UbuWeb

UbuWeb

Stewart Home - Short Films of the Eighties & Nineties
Ten rarely seen films by the British artist, filmmaker, writer, pamphleteer, art historian, and activist, which combine pulp novel sensibilities with pornography, political agit-prop, and historical references to punk rock and avant-garde art. These vintage shaky Super-8 and VHS works include promotions for Home's books, advertisements shown at independent cinemas, Situationist film remakes and much more. Also included are two recent works, Screams In Favour Of De Sade (2002) and The Eclipse & Re-Emergence of the Oedipus Complex (2004). UbuWeb also hosts an extensive Stewart Home audio archive [MP3].


Charles Bukowski Audio Archive (1968-86) A slew of orphaned and bootlegged recordings, inlcuding at-home performances, readings, radio shows & interviews. Included here are At Terror Street and Agony Way (1968), 70 Minutes in Hell (1969), King of Poets (1970), Poems and Insults (1973), Hostage (1980), Do You Use a Notebook? (1986) and Bukowski Lives! (undated). [MP3]


Bertolt Brecht's Audio Works A sweep of recordings and interpretations of Brecht's plays and speeches, both historical and contemporary. Includes Brecht singing two songs from "Die Dreigroschenoper" (rec. 1928/29), his testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee (1947), plays by the legendary Berliner Ensemble from the mid-50s, as well as archival radio plays of Brecht's work including "The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui," "Mr Puntila & His Man Matti," "In The Jungle of Cities," "The Life Of Galileo,"The Trial of Lucullus," "A Respectable Wedding," "Schweik in the Second World War," and "The Threepenny Opera." [MP3]


Reza Abdoh - Videos (1986-93) Reza Abdoh [1963-1995] was an Iranian-born director and playwright known for his large-scale, experimental theatrical productions that utilized multimedia elements and violent sexual imagery. Abdoh died of AIDS on May 11, 1995 in New York City at the age of 32. Included here are are eight videos: My Face (1986); Sleeping with the Devil (1990); The Hip-Hop Waltz of Eurydice (1990); Bogeyman (1991); Daddy's Girl (1991); The Weeping Song (1991); The Law of Remains (1992); and Tight Right White (1993). This UbuWeb resource is presented in partnership with Bidoun Magazine.


Alfred Jarry Finally Appears on UbuWeb From our FAQ: Why is there no Alfred Jarry on UbuWeb? Answer: ;) It is our 'pataphysical joke. Sixteen years later, we've decided enough is enough. Hence, we've beefed up our Jarry audio archive [MP3s] with some archival Ubuesque cabaret chansons penned by Jarry and his pals, a French radio documentary on Jarry [Alfred Jarry: Introduction à la vie et l'ouvre du créateur d' Ubu Roi] and a lecture by Jarry scholar Michael Taylor of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. We've also posted the first of many film versions of Ubu Roi to come, this one directed by Jean-Christophe Averty in 1965, which is a rollicking mix of live acting and animation, all in glorious black and white. We do hope you'll forgive us.


Robert Hughes - Shock of the New (1982) A classic eight part documentary that offers a comprehensive view on the development of modernist art in its cultural context. It focusses minly on painting and sculpting but pays some attention to architecture as well. The documentary is presented and narrated by the art critic Robert Hughes, whose views on modernism have left an unmistakable stamp on the film. It was originally aired by the BBC.


Mike Kelley (1954-2012) Ubu mourns the loss of this great artist. You can find his audio archive here [MP3], his videos here, and an interivew with him here [PDF].


John Cage Centenary (2012) In preparation for the hundred-year anniversary of John Cage's birth, we've quietly been beefing up Cage's audio and films. In particular, we've just added a number of lectures, interviews, and Q&A's with Cage, recorded between 1969 and 1991. There are also several of papers written on John Cage in UbuWeb Papers, as well as a variety of works of his in UbuWeb's Historical section. In fact, there's so much John Cage on Ubu's site that we can't keep up with it.


