Television Center, and by the Experimental Television Center's Finishing Funds, which is supported by the Electronic Media and Film Program at the New York State Council on the Arts.
Bernie Roddy, PhD: "You seem to take great pleasure in exploring different sound effects for these fragmented pieces of violence. For me, the extended duration of the firing and pummeling offered time to reflect on the varieties of immersion in cinema today and the implications for oppositional media politics. In the final installment of the "Flicker On Off" series, we are reminded of that portion of video art's history in which video was an activist tool. In this part, All the House (Haditha Massacre) [2008], you interject flashes of televised imagery from the aftermath of the Haditha massacre in November 2005 in which United States Marines killed twenty-four unarmed Iraqi civilians."
Read Roddy's "Pummeling Through the Frames" in Afterimage
Selected Screenings and Exhibitions
• Incursions Into Cosmic Fear, solo exhibition, Young Projects, June 5-Aug 15, 2015, Los Angeles, CA
• VAFA - Video Art for All International Video Art Festival, Dec 11, 2014, Macau, China
• PROYECTOR International Videoart Festival, All Roads Lead to Rome, curated by José Drummond, Sep 25-Oct 5, 2014, Madrid, Spain
• LOOP Barcelona Video Art Festival and Fair 2010, Arts Santa Mònica, curated by Paul Young, May 4-23, 2010, Barcelona, Spain
• Avant Cinema 3.8: Caroline Koebel, Austin Film Society, curated by Chale Nafus and Scott Stark, Apr 29, 2010, Austin, TX
• Remote Viewing: The Best of Loop II, Pacific Design Center, curated by Paul Young, Jan 30-Mar 30, 2010, Los Angeles, CA
• Callicoon Fine Arts, winter long online screening, 2010, callicoonfinearts.com
• 2nd International Video Art Festival of Camagüey, Nov 27-Dec 1, 2009, Camagüey, Cuba
• Ladyfest Toronto, Nov 25, 2009, Toronto, Canada
• Oblò Film Festival (OFF), Sept 4-6, 2009, Lausanne, Switzerland
• Arkansas Underground Film Festival, July 17-19, 2009, Hot Springs National Park, AK
• Edinburgh International Film Festival, June 24, 2009, Edinburgh, Scotland
• The Festival of (In)appropriation: Contemporary Found Footage Filmmaking, June 7, 2009, Los Angeles, California
• Callicoon Fine Arts, “All Suffering Soon to End!,” curated by Photios Giovanis, May 16-Aug 15, 2009, Callicoon, New York
• European Media Art Festival (EMAF), Apr 22-26, 2009, Osnabrück, Germany
• University of Oklahoma School of Art & Art History, Apr 2, 2009, Norman, Oklahoma
• Scope Art Fair, "On the Contrary: Recent Artists' Videos Concerning War in the Middle East," curated by Mary Billyou and Meredith Drum, Mar 5, 2009, New York, NY
SUNROOF (BENAZIR BHUTTO ASSASSINATION), PART 2 of FLICKER ON OFF
(stream on vimeo)
2008, 6:10, sound, color/b+w, 16mm and web to digital video
Sunroof (Benazir Bhutto Assassination) reconsiders the December 27, 2007 assassination of Benazir Bhutto, former Prime Minister of Pakistan and leader at the time of the Pakistan People's Party. Gun shootouts in Miller’s Crossing by Joel Coen are re-shot with a Bolex 16mm camera and then hand processed and clashed against nonfiction images of rioting and a multi-lingual audio collage.
Part 2 of Flicker On Off, a trilogy applying the idiom of experimental film and artist's video to big-budget movies in order to speak about world affairs in what could be described as an alternate essay format.
The Flicker On Off trilogy is made possible in part by residencies at Squeaky Wheel / Buffalo Media Resources and the Experimental Television Center, and by the Experimental Television Center's Finishing Funds, which is supported by the Electronic Media and Film Program at the New York State Council on the Arts.
