Tag Archives: Los Angeles

It is Not the Same Thing – A Film by Kathy Choi

by Cimaxion | 1 Comment

The Echo Park Film Center in Los Angeles is posting films made in its youth film class structured around the concept of work. The students made films about how they view jobs and work. It’s a great idea for a film class and throws the students into a very mature thought process. I really like this very fine film by Kathy Choi, Ce N’est Pas La Meme Chose (It Is Not The Same Thing).  She lets a woman from France compare the working life there to the life in America.  There are fascinating and sharp observations made about how the French worker simply wants to be efficient and get the job done within the regular day contrasted with how the American worker is expected to show a willingness to stay longer and ‘look’ more busy or dedicated.

Having closely observed American corporate office life I can attest to the phenomenon that is the actual ruling principal behind the entire American economy: at all costs one must always look busy.

The sad fact of our current jobless recovery is that an enormous percentage – probably in the 50% range – of all corporate American jobs are totally and completely unnecessary and should not exist.  In other words, those jobs should not come back because they are fake.  They are occupied by people spending the vast majority of their time looking busy, talking busy, pretending, and doing next to nothing.

The French view which holds a job to be something limited and something to do efficiently and well, while not allowing it to overwhelm one’s life strikes me as a very mature and reasonable view.

This little film is exceedingly good and reminds me of Godard.

Robert Mapplethorpe’s Life Work Given to Los Angeles Museums

by Cimaxion

As I was driving yesterday, I was thinking about my latest film work and muddling through half-formed thoughts about how, whether anyone likes it or not, Los Angeles is the center of art in the United States.  New York has become too much associated with the 20th century’s industrial approach to art.  Los Angeles, it seemed to me inside my comfortable car, is where it’s at.

Today it was announced that the work of American photographer Robert Mapplethorpe has been given in joint trust to the J. Paul Getty Trust and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Well, there you have it.

Enjoy the gift, Los Angeles, because you’ve earned it.

If you want to learn a lot more about Mapplethorpe and an incredible drive for artistic expression, read the National Book Award winning memoir by Patti Smith, Just Kids.

Glass Boulevard

by Cimaxion

Filmed in the dullest imaginable environment of shops along a major Los Angeles street at night when the shops were closed.

My Christmas film.

The music is a public domain recording of Artie Shaw and his orchestra playing ‘There’s Something in the Air’ in 1936. The singer is Peg LaCentra. I found it at the Internet Archive.

Los Angeles in the 1920s

by Cimaxion

This is an old silent film produced by Ford that shows Los Angeles in the twenties. You’d be amazed by how much of old LA you can still find. I’m working on a new film that’s going to be in large part about LA and the way a person perceives the city and self through images that are borrowed and may in fact have very little to do with the actual firm existing place. Finding this little film is part of my digging through material about the real and the fanciful Los Angeles.

MOCA Film on Artist Alexis Smith

by Cimaxion

The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles is producing a series of short films about LA artists in their studios. They sort of lean toward the cute clever artist in their oh so picturesquely messy work spaces mentality. But sometimes it’s nice to see a little mess and hear a few comments from an artist. I happen to like this one about Alexis Smith. I like her comments about not knowing where her art is going and how she keeps all this stuff around to make it with. I think what she means is that she just digs around in pile of crap and throws a whole bunch of junk together and suddenly goes ‘Oh wow! There it is!’  Of course, to do that you’ve got to have a really fine pile of junk.

Art: Don’t Turn Back (Two Versions)

by Cimaxion

Don’t Turn Back (Final Version)

Don’t Turn Back (First Version)

Here’s the little art problem I’ve been working on for the past few weeks.  It’s one of those things where I have no theory or rule to fall back on in order to make the decision.  Aside from some small touches like removing the Sergeant stripes from the figure’s shoulder, I was mainly trying to decide whether the right side of the image should be dark or light.  Ultimately, after scrutinizing the picture from a distance time after time, I decided that it was more dramatic if it depicted a night scene and if the figure was moving away from a more painterly zone toward a more digitized one.  I also made the road on the left a little more defined.  But canvas isn’t that expensive and I might just decide to hang both versions right next to each other in a gallery.

