Come see Spoon & Packet in their new film “Ion Rhino” alongside this year’s fantastic entries in the 22nd annual PXL THIS film festival.

Says Beverly Gray of Spoon & Packet:

Some of the night’s offerings are surreal, like the film in which oddball puppets try to stage Ionesco’s Rhinoceros.

Spoon & Packet: ION RHINO from eveningalbum on Vimeo.

She goes on to say about my favorite film of the night:

I was especially fond of Fialka and Clifford Novey’s eight-minute “I Think I’m in Something,” which is hard to describe but mesmerizing to experience.

I Think I’m In Something from Clifford Novey on Vimeo.

Echo Park Film Center says:

Echo Park Film Center
Thursday, May 23 – PXL THIS 22 – 8 PM

PXL THIS 22, the 22nd annual toy camera film festival featuring Pixelvision films made with the Fisher-Price PXL-2000 camcorder and the second oldest film festival in LA, celebrates visionary moving image artists from 4-years-olds to professionals. All genres are here: avant-garde, comedy, documentary, abstract, music, art, narrative & films words cannot describe.

“PXL is the ultimate people’s video.”
- J. Hoberman.

“If movies offer an escape from everyday life, Pixelvision is the Houdini of the film world.”
- SF Weekly.

Director Gerry Fialka will be present for discussion!

I’m glad I acted upon my desire to obtain the limited edition red vinyl Paul Smith-only release of David Bowie’s “The Next Day”, released on May 17. I chose to purchase it at 5 minutes past midnight GMT from the UK Paul Smith site, while it was still May 16 here in Santa Monica. The album was sold out before we ever saw May 17 on the west coast US.

The Paul Smith site states “Unfortunately we have now completely sold out. Please contact us for a list of available stockists.”

I don’t like the looks of these eBay “stockists”…

Even this version doesn’t contain the Japanese-only Blue-Spec CD bonus song “God Bless the Girl” (listen below):

Photo by Kevin Harkins

While attending Emerson College, I found myself on the steps of the college library with my friend Kurt Long and we were cajoled by a traveling film crew to record a commercial for the David Letterman show during his visit to Boston. If I remember correctly Kurt and I tumbled down the stone stairs for “comedy’s sake”. And I may have mumbled some reference to Ezekial’s burning wheel of fire. Bits of our “routine” are interspersed throughout other jump cuts of Boston college students shouting out to Letterman. I saw it air once and I don’t believe this particular gem of 1990′s arcana has made it on to Youtube yet.

Here’s page 2 from the my hometown newspaper, The Lowell Sun, showing me and my father in Boston. Photo credit: Florence Marion, 1994.

“Every spoon…has the form of a spoon…and that is what makes it a spoon.”

- Rupert Sheldrake
(Paraphrased from p.53 of “The Presence of the Past”, hardcover.

May 17, 8:00 PM – PXL THIS 21 at the Echo Park Film Center featuring
Spoon & Packet Present: The Best of Hel Centraal TV

It’s that time of year again where professionals and amateurs alike gather together for an evening of black-and-white PXL creativity. The Echo Park Film Center is hosting a showing of PXL THIS 21, where the art and expression of the now-defunct PXL-2000 camera gets public exposure. Expect music, laughter, and some plain old weirdness – maybe all in the same film.

This time around my friends Spoon and Packet are hosting an abbreviated “Best Of” show for the underworld television station Hel Centraal, in the year 472 Undertime (UT). The 9-minute movie features the adventures of a wooden monkey, a character from Bosch’s “The Temptation of Saint Anthony” singing Dylan, Sanford the walrus receiving a chair for his talk show, and Hank the crooning pig, among many others in the Hel C TV line-up.

In the words of 10-year old Donovan (who was in the audience at the Unurban Coffeehouse showing):

“It’s like Spoon and Packet are movie stars in the afterlife”.

I couldn’t have said it better myself. Watch “Spoon & Packet Present: The Best of Hel Centraal TV” here (below), on Youtube, on the Spoon & Packet Media page, or just wait until May 17 and watch it with an appreciative crowd at the Echo Park Film Center.

From Echo Park Film Center Schedule of Events:
Thursday, May 17 – PXL THIS 21 – 8 PM
PXL THIS 21, the 21st annual toy camera film festival featuring Pixelvision films made with the Fisher-Price PXL-2000 camcorder and the second oldest film festival in LA, celebrates visionary moving image artists from 4-years-olds to professionals. All genres are here: avant-garde, comedy, documentary, abstract, music, art, narrative & films words cannot describe. “PXL is the ultimate people’s video.” – J. Hoberman. “If movies offer an escape from everyday life, Pixelvision is the Houdini of the film world.” – SF Weekly. DIRECTOR GERRY FIALKA WILL BE PRESENT FOR DISCUSSION.