Selected Screenings and Exhibitions
• Incursions Into Cosmic Fear, solo exhibition, Young Projects, June 5-Aug 15, 2015, Los Angeles, CA
• VAFA - Video Art for All International Video Art Festival, Dec 11, 2014, Macau, China
• PROYECTOR International Videoart Festival, All Roads Lead to Rome, curated by José Drummond, Sep 25-Oct 5, 2014, Madrid, Spain
• International Video Art Fest, F Forum II, curated by Andrés Tapia-Urzua, Nov 26-30, 2010, Camagüey, Cuba
• Avant Cinema 3.8: Caroline Koebel, Austin Film Society, curated by Chale Nafus and Scott Stark, Apr 29, 2010, Austin, TX
• Callicoon Fine Arts, winter long online screening, 2010, callicoonfinearts.com
• 2nd International Video Art Festival of Camagüey, Nov 27-Dec 1, 2009, Camagüey, Cuba
• Ladyfest Toronto, Nov 25, 2009, Toronto, Canada
• Edinburgh International Film Festival, June 24, 2009, Edinburgh, Scotland
• The Festival of (In)appropriation: Contemporary Found Footage Filmmaking, June 7, 2009, Los Angeles, California
• University of Oklahoma School of Art & Art History, Apr 2, 2009, Norman, Oklahoma
• International Women's Film Festival, Transitions, curated by Ruth Goldman & Lizzie Finnegan, Mar 5, 2009, Buffalo, NY
REPEAT PHOTOGRAPHY AND THE ALBEDO EFFECT, PART 1 of FLICKER ON OFF
(stream on vimeo)
2008, 8:12, sound, b+w, 16mm to digital video
Repeat Photography and the Albedo Effect intermixes unlikely suspects to reflect upon the impact of global warming on glaciers. Boxing scenes from Martin Scorsese's Raging Bull are re-shot with a Bolex 16mm camera and then hand processed and juxtaposed against National Public Radio (NPR) reportage and artist Katie Paterson's audio project.
Part 1 of Flicker On Off, a trilogy applying the idiom of experimental film and artist's video to big-budget movies in order to speak about world affairs in what could be described as an alternate essay format.
The Flicker On Off trilogy is made possible in part by residencies at Squeaky Wheel / Buffalo Media Resources and the Experimental Television Center, and by the Experimental Television Center’s Finishing Funds, which is supported by the Electronic Media and Film Program at the New York State Council on the Arts.
"Repeat Photography and the Albedo Effect" clearly is a statement against the (otherwise stated) ignorance of politics on global warming. However, and with all their poetic power, these aren't Majakowsky's booming verses, claiming authority over the public media, it is rather like Anna Achmatowa speaking about those political disturbances she cannot get away from, political thoughts breaking into daily productions. The term "Repeat Photography" is used for (over time) repeated photography of the same subject in order to visualize changes (like the retreat of glaciers), and Albedo Effect signifies the fact of increasing shrinkage speed of glaciers due to the effect of increasing sun ray absorption by lack of white reflecting snow layers and thus darker surfaces of glaciers and their surrounding. However, the film starts with manipulated images of boxing from a Hollywood movie (Raging Bull, Scorsese), where sound and image are newly edited and the scene appears to be enhanced by flicker effects from consciously used chemical stains. The actor's violent boxing punches, which already in Scorsese's case appear to be there only by editing effects, are being enhanced by flashing chemical artifacts and solarization; then all of a sudden, the image disappears and a BBC-like reporter's voice can be heard, telling about studies of the Albedo effect at Tibetan glaciers. When later on, the image of the boxing ring reappears, it is now accompanied by the sound of cracking ice. As an unexpected effect, the boxing ceases to be as fiercely in the foreground and the chemical stains almost start to resemble ice floes. A more in-depth interpretation of the film would have to take into account the artificiality of realistic violence in feature films, the manipulating effects of sound on pictures and the still effective resilience of the United States government against any realistic measurements against global warming, and bring them together. Not an easy task for the recipient, who might find themself on treacherous icy conditions (a German saying)." —Klaus W. Eisenlohr, Curator of "Drift and Dwell"
Read the full essay by Curator Klaus W. Eisenlohr
Selected Screenings and Exhibitions
• Incursions Into Cosmic Fear, solo exhibition, Young Projects, June 5-Aug 15, 2015, Los Angeles, CA
• Turbidus Film #5 – Caroline Koebel (US), Lyndsay Bloom (US), Quimu Casalprim (E/DE), Fylkingen, curated by Daniel A. Swarthnas, Nov 2, 2013, Stockholm, Sweden
• Peras de Olmo – Ars Continua, The Friendship State: TX Experimental Filmmakers, Sep 28 and Oct 9-10, 2013, Buenos Aires, Argentina
• CineMarfa, The Friendship State, TX Experimental Filmmakers, May 3, 2013, Marfa, TX
• Zeitgeist Multi-Disciplinary Arts Center, The Friendship State: TX Experimental Filmmakers, Apr 27, 2013, New Orleans, LA