Stanya Kahn "It's Cool, I'm Good" (2010) UbuWeb is pleased to present one of three films from Kahn's first body of solo video works, which continues Kahn's longstanding exploration of the blurred lines between fiction and document, performance and being, humor and distress, the scripted and the improvised. With a 22-track surround-sound audio score and over 20 locations featured, It's Cool, I'm Good creates a visceral cinematic space in which place and action, landscape and soundscape operate literally and metaphorically, signaling a tenuous relationship between experiences of trauma and moments of agency. Paralleling the ways in which jokes simultaneously compress and expand meaning, here living and and naming collapse into each other, in a narrative that unpacks more along psycho-emotional lines, creating many small arcs in place of one grand one. You can view the films of Stanya Kahn and Harry Dodge here.


Ten Women Who Use Film A special project curated by Jennifer Higgie for UbuWeb featuring dozens of works by women filmmakers of varying ages and nationalities. Included are Juliette Blightman, Jennifer Bornstein, Bonnie Camplin, Spartacus Chetwynd, Beatrice Gibson, Aleksandra Mir, Frances Stark, Imogen Stidworthy, Annika Ström and Fiona Tan.


UbuWeb: Visual Poetry UbuWeb began in 1996 as a site for visual & concrete poetry and this new section expands upon and deepens Ubu's original vision. Beginning with Ian Hamilton Finlay's seminal magazine "Poor.Old.Tired.Horse" (1962-68) and continuing to the present (Anatol Knotek's 2010 "Rotated Alphabet"), the collection spans a half-century and encompasses hundreds of artists. This first installment, consisting of nearly 100 items will continue to be updated by curator & editor derek beaulieu.


Ryan Trecartin - Any Ever (2009-2010) Ryan Trecartin’s Any Ever comprises seven autonomous but interrelated videos. The work is structured as a diptych, with Trill-ogy Comp (three movies) as one side and Re’Search Wait’S (four movies) as the other. Taken together, these videos embark on poetic, formal, and structural elaborations of new forms of technology, language, narrative, identity, and humanity, portraying an extra-dimensional world that channels the existential dramas of our own. The individual videos fit together, block, break, orbit, or attract one another in infinite shifting combinations. Any Ever’s master narrative is subjectively chosen by the viewer, read from the shifting topography of its seven parts. Included is the Trill-ogy Comp, consisting of the three movies K-CoreaINC.K (section a); Sibling Topics (section a); and P.opular S.ky (section ish). Re’Search Wait’S comprises four movies: Ready, The Re’Search, Roamie View : History Enhancement, and Temp Stop.


Electronic Music Resources UbuWeb is pleased to announce the opening of a massive new section, devoted to technical resources concerning the practice of electronic and experimental sound. This is a place for information about actual methods and techniques, with little writing on aesthetics alone. It takes the form of technical/historical articles, interviews, books, small-press magazines and patents. Regrettably, most previous treatments of electronic music have tended to shy away from the details of the medium itself. In hopes of rendering the subject palatable they have removed much of its flavor, for it is precisely within the box, teeming with currents, where the true beauty resides - the other side of the panel. This first installment offers nearly 300 items, including books, periodicals, articles, interviews, media & patents.


The Films of Joseph Cornell (1936-1960) The films of the reclusive artist Joseph Cornell are as unique as his famous box constructions. Though rarely exhibited during his lifetime, these mysterious works nonetheless have had a deep and lasting influence on the world of avant-garde filmmaking . His entire body of film numbers some thirty-odd works, encompassing the incomplete and the fragmentary. It can be said that Cornell made two kinds of films in two distinct periods of activity: collage films, made by recombining found materials, and directed films,where he worked with cinematographers (including Stan Brakhage, Rudy Burckhardt and Larry Jordan) to document his fantasy/experience of wandering in New York. -Bradley Eros and Jeanne Liotta. Included here are 12 of Cornell's films.