Gerry Fialka at PXL THIS 20 at Echo Park Film Center.

Follow this link for a recap of Echo Park Film Center’s showing of PXL THIS 20 at Cinema Without Borders.

Just in time for my complete absorption into the world of CAN, which began many years ago, I had the opportunity to catch Irmin Schmidt & Kumo (aka Jono Podmore) deliver a DJ set at Amoeba Music in Hollywood. There’s a nice atmospheric review of the event by Sareth Ney at The Examiner.

They opened the set with 5 tracks from the forthcoming 3 CD set The Lost Tapes, which will be released in June 2012. I was impressed with the quality of these unreleased CAN tracks featuring vocals from both Malcolm Mooney and Damo Suzuki:

Waiting for the Streetcar
Graublau
The Agreement
Midnight Sky
Abra Cada Braxas

(By the way, RecordStore.co.uk is the only online location that I’ve found that has the complete track listing.)

The set continued with one classic CAN track, one Schmidt solo work, and 2 Kumo/Schmidt collaborations:

Spoon, CAN (from Ege Bamyasi)
Fledermenshen, Irmin Schmidt & Kumo (from Masters of Confusion)
Time the Dreamkiller, Irmin Schmidt (from Impossible Holidays)
Kick On the Floods, Irmin Schmidt & Kumo (from Axolotl Eyes)

The audience of listeners applauded, often between tracks, and Irmin posed with excited fans and was also presented a painting depicting himself at a series of keyboards.

Directly in front of the DJ booth they were selling copies of the 2012 CD reissue of Tago Mago, the older CD reissue of Ege Bamyasi, and a 10″ EP of Metamono, a new project from Kumo.

Many attendees came with CAN rarities ready to be signed (CAN Box, CAN DVD, vinyl albums, etc.) I opted to bring the relatively new Axolotl Eyes since it was both their work and its cover was perfect for two signatures. Kumo and I chatted comically for a few moments as one fellow had Schmidt sign 3 items. When Kumo saw the CD in my hand he said “I’ll sign this, I’m on this!” and I had him sign in black. I moved on to thank Irmin and let him know what a pleasure it was to meet him and thank him for all the years of wonderful music and asked if he would sign in red.

The next day I was surprised to see myself in the opening picture of CAN’s Facebook Page. Your humble author is in the brown coat with orange interior passing Axolotl Eyes to Irmin:

And here is the signed CD booklet (the smudge is true Schmidt-smudge):

Listen to Millionspiel from The Lost Tapes:

“What Happened Before the Big Bang?”, in the Atlantic Monthly.

Tim Maudlin: “If you think of life, of intelligent life, it is, among other things, a physical phenomenon — it occurs when the physical conditions are right. And so the question of how likely it is that life will emerge, and how frequently it will emerge, does connect up to physics, and does connect up to cosmology, because when you’re asking how likely it is that somewhere there’s life, you’re talking about the broad scope of the physical universe. And philosophers do tend to be pretty well schooled in certain kinds of probabilistic analysis, and so it may come up. I wouldn’t rule it in or rule it out.

I will make one comment about these kinds of arguments which seems to me to somehow have eluded everyone. When people make these probabilistic equations, like the Drake Equation, which you’re familiar with — they introduce variables for the frequency of earth-like planets, for the evolution of life on those planets, and so on. The question remains as to how often, after life evolves, you’ll have intelligent life capable of making technology. What people haven’t seemed to notice is that on earth, of all the billions of species that have evolved, only one has developed intelligence to the level of producing technology. Which means that kind of intelligence is really not very useful. It’s not actually, in the general case, of much evolutionary value. We tend to think, because we love to think of ourselves, human beings, as the top of the evolutionary ladder, that the intelligence we have, that makes us human beings, is the thing that all of evolution is striving toward. But what we know is that that’s not true. Obviously it doesn’t matter that much if you’re a beetle, that you be really smart. If it were, evolution would have produced much more intelligent beetles. We have no empirical data to suggest that there’s a high probability that evolution on another planet would lead to technological intelligence. There is just too much we don’t know.”

Spoon & Packet will be making their sophomore appearance at LA’s 2nd-longest running film festival, PXL THIS 21. This time around they find themselves hosting “The Best of Hel Centraal TV”, an awards show for the Year 472. Featuring clips from “The Adventures of Maluka and Pacos”, “Undercover Kachinas”, “Screaming Blackness”, “Walrus Corner”, and many more favorites. Watch at Spoon & Packet.com.

