Wednesday, May 03, 2023


 


 

Monday, May 01, 2023


I hear the fighting at sea continues as I go under for the third time by James BL Hollands

Released by CIA Records, Houston on the Manifestation X compilation

Vinyl and CD and digital copies here :

https://ciarecords2.bandcamp.com/album/manifestation-x


Thursday, July 28, 2022



 


 

Tuesday, October 08, 2013

Former Harbours


















James B.L. Hollands, former artist and musician turned sailor :

http://formerharbours.wordpress.com/

















Desdichados playlist is available to stream on Soundcloud here :

https://soundcloud.com/jamesblhollands/sets/desdichados

Wednesday, February 27, 2013

The White Queen at Kinetica


















An extract of my last piece "The White Queen" is showing this week at the Kinetica Art Fair 

http://www.kinetica-artfair.com/

it's being shown as a 3D "holographic" projection in the Musion Academy section. They're the people that did the Gorillaz live 3D stuff.

It is showing at :

Thursday 12:00
Friday 18:00
Saturday 14:00
Sunday 16:00

and I will be doing an "artists talk" at 4pm on Friday for an hour, discussing my "art practise" behind my work :

http://www.kinetica-artfair.com/?programme%2Ffri-1st-march.html

There are discount tickets available here (thanks Nicholas)

http://uk-offers.timeout.com/deals/kinetica-art-fair-offer

...sorry... I only got one freebie.

I'll be around at each screening, or intend to be. There's no mobile phone access in the gallery as it's, like, a bunker, but come find me if you come or ask someone in Musion where I am and I'll give you an Extra Strong Mint.

Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Into the Silence



















James B L Hollands & Akoustik Timbre Frekuency - "Into The Silence" - 15 minutes, 2013

Using footage from J.B.L. Noel's "Epic of Everest", J.B.L. Hollands finds correlations between not only the initials of the filmmaker, but with his work. Re-editing Noel's footage of George Mallory's fatal Everest expedition of 1924, Hollands resamples his own past audio work, to create a vision of artistic work as doomed failure, while Akoustik Timbre Frekuency add : Tibetan horns, tikgsha, singing bowls, bells, gong and shamanik rattle to echo the first performances of this film, which were performed as a "total" cinematic experience, as Noel had arranged for 7 Tibetan monks from Gyantse to perform alongside the film.

The Tibetan government subsequently lodged an official diplomatic protest, an affair which became known as the "Affair of the Dancing Lamas". It had profound and lasting political consequences, undercutting the reforms of the 13th Dalai Lama, which politically weakened Tibet against the invasion of the Chinese, and led to the problems Tibet has suffered ever since.

For this screening, Akoustik Timbre Frekuency's will be providing a recorded track not a live performance.


Into the Silence will be screened at the following : 

V4Wednesday Presents: 
Retina Of The Mind’s Eye. 20 Artists Showcasing New Sound and Video Works. Descrambling 30 years since VIDEODROME.

Curated by CivicTV83.

*Note Early Evening Event.

The first half of the night is videos only projected.

Second half of the night is... Four films will be presented with live soundtracks... 8pm till 9.30pm

Bioni Samp - "Henry & Moor"
(with live soundtrack ft. Stephen Thrower on treated saxophone)

James B L Hollands & Akoustik Timbre Frekuency - "Into The Silence"

Letraruido & Tom Webster - "Untitled"

Andrea Ruffino & Rebecca Salvadori - "Untitled"

CIVICTV 83 2013 - Compilation of video pieces, live performances by or featuring: 6pm till 8pm.

Lepke B.
Blanca Regina
Sus.
Simon Heartfield
Coco Reel
Ryan Jordan
Kyle Evans
Andy Page
Orlando Harrison
Tim Dredge
Ewa Justika
George Symington
Kevin Rowe

More Video and Sound artists info to be added soon...

RSVP Limited Capacity to 80 people.

