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Brenda Clews
Videopoetry
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Nine months in production, a video/filmpoem of three earth or nature poems spanning 30 years.1
22:04
Tangled Garden, a videopoem
by Brenda Clews 2,433 views
*Tangled Garden* (a long, slow art film, like meditating, a meditation) is a triptych of earth poems:
-A Floral Opera (2011)
-In the Hands of the Garden Gods (1979)
-Slipstream, the Tangled Garden (2006)
(with impromptu speaking between the poems, which each end with ~~~ in the subtitle track.)
Beautiful singing by the musician, Catherine Corelli from her album, Seraphic Tears (2010) (with her permission): http://www.jamendo.com/en/album/79547
Note: This video is subtitled. Click on the CC on the play bar to activate or de-activate the subtitles. YouTube will also automatically translate the subtitles into 25 languages if English is not your main language and you would like to get the gist of the poetry.
A blog post describing the making of Tangled Garden: http://brendaclews.blogspot.com/2012/01/videopoem-tangled-garden-triptych-of.html
I am humbled and amazed by the responses (on Facebook, G+, Gather, here and by private email) to my latest and most ambitious and longest videopoem, Tangled Garden. It took nine months to produce, and is 22 minutes long. I thought no-one would take the time to watch it, and I am still taken aback that anyone has. I have a confession to make, I save your comments for bleak days. You have no idea how you inspire me and how much I love you all. -
2
4:21
'Green Goddess,' a dance in the woods for Summer Solstice
by Brenda Clews 1,320 views
Poetry, performance, video by Brenda Clews. (This video is not without humour - laughter, though, can open us to deeper insights.)
"Chthonic goddess of the greening earth. Wrinkled, like tree bark, painted, an exotic glade. Process, the recycling of Nature, life emerging from death. An organic art. The mask's fronds as if growing out of the forest floor in the Spring. Papier-mache, mulch: paper, or leaves. The face as landscape; the face carrying the landscape with it. Flower colours framing her face; the iridescence of insects, sheen of dragonfly. Feathery wings, plumed serpent, vestiges of living vines. A vision of a Nature spirit, Summer Solstice, a Midsummer Night's Dream. Shaman of the forest. Tutelary guide in the rainforest. Jungle of the imagination. Then the Surreality of the sky-blue mask on the greening gold fields of her face: I offer you a masked mask."
After the papier-mâché green goddess masque was finished, I wrote some of the thoughts I had while making it. That became the prose poem.
Last Spring I had wanted to make a dancing video with the mask and the prose poem, but it didn't happen until a few days ago. The footage is from a 4 min clip of the only usable footage from a shoot in High Park in Toronto with my daughter not actually on camera, but affecting things.
There is an essay on some of the themes I considered when composing this videopoem at my blog: http://brendaclews.blogspot.com/2011/06/green-goddess-masque.html
A blog post from 2009 with photos documenting the process of making the masque, along with the writing: http://brendaclews.blogspot.com/2009/11/green-goddess-papier-mache-masque.html
This video is part of my multi-media work, 'Green Fire': http://www.brendaclews.com/green-fire
The background birds and forest track is a mix I made mostly from http://freesound.org/ -
3
4:37
Voicings
by Brenda Clews 372 views
Besides reading it at a poetry event last week, I videoed 3 rehearsals, and memorized it for this videopoem of 'Voicings,' a prose poem that I wrote some years ago and revised recently. This poem also made it to the top of SoundClick's Poetry charts in 2007.
While I but dimly understand the 'cult of personality,' I find even with my own work that when I perform a piece it garners more views than my videos of imagery with a voiceover. I cannot do it - show myself - without a sense of humour, though.
My aesthetic is multiplicity, multiples. Nodes, modules, events, thoughts, memories, everything is intersecting, widely missing the connection, intwined, separated, in the flow together or opposing each other. Vectors pulse everywhere in an ongoing processes of embodiment, momentary materializations.
We are layered, enfolded. I am composed of at least two, and usually more. My dopplegängers often show up in my videos; sometimes they get carried away and dance the words of the world. Ventriloquist, yes, but the main figure speaks and she, the double, explains. Like captions. Or perhaps she is the emotion within the words. The spirit fighting to get out. Anyway, she takes over at the end, dancing, and some of the colours and shapes remind me of ancient Sumerian myth, and Polynesian spirit charms.
She is Semiotic, rhizome, an off shoot of the woman speaking of words in a worded world.
That is a solid silver Sari wedding belt that I am wearing as a necklace. I only wear it on special occasions.
To read the poem, go to my blog: http://brendaclews.blogspot.com/2011/12/video-poetry-voicings.html
(Also, I composed the background soundtrack in GarageBand. On January 29, 2012 Rumblefish put in a claim on my work, which shocks me. I believe they are trying to make money off my creative work. Here is a screen capture of my GarageBand file: https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-SJO1qUkZfsg/TyVfy9fA8PI/AAAAAAAAOng/mOnXqfFzXO8/s1600/VoicingsGarageBandTrackScrnCptr -BrendaClews2011.jpg I have not violated any copyright as far as I know. Small GarageBand loops are legal; the poem is mine and I can prove it, and the midi file was generated from the text in my poem.) -
4
1:22
Nik Beat @Videofag
by Brenda Clews 50 views
A clip of Nik Beat performing a poem at Videofag in Kensington Market in Toronto on March 16, 2013. A live performance videoed and edited by Brenda Clews.
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5
11:58
Ink Ocean, a reading at HOWL@QSpace
by Brenda Clews 124 views
On Nov 25, 2012, I performed my prose poem 'Ink Ocean,' on the Gulf Oil Spill, as one of the featured poets at Nik Beat's HOWL@QSpace in Toronto.
In lieu of trying to say something about this poem and a performance of it, I share notes my dear friend John Walter (poet, playwright, novelist, teacher, intellectual, polymath) wrote while watching the video:
"Where plumes drag through the ocean's gloom" "Salt water on fire!" This poem is a wakeup call if I've ever heard one. "Burning despair of illusion"--waw. Your response to the black ocean with words is powerful and moves from despair to love, Brenda. Your performance of Ink Ocean is powerful and rhetorically dramatic. It was so great to see you in front of a live audience.
