experimental short videos by
Los Angeles and international artists

curated by Alysse Stepanian
and international guest curators (TBA)

GUTTURAL!

(merriam-webster.com: Guttural... marked by utterance that is strange, unpleasant, or disagreeable)

There is an unbridled energy and natural rawness to Martin Back's video, in which he uses his mouth, a contact mic and a webcam to create a raucous performance. Paulo Barros's percolating geometric abstractions are inhibited only by their forced rectangular enclosures. Hey-Yeun Jang's work penetrates the “in-between,” the deep cracks that are left unexplored in familiar realities. Niclas Hallberg and his collaborator Stina Pehrsdotter give voice to those who have come to feel shame in a civilization that has alphabetized and codified proper conduct. Wilfried Agricola de Cologne's videos are both visually and viscerally penetrating, and his clear observations are potent and commanding.

WILFRIED AGRICOLA DE COLOGNE (Cologne, Germany)

Agricola de Cologne is an artist brand and media art activist by the same name, launched on 1 January 2000.
- multidisciplinary media artist, director of experimental shortfilms & videos, new media curator and cultural designer
- founder & director of artvideoKOELN - the curatorial initiative “art & moving images” (2010)
- founder and director of CologneOFF - Cologne International Videoart Festival (2006)
- founder and director [NewMediaArtProjectNetwork]:||cologne - the experimental platform for art and New Media (2000), a global network on different virtual and physical levels.

Besides the wide range of curatorial contexts in virtual and physical space, Agricola initiates himself in frameworks such as JavaMuseum (2001), NewMediaFest (2002), Violence Online Festival (2003), SoundLAB & VideoChannel (2004), CologneOFF (2006), and netEX (2007). Agricola de Cologne is also co-curator and co-organizer of numerous media art events, festivals and exhibitions around the globe, as well as a jury member in diverse festivals. His media art works and videos have received numerous prizes and awards. Since 2000, he has been participating as a media and video artist in biennials such as ISEA Nagoya (2002), Venice Biennale 2003, Biennale of New Media Art Merida/Mexico 2003, Biennale of Electonic Arts Perth/Australia (2004), Biennale de Montreal (2004), Biennale of Video & New Media Santiago de Chile (2005), ISEA Singapore 2008, and in more than 500 festivals and media art exhibitions worldwide. His “CologneOFF 2011 - videoart in a global context” and "CologneOFF 2012" are nomadic festival projecst touring virtually and physically once around the globe during 2011 and 2012.

Moving Picture Collection: http://movingpictures.agricola-de-cologne.de
artvideoKOELN: http://video.mediaartcologne.org
Le Musee di-visioniste: http://www.le-musee-divisioniste.org
CologneOFF International Videoart Festival: http://coff.newmediafest.org http://coff.newmediafest.org/blog
[NewMediaArtProjectNetwork]:||cologne: http://www.nmartproject.net

MARTIN BACK (Texas, USA)

Martin Back is a composer, artist, and musician. He composes primarily for unusual instrumentation and fixed media which endeavor to define 'music' as a potential for the creation of novel situations for propagating, or investigating, sound worlds. He is engaged in object-making with his ongoing series of assemblage works, collectively titled 'Objemlature.'  He has created works for single and multi-channel video and live video performance, which have been exhibited in the United States and Canada. As a performing musician he has been active in a number of groups, including The Transducers, The Sound Painting Orchestra of New Mexico, the Ancestral Groan Liberation Orchestra, F/M, and cult psych-metal outfit Noceros/Gnossurrus. He has released collections of recordings on Modisti, Just Not Normal, and PandaFuzz.  Martin received his undergraduate degree from the Moving Image Arts department at the College of Santa Fe where his mentors included Gene Youngblood and David Stout. He has studied privately with composer and sound artist David Dunn. He is currently pursuing an MFA in new media at the University of North Texas.

PAULO R. C. BARROS (Sao Paulo, Brazil)

BIO
Paulo R. C. Barros, born 1958, is a business publications editor, a publicist and a digital and sonorous artist. He lives in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
His works were presented in art and media events and festivals in the United State, Denmark, England, Cyprus, The Netherlands, France, Austria, Romania, Syria, Venezuela, Spain, Greece, Italy, Germany, Czech Republic, Bulgaria and Brazil. He has a rich collection of electronic art and sonorous plastics. Observer of the cinema, music, contemporary art and adjacent Medias, he is up to date on expanded possibilities of video that are in constant process of changing and rearrangement.

