Perspectives | Base | 2008 | 5:00 min.
   
While interviews traditionally present what people say, in 'Perspectives' the interviewees don’t actually say anything. With the spoken portion of the footage edited out, Perspectives leaves only body language, pauses for thought, and interjections to do the communicating. 'Perspectives' is an ongoing independent project from BaseMotion, in collaboration with BaseWords, that is so far comprised of 19 videos ranging in length from 33 seconds to one-and-a-half minutes.

Base specializes in not specializing. Specifically, we specialize in not specializing in graphic design, art direction, audiovisuals, copywriting, and typeface design. With offices in Barcelona, Brussels, Madrid, New York, and Santiago, Chile, we specialize in not specializing in one geographical area, but in several. And lastly, working with clients ranging from fashion houses to museums to educational institutions to big corporations, we pride ourselves in not specializing in a specific client type or field. This is our specialty. www.basedesign.com


  Dress Rehearsal | Josh Weinstein | 2010 | 14:13 min.
   
This video continues my inquiry into notions of identity and perception started in 'We Are Each Other' and continued in 'Cross Examination'. This video is an exploration of the limits of language in expressing individual identity in the face of a world of judgment; we judge and we know we are judged, yet we are dependent on language to articulate our identity to ourselves and others. All the subjects are wearing t-shirts with statements on them, which invites the viewer to participate in the assessment and adds both visual and conceptual layers to the idea of self-expression and the reading of one’s identity.

For the last ten years, artist Josh Weinstein has made videos that engage with issues of identity and perception. His work has screened widely in video festivals, galleries, museums, as well as online. The narrative in his work arrives out of an interest in self-reflection. This is demonstrated through a quasi-documentary approach that typically finds its subject in the general public or voxpopuli. Through a deconstruction of conventional interview techniques borrowed from news media and the like, Weinstein, his subject, and his audience become enmeshed in a web of wit and uncertainty.
 
  China? | Allen Chen | 2010 | 1:08 min.
   



'China?'
is a project that explores the relationship between the geographical boundaries of immigrants and its inhabitants. The images were shot in the point of view angle to simulate the experience of walking through Chinatown in New York City. The captions of the photographs were assigned based on the location where the photographs were taken. The photos that were taken within the boundaries of Chinatown are assigned with “this is china” caption, and the photos that were not taken from Chinatown are assigned with “this is not china.” The captions are not served to confuse the viewer, but to convey the superficiality of human perception.

Allen Chen is a New York based visual artist using photography and video. He was born in Taiwan and grew up in Southern California.HeI moved to New York to study at the full time program at the International Center of Photography. During the time at ICPI, he began to incorporate video, installation, and photography into his work.

 
  5 lessons and 9 questions about Chinatown | Shelly Silver | 2009 | 10:00 min.
    You live somewhere, walk down the same street 50, 100, 10,000 times, each time taking in fragments, but never fully registering THE PLACE. Years, decades go by and you continue, unseeing, possibly unseen. A building comes down, and before the next one is up you ask yourself ‘what used to be there?’ You are only vaguely aware of the district’s shifting patterns and the sense that, since the 19th century, wave after wave of inhabitants have moved through and transformed these alleyways, tenements, stoops and shops. 10 square blocks, past, present, future, time, light, movement, immigration, exclusion, gentrification, racism, history, China, America, 3 languages, 13 voices, 152 years, 17,820 frames, 9 minutes, 54 seconds, 9 questions, 5 lessons, Chinatown

Using an irreverent mixture of fiction, documentary and experimental genres, Shelly Silver’s work in film, video, installation and photography is funny, poetic and formally beautiful, seducing the viewer into pondering such difficult issues as the cracks in our most common assumptions, the impossibility of a shared language, and the ambivalent and yet overwhelming need to belong—to a family, a nation, a gender, an ideology. Silver’s art has been exhibited and broadcast widely throughout the U.S., Europe and Asia. Screenings and installations have been mounted by venues such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the International Center of Photography in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, the Yokohama Museum, the Pompidou Center, the Kyoto Museum, the London Institute of Contemporary Arts, the Museo Reina Sofia, and the London, Singapore, New York, Moscow, and Berlin film festivals. Her work has been broadcast on BBC/England, PBS/USA, Arte, Planete/Europe, RTE/Ireland, SWR/Germany, and Atenor/Spain. Silver’s numerous fellowships and grants include awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the NEA, NYSCA, NYFA, the DAAD, the Jerome Foundation, the Japan Foundation and Anonymous was a Woman. She is based in New York where she is an Associate Professor of Visual Arts in the School of the Arts, Columbia University.
 
  Visa Applicants | Devrim Kadirbeyoglu | 2010 | 6:08 min.
   


Every Turkish citizen has to obtain a visa to travel abroad to almost all countries. The process is painstakingly long and expensive. The Visa Officers have the right to deny the visa without any explanation. ‘Visa Applicants’ is a video interviews with Turkish citizens who are applying for Schengen Visa (visa to enter Europe) in front of the German Consulate in Istanbul, Turkey. Questions asked are similar to the ones asked on the application forms.

Devrim Kadirbeyoglu earned her MFA in Studio For Interrelated Media at Massachusetts College of Art in Boston, USA after studying at Mimar Sinan University Fine Arts Faculty in Istanbul. She works in different mediums to portray issues of identity in contemporary society. In 2010 her work has been exhibited in Germany, the Netherlands, Italy and Turkey. Her work was part of the Turkish Contemporary Art exhibition held in a museum, Le CentrePasquArt, in Switzerland in 2009. The same year she was represented by Emmanuel Fremin Gallery at the Bridge Art Fair in New York. She currently divides her time between living and working as an artist/curator in New York and Istanbul.