• Austin Film Society, The Friendship State: TX Experimental Filmmakers, Feb 22, 2013, Austin, TX
• Microscope Gallery, The Friendship State: TX Experimental Filmmakers, Nov 5, 2012, Brooklyn, NY
• Avant Cinema 3.8: Caroline Koebel, Austin Film Society, curated by Chale Nafus and Scott Stark, Apr 29, 2010, Austin, TX
• Callicoon Fine Arts, winter long online screening, 2010, callicoonfinearts.com
• Ladyfest Toronto, Nov 25, 2009, Toronto, Canada
• Flicker Spokane Film Festival, Nov 1, 2009, Spokane, Washington
• Festival Internazionale del Cinema d’Arte, July 17-25, 2009, Bergamo, Italy
• The Festival of (In)appropriation: Contemporary Found Footage Filmmaking, June 7, 2009, Los Angeles, CA
• Experiments in Cinema V4.2 Film Festival, Apr 16-19, 2009, Albuquerque, New Mexico
• University of Oklahoma School of Art & Art History, Apr 2, 2009, Norman, Oklahoma
• Directors Lounge, Feb 6, 2009, Berlin, Germany
• 1st Camagüey International Festival of Video Art / Primer Festival de Video Arte, Nov 21-25, 2008, Camagüey, Cuba
• Technocracy: Techno-lust vs. Technophobia, Society for Photographic Education: Mid-Atlantic Conference, Nov 7-8, 2008, Pittsburgh, PA
• Abstracta International Exhibition of Abstract Cinema, Sept 24, 2008, Rome, Italy
• Oblò Film Festival (OFF), Sept 5-7, 2008, Lausanne, Switzerland
• Bearded Child Film Festival, Aug 14, Minneapolis, MN, and Aug 8, 2008, Grand Rapids, MN
• Athleticism vs. Aestheticism, curated by Sarah Buccheri, May 30, 2008, Milwaukee, WI
• Squeaky Wheel, screened as work-in-progress, Mar 7, 2008, Buffalo, NY
GRAND CENTRAL/CENTRAL TERMINAL (stream on vimeo)
Collaboration with Katherine Crockett
Version 1: projected video installation, 2007, 15:00, silent, color
Version 2: single-channel digital video, 2008, 5:50, sound, color
Grand Central/Central Terminal examines relationships between the moving image, dance, architecture, and the urban sphere. Like the cinema, people frequent transit hubs in order to go elsewhere. Katherine Crockett, a principal in the Martha Graham Dance Company, performs improvisatory movement in both Grand Central Terminal in New York City and the no longer in use Central Terminal in Buffalo, NY.
While both are majestic in their architectural and historic scope, the two spaces clash in terms of current use value. The crowds of Grand Central are juxtaposed with the solitude of Central Terminal. For the live terminal, Crockett acts as manifesto for the moment, while for the defunct station the solo body of the dancer in motion re-images and -imagines the site’s fluidity.
Grand Central/Central Terminal was produced in cooperation with Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center for Artists and Models. It was exhibited as a projected video installation at the Buffalo Central Terminal on June 2, 2007.
Bernie Roddy, PhD: "In considering artists such as VALIE EXPORT, especially her early work, your Grand Central/Central Terminal [2008] is hard to place. But looking at Edison's footage of Sheridan and Martinetti, it starts to come into focus. You returned to the aesthetics of Edison's studio with Katherine Crockett, a principle dancer in the Martha Graham Dance Company, who performs for you in this video at Grand Central Terminal in New York City and Central Terminal in Buffalo."
Read Roddy's "Pummeling Through the Frames" in Afterimage
Selected Screenings and Exhibitions
• Institute Euro-Balkan, curated by Biljana Petrovska Isijanin, Sep 7, 2012, Skopje, Macedonia
• Fünf 'n' Twist Screening Party, curated by Anna Brady Nuse, Oct 30, 2011, the Beahive, Beacon, NY
• Exchange Radical Moments! Live Art Festival, curated by Biljana Isijanin, Oct 2010, Berlin, Germany
• dança em foco –Festival Internacional de Vídeo & Dança, August 2009, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
• 5th ATTITUDE Festival for video art and experimental film, June 24-26, 2009, Bitola, Macedonia
• University of Oklahoma School of Art & Art History, curated by Bernie Roddy, PhD, Apr 2, 2009, Norman, OK
• Magmart | International Videoart Festival, video under volcano, Mar 14, 2009, Naples, Italy
• Urban Research at Directors Lounge, Feb 5-15, 2009, Berlin, Germany
• 1st Camagüey International Festival of Video Art/Primer Festival de Video Arte, Nov 21-25, 2008, Camagüey, Cuba
• Optica, International Festival of Vídeo Art, Nov 6-8, Gijón-Asturias, Spain, and Oct 16-18, 2008, Madrid, Spain
• Millennium Film Workshop, City Film Berlin: Caroline Koebel, Oct 20, 2007, New York, NY
• Artists' Television Access, Oct 9, 2007, Moment of Motion: Films by Caroline Koebel, San Francisco, CA
• Artists & Models: Nocturminal, site-specific Grand Central/Central Terminal curated by John Massier & Carolyn Tennant, June 2, 2007, Buffalo, NY
SEA LION (stream on vimeo)
2007, 2:50, silent, color, shot on Super 8, available on 16mm and digital video
This hand processed Super 8 film marvels at the beauty of the movement of the sea lion. It reflects the fascination of the filmmaker’s two-year-old son with this animal new to his world.