STATEMENT
Working with plastic and abstract images allows me for free experimentation with the imaginary, where reality and imagination are confused, the resulting process being able to generate and articulate new meanings. It is necessary to immerse, to experience and interact with this language to bring out a new imaginary and construct my own poetics.

The recycling of the visual and sonorous signs, the fragmentation and the impious dismount of their parts, the intentional repetition, allow the creation of an abstract, pulsing and hypnotic form of art. The video art's soundtracks were composed using a mix of experimental sounds produced by sound instruments, turntablism and circuit-bending techniques and their concept is based on the minimalism principles.

NICLAS HALLBERG (Sweden)

Niclas Hallberg works in video, photography, installation and performance. His experimental works deals with questions concerning identity, masculinity and humanity. He uses the moving image to express feelings or document performances. He often uses himself as an actor and thereby creates a feeling of intimacy and individuality. Niclas Hallberg has participated in several solo and group exhibitions in Sweden and abroad.

Hallberg works on several international projects focused on collaborational exchanges resulting in exhibitions and video screenings, and also in different art projects together with artists around the world. Niclas Hallberg founded Formverk (art zone) in 2004, together with Stina Pehrsdotter, an experimental exhibition and project space.

STINA PEHRSDOTTER (Sweden)

Stina works in video, photography, street/installation/object and performance art inspired by the human body and its environment. In her works she focuses on body’s desires and needs, wishes and loss. She often reflects on the connection between mind, body and soul, and tensions between the body and the environment. Her work can be seen as an exploration of existence and memories.

Stina Pehrsdotter has participated in numerous exhibitions in Sweden and abroad. She is engaged in several international video collaborations, shown at festivals and exhibitions. As a curator, she has arranged many showings in a variety of context, and as being one of the founders of Formverk (art zone), an art project organisation, she is involved with a broad network of artists and independent art initiatives.

HEY-YEUN JANG (New York City)

ARTIST STATEMENT
My works are about “in-between”. <In-Between>: what’s there and yet is not, <In-Between>: lies and its truth, and truth and its lies. The content of my work derives from daily life gap that separates what it is from what it seems. Time as measured and time as experienced do not coincide. My work serves to point out what is missing. It reveals subconsciously forgotten parts and consciously deleted parts of our lives to rethink about human existence and human condition. It reconnects us with some of those lost relationships.

BIO
Hey-Yeun Jang is Korea-born, New York based artist. She has exhibited widely in museums in the U.S and abroad. Within last few years her work has been featured at Haus der Kulturen der Welt(Berlin, Germany), Wurttembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart (Stuttgart, Germany), Carrillo Gil Museum (Mexico city, Mexico), Centro Cultural Tijuana(Tijuana, Mexico), National Museum of Contemporary Museum (Korea), Museum 63 Artist Commune (Hong Kong, China) and Queens Museum (NY, USA) and Poznan in Poland and Havana in Cuba. Her film has been screened at Metropolitan Museum of Art, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Anthology Film Archives, Los Angeles County Museum and Berkeley Art Museum. Her exhibition has received many reviews including Art in America, the New York Times, New York Arts, Berliner Zeitung, Stuttgart Zeitung, Taipei Times and Korea Times. She received awards from NY state council and the National Endowment for the Arts.

RKDB (Oakland, California)

BIO
RKDB is a video and performance artist based in Oakland, California. A BFA graduate of Carnegie-Mellon University, RKDB worked off-Broadway and in independent films in New York City, and while working at MoMA as an assistant to the curators for the Jackson Pollock retrospective, he had a revelation that led him to video art. RKDB is an amateur anthropologist/comparative religion and Jungian student. His work has most recently been exhibited at SOMArts (San Francisco, CA), Krowswork (Oakland, CA) and Southern Exposure (San Francisco, CA). He recently completed an intensive workshop with La Pocha Nostra, directed by Guillermo Gómez-Peña. In March, he will be participating in a three-person show at Krowswork.