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You get across the massive destruction, the complete wiping out of the entire environment, with the voice of a jeremiad poet who does not let herself lose herself in woe.
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I like the image of being 'fishermen of words' , the way you blend the ocean of ink and the blackened ocean, contaminated by the oil spill.
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"Let cold salt water wash our eyes until we swim in vision." So many great lines in this poem. I felt I was right there, in front of you, watching you perform.
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Your theatricality is impressive. Your voice is a skillful instrument. You demonstrate your ire and sadness and yet do not succumb to it.
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I like the way you undulate, 'anchored in the swell." The panoply of images you present is stark, and yet vast.
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Great finish. So gladdening to see you get such enthusiastic applause.
(Dec 3, 2012)
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With thanks to Nik Beat, Q Space and Luciano Iacobelli. It was a great evening. -
6
4:47
Retreat To Beautiful Objects (with words)
by Brenda Clews 88 views
...the making of a painting that's become a poster, including stills of the making of the papier mache masque I wore in 'Tangled Garden.' I painted it to celebrate that long videopoem, Tangled Garden, http://youtu.be/OG37qWh4rTM , a slow art film of a triptych of earth poems, Surreal, mythopoetic, a rhizoma of images, metaphors, explorations, philosophies (with subtitles) that is garnering view counts on YouTube, defying the expectations of those who said it was too long, not enough happens, no-one will watch it, and so on. It's somewhat delightful when that happens, huh. Cause to celebrate.
Music is Pierre-Marie Cœdès' 'Whirling Thoughts,' from his album, "Insomnia": http://jamendo.com/en/list/a94667/insomnia (with his permission). It is a great album, do go and listen. -
7
2:21
PL: P(ink) L(ady)
by Brenda Clews 709 views
PL: P(ink) L(ady)
once, the sakura tree
blossoming cloud
of pink
blood,
like split cherries
a pulp of wounds
fleshy stone fruit
soft under his fists
brazen, the road
where I walk
brazen, my ripe cherry
nectar
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A creative treatment on the theme of violence against women. The ending is meant to be positive - she's no longer hiding, and she is living from her source of nectar.
Shot with an iPhone4, and edited in FCE. The text had a lot of treatment, and took as long to create as the film itself. Normally I don't like text in videopoems, unless the text is a pictorial element in the composition.
The track, Chinese Sunrise, by bjarneo on SoundCloud: http://soundcloud.com/bjarneo/bjarne-o-chinese-sunrise -
8
5:21
Shadow Cave
by Brenda Clews 680 views
Shadow Cave is about reaching into the darkness in ourselves and bringing what is hidden to light, which is reminiscent of the return of the sun in the darkest moment.
It's a small offering. I did subtitle it, so click on the cc if you'd like to read along, or translate into another language.
It's based on a real ritual I did in 1995 and which I wrote an extensive entry in my journal about. I re-wrote the ritual as a sort of modern fairy tale. It's about integrating ourselves at our deepest levels, however we image that. Sometimes what is in our shadows is not anything 'dark' or 'dangerous' at all! It is only what we've repressed in ourselves... it could be a hurt or wounded part of yourself, and it might be your very creativity itself.
Shadows and dopple gangers appear in this videopoem, as ever. :)
Please forgive. (I just can't help being multiple, ya know!)
I offer it to the light within us.
Blog post with more info: http://brendaclews.blogspot.com/2011/10/dance-videopoem-shadow-cave.html
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The video is subtitled, -if you like, you can read along, or have Google automatically translate the text into one of 25 languages. If the cc in the play bar is red, the subtitle track is on; if black, it's not. Mouse click to toggle. -
9
4:14
Wear White Paint for the Moon - at CENtRAL
by Brenda Clews 371 views
Note: I created a subtitle file for this video so you can read the words while you listen, if you like, or have Google translate into another language.
This reading of my prosepoem, 'Wear White Paint for the Moon,' took place at CENtRAL, a pub in Toronto, and while I wasn't particularly happy with it, I did have enormous fun making the video, and quite like it now.
With tripod on camera, the angle was unchangeable. I layered multiple tracks of the same clip with lots of filters and then pulled in some footage I had shot of the full moon last August. The moon is quite bouncy in parts, and yet matches the words in those parts, which I found delightfully synchronous.
Background music - 'Satellite Two,' by Professor Kliq, from his album, "Athene's Theory of Everything: The Original Soundtrack": http://www.jamendo.com/en/album/90783 -
10
1:07
A One Minute Videopoem: 'Mask'
by Brenda Clews 186 views
"...the mask was exactly what she was searching for, exactly
what she needed: a face threaded over her face, a light
threaded over her light.
You speak, and the mask begins to speak,
and the listening takes fire."
Dale Favier: http://koshtra.blogspot.com/2011/06/mask.html
Slipping away, between
restraints.
Voices, performance, video and video editing, Brenda Clews. Blog post with more discussion: http://brendaclews.blogspot.com/2011/09/mask.html -
11
3:46
The Wall
by Brenda Clews 303 views
Video, words, voice, music by Brenda Clews, 2011.
It cannot be cracked, splintered, knocked down, for I've tried all this and more; it can only be burnt.
Like karma, though it is 'not' like karma because there is no cause and effect. No lesson. Rather, irrational, what we can never fully know. It sounds like glass, but it's not. There isn't anything it's like except for an impenetrable, invisible wall. There is no reason for this, none at all. Kafka's 'trial.'
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The sound track is a cut, layered, staggered, shortened midi file of the text that I generated. I used helicopters, gunshot, and a pad4choir from a music text generator, and ethereal sunrise, smooth clav, whirly, and nature sounds from GarageBand, plus the original track of thunder and lightning, so it is meant to be a bit of a war zone. Hey, recognizing and burning down walls! Obviously this is not a relaxation video!
I meditate regularly and often do yoga sets. Especially I do this when I am working through issues. During one of my sessions last week the metaphor of the wall arose, and while resting after the yoga set I picked up my iPhone and began speaking, intending to write a prose poem from my voice notes. I left the recording as is, and added the background of sounds and instruments. My speaking of the words is not a performance but an embodiment of the meaning. Then I began to work with recent footage of a lightning storm I had shot. Initially, when looking at the rushes, I was perturbed that I hadn't removed the mesh screen. Yet the footage is perfect for this video. The subconscious is all of a processing, mobile, energy of constantly equilibrating unity, and what we are voicing here is what we are filming there. Our lives are always moving beyond their boundaries as we push into deeper processes of who we are, in our aloneness and togetherness.
