YouTube and the Guggenheim teamed up to create a respected, juried art show of video work from YouTube. Back in July, anyone could enter a single video hosted on YouTube.  A jury of 11 respected artists selected 24 videos, which were unveiled tonight at a Guggenheim event.  Here is a complete list of jurors and selected work, with a few sample videos from the winners.

Jurors

Laurie Anderson
musician, inventor, filmmaker, performer

Animal Collective
band

Darren Aronofsky
filmmaker

Douglas Gordon
installation, video and film artist

Marilyn Minter
painter, video artist & photography

Ryan McGinley
photographer

Takashi Murakami
Painter, sculptor, video artist

Shirin Neshat
artist and filmmaker

Stefan Sagmeister
designer

Apichatpong Weerasethakul
filmmaker

Nancy Spector
Deputy Director and Chief Curator of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation
jury chair

Work Selected by the Jury

Post Newtonianism (War Footage/Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare Footage)
Josh Bricker — sqosh12

Moonwalk
Martin Kohout — lostpostservice

Words
Everynone (Will Hoffman, Daniel Mercadan) — dmercadante1

This Aborted Earth: The Quest Begins
Michael Banowetz, Noah Sodano — thisAbortedEarth

deuce
Monica Cook — monicacook

Strindberg and Helium at the Beach
Eun-Ha Paek, Erin Perkins — ErinPerkins

Die Antwoord — Zef Side
Sean Metelerkamp — stewartridgeway

Bathtub IV
Keith Loutit — keithloutit

Seaweed
Remi Weekes, Luke White — tellno1ne

Gardyn
Nick Bertke (Pogo) — Fagottron

Bear untitled — D.O. Edit
Christen Bach — Christenbach

Le Syndrome du Timide
Pierre-Axel Vuillaume-Prezeau — pehaboy

auspice
Bryce Kretschmann — squomb

I Met the Walrus
Jerry Levitan, Josh Raskin — imetthewalrus

Birdy Nam Nam — The Parachute Endings
Steve Scott, Will Sweeney — Nottoscalelondon

Wonderland Mafia
Lindsay Scoggins — waambat

Synesthesia
Terri Timely (Corey Creasey, Ian Kibbey) — territimely1

Ladybirds’ Requiem digest version
Akino Kondoh — akinokondoh

Notebook
Evelien Lohbeck — evelienlohbeck

Man With A Movie Camera: The Global Remake
Perry Bard — perrybard

Scenic Jogging
Jillian Mayer — JillianMayer

Taxi III Stand Up and Cry Like a Man
Lisa Byrne — lisabyrne700

Luis
Joaquin Cocina, Cristobal Leon, Niles Atalla — futureshorts

The Huber Experiments — Vol 1
Erik Huber, Matthew Huber — ErikHuber

Learn more and see all of the jury’s selections at
YouTube Play: Guggenheim Biennial for Creative Video

Related posts:

1. An Experiment – Syndicated Short Films from YouTube
2. Cornelius – Chimes Video

This great animation, by the artist Blu, is drawn and erased frame by frame on real walls and buildings in Baden and Buenos Aires.

Visit the artist Blu’s web site.

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In a series of short flashes, either by flashlight or hand signals or other means, Yoko Ono would like you to flash in this sequence: 1 flash. 2 flashes. 3 flashes. Which now means I Love You. Flash it from rooftops, from ships at sea, at parties and clubs, across a shop, to people on the street from a bus, spread love to all the people you encounter.

i.
ii.
iii.
I.
Love.
You.

Get the work of Yoko Ono.

Visit her official site.

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1. Learning to Love You More – Miranda July, Harrell Fletcher and The Oliver Family

In all the news reports of record-breaking crowds gathering to recreate Thriller’s signature dance sequence from beginning to end, I’ve heard no mention of Michael Peters, who choreographed Thriller with Michael Jackson.

Michael Peters was an award winning choreographer, winning Tonys and Emmys for his work, including choreography for Donna Summer’s Love to Love You Baby, Michael Jackson’s Beat It, Pat Benatar’s Love is a Battlefield, Lionel Richie’s Hello, the film What’s Love Got to do With It?, and the original stage choreography for Dreamgirls. Michael Peters died in 1994.

People magazine did a story on him in 1984,
Michael Peters Is the Hot New Choreographer Who Makes Dancers Out of Video’s Rock Stars

Below is some of his well known choreography.

Thriller:

What’s Love Got to do With It?

Love is a Battlefield:

Beat It (Peters is the one in white):

Michael Peters and Michael Bennett win the Tony for Best Choreographer

Some other people you might not know about:
John Landis director, and his wife Deborah Landis, who designed the iconic red jacket for the video.

Buy the work of Michael Peters, Michael Jackson, John Landis, Dreamgirls, Lionel Richie, Pat Benatar, Donna Summer and Victor/Victoria.

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Support for the filmmakers…

Related posts:

1. Short film for the day
2. An Experiment – Syndicated Short Films from YouTube

Throwing some support to the filmmakers out there, here’s a short film for today.

Related posts:

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2. An Experiment – Syndicated Short Films from YouTube
3. Haiti’s Only Film School Keeps Filming

YouTube and Google have just provided a new way for filmmakers and small independent studios to distribute their work and, importantly, get paid for it. It’s a great new model. I’m just testing it out and experimenting now, just to see how it goes. This one has animation and other short films from various studios and artists.

