Ubuweb Picks

Since discovering UbuWeb, a vast archival network featuring rare music, videos, interviews and recordings of poems by a diverse list of artists and thinkers, about two months ago, I have spent countless hours exploring what this incredible site has to offer, and you should too!

Here are six of my favorite works on the site at present (in no particular order):

Komar and Melamid with David Soldier, The Most Wanted Song and The Most Unwanted Song
http://www.ubu.com/sound/komar.html
Founders of the Sots Art Movement, Komar and Melamid are known for their paintings that combine Socialist Realist imagery with a Neoclassical style to examine Soviet life under Lenin and Stalin. Here are two tracks by the artists that explore sound’s potential to evoke desire and repulsion.

Pipilotti Rist, I’m Not the Girl Who Misses Much, 1986
http://www.ubu.com/film/rist.html
A girl who appears as a black, blurry silhouette repeats, “I’m Not the Girl Who Misses Much” over and over, faster and faster, bouncing around the screen like she’s on a pogo stick, seeming like some sort of out of control, agitated puppet. Somehow I can wholly relate to her.

Ryan Trecartin, I-Be AREA, 2007
http://www.ubu.com/film/trecartin_area.html
Trecartin creates a portrait of his appearance obsessed, Internet addicted generation. Gender ambiguity, characters with highly affected voices, digital drawings of palm trees, avatars and talk of adoption and talent shows are a few of the things that fill this hyperactive video.

Robert Smithson, A Heap of Language, 1966
http://www.ubu.com/concept/smithson_heap.html
Language is drawn as architecture, making it something tangible rather than audible.

Vito Acconci, Pryings, 1971
http://www.ubu.com/film/acconci_pryings.html
This video speaks about one-way intimacy and frustrated attempts at communication (as it seems to me, at least).

Laurie Anderson, Difficult Listening Hour
http://www.ubu.com/film/kitchen_anderson.html
Anderson speaks into a microphone that deepens her voice to make her sound like a man, playing with the possibilities of performative gender.