On quest and request(s)

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"It's a strange thing, ideas. They're not there, and then they're not there again, and then suddenly they're there. And it's a magical and beautiful thing when they do come. And then the next thing you know, there are some ideas you don't like. So those are discarded or saved until they find their place. When you fall in love with ideas, that's pretty close to euphoria."

Still pondering on the vlogging idea(s) and the consistency of the term "art", Sam Renseiw fulfils a voodle request, entitled "but you can dance to it", then proceed to the ritualised diptic production via a new Lumiere bonus video on today's post. View the disco trance by clicking here or on the links above. (patafilm # 449, 01'27'', 6.6MB, Quicktime/mov - Flash version at blip.tv)

Bonus Lumiere video, a quiet Bellevue prospect - fresh footage from the day - can be accessed by clicking here (Lum # 07, 00'59'', 4.5MB, Quicktime/mov) And: remember to check the embedded links in the text. (context, you know !)

In my quiet hood

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" In entering to passion the individual shudders momentarily, as if entering an unknown element; but as he has yielded, he will be embraced and carried away like a swimmer by water. He revels in this and does not want to touch the ground until he loses his strength or ramp might drown him. "

Leaping back onto the nearest familiar shore after waterborn caused by some inconspicuous panoramic ripples, Sam Renseiw re- explores the tranquil banks of his hood, missing sunshine today. View the short afternoon walk by clicking here or on the links above. (patafilm # 447, 01'22'' 6.4 MB, Qucktime/mov - Streaming Flash version at blip.tv.)

Bonus Lumiere video: A transfixed look, moving. Escalator, Kowloon/HK/ 2006. Just one rule broken! Click here to view.(Lum # 05,00'50'', 4MB, Quicktime)

On toddlers and pets

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"It is obvious that art cannot teach anyone anything, since in four thousand years humanity has learnt nothing at all. We should long ago have become angels had we been capable of paying attention to the experience of art, and allowing ourselves to be changed in accordance with the ideals it expresses. Art only has the capacity to make the human soul receptive to good. It's ridiculous to imagine that people can be taught to be good... Art can only give good, a jolt, the occasion for psychical experience."

Just voodling on with some straight forward dog-meets-toddler-in garden footage adding synaesthetic blurs, Sam Renseiw ponders on Chris Marker and Tarkovsky work, trying to figure out things. Click here or on the links above to view the outcome. (patafilm # 446, 00'57'', 4.3MB,Quicktime/mov - Streaming Flash version for PC at blip.tv)

Bonus Lumiere video: Mute and moving fixed rotation, manufactured according to the Haugstrup Pedersen rules. Click here to set in motion. (Lum #02, 00'53'', 3.9MB, Quicktime/mov)

On reading ripples

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"At the same time, the indentations in the brow of the wave must be considered, where it splits into two wings, one stretching toward the shore from right to left and the other from left to right, and the departure point of the destination of their divergence or convergence is this negative tip, which follows the advance of the wings but is always held back, subject to their alternate overlapping until another wave, a stronger wave, overtakes it, with the same problem of divergence-convergence, and then a wave stronger still, which resolves the knot by shattering it."

Condensing footage wavelengths into a short palindromic view, Sam Renseiw further investigates the nature of the gaze, inspired by a superb French exposure. View the cut-loop by clicking here or on the links above. (patafilm # 444, 02'37, 11.9MB, Quicktime/mov - Streaming Flash version at blip.tv)
For more mute enlightenment, enjoy an illustrative moment of delightful fixed action by clicking here for the lumiere voodling premiere on patalab. ( Lum # 01, 00'55'', 4.1 MB, Quicktime/mov)

On level pagan dub

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"In Denmark, Midsummer's Eve is a popular day, celebrated with large bonfires. Among Danes, this event is known as Sankt Hans aften, or St. John's Eve, and is celebrated on the eve of June 23 rd. Danes sing on this day the traditional Vi elsker vort land, "We Love Our Land", and burn a witch made of straw on the bonfire as a remembrance of the Church's witchburnings of the 16th and 17th centuries. The Scandinavian customs date back to pagan times when tribute was paid to the powers of the sun god with bonfires signifying the defeat of darkness."

Enjoying a cosily absurd moment of quiet pagan relaxation, Sam Renseiw joined the exclusive crowd at The Vaterpas Research Institute's Villa in Ll. Elmue, to celebrate this year's midsummer. View some streaming hot footage complete with cool Danish dub by clicking here or on the links above. (patafilm # 445, 02'16'', 10.6MB, Quicktime/mov - Streaming Flash version for PC at blip.tv)

On gaze, space, desire

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"..in other words, I am finally reinforcing the convention that declares illicit any sight of the breast; that is to say, I create a kind of mental brassiere suspended between my eyes and that bosom, which, from the flash that reached the edge of my visual field, seemed to me fresh and pleasing to the eye. In other words, my not looking presupposes that I am thinking of that nakedness, worrying about it; and this is basically an indiscreet and reactionary attitude."

