Interview with multi-media artist Russell Mills - video

(via WN)

russellmills.com

Jacqueline Mina: Gold

A lovely, four-minute film about contemporary British goldsmith and jeweller Jacqueline Mina OBE and her unorthodox use of traditional goldsmithing techniques. ‘Gold’’ has a contemplative feel of beauty, wonderment and tranquility.

(via Crafts Council)

‘Inside New York’s Art World’: Interview with Chuck Close, 1979 - video

Television interviewer Barbaralee Diamonstein talks to renowned American photorealist Chuck Close, whose paintings eschew ‘elegant or meaningful or powerful art marks’ in favour of a rational system of incremental marks and colour.

In this archive interview, Close speaks openly and in detail about his work and process, revealing his unique sensibility, vision and adeptness to hold several apparently contradictory ideas in harmony.

You can browse the collection of artist interviews from ‘Inside New York’s Art World’ here.

Video: Richard Feynman’s words spliced into moments of soul-stirring beauty

Reid Gower produces short, inspirational films to raise awareness of science education. It’s a job that he does well: the Sagan Series of science videos has so far been viewed by millions worldwide. By recently making the project ‘open source’ however, Gower is hoping that others will contribute.

Watch his latest media creation, the audaciously titled ‘Think Like A Martian’, above — which borrows the words of the late theoretical physicist Richard Feynman, one of the great voices of popular science. Or browse the entire Feynman Series here and its aforementioned companion series dedicated to astronomer Carl Sagan here.

Writer and children’s author Russell Hoban on artistic and literary imagination

This clip, the late great Russell Hoban.

The Makers of Things

On-going series of short films documenting a lifetime of making things, from London-based director and illustrator Anne Hollowday.

Author Christopher Hitchens on the tyranny of censorship (2006)

Hitchens in fine form. Recorded at Hart House Debating Club, University of Toronto in 2006.

Watch Part 1 and Part 2.

‘The Plateau Effect’ is a powerful law of nature that affects everyone

In a nutshell:

We succeed, and then we get stuck.

‘The Plateau Effect: Getting from Stuck to Success’ (Amazon, Foyles) is an intriguing look at why people in all kinds of pursuits will succeed to a point and then be unable to improve. Book co-author Bob Sullivan explains.

How to make a Dadaist poem

Excerpt from Mick Gold’s Europe After The Rain, 1978, Arts Council of Great Britain — an in-depth, if somewhat curious documentary of the work of the leading exponents of Dada and Surrealism.

See for yourself here.

The Situationists: A short documentary (1989)

Introduction to the activities of agit-art movement Situationist International.

Watch Part I (above), Part II and Part III.

How Maths Illuminates Our Lives: Author Daniel Tammet in conversation with RSA’s Simon Ings

Fist-bumps to writer and educator Daniel Tammet who was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (RSA) last month. In the above video, Daniel shares his love of mathematics, literature, poetry and art with the RSA audience.

Short essay by Walter Benjamin about book collecting: the one that begins, “I am unpacking my library. Yes, I am.”

Walter Benjamin’s library card, Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, 1940. (via pieto)

In a brief essay, first published in Die Literarische Welt (The Literary World), 1931, the German philosopher and literary critic Walter Benjamin ruminates on the nature of his attachment to the world of objects.

Unpacking My Library is whimsical and sincere. Benjamin offers a few seductive profundities — “the acquisition of an old book is its rebirth” and “the collector’s passion borders on the chaos of memories” — while reasoning that collecting is, after all, a creative exercise. An enjoyable read.

Read ‘Unpacking My Library: A Talk about Book Collecting’ and other essays by Walter Benjamin in Illuminations: Essays and Reflections (translations by Harry Zohn). The original German essay (‘Ich packe meine Bibliothek aus’, Gesammelte Schriften, IV, 388–396) is free to read online (via Internet Archive).

Big Words, Small Worlds (1986)

Author and academic David Lodge (How Far Can You Go?, The Campus Trilogy) narrates this gently sardonic three-part Channel 4 documentary about the social phenomenon of academic conferences.

When dissent amongst a polarized audience of literary theorists and linguistics scholars interrupts the proceedings of the Linguistics of Writing Conference, 1986, at the University of Strathclyde, the conference itself becomes the subject of a farcical debate between conferees, speakers and the documentary filmmakers.