Related posts:

1. Short film for the day
2. A short film for you
3. YouTube Play: Guggenheim Biennial of Creative Video

Don Hertzfeldt, who with Mike Judge (creator of King of the Hill, Office Space and Beavis and Butthead) created The Animation Show, a film festival of great new animation, released a collection of short films titled Rejected. The premise is that these animations were commissioned by corporations and then rejected.

Very funny. Be warned, they can also be pretty disturbing.

These are a distant cousin of Tim Burton’s Melencholy Death of Oyster Boy and Other Stories.

Get work by Don Hertzfeldt, Mike Judge or Tim Burton.

A common view of people involved in meditation of any kind is that they’re wimpy. They live in the clouds and forests among birds and silence, stay in big quiet stone buildings and don’t do much that actually affects the world. They’re just not realistic. “That’s nice and everything, you’re not hurting anyone, but get back to me when you have something I can use in the real world.”

The work of David Lynch is not tranquil, peaceful, naive, calming or any of those things you associate with meditation. It is often disturbing, blurring the lines between dream and reality, creepy and tense. So a few years ago when I saw him speak, after he surprisingly started a non-profit foundation dedicated to teaching meditation to the world’s children, I was perplexed. His appearance was open ended. He would answer any question people posed, about his work, the film industry, or anything else. But just by calling the event “David Lynch Speaks about Transcendental Meditation,” the questions organically centered around the topic.

The man is strange, but wholly captivating. It’s not a put-on strangeness. As he spoke, I theorized that his art and life were so strange because his entire inate metaphor system didn’t match anyone else in the room.

While answering a question about the stresses of shooting film, he said something like, “The stresses of the day, all of this anxiety you put on, it wears you down, stress, what I say is stress is like going through the whole day, wearing a big… white… rubber… clown suit.”
It was such a strange thing to say. And thank god I wasn’t in line of site, and I was far enough away he couldn’t hear me or the people around me. I held it in and buckled over with silent laughter, squinting my eyes and crying it was so funny. People around me were struggling hard to hold it in too.

I had never heard anyone describe anything as a rubber clown suit. The metaphor was completely outside the way I think (and all the people around me). I believe this is the secret element in all his work, and what makes it so unique and riveting.

Late last year, David Lynch released the book Catching the Big Fish, a book offering what he’s learned about art and meditation in his life. It’s kind of like an Everything I Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten for freaky artists. Some of it’s schmaltzy, but much of it offers great insight into David Lynch’s creative process, how he comes up with ideas and puts them on film, and on several occassions offers great insight directly for people who want to live their lives as artists. It’s in big print with lots of blank facing pages, so it’s a quick read whatever you think of it.

The span of the book is in these two quotes.
“I don’t necessarily love rotting bodies, but there’s a texture to a rotting body that is unbelievable.”
and
“Softer than a flower where kindness is concerned, Stronger than the thunder where principles are at stake. – Vedic definition of the enlightened”

Get Catching the Big Fish by David Lynch, or the work of David Lynch.

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Japanese artist Cornelius often performs in stadiums back in Japan. So I felt lucky to see him in a venue with only about 50 other people. When I first saw the show advertised, I thought it was a mistake because it was in such a small space. Cornelius has been called “The Japanese Beck” because he has many musical influences and sometimes uses collages and samples to weave tracks together.

The show was moving, energetic and hysterical.
It was also filled with chimes (as is his latest album.)

The music and performance were fantastic, but what really made it stand out was the video. Many bands these days project video behind them as they play. Most of the time this comes off as nothing more than a dynamic light cue, or worse, the content of the video distracts or opposes what’s in the music.

Cornelius says the video is a part of the band, like any other instrument. It’s often created right along with a song, in conjunction with the sound and meaning. The result is one of the best I’ve seen combining performance and video. The shape and motion mix with the performers and sound to make something much greater than the sum of its parts. Sometimes we were all in the sky flying with birds, other times mixing with words and color. Each song had it’s own film, and each added meaning, feeling and great visual beauty to the show.

An Interview with Cornelius.

Get Cornelius or Beck.

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Throwing stuffed animals at each other while jumping on second hand furniture in between stripteases doesn’t count as art most of the time, even though it’s a helluva lot of fun. But Berlin choreographer Constanza Macras and company Dorky Park weave together an enticing performance that’s both fun and sexy while technically challenging. The company flips easily from dance to string quartet to stripping to punk band to honest monologue.

As an artist, this hint of run down apartment with used furniture, other artists hanging around all day doing strange things, getting sexy and then too introspective feels all very familiar. The monologues each performer gives hit right at the heart of being artists.

Several friends of mine have moved to Berlin in the past year. It’s felt like Berlin is the current Bohemia, in the tradition of Bloomsbury, Montmartre and The East Village. Cheap rent in former East Berlin housing, a bustling metropolis, ways for artists to make a living at their work, and a big artist population make it a great place to be.

Far more than fun, sexy, and talented, what hit me watching this was how much fun it must be to live in Berlin right now. The members of Dorky Park are from all over the world, but are based out of Berlin. I’ve lived in some great places with solid artist communities, but I’ve never been at the center of Bohemia. Having such a powerful, collective creativity all around you pushes you to do more and better, and makes you feel anything is possible.

I’m jealous of artists in Berlin.

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