Just passing by, Sam Renseiw walked through familiar free spaces, newly adorned with various artistic paraphernalia, focusing his gaze. View the cut-up and montage voodling of desire by clicking here or on the links above. (patafilm # 442, 03'10'', 14.3Mb, Quicktime/mov - Streaming Flash version for PC at blip.tv)

Amid things that signify themselves

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" At this point he faces his first critical moment: sure that from now on the world will reveal to him an infinite wealth of things, Mr. Palomar tries staring at everything that comes within eyeshot; he feels no pleasure, and he stops. A second phase follows, in which he is convinced that only some things are to be looked at, others not, and he must go and seek the right ones. To do this, he has to face each time problems of selection, exclusion, hierarchies of preference; he soons realizes he is spoiling everything, as always when he involves his own ego and all the problems he has with his own ego."

While further brooding about the endless varieties of voodling definitions, Sam Renseiw uploaded a short inconspicuous voodle, featuring urban pavement cleansing and a displaced animal encounter, remembering that : "...a thing is happy to be looked at by other things only when it is convinced that it signifies itself and nothing else, amid things that signify themselves and nothing else..". View the simultaneous event by clicking here or on the links above. (patafilm # 441, 00'43'', 3.3Mb, Quicktime/mov - Streaming Flash version for PC at blip.tv)

In mutual observation and speculation

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“Think of what it would be to have a work conceived from outside the self, a work that would let us escape the limited perspective of the individual ego, not only to enter into selves like our own but to give speech to that which has no language, to the bird perching on the edge of the gutter, to the tree in spring and the tree in fall, to stone, to cement, to plastic…”

Trying to voodle some older footage into something of consistency, Sam Renseiw pillaged his archives, pro forma, finding traces of a sand-child, to mash-up a short visual landscape with a duo and side figures. View the move into meditation, complete with de Campos poetics, by clicking here or on the links above. (patafilm # 440, 01'51'', 8.5MB, Quicktime/mov - Streaming Flash version for PC: click on "it's on blip.tv" widget at right)

On the perils of thinking

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" One of the perils of thinking is to see while thinking. Those who think with their reason are distracted. Those who think with their emotion are sleeping. Those who think with their desires are dead. I, However, think with my imagination, and all reason, sorrow and impulse in me are reduced to something remote and irrelevant, like this merry-go-round where the last light of the sun unlastingly hovers..." (339)

Further pursuing his voodling passion, Sam Renseiw got caught in a carousel swirll, rescuing imaginative footage nevertheless. View the short, colourful irrelevance complete with A Naifa's "Um" by clicking here or on the links above. (patafilm # 438b, 00'47'', 3.6MB, Quicktime/mov - Streaming Flash version for PC users: click the small "It's on blip.tv" widget at right.

On Graffitti and voodling

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" It is a rule of life that we can, and should, learn from everyone. There are solemn and serious things we can learn from quacks and crooks, there are philosophies taught to us by fools, there are lessons in faithfulness and justice brought to us by chance and by those we chance to meet. Everything is in everything. In certain particular lucid moments of contemplation, like those of early afternoon when I observantly wander through the streets, each person brings me a novelty, each building teaches me something new, each placard has a message for me." (357)

While paraphrasing a fragment from Pessoa's Book of Disquiet, found fitting for his urban ramblings, Sam Renseiw encounters fresh street-art in the making and an inconspicuous collision just a moment later. Contemplate the voodled[x] sequence of events by clicking here or on the links above. (patafilm # 437, 02'01'' 9.1 MB, Quicktime/mov - Streaming Flash version for PC users: click on the blip.tv widget at right) [X] voodling (adj.): the manufacturing of inconspicuous video doodles

Riveting bifurcated repetitions

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" I'm astounded whenever I finish something. Astounded and distressed. My perfectionistic instinct should inhibit me from finishing; it should inhibit me from even beginning. But I get distracted and start filming something. What I achieve is not the product of an act of will but of my will's surrender. I begin because I don't have the strength to think; I finish because I don't have the strength to quit. These videos are my cowardice. " (text 152)

"I never kept sheep," exults Sam Renseiw, "but it's as if I'd done so. My soul is like a shepherd. It knows wind and sun, walking hand in hand with the seasons, observing, and following along..." Riveted by the mesmerising, mechanic moves of three women fingering card-boards, Sam, the coward, surrenders his gaze to yet another capture of repetitive footage. View the bifurcation's by clicking here or on the links above. (patafilm # 436, 03'58'', 18.3MB, Quicktime/mov - Streaming Flash version for PC at blip.tv)