My own favorite part of the picture is right around the figure’s legs where you can see through to the landscape with that slight glow on the ground and how the shrubbery overlaps the neon line of the leg.  The image is about fear.  It is also connected directly to Jean Cocteau and the myth of Orpheus.  The figure looking back is from a single frame of video I shot of a store sign while walking along Hollywood Boulevard at night.  The road is a sharp bend in Laurel Canyon Boulevard near Mulholland Drive above Los Angeles that I shot through a windshield.  The background landscape is a shoreline I shot from a moving car near Rehoboth Beach, Delaware.  The dark palm fronds hanging down are from some throw-away footage I shot in high winds.  The pixelation is the product of blowing up a frame of a digital copy of decomposed celluloid film until the digital artifacts became pronounced.  I made all of these things individual layers and then went in with a digital pen and worked on a trial and error basis to make things come out the way they did.  What is interesting to me about making such an image is how I begin with an initial image – the glowing figure – and shuffle parts of other images on top of and underneath it to build a new image.  It requires an extreme confidence that you will know what you need exactly when you see it.  So you start going through piles of video or photos both on screen and in your head and pull out the pieces that snap into place for a new picture.  It’s like walking up to a leaf on a tree and taking it as the basis for a painting.  You know that from the leaf you will be able to connect to other things and end up with exactly the right final result.

This print measures 68″ x 38″. It’s an original work created from elements used in my film Yellow Plastic Raygun.

Art: Don’t Turn Back

by Cimaxion | 1 Comment

Don’t Turn Back

This is my next large canvas print.  I’ve been making original artist prints through a gallery in Los Angeles. They measure 68″ x 38″. They are original works created from images used in my film Yellow Plastic Raygun.  They are not exact frames from the film, but rather artworks based on segments of the film.

Art: Digital Prints on Canvas

by Cimaxion

I Was Thinking

I’ve been making large original artist prints of these images through a gallery in Los Angeles. They measure 68″ x 38″. They are original works created from images used in my film Yellow Plastic Raygun.  They are not exact frames from the film, but rather artworks based on fragments of the film.  I make the film, then I mine it for artworks that will stand on their own.  So the film becomes a sort of a paintbox or a scrapbox that I dig through and manipulate.  I could go on working like this forever.  It’s an endless trove to explore.

Wave Rider

I Was Thinking hanging on a wall:

The Cool School: LA Art Scene Film

by Editor

This video is from a PBS Independent Lens documentary about the Ferus Gallery that shaped much of the Los Angeles art scene in the early 1960s.  It’s short but it conveys some of the sense of LA’s wild, nervy, uncontrolled art attitude that is still in force today.  I love the zoom in on Andy Warhol who’s standing in front of one of his works and he just says, ‘Oh.’  LA still has that sense of offering the individual artist the clear opportunity to walk into a gallery, shake hands, say ‘How’s it going?’ and end up with an art showing a few weeks later.  It’s a city of entrepreneurs.  New York is a city of deeply knowledgeable and experienced people who understand that there is a system in place that’s been there forever.  That’s why people walk fast in New York.  They’re all trying to stay on schedule so the system keeps running.  In LA, everyone is throwing crowbars into the system and breaking it so that they can make their own.  The gallery scene in downtown LA is really interesting these days.  You can walk for blocks, stopping in at the galleries for a wide variety of offerings.  There are a couple of galleries that have copped an arrogant New York attitude and they are the ones I stay away from.  In general, you get a real feeling of the art being right there and totally accessible to you.  Everything is for sale.  The artists are interested in your money.  It’s very simple and healthy.  When I buy a piece of art in LA I feel like I’ve pulled a fast one on the art world somehow.  I feel complicit in something with underground tones.