Bioni Samp - "Henry & Moor" - 15 minutes, 2013
(with live soundtrack ft. Stephen Thrower on treated saxophone)

...'I had a dream about Henry Moore, that someone had rammed his sculpture, crashing into it while joyriding, and that it had'nt budged the sculpture, it was now inside the centre of the car, squashing the seats out the way, still on its plinth'... - voice over from the film. Part of the film was shot in 1983 in Castleford, Henry Moore's hometown. on Super 8. Described as 'Bioni Samp's poetic critique of the North's arch modernist'.



James B L Hollands & Akoustik Timbre Frekuency - "Into The Silence" - 15 minutes, 2013

Using footage from J.B.L. Noel's "Epic of Everest", J.B.L. Hollands finds correlations between not only the initials of the filmmaker, but with his work. Re-editing Noel's footage of George Mallory's fatal Everest expedition of 1924, Hollands resamples his own past audio work, to create a vision of artistic work as doomed failure, while Akoustik Timbre Frekuency add :
Tibetan horns, tikgsha, singing bowls, bells, gong and shamanik rattle to  echo the first performances of this film, which were performed as a "total" cinematic experience, as Noel had arranged for 7 Tibetan monks from Gyantse to perform alongside the film.

The Tibetan government subsequently lodged an official diplomatic protest, an affair which became known as the "Affair of the Dancing Lamas". It had profound and lasting political consequences, undercutting the reforms of the 13th Dalai Lama, which politically weakened Tibet against the invasion of the Chinese, and led to the problems Tibet has suffered ever since.

For this screening, Akoustik Timbre Frekuency's will be providing a recorded track not a live performance.

http://www.akoustiktimbrefrekuency.com


Letraruido & Tom Webster - Live Video and Soundtrack, more info to follow soon
Andrea Ruffino & Rebecca Salvadori - Live Video and Soundtrack, more info to follow soon

Simon Heartfield - "WURZBURG" - 10 mins, 2013 Limbic Production
New music video created for a reworked version of the track of same name taken from the 2011 Simon Heartfield album "Schrage Musik". The video uses found documentary footage which is re-edited and reprocessed to form a dense, textured thematic interpretation of the spatial electronics of the soundtrack.

Lepke B. - "Sqwark Box" - 1 minute 2013
Lepke B's unique use of found materials, often processed beyond recognition , inhabit a phantom region between Hauntology and Plunderphonia ,new maps of Hell . Disturbing ,yet undisturbed ,the prolific Lepke B is a champion of Underground A/V , as VJ,the Red Baron of VHS cut 'n' pasteand imploding television sets .
lepkebgoode@yahoo.co.uk

Ewa Justka, "Ultimate Sonic Flash" 2012, 5 minuteslive @ Warsaw. Recorded by Natalia Ambroziak 
Nothing here is representative: rather, it is all life and lived experience (…) A harrowing, emotionally overwhelming experience, which brings the schizo as close as possible to matter, to burning, living center of matter(…) one’s entire soul flows into this emotion that makes the mind aware of the terribly disturbing sound of matter, and passes through its white – hot flame.


Saturday, September 08, 2012

The White Queen / Bila Kralovna




















The White Queen is showing in Prague from the 7th September to the 22nd, for details please see below.

pátek 7. září ve 20 hodin v Divus Pragerkabarettu
James B.L. Hollands - The White Queen / Bílá královna
Audiovizuální vesmír s textem, 24:30, Spojené království 2012.

The White Queen je audiovizuální symfonie, která shrnuje sedm pohybů, je to neotranscendentální symbolistická tragedie ve formě  imerzivní multimediální instalace.