ARTIST STATEMENT
Video and performance for me are alchemical in nature. I use them as tools to help me know myself and to communicate with others. I have a fascination with mythology, religion, shamanism and dreams and this has led me to study comparative religion, ritual, myth, anthropology and most important to me, the writings of Carl Jung. I try to work intuitively, letting my unconscious self guide the process. The general motifs of shamanism are very present in my work, the most important of which is the concept of analogy/metaphor. One thing can stand in for something else and this is true, earthly magic. I believe the dream-like quality of the moving image is best suited to respond to and enter into a dialogue with the part of the mind that is beyond - and on which floats - the rational sphere.

A Curious Sense of Calm

The inaugural screening of Manipulated Image in Los Angeles will take place at TAM. Invited video artists include Gerald Guthrie (Illinois, USA), Adnan Hussain (Los Angeles, USA), Kika Nicolela (São Paulo, Brazil), and Yuko Takemura (London, UK). Guthrie's digital animations are philosophical inquiries into a man-made world of artificiality and alienation. Hussain's hope is that his work will encourage people to "think for themselves." Kika Nicolela uses the natural expressions of body and movement to explore the connection between the self and society. Yuko Takemura creates sensuous settings that draw the viewer into her mysterious world of perceptions.

This is the first screening of LA-based artist, Adnan Hussain's work by Manipulated Image. Adnan will be present at the event to talk about his award-winning animated film, "Gul (flower)." Adnan was born in the US and lived in Pakistan for a few years.

KIKA NICOLELA (São Paulo, Brazil)

BIO
Kika Nicolela is a Brazilian artist, filmmaker and independent curator. Graduated in Film from the University of Sao Paulo, Nicolela was the recipient of several grants and has participated in over 100 solo and group exhibitions worldwide. Her videos have been screened and awarded in festivals of more than 30 countries, such as: Bilbao International Film Festival, Milan International Film Festival, Oberhausen International Short Film Festival, Japan Media Arts Festival, Videoformes and São Paulo International Film Festival. She has been an artist-in-residence at several worldwide institutions, such as Gyeonggi Creation Center (South Korea), Rote Fabrik (Switzerland), Objectifs (Singapore), Sumu (Finland) and Rondo Studio (Austria). Nicolela is represented by DConcept (São Paulo) and Vtape (Toronto).

ARTIST STATEMENT
I am interested in the encounter with the other, mediated by video. My works often involve participative methods, engaging communities in the creative process, as well as collaboration with others such as visual artists, dancers, musicians, writers, actors and performers. Constructing situations in which I have limited control, I try to make the collaborators and myself get out of our comfort zones, provoking unexpected, spontaneous results. My works can be seen as experimentations in social interaction and self-exploration – for the participants, the viewer and myself.

"Crossing" "A/través" 2003, 9:01 min, color, sound
"Desesmetak" 2009, 2:55 min, black/white, sound
"Nós" 2007, 11:27 min, color, sound

GERALD GUTHRIE (Illinois, USA)

BIO
Gerald Guthrie was born in 1951 in Waukesha, Wisconsin. He received a Master of Fine Arts in Printmaking from the University of Illinois (1977). Guthrie currently teaches animation and foundation studies as a Professor in the School of Art and Design at the University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign. His digital animations have screened in over 75 national and international film festivals, including the Melbourne Animation Festival (Australia 2011), Anima Mundi (Brazil 2010), The Seattle Film Festival (2011), the Denver Film Festival (2010) and the Prix Ars Electronica International Festival of Arts and New Media (Austria 2008, 2010).

ARTIST STATEMENT
“Gerald Guthrie uses the medium of digital animation to identify and exemplify many of the inscrutable mysteries of everyday life. Questions that do not have definitive answers are woven into the fabric of our culture and become the basis for such uniquely human pursuits as religion, ethics, philosophy, politics, and science. By distinguishing common threads of recognition, he strives to inform the viewer that closure is not as important as the act of enquiry, a process essential to the human experience.”

- "The Realm of Possibility" 2009, 6:06 min, color, sound
- "The Whole Truth" 2008, 7:30 min, color, sound