Selected Screenings and Exhibitions
• Turbidus Film #5 – Caroline Koebel (US), Lyndsay Bloom (US), Quimu Casalprim (E/DE), Fylkingen, curated by Daniel A. Swarthnas, Nov 2, 2013, Stockholm, Sweden
• Fun Party, Tiny Park Gallery, curated by Dan Boehl and Cindy St. John, Dec 8, 2012, Austin, TX
• Curious Magic: The Magic Lantern Slides of the Museum of Natural History, Cormack Planetarium, curated by Magic Lantern Cinema (Josh Guilford and Colleen Doyle) in program with Stan Brakhage and Lawrence Jordan, Apr 12-13, 2012, Providence, RI
• Art of the Moving Image, curated by Jeanne Stern, July 16, 2011, Porto, Portugal
• Somewhere Else, Right Here, Texas State University Galleries, curated by Jeanne Stern, June 1-30, 2011,San Marcos, TX
• Smoke and Mirrors!, Austin School of Film, curated by Ekrem Serdar, Apr 8, 2011, Austin, TX
• Abstracta Festival at Montévidéo Cultural Center, April 10, 2009, Marseille, France
• University of Oklahoma School of Art & Art History, curated by Bernie Roddy, Apr 2, 2009, Norman, OK
• Eye Am: Women Behind the Lens, broadcast on Manhattan Neighborhood Network/Channel #34, Oct 5, 2008, NYC
• Abstracta International Exhibition of Abstract Cinema, Sept 24, 2008, Rome, Italy
• Animalia: Stories of Collapse, Calamity and Departure, performance by Carolyn Ryder Cooley, Sept 19, 2008, Schenectady, NY
• Eyes and Ears: Sound Needs Image Part II, Apr 5, 2008, live accompaniment by Steve Baczkowski and Chris Reba, co-curated by Joanna Raczynska and Will Redman, Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center, Buffalo NY
• FILM LOVE 53/Openings: Music and Experimental Film, Dec 9, 2007, curated by Andy Ditzler and presented by Atlanta Fourth Ward Improvisation Ensemble and Frequent Small Meals, Eyedrum, Atlanta, GA
• City Film Berlin: Works by Caroline Koebel, Oct 20, 2007, Millennium Film Workshop, New York, NY
• 21st Century Feminist Film, Oct 11, 2007, Dr. Paula Birnbaum's Women and Art course, University of San Francisco, San Francisco, CA
• Moment of Motion: Films by Caroline Koebel, Oct 9, 2007, Artist's Television Access, San Francisco, CA
• 11th Annual MadCat Women's Intl Film Festival, Sept 26, 2007, Program No. 11: So Loud it's Silent, El Rio, San Francisco, CA
• Global Super 8 Day, May 13, 2007, Squeaky Wheel, Buffalo, NY
BERLIN WARSZAWA EXPRESS
2006, 19:50, color, digital video
In Berlin Warszawa Express a disappearance becomes a departure, but rather than attempting to reconstitute what is lost, the filmmaker follows the clues and signs framing the site and scene with an anticipatory gaze. She performs the kino eye, meeting the same train day after day, yet here the eye is aligned with not just any body, but with the distinctly maternal body. Aided by the rich history of avant-garde city films about Berlin, Berlin Warszawa Express reorients the city film genre itself in terms of feminine embodiment.
The film is also a site-specific performance action-intervention that references one of the earliest known films, Arrivée d'un train à la Ciotat (Arrival of a Train, 1895) by the Lumière brothers. Tracking shots, animation, structural film, light and reflection, protofilmic toys such as the zoetrope, sprocket holes—cinema itself is a main line for Berlin Warszawa Express.