History of Electronic / Electroacoustic Music [1937-2001] This massive selection is from a 62 CD set called "The History of Electroacoustic Music" that was floating around as a torrent, reputedly curated by a Brazilian student. It's sketchy. The torrent vanished and the collection has long been unavailable. It's a clearly flawed selection: there's few women and almost no one working outside of the Western tradition (where are the Japanese? Chinese? etc.). However, as an effort, it's admirable and contains a ton of great stuff. Take it with a grain of salt, or perhaps use it as a provocation to curate a more intelligent, inclusive, and comprehensive selection.


UbuWeb at 15 Years: An Overview Ubu's founder Kenneth Goldsmith writes: "It’s amazing to me that UbuWeb, after fifteen years, is still going. Run with no money and put together pretty much without permission, Ubu has succeeded by breaking all the rules, by going about things the wrong way. UbuWeb can be construed as the Robin Hood of the avant-garde, but instead of taking from one and giving to the other, we feel that in the end, we’re giving to all. UbuWeb is as much about the legal and social ramifications of its self-created distribution and archiving system as it is about the content hosted on the site. In a sense, the content takes care of itself; but keeping it up there has proved to be a trickier proposition." Read the entire piece at The Poetry Foundation.


The Films of Kamran Shirdel UbuWeb is pleased to present four of Shirdel's most renowned socio-political documentaries, films that courageously and frankly revealed the darker side of Iran's economic boom, analyzing the effects of a society of flush with oil money. These films were steeped in a deep social consciousness reminiscent of the best of the Italian Neo-realist tradition, the cinema that had influenced him deeply during his studies in Italy. Shirdel's furious documentaries and cinematic language were a bone of contention both under the Shah and following his exile, because they spoke up for the underprivileged and, in doing so, exposed and criticized the corruption of the mechanism of power. Because of the severe censorship, nearly all his films were banned and confiscated, and in the end he was expelled from The Ministry and put on the blacklist. Seven years after it was made (and censored), his The Epic of the Gorgani Village Boy (The Night It Rained!), after receiving the GRAN PRIX at The Third Tehran International Film Festival (1974), was immediately banned again and remained so (like his Nedamatgah (Women's Prison, 1965), Qaleh (Women's Quarter, 1966), Tehran Is the Capital of Iran (1966), and others) until after the revolution. Presented in collaboration with Bidoun: Art & Culture from the Middle East.


The Avant Garde Project Comes to UbuWeb UbuWeb is pleased to welcome the legendary Avant Garde Project. The Avant Garde Project is a series of recordings of 20th-century classical, experimental, and electroacoustic music digitized from LPs whose music has in most cases never been released on CD, and so is effectively inaccessible to the vast majority of music listeners today. The first installment is up, with new material as well as older, AGP archives to be added in the near future. [MP3 and FLAC]


Jean Cocteau - The Complete Recordings A set of historic recordings, compiled by Cocteau's sound producer Fred Kiriloff. Inlcudes Parade, Jean Cocteau's Theatre, Les Voleurs d'Enfants (The Abductors), La Toison d'Or (The Golden Fleece), La Machine Infernale (The Infernal Mechanism), La Voix Humaine (The Human Voice), Presentation of the Group of Six, Le Bel Indifférent (The Callous Beau), Les Parents Terribles, Reception Speech at the Académie Française. Plus previously unissued items, such as: L'Arbre de No‘l (The Christmas Tree), Crucifixion, Nuit de No‘l (Christmas Night) and the Preface to Les Mariés de la Tour Eiffel (The Eiffel Tower Wedding) and many others. Cocteau's collaborators included Francis Poulenc, Eric Satie, Marianne Oswald, Suzy Solidor, Edith Piaf, Jean Marais, Jeanne Moreau, Diaghilev, Picasso and more. [MP3]


