looking through an old issue of the face while i was eating my mashed patatoes today. it was an issue from 05.2000, the magazines 20th anniversary issue and i saw a page by chris cunningham. i remember seeing all the cool videos he did a few years back. “come to daddy” by aphex twin and “come to my selector” by squarepusher and a few other ones.

this incredibly complete site details nearly all of his work with pictures of many of the videos. you can also download some of them in varying qualities. here is an image from björk “all is full of love”.

the above picture is taken from a short film, “flex“, he showed it at the royal academy in london in september 2000. the overall show was called “apocalypse”,

flex is a deliberately aggressive piece of film-making. cunningham’s aim is to attack the senses with a physical intensity using film and music. the soundtrack for flex was composed by richard james of aphex twin. flex’s inspiration comes partly from the superhero cartoon imagery, particulary the idealised bodies with their surreal muscles. the film shows cunningham’s varied interests in animation, in renaissance drawings – particularly those of michelangelo – and in the symbolism of the pre-raphaelites.

this guardian article details what went on at the show. i remember hearing about this show because of one of the other exhibits. i was half thinking at the time of visiting london to see the exhibition. but alas, being a semi poor just outta college lazy ass monkey man i never got around to it. anyway, the one exhibit that caught my eye was this one:

maurizio cattelan’s joke sculpture of the pope, a life-size and realistic sculpture of the pontiff floored by a meteor that appears to have crashed through the glass roof of the gallery, may be found offensive. this act of cattelan – not god, nor an indifferent universe – is no more troubling, nor funnier, than many of the cartoons one finds in newspapers in catholic countries. impeccably staged, it presents a very old kind of apocalyptic vision – of horsemen and fires in the sky, heavenly portents and divine retribution – that we might have thought had disappeared. yet only this week a liberal democrat was promoting a star wars offensive against falling rocks and cosmic debris. plus ça change – cattelan’s work is a see-once-then-forget-it gag. that so much effort has gone into it renders it monumentally absurd.

anyway, i never got to see the show, but that “absurd” exhibit always stuck in my mind. shows the level of my humour sometimes.

anyway, you can stream some of the cunninghams videos here in pretty good format (broadband only)
ooo.. here is some more “all is full of love” pictures and “making of…” images
here is an interview with him