See blog post for more discussion: http://brendaclews.blogspot.com/2011/09/videopoem-wall.html
This videopoem was featured at Moving Poems in September 2011: http://movingpoems.com/2011/09/the-wall-by-brenda-clews/ -
12
5:14
White Petal
by Brenda Clews 297 views
Full description, including the words in the video: http://brendaclews.blogspot.com/2011/07/white-petal_16.html
After recording a few voiceovers, and being unable to leave this project alone, finally I wrote something along the lines that I'd hoped for. Which was a discussion of relationship, reminiscent of Annie in Woody Allen's 'Annie Hall (1977)' or Cristina in his 'Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008),' or like a Wong Kar Wai character who simply can't commit, simply can't, like York in 'Days of Being Wild (1990).' The character Rupert Birkin's description of relationship in D.H. Lawrence's 'Women in Love (1920)' before he marries Ursula, along with Lawrence's writings of the sexual electricity between people was an influence. There's a little Germaine Greer here too, I think ('Female Eunuch (1970).' And all those women who became nuns during the centuries so they could gain an education and could write, paint, compose outside of the confines of marriage and having 16 children. Some of us dance to our own music. (Said with the grin of a Cheshire Cat.)
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Experimenting... always learning! Trying this and that with the footage. Having fun, and it shows in the humour of the piece.
I live in a city in a small apartment. Fabric covers a doorway and shelves. I'd like to see myself dance before it is too late.
Faded opulence. Over-the-edge-of. Yet floral abundance. The flowers are the stars—beauty, that edge of fading.
There are sections to this video: doubles (video itself a type of mirror or reflection of the world), single, layering, shifts in colour and style as the yoga dance continues.
Who are we? Repetitions of ourselves. Our memories create us in our fragmentary identities. I fold into who I was or who I will become. Uncertainty is confusing. People flee from my uncertainty.
White Petal
Look into a dissolving mirror
bones, skin, neurons
the self-image.
This poem is not neat as intact
petal veins, mysterious as garden
fossils.
The poem writes,
rises from ruminations, dried
flowers on my spine
bursting seeds.
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Danced, videoed, edited by Brenda Clews; background music by Gabrielle Roth and the Mirrors, from an old favourite, Initiation: gabrielleroth.com/ -
13
8:00
Painting of Vision Trees
by Brenda Clews 575 views
I subtitled this video. Click on the CC if you'd like to read along, or use Google's translation service for the subtitles in another language. ( wrote a post about how to caption/subtitle your videos here: http://brendaclews.blogspot.com/2011/09/how-to-make-subtitle
s-for-your-videos.html)
A time-lapse art video. I thought to paint some trees of significance to me for the Festival of the Trees which I hosted on my blog June 1st (http://brendaclews.blogspot.com/2011/06/festival-of-trees-60.html), and so hooked up the camera and recorded. The footage is sped up 1200%!
'Your video reminded me of a bird building her nest,' William wrote. I hadn't seen that. The sped-up video, ink, pen, paint, fingers, constructing the nest, the voiceover story, a nesting story. An accurate description.
The voiceover relates a tree story. The magnetism of certain trees. A story of my vision trees. About finding home through those trees. The voiceover is perhaps a bit loose - I begin by reading a piece and then just start talking - but I wanted something colloquial, expressing the extraordinary in the ordinary, a vision in a rambly monologue. It's a real story. I hope the way I've layered it into the video works for you.
This painting is my first landscape, maybe ever. I'm a figurative artist normally. But these trees are special.
The music is by dear Pierre-Marie Coedes, 'City night hubbub (instrumental)' from his album, "Lapses of Time": http://jamendo.com/en/album/46021. Pierre-Marie's music is a complex, sensitive interweaving of instruments and rhythms, and while eminently listenable, reveals riches on closer listening. Do check out his oeuvre at Jamendo.
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If you're interested in the process of the painting, I talk about it here: http://brendaclews.blogspot.com/2011/06/vision-trees.html -
14
2:34
The Dinosaur Book Is Green Fire
by Brenda Clews 484 views
A time-lapse art video: drawing in India inks in my beloved Moleskine Folio Sketchbook A4; pulsing green kalaidoscope in the background; text of the poem moving slowly up the screen at a diagonal; and a voiceover poem. The world is a green furor of creativity - the green fire of life.
I shot the video with a Canon HF S100 and speeded up about 800%.
Twenty min of footage became a 2.5 minute video. A longer drawing would use a huge amount of space on the hard drive, and so, except for short films, I don't recommend this technique.
I edited the footage in Final Cut Express 4.0.1. Because of the camera angle, I rotated and cropped the sketch clip, and underneath added a layer of footage with a kalaidescope filter, and also ran the text of the prosepoem over the paper at an angle, motion keyframing it, and changing the opacity from light to dark letters over the duration of the video.
I created the music in a cool program, a 'P22 Music Text Composition Generator (A free online music utility)': http://www.p22.com/musicfont In this program, each letter has a sound. When you put text in, you can choose what BMP and instrument you'd like, and the program generates a midi file, with the sheet music. I layered my track in GarageBand 6.0.2 using different instruments, splicing and re-arranging.
Even the reading of the writing was speeded up, in Audacity 1.3.12, using the tempo filter.
From start to finish took about 12 hours, there were many layers, of image, text, and sound, each with filters, and I had to render a few times, which took hours, to see if what I had produced worked.
While this method for creating an art video works, my camera battery can only tape for 1½ hours, which is not long enough for most art projects.