The Films of Peggy Ahwesh (1985-2009) Over the last twenty years, Peggy Ahwesh has produced one of the most heterogeneous bodies of work in the field of experimental film and video. A true bricoleur, her tools include narrative and documentary styles, improvised performance and scripted dialogue, synch-sound film, found footage, digital animation, and crude Pixelvision video. Using this range of approaches, she has extended the project initiated by 1960s and '70s American avant-garde film, and has augmented that tradition with an investigation of cultural identity and the role of the subject. Presented here are: From Romance to Ritual (1985), The Deadman (1989), Martina's Playhouse (1989), Nocturne (1998), She Puppet (2001), The Third Body (2007), Beirut Outtakes (2007), Bethlehem (2009). This UbuWeb resource is presented in partnership with Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI).


UbuWeb sur Radio France Culture Kenneth Goldsmith, fondateur d'UbuWeb, explique à Thomas Baumgartner la genèse et l'esprit d'UbuWeb, dans Les Passagers de la Nuit sur France Culture, famous French radio, le 25 mars 2011. Avec aussi les voix de Warhol, Beuys, Dali, Joyce, Kurt Schwitters... Téléchargeable ici [30 min/ French]


Vanguarda da pilhagem: roubo e arte no UbuWeb &
Kenneth Goldsmith, do UbuWeb: 'O site é muito ruim'
O Golbo, Brazil, 26.03.2011


IRIS-TIME UNLIMITED (1962-1970) An occasional ephemeral two-page newspaper produced by the legendary experimental Iris Clert Gallery in Paris, featuring many of the cutting-edge artists of the day including Ad Reinhardt, Pol Bury, Lucio Fontana, CPLY and many others. Clert ran an almost anarchistic free space in Saint Germain des Prés, which featured early conceptual shows (Yves Klein's empty gallery and Arman's rubbish-strewn space) as well as being an early venue for performance art. Curated for UbuWeb by Ulysse Geissler.


Harry Bertoia - The Sonambient Discography [MP3] In the early 1970's Harry Bertoia made hundreds of sound sculptures. These sculptures represent Harry Bertoia's formation of Sonambient. Sonambient was Bertoia's term to describe the spatial and tonal environment created by these sound sculptures. By stretching, bending, striking, and in other ways moving the materials, he made them respond to wind and/or to touch to create different sounds or tones, which he then taught himself to 'play' and recorded a series of pieces. He also performed with the pieces in a number of concerts. The completed Sonambient also consists of gongs and suspended sonic-bars. Within his renovated barn, Harry made more than 360 magnetic-tape recordings.


We Killed Our RSS Feed Sorry about that. But you can always catch the latest on our Twitter feed. Or check this page. We're always updating. Thx.


Ubu Moves To New Servers We're proud to announce our new partnership with CENTRO in Mexico City, who is now hosting Ubu's media files. We're in the process of switching everything over to the new servers. While you'll (finally) begin to see new media content, there will be some bumps and many inevitable 404s. Bear with us: it might take a while to get it all figured out. If you find something that's not working, please let us know and we'll fix it.


James Hoff - Topten (2008) In almost every issue since December 1997, the contemporary art monthly Artforum has asked a member of the art world to compile a list of his or her top ten favorite recent exhibitions (as well as concerts, television programs, books, and events) in a list that displays the writer's taste as well as his or her wit. With this hefty artist's book, James Hoff has reprinted the text of every column alongside the abstract designs of blacked-out photographs that once depicted the writers' picks. Inlcudes Kate Bush, David Byrne, Dave Eggers, Dave Hickey, Charlie Kaufman, Mike Kelley, Barbara Kruger, Matmos, Glenn O'Brien, Amy Sillman, Laurie Simmons, John Waters and dozens more. Also related, is the archive of UbuWeb's monthly Top Ten picks.