Opening narration:
“In August 2004 I was in Berlin. A friend was arriving from Warsaw. I went to the East Train Station to greet her. I filmed the train pulling into the station and my friend getting off, smiling and waving as she walked towards me on the platform. Soon after I mistakenly recorded over her. I then decided to do a performance. As often as possible for the next few months I went to greet that very train arriving daily shortly after 5PM from Warsaw. I was also awaiting the birth of my child."
Selected Screenings
• University of Oklahoma School of Art & Art History, Apr 2, 2009, Norman, OK
• New Creativity: 11th Biennial Symposium on Arts & Technology, Feb 28 – Mar 1, 2008, The Ammerman Center for Arts & Technology, Connecticut College, New London, CT
• City Film Berlin: Works by Caroline Koebel, Oct 20, 2007, Millennium Film Workshop, New York, NY
• 21st Century Feminist Film, Oct 11, 2007, Dr. Paula Birnbaum's Women and Art course, University of San Francisco, San Francisco, CA
• Moment of Motion: Films by Caroline Koebel, Oct 9, 2007, Artist's Television Access, San Francisco, CA
• Utopia Film Festival, Oct 27, 2007, “Urban/Rural Landscapes” curated by Chris Lynn, Greenbelt, MD
• Feminism(s): Film, Video, Politics Symposium, Apr 22, 2007, the University of Hartford, West Hartford, CT
• EYE AM: Women Behind the Lens, May 2, 2007, curated by Victoria Kereszi, Manhattan Neighborhood Network Time Warner #34/ RCN #83 & online at www.mnn.org
• Director’s Lounge, Feb 16 2007, “Urban Research on Film” curated by Klaus W. Eisenlohr, Berlin, Germany
• Shots and Cuts: Films by Caroline Koebel, Jan 18, 2007, curated by Carolyn Tennant, Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center, Buffalo, NY
• Making Movies, screened as work-in-progress, Mar 30, 2006, curated by Terry Cuddy, Schweinfurth Memorial Art Center, Auburn, NY
hole or space (stream on vimeo)
2006, 3:23, silent, color/b+w, collage film, available on 16mm and digital video
Pricks, gaps, dots, openings, hole or space takes its cue from contortionists of the early screen in spiraling out from conceptions of the body as whole.
The film uses early cinema and avant-garde classics as its compositional notes: Luis Martinetti, Contortionist (Edison Manufacturing Company, 1894); Crissie Sheridan Serpentine Dance (Edison, 1897); Ballet Mécanique (Fernand Léger & Dudley Murphy, 1924); An Optical Poem (Oskar Fischinger, 1938); Tarantella (Mary E. Bute & Ted Nemeth, 1940).
Bernie Roddy, PhD: "Answering audience queries about your collage film hole or space [2006] you drew attention to the eroticism of the one-shot takes from the first filmed sequences made by Thomas Edison's company. Reflecting on your appropriation of Edison's films of serpentine dancer Crissie Sheridan and contortionist Luis Martinetti, you drew a distinction between the erotics of early cinema and that of contemporary visual culture, which is characterized by the fragmented and idealized body parts of advertising. At the same time, however, it seems your film complicates our understanding of formal experimentation itself by reflecting on the erotics of early experimental animation."
