Free Press Summerfest and The A/V Swap

Wrought Park, Video by Sean Carroll Audio by Thousands

filmed mostly at Summerfest, Eleanor Tinsley Park, Co-Lab Artspace in Austin, the joanna Gallery and BOX 13 Artspace.



Johnny and Paul / Flash Yo Grill, Video by Michael Rodriguez Audio by Kanude

Where will you see a country song about Paul Wall and Johnny Dang turned into a love story about hipsters eaten by monsters? Where else but The A/V Swap?



Come check out the Best Of The A/V Swap 2009 tonight at Rice Media Center at 8 pm!

This fall The A/V Swap is back with a bigger and badder group of films, this time from both Texas and New York! For our screening Friday, September 18th at 8 pm, The A/V Swap presents the Best Of 2009, a selection of collaborations from Houston, Austin, Buffalo and New York City created this summer. The screening will start with an artists reception at 7:30 pm and conclude a Q & A with participating filmmakers and musicians.

A/V Swap projects are collaborations that begin with a film or song that is traded between artists to complete; we hope to provide a forum where artists can showcase their talents by manipulating audio and video they would never otherwise encounter. In this "swap" we anonymously pair composers and filmmakers, hoping to expand their creative horizons. Over 70 artists participated in this year's swap.

This year the A/V Swap is proud to be screening films at the Rice Media Center, founded in 1969 by Dominique de Menil and an evolving haven for experimental film for 40 years. Many inspired events have happen at Rice Media Center; Andy Warhol premiered Lonesome Cowboys, Dennis Hooper performed the Russian Dynamite Death Chair Act and Spike Lee was hosted for a screening of Do The Right Thing followed by a "spirited debate" with the crowd. The founders' intent was that the Media Center provide a channel through which different peoples of the world could communicate- and for four decades it has lived up to their vision. The A/V Swap is pleased to be working with another exemplary innovator to bring you this event, KTRU, Rice Radio.

Push It

Untitled (Sisyphean Task), 2009

by Divya Murthy

While Devin the Dude performed on the main stage at Summerfest, Frank Olson, Johnny DiBlasi and Matt Keller were attracting a significant audience toiling away in the sweltering heat. While festival-goers tuned in, turned on and dropped out, at the top of the hill Olson and Keller endlessly repeated a performance piece referencing the unyielding absurdity of an endless chore.

Set under the shade of a tree and surrounded by teeming crowds, Untitled (Sisyphean Task), attracted onlookers, cheerleaders and catcalls. While one performer unsuccessfully attempted to move an old heavy television with broken wheels up a 12-foot ramp, another made lackadaisical loops around the structure. In case there was not enough emphasis on cyclical behavior, Keller and Olson both painted purple Os on their back; their sweat washed the paint down in rivulets. As they continually exerted themselves, jocks in polos and hippie girls in flowery dresses looked on, their minds spinning with circular humdrum. A video looped on the television, playing video of CDs spinning in the players, scenes from action films and screensaver-ish self-generating computer images.

Was it really necessary to be so didactic and push so many literal ideas of circular logic at a redundant pace? Considering the references to Sisyphus (who endured a never ending, ineffective act), a durational performance art piece (that lasted at least two hours), and the overcrowded venue (a park teeming with hipsters looking for music not art), I would probably say yes. As Sisyphean Task endured at Summerfest its audience filtered in and out; their quickly recognizable visual markers made the performance accessible to any person passing through, pausing in wonder or finishing their beer before leaving to see a band play on the main stage. DiBlasi and Olson made a courageous effort at creating a lengthy time-based piece, with a fair concept and delivery for the brutal temperatures during the heavily trafficked festival. Performance art still seems to be one of those largely under-represented mediums in a contemporary art world that accommodates the obsession with ownership of images. Durational pieces are rarely utilized in fine arts venues, especially in Houston. Sisyphean Task, tweaked with a bit more subtlety, would blossom in an art space where it is one of the main events. I believe many art lovers, who didn’t want to go to Summerfest, would appreciate its earnest bluntness.