Listening to Films, a New UbuWeb Podcast A selection of ten films from the UbuWeb archive that are actually worth listening to (as well as seeing). Included here are excerpts from the following films: Vito Acconci's Theme Song (1973); René Clair's Entr'acte (1924) with a soundtrack by Erik Satie; Harry Dodge and Stanya Kahn's Can't Swallow It, Can't Spit It Out (2006); Jordan Wolfson's Con Leche (2009); People Like Us's Story Without End (2005); Hermann Nitsch's 6 Tage Spiel - Das Orgien Mysterien Theater. Day 3: Day of Dionysus (1998); Sun Ra A Joyful Noise (1980); Richard Serra's Boomerang (1974); David Van Tieghem's Ear to the Ground (1979); Karl Holmqvist's I'm With You In Rockland (2005). Download the MP3 podcast directly here. You can subscribe to our podcast here. UbuWeb's podcasts are produced by The Poetry Foundation.


"No money, no democracy - that's why UbuWeb is so good" An interview with UbuWeb founder Kenneth Goldsmith at Radio Web MACBA. Poet, university professor and amateur archivist, Kenneth Goldsmith is the founder and main editor of Ubuweb, the Internet's largest archive of artistic avant-garde material. An underground project that has no institutional backing or budget of any kind, Ubuweb is an influential repository that is as exhaustive as it is personal, reflecting the preferences, quirks and obsessions of its creator. Son[i]a talks to Kenneth Goldsmith about the origins, ideas and operation of Ubuweb.


Eight Flims by Alexander Kluge (1960-1977) Writer, theorist, filmmaker, and television pioneer, Alexander Kluge is one of the intellectual giants of post-war Germany. Although he directed nearly thirty films, Kluge's uncompromising politics and formal experimentation ensured that most of these critically celebrated works never reached a mass audience. Despite this groundbreaking work, it is his career as a fiction writer that has contributed most to his European renown. Kluge has treated media as a fluid field, one in which disciplinary boundaries are as questionable as the distinctions between high and low, individual and society, history and the present: all are texts up for renegotiation. Films inlcuded here are: Lehrer im Wandel (Teachers in Transformation) (1963); Frau Blackburn, geb. 5 Jan. 1872, wird gefilmt (Frau Blackburn, Born 5 Jan. 1872, Is Filmed) (1963); Porträet einer Bewäehrung (Portrait of One Who Proved His Mettle) (1964); Feuerlöscher E. A. Winterstein (Fireman E. A. Winterstein) (1968); Besitzbürgerin, Jahrgang 1908 (A Woman from the Property-owning Middle Class, Born 1908) (1972); Gelegenheitsarbeit einer Sklavin. Zur realistischen Methode, Frankfurt (1975); Die Menschen, die das Staufer-Austellung vorbereiten (Die Menschen, die das Stauferjahr vorbereiten (1977); and Brutalität in Stein (Die Ewigkeit von gestern; Brutality in Stone; Yesterday Goes on for Ever).


Films of the Vienna Actionists (1957-1995) UbuWeb presents 35 films by the Vienna Actionists. The term Viennese Actionism describes a short and violent movement in 20th century art that can be regarded as part of the many independent efforts of the 1960s to develop "action art" (Fluxus, Happening, Performance, Body Art, etc.). Its main participants were Günter Brus, Otto Mühl, Hermann Nitsch and Rudolf Schwarzkogler. As "actionists", they were active between 1960 and 1971. Most have continued their artistic work independently from the early 1970s onwards. Included here are films by Otto Mühl, Kurt Kren, Hermann Nitsch & Otmar Bauer. You can also listen to the soundworks & interviews by Otto Mühl & Hermann Nitsch in UbuWeb's sound section.


A Pause Many of you may have noticed that since the hack, we haven't been adding much new material. That's not due to a lack of new stuff -- we've got tons in the pipeline -- rather it's because, after the attack, we're up and moving to new and more secure servers. We should be settled within a few weeks and will begin posting fresh films & audio. Keep an eye here or on our Twitter feed for the latest. Until then, enjoy the vast trove that already exists here of approximately 7500 artists & several terabytes of media to cram your hard drives full with.