Read Roddy's "Pummeling Through the Frames" in Afterimage
Selected Screenings
• Incursions Into Cosmic Fear, solo exhibition, Young Projects, June 5-Aug 15, 2015, Los Angeles, CA
• Turbidus Film #5 – Caroline Koebel (US), Lyndsay Bloom (US), Quimu Casalprim (E/DE), Fylkingen, curated by Daniel A. Swarthnas, Nov 2, 2013, Stockholm, Sweden
• Fun Party, Tiny Park Gallery, curated by Dan Boehl and Cindy St. John, Dec 8, 2012, Austin, TX
• Curious Magic: The Magic Lantern Slides of the Museum of Natural History, Cormack Planetarium, curated by Magic Lantern Cinema (Josh Guilford and Colleen Doyle) in program with Stan Brakhage and Lawrence Jordan, Apr 12-13, 2012, Providence, RI
• Festival Internazionale del Cinema d’Arte, July 17-25, 2009, Bergamo, Italy
• University of Oklahoma School of Art & Art History, Apr 2, 2009, Norman, OK
• Pantheon International Xperimental Film & Animation Festival 7.0, Nov 15, 2008, Lefkosia, Cyprus
• NewFilmmakers Women Behind the Lens, Nov 11, 2008, curated by Victoria Kereszi, Anthology Film Archives, New York, NY
• Synthetic Zero, Nov 1, 2008, curated by Mitsu Hadeishi, New York, NY
• Abstracta International Exhibition of Abstract Cinema, Sept 24, 2008, Rome, Italy
• Ladyfest Toronto, Sept 15, 2008, Toronto, Canada
• Mary Magdalene Feast Day, July 22, 2008, curated by MM Serra, Issue Project Room, Brooklyn, NY
• The Filmmobile West Coast Tour, a program of the Echo Park Film Center (EPFC) in Los Angeles, CA, July 2008, Youth Arts Collective, Monterey, CA; Community Partnership for Youth, Seaside, CA; Alisal Center for the Arts, Salinas, CA; Stonelake Family Farm, Buck Mountain, CA; Beachside State Park, Florence, OR; Department of Safety, Anacortes, WA; Friendship City Collective, Bellingham, WA; Commercial Drive and Purple Thistle Center, Vancouver, Canada; Punch & Judy Cinema, Eugene, OR; Outdoor Screening, Grass Valley, CA; Outdoor Screening, Lone Pine, CA; CSSA - Cal Arts, Valencia, CA
• Tuff Stuff From the Buff: Experimental, Diary, Activist Film & Video, Apr 18, 2008, co-curated by David Gracon, Julie Perini & Marc Moscato, DIVA Center, Eugene, OR
• FILM LOVE 53/Openings: Music and Experimental Film, Dec 9, 2007, curated by Andy Ditzler and presented by Atlanta Fourth Ward Improvisation Ensemble and Frequent Small Meals, Eyedrum, Atlanta, GA
• City Film Berlin: Works by Caroline Koebel, Oct 20, 2007, Millennium Film Workshop, New York, NY
• 21st Century Feminist Film, Oct 11, 2007, Dr. Paula Birnbaum's Women and Art course, University of San Francisco, San Francisco, CA
• Moment of Motion: Films by Caroline Koebel, Oct 9, 2007, Artist's Television Access, San Francisco, CA
• 11th Annual MadCat Women's Intl Film Festival, Sept 26, 2007, Program No. 11: So Loud it's Silent, El Rio, San Francisco, C
• Ars Electronica Festival, Sept 7, 2007, presented by Sandra Naumann as part of Lichtmusik #1: Mary Ellen Bute, Institute for Media Archeology, Linz, Austria
• New Forms Festival - Re:Use, Sept 7, 2007, Vancouver, BC, Canada
• Feminism(s): Film, Video, Politics Symposium, Apr 22, 2007, the University of Hartford, West Hartford, CT
• EYE AM: Women Behind the Lens, Mar 7, 2007, curated by Victoria Kereszi, Manhattan Neighborhood Network Time Warner #34/ RCN #83 & online at www.mnn.org
• Women’s Caucus for Art International Video Shorts, Feb 18, 2007, juried by Sheryl Mousley, Barnard College, New York, NY
• Shots and Cuts: Films by Caroline Koebel, Jan 18, 2007, curated by Carolyn Tennant, Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center, Buffalo, NY
• Making Movies, Mar 30, 2006, curated by Terry Cuddy, Schweinfurth Memorial Art Center, Auburn, NY
• The Perpetual Art Machine, online exhibition, site launched Mar 2006
• 10th International Women’s Film Festival, Mar 2, 2006, Market Arcade, Buffalo, NY
I WANT TO HAVE YOUR BABY (stream on vimeo)
2003-2005, Collective Performance Action, shot on miniDV, approx. 4 hours total, sound, color, multilingual with English subtitles, various presentation platforms: single-channel video, video installation, website, large-scale prints, artist’s book
In the collective performance action I Want to Have Your Baby (2003-2005) over 300 participants in sites including Los Angeles, Budapest, Havana, Berlin, Buffalo, and London conceived hypothetical offspring in a digital repopulating of the world with humane beings.
BABY draws inspiration from the global protest movement against war and violence, and seeks to give voice to the international community´s peace-loving majority. In serious play, it goes to the heart of things by focusing on "The Family" in order to subvert the American right-wing’s appropriation of family in justifying its aggression machine. The project also seeks to broaden the meaning and representation of family. BABY combines political activism with conceptual art and feminist concerns.