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Rubies In Crystal post, with the full text of the prose poem: http://brendaclews.blogspot.com/2011/04/dinosaurs-book-is-green-fury.html
This video poem was featured at Moving Poems, an "anthology of the best videopoems, filmpoems, animated poems, and other poetry videos from around the web": http://movingpoems.com/2011/04/the-dinosaur-book-is-green-fire-by-brenda-clews/ -
15
3:04
dance/ ...indigo folio leaves
by Brenda Clews 585 views
A dance that is creative movement, a moving meditation. Brenda Clews: prose poetry, dance, video - http://brendaclews.com Music: José Travieso's track, 'Monster,' on his album, "No More Faith" - http://josetravieso.org/index3music_10nomorefaith.html
Music
...enters your backbone, joints, plucks the
cartilage holding you together. Music is the
moon of the red tides of your bloodstream.
Drift to and fro, a willow tree, or sway, bend,
a flamenco, stretch, purple morning glories
on the vine, jump. Sway your hips, delta of
fiery flow. Express yourself, woman. No-one
is watching. Say it all. The lyric travels tenderly
through your wrist, a memory of the wind on the
hill. You are an instrument of the musician who
is absent, gone. Whose music plays on; who
does not know you exist. Orphean muse. Twirl
on the floor, the beat in your ankles, room
spinning, see the canvas walls, luminous see
the sun, moon, stars that are always there.
Spin on the clock turning. Give everything.
Wanton woman. Harlot of the night. Mother of
angels. Insufferable radiance. Black hole of
emptiness. Sweet moan nectar.
Mystery dangles like your silver bracelets,
the ghosts are present. Approach yourself by
disappearing. Undulate your liquid bones.
Beautiful sensuality. Seek invisible illumination
in your writhing steps. Leave time, transform in
your multiplicity, a seer searching the spheres.
Manifest your dreams. Shake them out of the air
to materialize before you like light forms. Shimmy
wet sweat, a flag in a wind storm. Thunder the
floor. Witch, werewolf, Goth beauty, fragile
starchild, cyberpunk, pull the sky down. Sway
those hips, woman. Sway them until you ignite.
Dance with your ineffable muse. Just, dance.
I pull purple veils over my vision, indigo
blue silk lights and shadows.
Listen: dance on the stage of your
imagination.
© by Brenda Clews, 2011 -
16
1:30
The Dancer's Backskin
by Brenda Clews 282 views
An accidental drawing - in a new Moleskine notebook, I brushed water over watercolour pencil. The paper shredded badly and cracked like an eggshell when dry. Intrigued with the effect, and having seen Natalie Portman's incredible performance in Aronofsky's 'Black Swan,' the desire for pure art, its passion and self-effacement, and the self-mutilation, hallucinations, madnesses, I thought of the underside of the dancer's life. Or her backskin.
I am working with the album that the music comes from (see also 'dance/ ...indigo folio leaves'), with the musician's knowledge and tacit permission. 'No More Faith' is an album of such variety I felt it could work for a longer project - literally, from neo-classical to this strange fingernail-on-the-blackboard minute and a half of scratchings. The strangeness that I might have felt on first listen has worn off and the sound seems less grating and more intriguing- perhaps, and who's to know for sure, that's the musician making anti-music for his possessive slave-driving muse who doesn't seem to realize he has a day job as a teacher. The tension is in this piece. His work has such energy. It was the perfect choice for my video.
The other track from his album, 'dance/ ...indigo folio leaves': http://youtu.be/-5hBgLF6bho
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Brenda Clews, art, poetry, voice, video: http://brendaclews.com ; music, José Travieso's track, 'Shinigami's Dream, No. 1,' on his album, "No More Faith": http://josetravieso.org/index3music_10nomorefaith.html -
17
4:52
Dance of Gold Canvas
by Brenda Clews 548 views
A performance piece, hints of the epic, the metamorphosis that life is. Age and grace. Frivolity and art. Pain and laughter. Humor and seriousness.
In the dance I speak a poetry whose volume I dimmed to just below audible. A poetry below the threshold.
And of this nearly silenced subliminal speaking? It's part of the motion poem. A tantra. Dance, the journey of the soul, guttural, the women crying for help during the tsunami, women in war, survival, a Blakean crawl across the canvas at one point and I allowed some words to rise, utterances, Butoh not in style but expression perhaps in parts, and of strength, empowerment, and the fecund, the buds of spring about to burst, Boticelli's Primavera, the rich earthy tapestries of the natural world, and Zen, laughter at the absurdity of life, and love, love everywhere, enjoyment in the body itself, sensuality, a wit, humour. Dancing with shadows of the self was intriguing in the editing, as was slipping between colours of a rich Buddha saffron and the smudging shadows of black and white. Editing itself a psychic process, shaping a moving poem.
How a video comes to be is almost surreal. Magic in the editing. I enter a state where time doesn't matter and think it closest to the dream, the mind's most deeply creative process, where you're exploring something, and you're not quite sure what it means, or where it's going, but are fascinated, compelled.
A dance poem, an enactment, a one-act play. Perhaps in this piece something visionary, in that there is resolution to the conflict, the paradoxes, in the process of art itself, in the dance of the self.
Self-conscious but daring to anyhow, give everything you've got.
The dance of the self within Krishna's cosmic dance, the spinning painting of us on the canvas, the dance we all share.
Performed, videoed and edited by Brenda Clews.
Background music by arnoldsrecords, 'There's a hole, there's a wall,': http://www.jamendo.com/en/track/715561
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Without memory, the fragile present disappears.
blog: http://brendaclews.blogspot.com
art and writings: http://brendaclews.com
Starfire, an album of poetry performance pieces
(listen, download for free): http://www.jamendo.com/en/album/81729 -
18
2:19
Anansi Hides the Moon
by Brenda Clews 578 views
A painting, 'Parchment Figures: Doubles, Doppelgängers, Clones,' hanging on a wall. Sunlight moving through wind-waving branches falls through a window onto it. You can also see the shadows of the window itself. That morning I was absorbed watching the light and shadows dancing quietly over the painting and videotaped it. Then, on an evening walk I came across a light on a patio with a thick white gauzy curtain around it, and shot some footage with my iPhone video camera. Later, playing with the footage, I added the billowing curtain and its light next to the painting of doubles and shadows. Then I cut sections of a photograph of the painting out, animated them and added them to the film. Finally, pondering on what I had produced, I wrote a whimsical poem of the African trickster spider god, Anansi, and wove it in with handwritten notes.