PXL THIS 21  - Mon, Dec 12 at 7 & 9pm - Free admission

Unurban Coffehouse

3301 Pico Blvd, Santa Monica CA 90401, 310-315-0056

Next showing: May 17, 2012 at the Echo Park Film Center, Los Angeles.

The Best of Hel Centraal TV. Running time: 9 minutes.

I am delighted to again be involved in what is now the 21st year of this festival. While individual PXL films can be satisfying to watch on their own, perhaps from a computer, something different occurs when you watch them back to back for hours in a theatre with others. The previous year I was struck by the effect PXL films can have in the festival format. The homogenous visual quality of the black and white medium allows each film to act like scenes within the larger dreamlike film of the evening. I hope that you can join us for a night of laughter, camaraderie, and community.

Thanks to Gerry Fialka, the organizer, for his dedication.

_____________________________________________________

PRESS RELEASE

PXL THIS 21, the 21st annual toy camera film festival featuring Pixelvision films made with the Fisher-Price PXL-2000 camcorder, premieres MONDAY, Dec 12, 2011 in Santa Monica, California. PXL THIS, the second oldest film festival in LA, celebrates visionary moving image artists from 4-years-olds to professionals.

for immediate release
contact: Gerry Fialka 310-306-7330
pfsuzy@aol.com  | http://www.laughtears.com/

PXL THIS celebrates its 21st year of creative filmmaking by everyone from kids to professionals. One of the most unique film festivals ever, PXL THIS has been attended by Oliver Stone, Daryl Hannah, Kim Fowley among many more. Pixelvision has even made it onto the big screen via Richard Linklater (Slacker), Michael Almereyda (Nadja, produced by David Lynch) and Craig Baldwin (Sonic Outlaws). The irresistible irony of the PXL 2000 is that the camera’s ease-of-use and affordability, which entirely democratizes movie-making, has inspired the creation of some of the most visionary, avant and luminous film of our time.

“If movies offer an escape from everyday life, Pixelvision is the Houdini of the film world.”

- SF Weekly

PXL THIS, featuring films made with the Fisher-Price PXL 2000 toy camcorder, is one of the longest running film festivals in the entertainment capital of the world. Celebrating “cinema povera” moving image art, it evokes Marcel Duchamp’s axiom “Poor tools require better skills.” Pixelators from across the globe hoick up inventive approaches to the unassuming throw-away of consumer culture. These low-tech hi-jinx films come through loud and clear by reframing a new cinema language.  Past PXL THIS participants have included Lee Ranaldo (Sonic Youth), Chris Metzler (Fishbone & Salton Sea documentaries), James & Sadie Benning, Joe Gibbons, Cecilia Dougherty, Peggy Ahwesh, Jesse Drew, Margie Strosser and Michael Almereyda.

“Gerry Fialka’s annual PXL THIS is a reliably surprising and seductive round-up of recent work achieved with the PXL 2000 camera. This humble outdated “toy” continues to bring out the visionary child in filmmakers and viewers alike, and no one has kept the PXL flame burning longer or brighter than Gerry.”

- Michael Almereyda, director

“Gerry Fialka’s PXL THIS festival snaps, crackles and pops off the screen with the funky, user-friendly energy of real first-person cinema. Goofy, gorgeous, and altogether groovy, his provocative program of pieces produced with the Fisher-Price PXL 2000 toy video camera is not only downright entertaining, but more, its blipping and buzzing black ‘n’ white picture-bits coalesce into a veritable inspiration to all those who cherish the playful, spontaneous gestures and low-cost of electronic folk art.”

- Craig Baldwin, director & curator.

“All the PXL THIS videos reflect festival organizer Gerry Fialka’s commitment to the freedom produced by making art without financial constraints. PXL THIS is a welcome highlight in the Los Angeles media scene celebrating the rich lexicon available in a tool which might initially seem rather limiting.”

- Holly Willis, LA Weekly. 

“Pixelvision may be firmly ensconced in the pantheon of once-popular dead media, but for many of the faithful it captures the heart of the American experience as it should be seen: in basic black and white.”

- David Cotner. LA Weekly

“PXL is the ultimate people’s video.”

- J. Hoberman, Premiere Magazine. 

“When the aliens are here and deciding whether to vaporize all mankind for our inhumanity, cruelty and greed, showing the aliens PXL THIS will save the world. PXL THIS shows our best nature as humanist creators and subversives against those who deserve it. Save the world. Support PXL THIS.”

- George Manupelli, founder of the Ann Arbor Film Festival, filmmaker, poet, collagist and political/environmental activist

Letter from Councilman Bill Rosendahl to Gerry Fialka