If We Had To Ask For Permission, We Wouldn't Exist: An Open Letter After the hacking of UbuWeb, a heated discussion broke out on the most prominent experimental film listserv, Frameworks, discussing the tactics of Ubu. There was clearly a lot of misunderstanding regarding what UbuWeb is about. Ubu's founder, Kenneth Goldsmith, was compelled has penned a response here, which can also be seen as an update to our FAQ.


John Berger - Ways of Seeing (1972) Ways of Seeing was a BBC television series consisting of visual essays that raise questions about hidden ideologies in visual images. The serie gave rise to a later book of the same name written by John Berger. It would be easy to say that Ways of Seeing is hopelessly dated -- made in 1972, the films come across as a puritan-groovy mix of Monty Python, the Open University and the Look Around You spoofs. And yet what's so remarkable about this series is that it seems more apposite, subversive and thought-provoking than ever. The Britain we glimpse in the films, already alienated by spooky BBC Radiophonic Workshop music by Delia Derbyshire, is alienated even more by the passing of time. Alienated usefully, in the Brechtian sense; we look at a capitalist society which is like, and unlike, our own. In four parts: Episode 1: Psychological Aspects, Episode 2: Women in Art, Episode 3: Collectors and Collecting and Episode 4: Commercial Art. With an essay by Nick Curie (aka Momus).


The Poetics - Soundworks (1977-1993) Historical recordings of Mike Kelley, Jim Shaw, Tony Oursler and a cast of thousands from their Cal Arts days. Concurrent with the LAFMS and punk scenes in LA, this material is, in the words of artist Jutta Koether, "garbage versions of electronic music (linked to Kelley's involvement with DAM), noise, prototrance, instrumentals, both aggressive and sad stints with a singer-songwriter style, music as a dysfunctional standup routine (half lounge, half rock). In other words, punk rock deconstructed. The result is hours and hours of a monster being created and released." Featured here are the collections Remixes of Recordings (1977-1983) and The Poetics reunion album from 1997, Critical Inquiry In Green. This release marks the beginning of a new partnership with CENTRO in Mexico City, who will begin to host the entire UbuWeb archive from this time on.


UbuWeb Podcast: The Sounds of Silence Craig Dworkin's paper Unheard Music [PDF] is a list of conceptual music that highlights a bunch of music that plays with the idea of silence: How is silent music made? Is silence really silent? How many varieties of silence are there? In this podcast, we actualize Dworkin's theories and discover that silence is anything but silent and neutral; rather, it's varietious and rich. Artists featured on this podcast include John Cage, Matmos, Steve Reich, Mieko Shiomi and many others. Download the MP3 podcast directly here. You can subscribe to our podcast here. UbuWeb's podcasts are produced by The Poetry Foundation.


The Art of Performance: A Critical Anthology (1984) Edited by Gregory Battcock and Robert Nickas, an essential long out-of-print collection of essays centered around the historical conditions that led to the rise of performance art in the 1970s and 80s. The book is divided into three parts: 1. Historical Introduction, 2. Theory and Criticism, and 3. The Artists and includes essays by Roselee Goldberg, Ken Freidman, Michael Kirby, David Shapiro, David Bourdon, Vito Acconci, Chris Burden, Les Levine and Laurie Anderson and many others. This /ubu Edition was edited by Lucia della Paolera.


The Videos of Aki Sasamoto Aki Sasamoto is a New York-based, Japanese artist, who works in performance, sculpture, dance, and whatever more medium that takes to get her ideas across. Her works have been shown both in performing art and visual art venues in New York and abroad. Besides her own works, she has collaborated with artists in visual arts, music, and dance, in which she plays multiple roles of dancer, sculptor, or director. Presented here are four videos: Everything Chidambaran (2005), remembering/modifying/developing (2007), Practicing to Leave - Conduct - Judge Mentals (2007), Secrets of My Mother's Child (2009) and Strange Attractors (2010).