Afterimage

Curated by Rambod Vala

Afretimage
Curated by Rambod Vala
Thanks to: Niloufar Emamifar, Taymaz Pour Mohammad, Niloofar Sarlati
Our protagonist is sitting in front of a Retina display; her retina is capturing the fleeting pixels. All the pixels put together create a single image imprisoned in a frame: TV, laptop, camera display. One image follows another, demonstrating the passing of time. In Afterimage, words comment on images and music comments on images. Only rarely do images comment on images.
After exposing her retina to the bright light of the screen, it becomes light-adapted. Light adaptation creates an afterimage. The afterimage is stuck behind the retina and it blocks the sight — blinds — or detracts the eye from reality. This afterimage is sometimes mystical, familiar, exhausting, exuberant, disturbing or comforting, but it is always mesmerizing.
Michael Robinson
Mad Ladders
2015
00:09:56
A modern prophet’s visions of mythical destruction and transformation are recounted across a turbulent geometric ceremony of rising crtuains, swirling set pieces, and unveiled idols from music television’s past. Together, these parallel cults of revelation unlock a pathway to the far side of the sun.
Kevin B. Lee
Interface 2.0
2012
00:07:58
Interface 2.0 is a short video essay that I produced for Frames. It engages with Harun Farocki’s 1995 short Schnittstelle (Interface). Schnittstelle was originally a two-screen installation made for the Lille Museum of Modern Art, and later adapted into a single channel video combining the two screens. In Schnittstelle, Farocki depicts his editing practices and reflects on the differences between working with film and video, as well as found footage and newly filmed material.
This video essay is not intended as a finished work, but an initial engagement with Farocki and his work. It takes Farocki’s work as a model, as a way to engage with, re-enact, and critically interrogate the original, within the context of the current proliferation and practice of online video essays and videographic film studies.
Jon Cates
Unboxing is the unpacking of new products... “unpacking” dense or tangled ideas... O Fluxo!
2012
00:00:54
"O FLUXO ISSUE#01 – Circulating Forms of Reality it’s the first publication of O Fluxo, an open and collaborative effort set up to explore the boundaries of new media technology and how they are being inserted into reality. A speculation of the online art culture opposed to its volatile forms of communication."
John Smith
unusual Red cardigan
2011
00:13:00
The discovery of a VHS tape of the artist’s films on eBay triggers obsessive speculation about the seller’s identity.
Jon Cate
unboxXxing TEEN WITCH MAGAZINE #2
2013
00:00:29
Lilli Carré
Jill
2016
00:06:49
Jill explores the idea of the rebellious cartoon body. Set in a plain white room reminiscent of a gallery space or a testing laboratory, an acousmatic voice interacts with Jill by command. Jill is a cartoon that shows the wear and tear of slapstick, maintaining dents on a body that seems to feel no pain. The piece speaks to power dynamics and the ambivalent relationship between creator and creation, recalling Gertie the Dinosaur and the asymmetrical interaction of Frankenstein to his monster
Jon Cates
unboxing SYSTAIME-DVD-4
2013
00:01:15
Steve Reinke
Welcome to David Wojnarowicz Week
2016
00:14:01
Welcome to David Wojnarowicz Week is the follow up to A Boy Needs a Friend. Reinke proposes a new holiday with the motto MORE RAGE LESS DISGUST: David Wojnarowicz Week and takes us through his seven days of celebration. Plankton, Kafka, Bette Davis, Wednesday afternoon visits with friends, more plankton, burning villages, Hollis Frampton, Sammy Davis Jr. as a libidinal machine producing sadness, opera, disembowelment, poetry.
Jon Cates
unboxing new adidas postglitch kicks
2014
00:00:42
Zheng Yuan
External Memory
2017
00:11:30
The film follows a man who visits a place without ever going there. It begins with the whir of a hard drive and the image of an airplane. He travels through different representations of space and time, tracing along the footprints of others, attempting to construct his own memories of “here” or “elsewhere”…
Jon Cates
unboxXxing MSET6_ Evil Robot Ted - Ejecta, cassette tape sticker
2013
00:00:52
Jesse McLean
Climbing
2010
00:06:18
A hand-shaped cursor pulls itself upwards, through an infinite expanse of digital mountains. An ode to the persistent and the prosaic.
Jon Cates
unboxXxing Truisms by Alexandra Gorczynski
2013
00:01:18
Ben Podell
Untitled
2014
00:04:52
A digital record of longing — a love letter to, from, and through a computer.