The painting, from chalk drawing to nearly finished, can be viewed here: http://picasaweb.google.com/brenda.clews/ParchmentFiguresDoublesDoppelgangersClones?feat=directlink
Flute music, a very small section of 'Bodydrama at the Nave' by ARTSomerville: http://www.jamendo.com/en/album/53543
*Anansi Hides the Moon*
Anansi
the spider
dropped
in from
where
African
gods &
goddesses
hang out
Anansi
hid
the moon
behind a
curtain
The sun flickered
The parchment
figures, doubles,
doppelgangers
& clones
barely
noticed
The days
were
sun bright
and the city
was electric
light
at night
Sometimes
it's
like that
You can read more on this video at my blog: http://brendaclews.blogspot.com/2011/02/anansi-hides-moon.html
This videopoem was featured at "Moving Poems," "an on-going anthology of the best videopoems, filmpoems, animated poems, and other poetry videos from around the web," that is at the forefront of multimedia poetry today: http://movingpoems.com/2011/02/anansi-hides-the-moon-by-brenda-clews/ -
19
2:02
One Hand Clapping
by Brenda Clews 3,032 views
A John Cage/Merce Cunningham style collaboration. Watch in HD if you can.
Two autopoetic systems: my short film, Alphacore's music score, without any reference to each other as we separately created them. Each of our autopoetic systems closed from each other, selectively referring to their own environments.
Mine, abstracted footage of a tree at dusk when the light dims and the camera acts like the retinal cells, the rods, seeing essentially in black and white. Alphacore's a slow, simple, quiet, meditative piano solo with a dim voice in the background whose words we cannot quite hear - or is it yelping dogs or a bird call? To my ear the background chant sounds like 'help me.' The letters falling like rain in my film do, in the slow roll of credits, line up at the end as SOS. An accidental correlation in two separate creations brought together.
I titled our collaboration, without hearing the music, One Hand Clapping, since, I, in Toronto, and Alphacore, in Seattle, each creating our component to an agreed on time span, were like the clapping of one hand - the famous Zen koan meant to sent the logical mind into an impossible spin.
Our final product, the mix, matches in the way all aspects of the universe correlate, by accident. Only this is a designed accident.
And it doesn't match in the way each of us might have originally envisioned.
My video is uncharacteristic of my work thus far - it is abstract rather than figurative; a natural black and white rather than colour; the speed is slowed down to just above frame-by-frame and thus a little jerky while the letters fall so quickly as to be almost in fast-forward; and the letters in One Hand Clapping fall continuously carrying random meanings, unlike my usual work with whole poems or sections of poems.
Alphacore's music is usually the product of computer-generated transformations of text or images into sound - they are sonic landscapes of various sounds and instruments that form unusual experimental and avanteguard abstract soundscapes - in One Hand Clapping he plays the piano meditatively note by note, a scale ascending and partially descending, we hear the touch of fingers. While we can't see him, he is more of an embodied musician than his more usual 'Deleuzian machine' music. Deleuze writes, in Anti-Oedipus, "A machine may be defined as a system of interruptions or breaks," and this is how I might describe Alphacore's music on the whole. He creates tracks where there is no subject or object, where the sounds interact with each other in nodes, in a series of interruptions that create a syncopated flow in a minimalist rhythmic space, like the famous metaphor of rhizomes we associate with Deleuzian philosophy.
In the final product of our collaboration, One Hand Clapping, a film with music/music with a film, we have two self-referential autopoetic systems, visual and auditory, interacting. How the viewer perceives this deliberately accidental pairing will refer to yet another autopoetic system whereby the collaboration of two artists becomes one experience.
__
Gabriel, aka AlphaCore, may be found at: http://compositions-of-alphacore.blogspot.com/
This description with definitions at my blog: http://brendaclews.blogspot.com/2010/06/one-hand-clapping.html -
20
3:20
Glint
by Brenda Clews 1,051 views
He indicated that the video was ok, but uploading to YouTube? I said there are lots of CATS on YouTube. (Featuring our 13 year old family cat, Tiggy. I told him he was going to be a YouTube cat - that's status.) :-)
I thought to present this minimalist poem as the murmur you overhear. Something spectral, composed of shapes and sounds open to interpretation. Ghostly, sensual, colours and light and shadows in a flux in a landscape that's a little ambiguous, a bit Surreal. The music that I found for this piece was so perfect I edited the video's rhythms to the song.
This writing is drawn from a much larger manuscript which interweaves science and poetry. Three quarters of the energy of the universe is dark energy. 'Glint' calls on the metaphor of dark energy to shape a love poem. Words rise and sink in the marvelous soundtrack, which I didn't want to disturb above a murmur.
The music is "Madrox, in my head," by Arena of Electronic Music, which holds a Creative Commons license: http://www.jamendo.com/track/477297 -
21
9:25
BIRTHDANCE (birth paintings)
by Brenda Clews 389 views
Paintings and poem may be found at my website: http://www.brendaclews.com/birth-paintings
On the paintings:
THE BODY IS FOR BLOSSOMING
...pigment of flesh flowing under my fingers, magenta, alizarin crimson, cerulean blue, cyan green, cadmium yellow, dark violet, colour so rich it's almost edible, bodyscapes of colour, landscapes of fertility, erupting in the swirl of water and paint...
When I was pregnant, my body changed in fundamental and drastic ways. It was a crisis: the freedom of an old self was dying to make way for the mother I would become.
The "Birth Series" paintings became a visual journey of my changing body, a way to comprehend what I was undergoing in the tumble of hormones as my belly grew. The paintings focus on the woman who conceives and carries a baby into life, who nourishes and awaits the child who will hopefully emerge from the nine-month gestation of her body like a dream become real.
In reaction to an increasing invisibility in the world: the averted gaze, perhaps arising out of a cultural discomfort with the swollen belly, I wished to present the pregnant body as sensual and sacred. Despite my desire to confound the categories of alluring woman and maternal body, I found myself deep in the mystery of creation itself.
At the beginning of the series, the body is portrayed clearly; as the forces of labour, birth and then breastfeeding unfold, the clarity shifts into flowing colours suggesting the transformative experience that carrying and delivering and breastfeeding a baby is.
These paintings are about a rite of passage, about the strangest body on earth, about the mind-blowing transformation of skin, belly, heart and perception of the self, as a woman ripens and delivers her fragile and beautiful fruit, the newborn, a miracle of the world.