Participants—regardless of gender, age, sexual orientation, and biological reproductive capacity—give "mom" performances in which they conceive hypothetical babies that they believe would make the world a better place. Participants pretend to speak to their baby's other parent, saying why they want the baby and what they imagine the baby to be like. Babies range from best friends and favorite pet dogs, to endangered species, to specific places, to famous people from history, and to abstract concepts—including Mahatma Gandhi, Jane Fonda, Jimi Hendrix, Maya Deren, fruit bats, Brazil, virtual reality, the color spectrum, and breeze. Anything is possible.
Maya Deren, I Want To Have Your Baby (Akil Kirlew, Buffalo, NY, 2003)
You’ve provided a blueprint for film as a medium for observing the ephemeral. This desire—to articulate desire itself—led you to Haiti, where you produced a groundbreaking study of the occult and became a Vodoun priestess. Through ritual you transformed both your mind and body into a silver screen onto which the living gods of Haiti were projected.
Fruit Bat, I Want To Have Your Baby (Seònaid MacKay, London, UK, 2004)
You are a very intelligent creature. You look like a fox, but upside down. You have the most complex language in the animal world, after humans and dolphins. I hate those girls who scream at you. Fruit bat, you can fly into my hair any time. I want to have a baby with you, so our half-human, half-bat baby can go out into the world and teach others what amazing animals fruit bats really are.
Screenings, Exhibitions and Residencies
• Avant Cinema 3.8: Caroline Koebel, Austin Film Society, curated by Chale Nafus and Scott Stark, Apr 29, 2010, Austin, TX
• Imagining Ourselves (Love): a global generation of women, International Museum of Women, online exhibition, Mar 2006, San Francisco, CA
• Making Movies, Schweinfurth Memorial Art Center, Baby in solo screening, curated by Terry Cuddy, Mar 30, 2006, Auburn, NY
• Quantum Leaps, touring group international video program for which curator Astria Suparak selected individual performances from Baby for a combined selection of 7:30 (note that this selection is different from the Baby that toured in her earlier Elusive Quality program), premiered: Aurora Picture Show, Mar 6, 2006, Houston, TX,
subsequent screenings: Minicine, Mar 7, Shreveport, LA; Nomad Nights, Mar 8, Ruston, LA; Texas A & M University, Mar 9, College Station, TX; Magic Lantern at the Cable Car Cinema, Mar 13, Providence, RI; Mass Art Film Society at the Massachusetts College of Art, Mar 15, Boston, MA; Small Change at Vox Populi, Mar 18, Philadelphia, PA; Bard College, Mar 20, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY; The Kitchen, Mar 21, New York, NY; iEAR Presents! co-sponsored by The Sanctuary for Independent Media, Mar 22, Troy, NY; Spark Art and Performance Space, Mar 24, Syracuse, NY; the University at Buffalo, Mar 27, Buffalo, NY; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Mar 31, Washington, D.C.; and Johns Hopkins University, Apr 3, Baltimore, MD
• I Want to Have Your Baby, solo show: video installation (continuous projection), Beyond/In Western New York, CEPA Gallery, curated by Lawrence Brose & Sean Donaher, Apr 16-June 4, 2005, Buffalo, NY
• I Want to Have Your Baby, solo show: video installation (continuous projection), The Usher Gallery, curated by Jeremy Webster, Feb 15-Apr 9, 2005, also week-long residency to film new participants, Lincoln, UK
• Centre for Contemporary Art, Ujazdowski Castle Kino.Lab, Baby screened in solo program & new participants filmed, Sept 30, 2004, Warsaw, Poland
• Liverpool Biennial of Contemporary Art, Baby screened in the group program Elusive Quality, curated by Lauren Cornell & Astria Suparak, Foundation for Art & Creative Technology, Sept 18-19, 2004, Liverpool, UK. The program premiered on July 19, 2004 with the Practice More Failure edition of the feminist & genderqueer journal LTTR, Participant Inc, NYC. Addl screenings include Independent Heroines, Feb 9, 2005, Bristol, UK and Hampshire College, sponsored by Queer Community Alliance, May 6, 2005, Amherst, MA
• OMSK Roam, new participants filmed during day-long public art event and then screened in a group program in the evening, July 25, 2004, London, UK
• New York State Summer School for the Media Arts, artist’s talk and new participants filmed, July 5, 2004, Cazenovia College, Cazenovia, NY
• National Graduate Seminar, The Photography Institute, artist’s talk, June 14, 2004, Columbia University, NYC
