On witnessing and tracing with the eye

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"Dancers, choreographers, writers and dance voodlers spend a lot of time looking, witnessing, tracing with their eyes, mapping with their gear. They are constantly taking in and trying out. Rehearsing. Making new space in their bodies for the writing down of performance. This act, in the words of Julia Kristeva is an “ordeal.”

Yet, the simple act of witnessing basic choreographic moves, casually framed, opens up confined spaces with their own liberating re-imaginations, muses Sam Renseiw. View the short quasi pataphysical footage by clicking here or on the links above. (patafilm # 405, 01'30'', 6.6 MB, Quicktime/mov - Flash version at blip.tv)

On the impression of plenitude

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" Both musical unity and musical structure are facilitated by the clear and distinct arrangement of tonal properties. Thus, the greater a musical passage can be anticipated, the more likely we sense it as being temporally continuous. And central to this anticipatory aspect is the employment of tonality, obeying the logic of modulation, succession, and resolution."

Beneath the impression of plenitude while walking along Thorvaldsen's scupltures, Sam Renseiw's captured footage reveals a lines of discontinuity where the things change, even though they seemingly remain the same. View the Rytm of Duration by clicking here or on the links above. (patafilm # 400, 01'57'', 7 MB, Quicktime/mov - Flash version at Blip.tv)

On Normann inside the show-room

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"Perhaps the most disturbing thing about the modern yuppie, is that many of us will recognise ourselves. The Yuppie Handbook listed the things that budding yuppies couldn't live without: gourmet coffee, Burberry trench coat, expensive running shoes, home help, new kitchen with double sink, smoked mozzarella, Normann and Coach bag. Just remember that when you're ordering organic vegetables from Ocado, sipping an Innocent smoothie, or picking out a bright People Tree scarf in Topshop."

After his regular Baresso morning double-latte (less milk please) Sam Renseiw stumbled upon a quiet street hippie just before having a conversation with Normann, examining life from inside the Copenhagen show room. View the encounter by clicking here or on the links above (patafilm # 404, 01'22'', 6.3 MB, Quicktime/mov - Flash version at Blip.tv) Bonus: beach dog video from Pepa Garcia, click here)

Three of cups or minor arcana

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"Although various sources for myth refer to different numbers of Graces or Charites, most often they are depicted as a trio. Each of these three goddesses represented an individual quality that was revered by the ancient Greeks. It was the poet Hesiod who named the Graces in his Theogony: "Then Eurynome, Ocean's fair daughter, bore to Zeus the three Graces, all fair-cheeked, Aglaia, Euphrosyne, and shapely Thalia; their alluring eyes glance from under their brows, and from their eyelids drips desire that unstrings the limbs."

Transmutating as usual, Sam Renseiw recently framed new footage of Bertel T's exquisite trio, on site in Bindesbøll's museion - Expect more from these spaces in the coming posts. View the moving blur with dripping sweet soundtrack remix by clicking here or on the links above. (patafilm # 399, 01'49'', 7 MB, Quicktime/mov - Flash version at Blip.tv)

On the continuity of melancholy

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".. we base all the events in our lives on the continuum of our sorrows; we translate into the emotional language of continuity what would be more accurately expressed in the clear and trenchant narrative of objective events. Continuity is but our emotion, our unease, our melancholy, and the role of emotion is perhaps only to blunt ever-hostile newness.."

Casually dropping by a random Tuesday evening, Sam Renseiw got mixed up in a rather nostalgic set-up at Vaterpas Fine Arts. While wondering about the sense of space and place in time, and, if all might be a revolving simulacrum re-performed by an atavistic new generation, blurred footage served to clarified. View the short, unfolding ballade by clicking here or on the links above. (patafilm # 398, 01'35'', 7.3MB, Quicktime/mov -Flash version at Blip.tv)

Condensing moves in elliptic associations

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" From its standpoint of its will to shape expression, the moving image is a physical reality which has its own relief. More precisely, it is the physical relief, the multilevelled psyche. It furrows or it raises; it finds a depth or suggests an elevation; it rises or falls between heaven and earth. It is polyphonic because it is polysemantic."

Re-viewing parts of overlooked footage, Sam renseiw investigates the polysemantic effects of a few chosen dance steps in a seemingly infinite space; Enjoy the short elliptic associations by clicking here or on the links above. (patafilm # 397, 00'40'', 2.4 MB, quicktime/mov - flash version at blip.tv)

On The Persistence of Memory and Context

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"Memory has three different aspects: memory when it remembers things, imagination when it alters or imitates them, and invention when it gives them a new turn or puts them into proper arrangement and relationship. For these reasons the poets called memory the mother of the Muses."