On the poem:
BIRTHDANCE took two years to write. In 1987, after my first child, my son, was born, I tried to write about birth. At the time, I was unable to find any poetry or literature by women on what giving birth 'felt' like, on their inner birthing experience, and I wasn't sure how to express those powerful birthing hours. It took some years, and many revisions as I worked towards how to express this powerful moment of my life, and finally chose to allow the stages of labour to structure the poem. Each woman has a different experience of birth, the many stories, poems and artwork by women in the last decade or two have been an important sharing of what was previously hidden.
__
The Birth Paintings and BIRTHDANCE were painted and composed from 1986-1989. -
22
2:28
Writings of 'Who'
by Brenda Clews 238 views
A videopoem performance piece:
I seek who allows me to write. In the sunlit corridor, perhaps. An encounter with my eclipsed twin, who answers only through this writing. Who is the narrator conversing with me in these words that I relay to you as we converse? Who haunts us from within?
Who is writing?
Surely not our speaking voice.
We write with the poetry of angels, where the gradual lightness of the dawn enlightens. If the trope of light didn't burn, corrode our vision, that is. Sometimes I want to keep my secrets secret.
Down the dark corridors of time, our shadows cast into the future. Where the doors open, and close, and open, the spurious wind blowing through. Shutters cannot stay shut. We are haunted by ourselves, ghosts moving through ourselves.
Can we have thoughtless words? A discourse bereaved of its cry?
__
Poem, written in 2006; videopoetry performace, 2011.
For description of the process of making the video, including the video software and filters used, as well as the literary background for the poem, see blog post: http://brendaclews.blogspot.com/2011/03/writings-of-who.html -
23
5:15
Poetic of Light, from 'White Fire'
by Brenda Clews 922 views
The poetry is addressed to the lover, the soul mate, you, the viewer.
In 'Poetic of Light/ Poétique de la lumière,' I attempt to incorporate the text of the poetry as a design element in the dance of the figure as it is being spoken in the video. Though the theme is ancient, the creation of the universe out of light, and draws on traditions not only of modern physics but of mysticism, some Sufism but in particular creation as it is presented in The Zohar, a central Kabbalah text, I hope the viewer comes away from 'Poetic of Light/ Poétique de la lumière' carrying the awe, of creation, being, life, the universe. While I find a distinct, if unintentional, reference to Plato's cave in the last frame, I also understand the observer witnessing the light as an appreciation of what is greater than us.
Videopoetry webpage with descriptions: http://sites.google.com/site/brendaclews/videopoetry Text of 'White Fire,' written and performed by Brenda Clews, may be found at her website: http://sites.google.com/site/brendaclews/videopoetry/white-fire The ecstatic piano to which she dances is Lena Selyanina's 'Spring,' from "Piano Paintings," which carries a Creative Commons license and may be found at Jamendo: http://www.jamendo.com/en/album/45611 -
24
1:58
Burning Brightly in the Night
by Brenda Clews 286 views
Brenda Clews: video, editing, poetry, voice, figure, and mix; music by José Travieso, 'El Juego de las Atracciones,' from, "A Retrospective: the early years": http://www.jamendo.com/en/album/41740
*Burning Brightly in the Night*
Not an other reality, purified for those who access it through prayer or meditation. Perhaps there is nothing at the centre.
Hovering there.
Like the sun whose winds steal away Venus' atmosphere.
I don't know what
your essence is,
or if I could think of you that
way.
Revelations of you.
Can I interrupt my solitude ------ for you?
Our planet of love, stripped by solar winds.
By modulated magnetic and thermal fields of ionized plasma streaming through the inner solar system, causing our auroras, magnetic storms, power failures, this electrified force, its proton furies.
It forms a barrier at the edges. The heliosphere protects us from super-charged sub-atomic particles coming from outside our solar system.
How is this light the light which enables us to see eternal forms? Out of the Platonic cave, blindingly. A mystic's vision is of the truth beneath the illusion, of a pure reality amidst appearances. Are ideal forms only understood through intuition?
In the combustion, an internal temperature of 15,600,000° Kelvin, or 28,000,000° Fahrenheit.
Tell me the eternal form of you, in that burning star.
©Brenda Clews, Dec 6, 2007
_
blog post on this video here: http://brendaclews.blogspot.com/2011/01/burning-brightly-in-night-2min.html -
25
2:52
Interstices
by Brenda Clews 272 views
A videopoem. I experiment with my own reflection (if I can see myself I am a Descartian subject, though interspliced with a Deleusian thought-cast).
In the poem I reflect on our reflections of ourselves and how we can't see ourselves except in our art, which reflects us.
The words of the poem:
In the field of an'other,' reflecting on self-reflection. Who are we in our mirror-image? In a gallery of sculpture, do we become still? Stilled, turned-to-stone, despite time, change, age. Like those fizzures, splits, gaps, places of disintegration in the plaster, stone, metal carved and cast about me that occur in smooth moments of presence. Where our lives buckle, crumble, turn backwards to plunge on.
We are subjects who cannot behold ourselves.
We gaze upon ourselves
only
in our art.
_
A different sort of gallery hop!
Video: Brenda Clews (person/voice in clip, editor of video, poet, ya know the etc.): http://brendaclews.com
Sculpture: Theo Willemse's show, 'The Art of Form' at SPAZ I O dell'arte in September in Toronto: http://theowillemse.com
Music: Le Pandorien, 'Spirale noire op 2,' from his album, "Pandora Moon": http://www.jamendo.com/en/album/44226
_
I composed this videopoem in duplicate tracks. You can view 'before & after' stills of both tracks with a list of their Final Cut Express filters at my blog: http://brendaclews.blogspot.com/2010/10/interstices.html -
26
1:33
Ravishing Light: A Solar Videopoem
by Brenda Clews 467 views
A vision of such power that what went before falls away in a rapturous death. An unerasable enlightenment. That Rubicon. I was inspired to write this piece after seeing the movie, 'Sunshine,' which also uses footage from NASA's SOHO Observatory.