When hummingbirds come back

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"These are the days when Birds come back/A very few/ a Bird or two/To take a backward look//These are the days when skies resume/The old, old sophistries of June /A blue and gold mistake// Oh fraud that cannot cheat the Bee / Almost thy plausibility/ Induces my belief// Till ranks of seeds their witness bear /And softly thro' the altered air/Hurries a timid leaf//Oh Sacrament of summer days/Oh Last Communion in the Haze/Permit a child to join//Thy sacred emblems to partake/They consecrated bread to take/And thine immortal wine!//"

Indulging in a moment of nostalgia over a pixelfest not attended, Sam Renseiw captured footage of another, quiet fest-closing near Dragør, on late Sunday afternoon, musing about the screenings of some videos near the Pacific; And: Sam would have loved to walk the line too. View the other closing by clicking here or on the links above. (patafilm # 434, 01'32'', 6.9MB, Quicktime/mov - Flash version at blip.tv)

To sweep away the world's dust

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" A broom has a number of meanings in Zen art. Monks spend a lot of time sweeping the temple grounds, and one was enlightened when he heard the sound a piece of tile striking a tree while he was sweeping; the whack from a woman's broom spurred Hakuin on to enlightenment; Jittoku, the sidekick of the Zen poet Kanzan, is almost always portrayed holding a broom, or symbolically represented by just a broom."

Practising a moment of Zen, Sam Renseiw is equally enlightened by the soft broom actions of a fair blonde maiden. View the un-foldings by clicking here or on the links above. (patafilm # 435, 01'35'', 7MB, Quicktime/mov - Flash version at blip.tv)

On Umbra and Ella

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"The cocktail umbrella is among humankind's most elegant and useful inventions. During the present prudish neo-Victorian era, which we can only hope is coming to a close, the cocktail umbrella has developed a reputation for being silly and frivolous. On the contrary. The cocktail umbrella, so often overlooked, so frequently maligned, epitomizes form-follows-function design."

Summer in Copenhagen: blue skies with de Chirico shadow castings in the quiet afternoon urban cocktail, where Sam Renseiw recorded a lone poetic Asian walk in the city centre. View the short umbrella passage by clicking here or on the links above. (patafilm # 433, 01'22'', 6.3 MB, Quicktime/mov - Flash version at blip.tv)

On banal repetition(s)

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"Repetition is a huge world and creating something which is repetitive and still exiting is a challenge. Repetition forces the camera to focus on the essence, since it exposes every detail again and again."

Recording once again the repetitive mermaid rituals at Langelinie, Sam Renseiw focused on triptic footage. view the posing(s) by cliking here or on the links above. (patafilm # 432, 03'03'' 13.9 MB, Quicktime/mov - Flash version at blip.tv)

On the limits of verbal expression

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" An author is often merely an x, even when his named is signed, something quite impersonal, which addresses itself abstractly, by the aid of video, to thousands and thousands, while remaining itself unseen and unknown, living a life as hidden, as anonymous, as it is possible for a life to be, in order, presumably, not to reveal the too obvious and striking contradiction between the prodigious means of communication employed and the fact that the author is only a single individual."

Remembering a passage of a letter from Kafka to Brod, Sam Renseiw speculates on the nature of his videographic endavours, musing if they could, in their totality and in spite of their contents, just as well be understood as the misleading imagery of a seducer, written behind clouds. View the unfolding blend of clouds, chimera lamps and royal pavillion rooftop by clicking here or on the links above. (patafilm # 431, 01'47'', 8,3MB, Quicktime/mov - Flash version at blip.tv)

On solitaire reverie

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"A root is always a discovery. We dream it more than we see it. It surprises us when we discover it: is it not rock and hair, flexible filament and hard wood? With it, we have an example of contradictions among things. In the realm of imagination, the dialectics of contraries proceeds through objects, by opposition of differentiated, reified substances. How we would activate the imagination if we were to seek out systematically objects which contradict each other! "

In a short state of fluctuating solitaire reverie, Sam Renseiw encounters glimpses of nostalgia, Richter's candle, Bachelard's poetics and the inconspicuous fall of an undefined object. View the unravelling in the cabin by clicking here or on the links above. (patafilm # 430, 01'31'' 6.8Mb, Quicktime/mov - Flash version at blip.tv)

On approaching slowness

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"To wait means to live the present moment fully. When this happens, the present reveals itself as that which cannot readily be seen through. Waiting may sounds like doing nothing for the present, but it is not an escape from reality. To wait is to hesitate or to unplug, to create a short circuit, and by doing so, delay the automatic judgments which societies, enamored with speed, demands of us."

On an short week-end excursion, Sam Renseiw experiences the combined bliss of serendipity and of a Walden-like cabin, having a great deal of fine company in the small house; especially in the morning, when nobody calls. View the unfolding of moment of solitude by clicking here or on the links above. (patafilm # 428, 01' 58'', 8.8MB, Quicktime/mov - Flash version at blip.tv)