"Not to know one's way in a city doesn't signify much. But to lose oneself in a city as one loses oneself in a forest calls for schooling" muses Sam Renseiw paraphrasing Benjamin, thus vaguely remembering a questionnaire session after walking the invisible reality show last November. Re-view the world as thing and image q/a video by clicking here or on the links above - and fill in the audio-blanks yourself- visual poetry and the continuity of silent pata-language... although: we must look straight at objects and not squint, for in that case the eyes do not see that at which they look, but rather distorts and confuses it...yet: the squint is crucial in providing the aslant view that makes the object new. (patafilm # 396,03'41'', 17.1MB, quicktime/mov - flash version at blip.tv)

On the love for concepts and images

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"Images and concepts are formed at opposite poles of mental activity: imagination and reason. A polarity of exclusion plays between them, in a way utterly unlike that of magnetic poles. In this case, the opposite poles do not attract , but repel. If one loves concepts and images, the masculine and feminine poles of the psyche, one must love mental powers with two different loves."

Everyone has within himself his own somnambulist, of whom he is the mesmerist... is Sam Renseiw's relevant paraphrase of J.W. Ritter while conceptualising The Poetics of Space in a corner of canteen footage. View the short dialectic moving visual, with scratch-acordeon accompagnement by clicking here or on the links above. (patafilm # 395, 01'45'', 7.8 MB, quicktime/mov - flash version at blip.tv)

On distantiation and jump cuts

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"Our eyes see very little and very badly – so people dreamed up the microscope to let them see invisible phenomena; they invented the telescope…now they have perfected the cinecamera to penetrate more deeply into he visible world, to explore and record visual phenomena so that what is happening is poetically, pataphysicly reworked."

Voodling further around, Sam Renseiw mashed-up a short piece of red car footage into intricate jump cuts, complete with soundtrack remix by Polo& Solo's mesmerising scratch-Baudelaire. View the moving raod-movie still by clicking here or on the links above. (patafilm # 392a, 02'07'', 9.5 MB, Quicktime/mov - Flash version at blip.tv)

No cinematic interface

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"It's a house by the sea, sunshine, a perfect day. Short silence and sly move: a view from the ceiling after the corridor walk. Thoughts of morning light on rosemary & on the shore. But going further and further out, along the pier, in the wind, is crushing. She wears a pink blouse, a yellow cardigan, and a black skirt. Yes, she says, I like it here in winter. The frosty air, a lovely lovely sight. The words, the melody, flattens the thing, to take it. And the low low regard is spoken, in vain, after all those steps."

Following classic lines, Sam Renseiw climbed some steps, turned left into a corridor, finaly opening a door. View the uncut, un- manipulated rehearsal footage of the first part of the Goldberg Variations by clicking here or on the links above. (patafilm # 385, 02'22'', 10.8MB, quicktime/mov - flash version at blip.tv)

On the phenomenology of roundness

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" And for a dreamer of images, what calm there is in the word round. How peaceful it makes one's mouth, lips, and the being of breath become round. Because this too should be spoken by a philosopher who believes in the poetic substance of word-images. An for the voodler who has broken every kind of "being-there", it is a joy to the eye to continue his deployment in pataphysics with the declaration "Das Dasein ist rund". Being is round."

While further investigating the poetics of various confined spaces, Sam Renseiw cuts corners in the kitchen once more, rounding off a short evening panorama on the phenomenology of roundness, in one whole, un-blured take. View the domestic piece by clicking here or on the links above. (patafilm # 387, 01'18'', 6 MB, Quicktime/mov - Flash version at Blip.tv) Bonus link: Another poetic kitchen video- from Pepa, in Villa del Mar, Chile - can be viewed by clicking here.

Matter is dreamed in Reveries

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" Since reverie is always considered in terms of a relaxed consciousness, one usually ignores dreams of definite action, which I will designate as reveries of will. Furthermore, in the presence of reality, with all its forces and its terrestrial matter, it is easy to believe the the function of reality rules out the function of unreality, and easy to forget the unconscious impulses, the oneiric forces ceaselessly overflowing into conscious life."

As creative imagination has quite different functions from those of reproductive imagination, Sam Renseiw, paraphrasing Bachelard, proceeded to re-manipulate ordinary pixel reverie footage of spring. View the short animated poetic by clicking here, or on the links above. (patafilm # 391, 01'14'', 5.6 MB, Quicktime/mov - Flash version at Blip.tv)

The halting and rudimentary art of reading

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"Menard (perhaps without wanting to) has enriched, by means of a new technique, the halting and rudimentary art of reading: this new technique is that of the deliberate anachronism and the erroneous attribution. This technique, whose applications are infinite, prompts us to go through the Odyssey as if it were posterior to the Aeneid and the book Le jardin du Centaure of Madame Henri Bachelier as if it were by Madame Henri Bachelier. This technique fills the most placid works with adventure."