Prose poem written in July 2007; videopoem created April 2010 (also available at the Internet Archives as a separate recording)
These are the videos I finally chose and downloaded. I used clips from some of them for my short videopoem:
wave- archive.org/details/CIL-10079
SOHO_TRACE_Intro_YouTube- archive.org/details/GMM-10421
recon- archive.org/details/SPD-SOHO-STRIPreconSTRIP
quiet20010310ntscarchive- archive.org/details/SVS-2766?start=4.5
EITflameszm- archive.org/details/SPD-SOHO-STRIPEITflameszmSTRIP
304blow- archive.org/details/SPD-SOHO-STRIP304blowSTRIP
archive.org/details/SVS-3286
EITbulb- archive.org/details/SPD-SOHO-STRIPEITbulbSTRIP
flarezoom640x480- archive.org/details/SVS-2496
helio_fleet_v1.1- archive.org/details/SVS-3570 -
27
1:36
Venus Enroute, from the 'Suite of Botticelli Venus Poems'
by Brenda Clews 493 views
Videopoetry webpage with descriptions: http://sites.google.com/site/brendaclews/videopoetry The poetry is an excerpt from my "Botticelli Suite of Venus Poems":
She stopped to rest.
Momentarily, in the field of pure possibility, her position unfixed, indeterminate.
Without hovering, or insecurity.
It was an image of being in the vast field of life.
Without knowing. In a position of unknowing, positionless, I suppose. Existing without location or momentum. Vibrating with possibility. It wasn't exciting or fearful, just what is.
Nothing is fixed or certain, though there are always solutions to problems.
Then she continued on.
She didn't doubt her certainties.
http://sites.google.com/site/brendaclews/home/Botticelli-venus-poems
The music clip is from Lena Selyanina's 'Sarah's Dance,' from her album, "Piano Poetry," which carries a Creative Commons license and may be found here: http://www.jamendo.com/en/album/45056
The chair sequence and the poem added to it had no original connection. I cut the clip from two hours of footage as perhaps 'workable.' Then I searched for a poem. It's amazing how the poem 'fits' the movement, huh? Creatively perhaps we are a gesture, a gesture where here poetry and dance are an aligned fusion.
Albeit, the resulting video is a bit comic. The tag on the back of my dress? As soon as I saw the footage I grabbed the dress and cut it off. The other camera? Ahh, I'm still just learning how to make videos and don't have a clone plugin to remove these elements. Enjoy the humor!
(Or perhaps, in context of the poem, since Venus has swung her scallop shell around to enter the world of experience, we could say the tag on her dress reads: 'If this Vintage Venus is found wandering, send her back to "Mount Olympus"!)
___
Postcript, May 31, 2010.
Kean Ghiero has created a video that uses a clip from my video with music and a poem of his own- "COSMIC WASTE (The Big Leak)" : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwxUCP_i2HA -
28
1:23
Tones of Noir
by Brenda Clews 197 views
Do poems wait to be born? A poem whittled out of thundering mist at Niagara Falls. The roar of the Falls, music, voice.
I wanted the voice to be as light as the mist, and as strange as a dream with noir elements. (Don't worry if you can't hear all the words -it's meant to be a bit ghostly, and you can read the words here.)
'Tones of Noir'
Numinosity washes the sky.
Poems rise out of thundering mist.
I think it is a crime.
She rushes by.
The water, the power in falling.
Begin when it's in motion
and stop before it ends.
Mystical crystal spikes of sun.
He waits.
We walk quickly
covering ourselves against the watcher.
_
Video I shot in Niagara Falls, Canada, a few days ago, edited in Final Cut Express, and a recording of a few readings of the poem I wrote for this piece.
Alex Bailey: music. http://www.jamendo.com/en/track/76255
My Art & Writings website: http://brendaclews.com -
29
2:04
Three White Images
by Brenda Clews 269 views
Two voices - one of rumination, who speaks about, who carries the camera; the other the poet for whom there is spiritual presence in images of the world. Ways not necessarily to merge these voices, because they each maintain their autonomous vision, but to present them together.
The commonality of the images - white elephant, Tibetan prayer flags, birch tree, and their increasing luminance for the poet- was that I saw all three on a walk one night and all three images struck me with their poetic quality.
But then we can also include a discussion on the nature of the medium itself, on reconstituted memory through the photograph, the video. And is this memory? Indeed, Three White Images calls into question the perspicacity of a lense-captured memory container -the photograph, the video- as an alteration of the memory and as potentially not saving the actual event for recall but supplanting what consciousness unaided by the camera might remember.
Even as the video tells its story in images and words it is suspicious of these media and their claim as memory-placeholders.
Perhaps it is the poet who completes the process of the encounter with three white images in a luminance that transcends memory:
'lanterns of love
and then I lifted myself
and it was bright'
You can read the words spoken in the videopoem, in their multiplicities, here: http://brendaclews.blogspot.com/2010/03/three-white-images-videopoem.html
Music from BertycoX's "Light of Abysses": http://www.jamendo.com/en/album/42855 (go and listen to the whole track, beautiful)
Postcript, June 13, 2010: Take a look at Loftus' work on memory: http://www.slate.com/id/2256089/pagenum/all/ -
30
2:17
White, a Butoh-inspired dance
by Brenda Clews 1,109 views
Videopoetry webpage with descriptions: http://sites.google.com/site/brendaclews/videopoetry A poetry in motion. I played with negatives. It reminds me of ice and snow, of liberation from constraint. Of imaging between being and non-being. Of the mother. Of the sorrow of the mother earth. Of disappearing into and emerging from. Of the continuous cacophony of the dance of life. Of the disjointed, an awkward grace. The film loses some of its quality in the uploaded video: the semi-opague layers appear more like faded images than the transparencies they are. Yet you let go of the white leaf and let it float out to the sea. I wanted to add words, a poem, and perhaps that's next. The flowers are from photographs I took last year of mandalas of fresh flowers in the street outside an Indian restaurant in honour of a Hindu festival. The increasing presence of the flowers behind the screen of the dance is a reminder of what is ever-present, profundita natura, the profundity of nature at its most beautiful, fragile, transitory, in the flower. I leave you with a screen of flowers, like a prayer.
