Interviews with participants of North American Buggy eXpo 2009 Ivanpah Dry Lake Nevada, USA www.nabx.net 24 min total, part one 8:58 video: Lenka Chludová www.lenkadu.com interviewer: Garrett Freberg
Interviews with participants of North American Buggy eXpo 2009 Ivanpah Dry Lake Nevada, USA www.nabx.net 24 min total, part two 7:53 video: Lenka Chludová www.lenkadu.com interviewer: Garrett Freberg
Live Video Demo 1 and 2 are two live video (VJ) samples of what I create during my live video sets on the fly where i also incorporate live video feed. They are collages of original footage, fragments of movies, videos and graphics, all processed and mixed using Max MSP/Jitter software and video mixer. Music: Demo 1 'Time' by Benny Benassi Demo 2 'Weapon of Choice' by Fatboy Slim Made June 2009 before Summer Tour. NEW DEMOS COMING IN OCTOBER 09.
Pozen Center for Interrelated Media Massachusetts College of Art and Design 621 Huntington Ave Boston, MA 02115
photo by Gregory Vershbow. http://www.gregoryvershbow.com/
Production assistance: Josiah Simmons Gregory Vershbow Chris Carroll Kevin Clancy Noah Stout Jonathan Rand Video Documentation
Adaptation is a performance by Lenka Chludová focusing on the interaction between our actions and the environment. Each action is at first meaningful for our survival (cover, water, food, warmth, shelter) but overdone to the extent where we struggle to survive the consequences of what we began to do in order to survive in the first place. This is "Misplaced Survival". The environment in this performance piece is manifested primarily in the sounds in the space. The materials and the order of the five actions were decided according to the their sonic properties and amplified in a way that these sounds begin to feedback on themselves as each action escalates. The feedback grows throughout the performance to the point of unbearable, forcing the performer to adapt to the environment and change the course of action, go back in pursuing these tasks, in an attempt to calm down the environment and to return, now transformed, to the original state. The audience too, despite being equipped with ear plugs, is exposed to the increasingly damaging sonic environment.
The sky could be the earth and the earth could be the sky. In Czech, Nebe is the sky and Země the earth, but written together it means 'not without me'. This video piece is a space for our imagination, without which the earth could not be the sky and the sky the earth. In NebeZemě imagination gains power from our ability to constantly reconfigure our spatial understanding of ourselves in the environment.
This video is part of the Misplaced Survival Series.
How long do we think we can maintain our humanness in this rushed and anxious contemporary world?
The aim of the action is to burn as many matches as fast as possible without burning myself. I take as deep breath as possible, clip my nose shut with a clothes pin and take as much water into my mouth as I fit. I can put out each match only by spitting water on it. Only in the instance of spitting water can i breathe in again before i clip my nose shut again. Since this is only a short moment i manage to take in only little air and am gradually deprived of oxygen. At the same time i have less and less water for each consecutive match, until finally i have no water to put out the match with and it burns me. The sound of the match is amplified through a microphone hidden in the match box and played back with a delay over it.
"As fast and for as long as possible" is a response to an apparent imperative which seems to characterize our lives in contemporary society. The act is carried on all fours for two reasons. The impetus for it comes from an animalistic sense of an ever potential failure a person living under such imperative may have: "I might not be able to go on, I am just going to drop here and lay here still, then crawl or walk on all fours". The motion on all fours is also a cumbersome movement for the human body and in that is a parallel to the obstructed character a human life has under the imperative "as fast and as long as possible".
It is particular to the movement on all fours that it is straining from the beginning of the act and therefore does not go through a physically and visually obvious progression as, for example, running on two as fast and for as long as possible. The muscles and skeleton resist this abnormal motion in a way that makes the human body give out signals as if it is on the verge of collapsing three minutes into the act the same way it signals fifty minutes later. The sense of a pending total exhaustion therefore occurs repeatedly. This repetition opens a door to questioning our fulfillment of the detrimental imperative 'as fast and for as long possible'. It also offers a chance to witness the human determination to overcome the fear of total exhaustion and to feel confident in the face of such fear.
Duration of this act 48 minutes, video 5 minutes. Camera: Brian Budak