Undertaking a Voyage around the Room during the Easter break, Sam Renseiw offers a candid excerpt of bookshelf's, complete with hypnotic hologram harpsichord sound. Re-view the titles by clicking here or on the links above. (patafilm # 390, 01'52'', 8.2 MB, Quicktime/mov - Flash version at Blip.tv)

On motion analysis and treadmills

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“Through the years, a man peoples a space with images of provinces, kingdoms, mountains, bays, ships, islands, fishes, rooms, tools, stars, horses, and people. Shortly before his death, he discovers that the patient labyrinth of lines traces the image of his own face.”

The treadmill is essential for motion analyses since the measured object cannot move out of the measuring area pondered Sam Renseiw, remembering sentences from Borges; View the confined footage by clicking here or on the links above. (patafilm # 386, 01'26'' 6.5 MB, Quicktime /mov - Flash version at Blip.tv)

On floating in space

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"In apparent contrast to the feelings of pressure pushing down on the body, a feeling of floating or flying can often experienced. These floating experiences range from relatively tranquil experiences, during which one respondent reported, "I feel sort 'wrapped in cloud'," to encounters in which the floating is sometimes associated with the relatively rare experience of enjoyment or bliss."

In a quiet Easter trance, Sam Renseiw presents some floating spatial footage complete with church ship and fine audio mash-up. View the condensation by clicking here or on the links above. (patafilm # 388, 02'48'', 12.9 MB, Quicktime/mov - Flash version at Blip.tv)

On Species of Spaces and other Pieces

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" The creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his (her) contribution to the creative act."

The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees oneself of the chains that shackle the spirit... the arbitrariness of the constraint only serves to obtain precision of execution, muses Sam Renseiw, paraphrasing Stravinsky, capturing more intimate footage from the close set-up, complete with plunderphonics, a hint from Rrose Selavy and other left over objects.. View the latest unfolding of species of spaces by clicking here or on the links above. (patafilm # 384, 01'56''. 8.9 MB, Quicktime/mov - Flash version at Blip.tv)

On simulated reality

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"Existence comes first. Things are what they are independent of consciousness - of anyone's perceptions, images, ideas, feelings. Consciousness, by contrast, is dependent. Its function is not to create or control existence, but to be a spectator: to look out, to perceive, to grasp that which is."

Recently re-viewing the shark on the bathroom window ledge, Sam Renseiw complied to capture footage of a simulated reality, thinking of The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living. View the panoptical panoramic display by clicking here or on one of the links above. (patafilm # 383, 01'26'', 6.9 MB, Quicktime/Mov - Flash version at Blip.tv)

On Simulacra and Simulations

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" Abstraction today is no longer that of the map, the double, the mirror or the concept. Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being or a substance. It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal. The territory no longer precedes the map, nor survives it. Henceforth, it is the map that precedes the territory - precession of simulacra - it is the map that engenders the territory and if we were to revive the fable today, it would be the territory whose shreds are slowly rotting across the map. It is the real, and not the map, whose vestiges subsist here and there, in the deserts which are no longer those of the Empire, but our own. The desert of the real itself."

Speculating away on the notion of a hyperreal, Sam Renseiw captured some quiet reality footage from the kitchen corner; Day 3 entry for videobloggingweek2007. View the unfolding corny map of the territory by clicking here or on the links above. (patafilm # 382, 01'02'', 4.7 MB, Quicktime/mov - Flash version at Blip.tv)

The snow queen's psychogeography

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"There was once a dreadfully wicked hobgoblin. One day he was in capital spirits because he had made a looking-glass which reflected everything that was good and beautiful in such a way that it dwindled almost to nothing, but anything that was bad and ugly stood out very clearly and looked much worse. The most beautiful landscapes looked like boiled spinach, and the best people looked repulsive or seemed to stand on their heads with no bodies."

No hobgoblin of that sort, yet still speculating about the nature of Vlogging and other psychogeographical practices, Sam Renseiw captured some marvellous voodling footage from the Snow Queen's recent ice dance, posted right on time for H.C.Andersen's 202 birthday. View the gliding by clicking here or on the links above. (patafilm # 381, 01'49'', 8.2 MB, Quicktime/mov - Flash version at Blip.tv - The fine sound track mash-up is inspired by the poetic audio-troves on Jimmi B 's # 72.)

On reversibility as true symbolic form

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"This reversal leads us to...an inverse negative relation between the cinema and reality: it results from the loss of specificity which both have suffered. Cold collage, cool promiscuity, asexual engagement of two cold media which evolve in asymptotic line towards one another: cinema attempting to abolish itself in the absolute of reality, the real already long absorbed in cinematographic (or televised) hyperreality."

As Balconia never happens in winter - in Denmark- Sam Renseiw re-collected fragments of Baudrillard raised issues while capturing prime footage of pruning of the central weeping willow. View the drama unfolding by clicking here or view the same situation last spring. (patafilm # 380, 00'53'', 3.9 MB, Quicktime/Mov - Flash version at Blip.tv)