-
31
5:13
Magnolia Stellata, from the 'Botticelli Venus Suite of Poems'
by Brenda Clews 1,147 views
From my Botticelli Venus Suite of Poems, 'Magnolia Stellata' is the first poem. I am learning how to make videopoems and while this is a complete version of the poem there is a talk to accompany it that I haven't yet recorded but I share anyhow. I taped this on Solstice 2008. Hope you enjoy this rendition.
It was videotaped with an iMac 10.5.5 webcam and edited in Final Cut Express 4.0.1. -
32
4:16
On Butoh-based Dance- A Saturday morning amble...
by Brenda Clews 7,511 views
Videopoetry webpage with descriptions: http://www.brendaclews.com/videopoetry/3
Discussing Butoh-based dance having just completed a 4 day workshop with Denise Fujiwara in Toronto, Canada.
My first video, using the in-built webcam on an iMac with iMovie, on Butoh-based dance with a poem in my white flannel nightgown this morning.
Even before coffee. I leave as is. Though I did add the poem later this evening and you might have to increase the volume since, though I re-recorded a number of times much closer to the computer's built-in microphone than the original clip, I wasn't able to arrive at the same volume levels.
In the emptiness of the dancer everything comes to be. I hope I imparted this in my little experimental video. Sharing a recent experience which I am in the process of understanding.
Strange and surreal as it appears, the intensity of the dancers, intimacy, exposure, vulnerability are the core of Butoh. -
33
1:43
Vishnu on Chinese New Year (performance poetry)
by Brenda Clews 213 views
Fun piece. A combination of poetry, painting, GarageBand jazz. A friend, Doug Carroll, & I were playing with my camera, Final Cut Express & GarageBand. A neophyte, I spent a further 6 hours editing. 2nd attempt at a videopoem, and the first one using Final Cut Express (which I'm learning by watching You Tube tutorials, see my playlists). Poem, "Vishnu on Chinese New Year" (Dec, 2007), painting, "Women in Spring," (May, 2008). Many thanks!
-
34
7:46
birthdance
by Brenda Clews 2,455 views
Paintings and poem may be found at my website: http://www.brendaclews.com/birth-paintings
On the paintings:
THE BODY IS FOR BLOSSOMING
...pigment of flesh flowing under my fingers, magenta, alizarin crimson, cerulean blue, cyan green, cadmium yellow, dark violet, colour so rich it's almost edible, bodyscapes of colour, landscapes of fertility, erupting in the swirl of water and paint...
When I was pregnant, my body changed in fundamental and drastic ways. It was a crisis: the freedom of an old self was dying to make way for the mother I would become.
The "Birth Series" paintings became a visual journey of my changing body, a way to comprehend what I was undergoing in the tumble of hormones as my belly grew. The paintings focus on the woman who conceives and carries a baby into life, who nourishes and awaits the child who will hopefully emerge from the nine-month gestation of her body like a dream become real.
In reaction to an increasing invisibility in the world: the averted gaze, perhaps arising out of a cultural discomfort with the swollen belly, I wished to present the pregnant body as sensual and sacred. Despite my desire to confound the categories of alluring woman and maternal body, I found myself deep in the mystery of creation itself.
At the beginning of the series, the body is portrayed clearly; as the forces of labour, birth and then breastfeeding unfold, the clarity shifts into flowing colours suggesting the transformative experience that carrying and delivering and breastfeeding a baby is.
These paintings are about a rite of passage, about the strangest body on earth, about the mind-blowing transformation of skin, belly, heart and perception of the self, as a woman ripens and delivers her fragile and beautiful fruit, the newborn, a miracle of the world.
On the poem:
BIRTHDANCE took two years to write. In 1987, after my first child, my son, was born, I tried to write about birth. At the time, I was unable to find any poetry or literature by women on what giving birth 'felt' like, on their inner birthing experience, and I wasn't sure how to express those powerful birthing hours. It took some years, and many revisions as I worked towards how to express this powerful moment of my life, and finally chose to allow the stages of labour to structure the poem. Each woman has a different experience of birth, the many stories, poems and artwork by women in the last decade or two have been an important sharing of what was previously hidden.
__
The Birth Paintings and BIRTHDANCE were painted and composed from 1986-1989. -
35
4:00
Dancing an Unwinding
by Brenda Clews 909 views
Dance is an ecstatic, uplifting, enlightening experience. I hope this little video imparts some of the warmth and joy of the connectedness that occurs during these wild and nurturing dances. After last Summer's Solstice DOWH (Dance Our Way Home) session, some women kindly stayed to dance. The camera taped us for dance stills for an article I was writing. The footage was so sweet, however, that I created this little videopoem. You can read the prose poem here: http://brendaclews.blogspot.com/2009/03/ericas-dance-our-way
-home.html
Dancing Women: Erica Ross, Laura Nashman, Angela Greco, Jade Niemczyk, Linda Robinson & Brenda Clews.
Background music from *Collection Hapa* by Keli'i Kaneali'i & Barry Flanagan: mountainapplecompany.com
Videotaped, edited & prose poetry by Brenda Clews: sites.google.com/site/brendaclews
_____
It's important for those in the entertainment industry to create smart, cool, sexy, funky, daring, glitzy videos to be noticed, to make a name, to become famous.
I'm not trying to call attention to myself except as one of the participating women; I have nothing to sell; I am not attempting to make money on this; I am not trying to impress anyone.
I'm promoting the creative self-expression of women, ordinary women, in unfacilitated dance. No choreography. It's all about feeling comfortable with who you are and flowering as yourself.
This video was shot on a tripod with a democracy whereby no-one got close-ups or special attention. No cuts were made to the footage, the music is uninterrupted, but some filters were added. The stop motion filter, for instance, was done frame by frame, about 7 hours. It took probably 20 hours to produce something that looks like almost nothing was done to it, that's perhaps slow and ordinary to the eye used to action and special effects.
Makes me think of Wordsworth's language of and for the common man, or Courbet's determination to paint the ordinary, stones, roads, fields, farmers.
An aesthetic: the beauty of the ordinary. How the ordinary is dreamy. How enlightenment flows out of the ordinary. How what is truly marvelous is the unassuming, the everyday, expressions of joy in everyone simply because they are. What is most surreal is the real. I hope to convey some of this with the way I chose to show the footage.