• Networks, Art, & Collaboration: free cooperation conference, Apr 24-25, 2004, new participants filmed, the University at Buffalo
• Robert(a) Beck Memorial Cinema at The Collective: Unconscious, Baby screened in solo program, curated by Ghen Zando-Dennis, Apr 20, 2004, NYC
• New York University Lecture Series, artist’s talk and new participants filmed, Invited by Dr. Deborah Willis-Kennedy, Mar 3, 2004, NYC
• El Delito del Cuerpo/The Crime of the Body, curated by Omar Estrada, group exhibition in which Baby was presented as a looping video on a monitor with a supplementary image and text work, also filmed new participants at the exhibition, on the street, and at the art university (Instituto Superior de Arte), Dec 6-14, 2003, Havana, Cuba
• War and Media Conference, Nov 17-18, 2003, presented Baby, the University at Buffalo
• // Documentary Intentions, Online & Off, presented Baby, Nov 14-15, 2003, Hunter College, NYC
• I Want to Have Your Baby, screening & artist’s book sponsored by the Gender Institute, Sept 25, 2003, University at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY
• 8th Gay & Lesbian Film Festival, Baby screened in the group program Evolutionary Girls Club & new participants filmed, July 3–6, 2003, Budapest, Hungary
REACTION: "FROM THE PORTFOLIO OF DOGGEDNESS" (stream on vimeo)
2003, 3:30, digital video
ReAction: "From the Portfolio of Doggedness" springs from the desire for familiarity with the temporal- and site-specific artwork by Valie Export and Peter Weibel "Aus der Mappe der Hundigkeit": a 1968 action “proclaiming the negative utopia of erect posture in our animalistic society."
Treating the original as a script, ReAction features the Viennese semiotician Bernadette Wegenstein walking the artist Tony Conrad across a busy intersection in downtown Buffalo, New York (as well as guest performances by clients of the Canine Clubhouse). ReAction looks for slippages between the original action and the video reenactment, and considers tensions between animals, humans and cars as they move through the built environment.
The soundtrack is an original 1969 performance by the Golden Galaxy Symphony, in which Beverly Grant Conrad directed the musicians to maximize their vocal chords’ capacities to mimic a barnyard of animals.
Caroline Koebel—director, camera, editor
Tony Conrad—performing as Peter Weibel
Bernadette Wegenstein—performing as Valie Export
Carolyn Tennant—production manager
Canine Clubhouse clients—extras
The Golden Galaxy Symphony, 1969—sound
Beverly Grant Conrad—GGS director
Tony Conrad—GGS producer
Bernie Roddy, PhD: "It has long been a complaint within experimental film circles that the culture of avant-garde film also tends to valorize male contributions over those of women. Your program makes reference to this history in the title of "Flicker On Off" as well as in the person of Tony Conrad, who appears on all fours in ReAction: "From the Portfolio of Doggedness" [2003], where he re-enacts Peter Weibel's role as a dog on a leash behind Austrian feminist expanded cinema progenitor VALIE EXPORT. This time, the crawling follows behind Viennese semiotician Bernadette Wegenstein at an intersection in Buffalo, New York. The new context for the performance seems to draw attention to the different futures of structuralist experiment in film and women's performance."
Read Roddy's "Pummeling Through the Frames" in Afterimage
Selected Screenings and Exhibitions
• University of Oklahoma School of Art & Art History, Apr 2, 2009, Norman, OK
• Traum-Kino Fetisch Film Festival, Nov 20, 2008, Kiel, Germany
• City Film Berlin: Works by Caroline Koebel, Oct 20, 2007, Millennium Film Workshop, New York, NY
• 21st Century Feminist Film, Oct 11, 2007, Dr. Paula Birnbaum's Women and Art course, University of San Francisco, San Francisco, CA
• Moment of Motion: Films by Caroline Koebel, Oct 9, 2007, Artist's Television Access, San Francisco, CA
• Raw Tactics Of the Subversive Body, curated by Andres Tapia-Urzua, Sept 8, 2007 at Pittsburgh Filmmakers Pittsburgh, PA, and Sept 20, 2007 at Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center, Buffalo, NY
• Now Again The Past: Rewind Replay Resound, Feb 11 – Mar 18, 2006, curated by Joanna Raczynska, Carnegie Art Center, North Tonawanda, NY
• Centre for Contemporary Art, Ujazdowski Castle Kino.Lab, Sept 30, 2004, Warsaw, Poland
• Robert(a) Beck Memorial Cinema at the Collective: Unconscious, Apr 20, 2004, curated by Ghen Zando-Dennis, New York, NY