 
  Untitled (Clown) | Christopher Udemezue | 2008 | 01:54 min.
   

 

In this collection I set out to explore the terms of “what it means to be a man” and “what it means to be black” in relation to the African- American male. Using my body as subject to engage the viewer with my personal narratives, the sphere of characters and symbols are played out. With the leading concept of “mask” and “to put on an act” of “blackness” & “macho” the symbol and charecter of “clown” comes forth in this video.

Born 1986 Long Island, NY, USA Christopher Udemezue is a visual artist living and working in NYC. Christopher recently had the privalege of showing his work for the Jamaica Flux’10: Workspaces & Windows in Jamaica, Queens and the Envoy Enterprises gallery space in NY.


 
  Boy Brides & Bachelors | Melissa Potter | 2010 | 4:00 min.
   
'Boy Brides & Bachelors' is an animated video shot on a cold January night in Southeastern Serbia during a ritual called Surovari in which men dress as women (large breasted peasants, grandmothers, and brides), and engage in pretend sexual acts with village bachelors. Little is known about the meaning of this pagan ritual, but its contemporary gender role-play implications are profound. In 'Boy Brides & Bachelors', I use stop motion animations to engage my questions about the underlying meanings of the ritual, and make a connection between my inability to translate much of what was going on with the strange language of gender itself.

Melissa Potter is a multi-media artist whose work deals with the commodification of women and their rites of passage from marriage to motherhood. Her work is expressed in papermaking, drawing, print, sculpture, and video animation. She exhibits nationally and internationally at venues including White Columns, Bronx Museum of the Arts, and Zvono Gallery, Belgrade, Serbia. Ms. Potter is a recipient of two Fulbrights (to Serbia), ArtsLink, Trust for Mutual Understanding, and film funding from the Serbian Ministry of Culture. Her critical essays on art have been printed in BOMB, Art Papers, Chicago Art Magazine, Flash Art, Proximity Magazine, Hand Papermaking, and AfterImage.

 
  More Man | Erik Levine | 2005 | 8:00 min.
   
Focusing on adult participation in an organized youth sporting event,
'More Man' reveals inherent behavioral and psychological dynamics: how knowledge, persona, and character are passed down; how men strive to shape and infuse boys with their ideals and beliefs; and, above all, how ideas of masculinity are transmitted from one generation to the next.

Erik Levine has exhibited widely in the United States and Europe and is in the public collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Walker Art Center, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, and Des Moines Art Center, among several others. He has received numerous awards including a Guggenheim Fellowship and three Pollock–Krasner Foundation awards. In addition, he’s received two grants each from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Foundation for the Arts, as well as grants from Awards in the Visual Arts, the Nancy Graves Foundation, and most recently, New York State Council on the Arts and the Jerome Foundation.


 
  Teaser02# | Simon Mullan | 2009 | 2:52 min.
    A young danser exercices at the barre. The aesthetic of the gesture is underlined by the slow motion and the original soundtrack. Danse is the main theme of this video. Danse is therefore considered as a fight against boredom, and as a body expression and peculiar energy for the artistic creation. The young danser is part of the generation of young people featured in the video; a generation marked by consumerism and stagnation. Through his body exercises which he only makes for himself, the danser expresses the possibility of a fight for values avoiding drug and alcohol. The title of the video “Teaser”, from the word teasing, points out that this video is only the beginning of a wider research.

Simon Mullan lives and works in Stockholm and in Vienna. He was born in 1981 in Kiel, Germany. He grew up with four brothers and sisters in Austria, in Vienna. He has been studying at he Applied Arts University of Vienna in the transmedial program with Brigit Kowanz, and has then followed the one year study program at the Royal Fine Arts University in the video department. During his art studies, he has developed a very strong interest for video, which is between motion picture and instant photography. A the end of his studies, having been studying with Harun Farocki and Ruth Noak, he has found a very peculiar aesthetic for his video work. Since then, he has made sevral movies dealing espacially with social questions, such as handicaped people life or the fate of immigrants in Vienna. His works are often simple and are characterized by brief stances, often ironic and humoristic.


 
  Close to God / Far from Home (Somewhere between Pop and Classical) | Axel Petersén | 2009 | 11:09 min.
   



A portrait of Palestine's loneliest lover Tony Abu Jaber.
A hair-dresser and choir-boy, but also the sexiest man in Bethlehem, forever faithful to Jesus Christ, Richard Clayderman and Kaiser Franz Joseph.

Axel Petersén, born in Stockholm in 1979, is a visual artist and storyteller.
He studied film at FAMU, School of Performing Arts in Prague and got a MFA at the Royal Institut of Art in Stockholm.


 
  Just the Way You Are | Liz Rodda | 2009 | 3:35 min.
   

'Just the Way You Are' pairs two separate YouTube videos side by side: a series of girls doing the splits, desperately aware of the camera, and a boy clumsily playing an instrumental version of Billy Joel’s Just the Way You Are on the piano. Each of the videos features a lone performer who has become a part of a worldwide network by broadcasting their performance online. The video reintroduces a range of topics including the role of the viewer, life as a teen, sincerity and collective aloneness.

Liz Rodda exhibits work nationally and internationally and has shown at venues such as the Anthology Film Archives (NYC), 808 Gallery (Boston, MA), Hunter Museum of American Art (Chattanooga, TN) and Literaturwerkstatt (Berlin, Germany). Liz was recently selected to participate in Art 365 curated by Shannon Fitzgerald and has been nominated for a USA Artist Grant.