Watch Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 of Big Words, Small Worlds, blissfully archived by University of Pittsburgh.

Contributions from novelist and critic Raymond Williams, celebrated philosopher Jacques Derrida, writer and critic Stanley Fish, MIT Professor of Linguistics Morris Halle, Professor of Languages and Literatures Marie Louise Pratt, cultural theorist Stuart Hall, slang lexicographer Jonathon Green, writer and academic Willy Maley, documentary filmmaker Pratap Rughani, writer and poet Benjamin Zephaniah, avant-garde filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard, and others from an attendee list that reads like a Who’s Who in literary and linguistics criticism.

David Weiss (1946–2012)

Swiss artist, ingenious practitioner and diffident prankster David Weiss, sadly, died in April. He is remembered for his career-long collaboration with Peter Fischli.

Fischli/Weiss, The Point of Least Resistance (Der Geringste Widerstand), 1980
Colour Super 8 film enlarged to 16mm
30 minutes, sound
Peter Fischli and David Weiss dressed in furry brown rat and panda bear costume are roaming around Los Angeles on a quest for art success.

Fischli/Weiss, The Right Way (Der Rechte Weg), 1982
Colour Super 8 film
32 minutes, sound
Rat and bear are trekking across remote countryside in an attempt to rationalise experience of the natural world.

Fischli/Weiss, Fasion Show from The Sausage Series (Wurstserie), 1979
Chromogenic print
50cm x 70cm

Fischli/Weiss, Snowman (Schneeskulptur), 1990
Installation, Saarbrücken, Germany

Fischli/Weiss, Herr and Frau Einstein shortly after the conception of their son, the genius Albert, 1981, from Suddenly this Overview, 1981/2006
Unfired clay

Fischli/Weiss, The Way Things Go (Der Lauf der Dinge), 1987
Colour 16mm film
30 minutes, sound
Household objects laid out on a warehouse floor collide in absurd and unexpected ways.

The art duo's memorable capers are a joy to watch. The Right Way and The Way Things Go frame seemingly banal collisions between artist and everyday life with child-like wonderment that is disarming and touching.

Read an obituary to David Weiss written by art curator and critic Hans Ulrich Obrist.

The Horologicon by ‘The Inky Fool’

Journalist and blogger Mark Forsyth (‘The Inky Fool’) unleashes a cornucopia of unusual and forgotten words for familiar situations. The Horologicon is ‘a book of the strangest and most beautiful words in the English language arranged by the hour of the day’.

(Comedian and writer Hugh Dennis will be reading excerpts from the abridged version of the book, as part of BBC Radio 4’s Book of the Week which begins Monday 3 December.)

Marcel Duchamp on the origin of the ‘readymade’

In this BBC archive footage, the grandmaster of quotidian, avant-garde intervention recalls how the game-changing artist readymades Bicycle Wheel (1913), Bottle Rack (1914) and Fountain (1917) originated.

Trite but true: Duchamp was a genius!

Audio: Marshall McLuhan recalls Wyndham Lewis (Harvard University, 1940)

“Lewis’s profound influence is indelibly stamped on McLuhan’s work” (Gordon vii).

Listen to Side 1 and Side 2 of a rare flexi disc recording of McLuhan speaking about Percy Wyndham Lewis.

Gordon, W. Terrence. “From Blast to Counterblast.” Foreword. Counterblast: 1954 Fascimile Edition. By Marshall McLuhan. Berkeley: Ginko Press, 2011.

(Thanks to Adam Swick)

Werner Herzog on the set of Fitzcarraldo

Tormented by the incongruity of the beauty and the horror he discovers in the jungles of Peru, Werner Herzog delivers a sublime commentary to camera during Les Blank's extraordinary filming of the nightmarish production of Fitzcarraldo.

(For an exquisite feeling of schadenfreude, Burden of Dreams is highly recommended!)

Rick Hanson: Neuroplasticity

Neuropsychologist Rick Hanson reveals how we can use our minds to change our brains to change our minds — for better or worse. What flows through the mind sculpts the brain. Brilliant

Kurt Vonnegut: Shape of Stories

Watch the late Kurt Vonnegut as he plots familiar narrative structures in a few marks on a blackboard. Reductive, entertaining and perfectly paced storytelling.

(Via kottke)