Symbolistické vyprávění začíná rozhovorem mezi hvězdami, které vyslovují svou touhu zachránit život člověka na Zemi – která, jak se zdá, míří nezvratně k sebevraždě („It’s a Wonderful Life,“ Frank Capra 1946 s Jamesem Stewartem).
Divák je přizván, aby si lehnul na podložku na podlaze galerie a díval se na umělý vesmír promítaný na strop. Zvlněné pulzace této syntentické hvězdné oblohy jsou digitálně vytvořeny orchestrálním záznamem, který  v sobě zahrnuje hip hop, grime i prvky z tvorby umělců jako jsou Terry Riley, Glenn Branca a Michael Gira. Vizuální obraz nás vezme na výlet vesmírem, kde budeme svědky toho, jak mlhovina vytváří černou  díru, v níž explodují alternativní galaxie a postupně se rozpouštějí do abstraktní nicoty.
The White Queen spojuje sluchové  a zrakové vnímání do synkretického vesmíru. Je to téměř synestetická zkušenost. Divák je přizván  k tomu, aby odložil nedůvěru a sledoval soucitný vesmír, který pečuje o lidskou existenci natolik, že je připraven sám sebe přeměnit v orgie symfonického audiovizuálního potěšení pro náš okamžitý požitek – je tak zamítnutním prohlášení Quentina Meillasouxe, že vesmír zde „není pro nás“, a extatickým zvratem v ponížení, jež člověku dopřála kopernikovská revoluce.
Pro Hollandse představuje myšlenka White Queen touhu navrátit se k „bílému světlu v ústí nekonečna“ – k minulé a budoucí destrukci, jíž je zároveň Velký třesk a extrémní bílá smrt termonukleárního holokaustu. Světlo hvězd, které putuje přes obrovský vesmír, je pak mírné jako záře televizní obrazovky. Před naším zrakem  je obraz něčeho, co už přestalo existovat. Budeme-li parafrázovat Raye Brassiera: vesmír je „už mrtev“. A sledování jeho umírání, jehož jsme stále součástí, je nádhernou zkušeností.

Vernisáž The White Queen proběhne zároveň s vydáním Desdichados, dvojdisku CD/DVD se soundtracky z Hollandsových dvou posledních videoprací spolu s jeho posledním filmem Telepathy 101. Název – Desdichados – značí „nešťastní či vydědění“, a poprvé jej použil Sir Walter Scott v Ivanhoeovi, později jej Gerard De Nerval použil jako titul básně (El Desdichado), a po něm jej citoval T.S. Eliot v Pustině.

James Hollands je tvůrce experimentálních filmů, spisovatel a hudebník a v minulosti byl kurátorem  Horse Hospital v londýnském Bloomsbury.

„Vím, že technicky to není správné
Tento projekt jsem studoval
Vím, že můj výzkum má své chyby
A tohle je jen alegorie
Vím
Jejich vesmír se rozpíná.
Ale můj ne.“

- J B L Hollands, 2012
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Vesmír můžete shlédnout každý den mimo neděle od 7 do 22 září mezi půl osmou a desátou hodinou večerní.
Divus Praha PR kontakt:  Helena Čtyřoká, news@divus.cz, +420721445082

Další informace o programu Prager Kabarettu na http://www.pragerkabarett.cz
Více o Divusu a dalších projektech naleznete na
http://www.divus.cz, http://www.umelec.org a http://www.easternalliance.net
Divus Pragerkabarett, Bubenska 1, Praha 7

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Friday September 7, 8 pm at Divus Pragerkabarett
James B.L. Hollands - The White Queen
Audiovisual universe with text, 24:30, United Kingdom 2012.

The White Queen is an audiovisual symphony, comprising seven movements, a neo-transcendental symbolist tragedy taking the form of an immersive multimedia installation.

The symbolist narrative begins with a discussion between stars that proclaim a desire to save the life of a human on Earth – who is seemingly headed on an irresolvable pathway to suicide (‘It’s a Wonderful Life’, Frank Capra 1946 with James Stewart).

The viewer is invited to lie on a artificial lawn on the gallery floor and stare into an artificial cosmos projected onto the ceiling. The undulating pulsations of this synthetic starscape are digitally generated by an orchestral score that owes as much to hip-hop and grime as to Terry Riley, Glenn Branca and Michael Gira. The visuals take us on a journey through space where we witness the nebulaic creation of a black hole in which alternate galaxies explode and then gradually dissolve into an abstract nothingness.

The White Queen conjoins hearing and seeing into a syncretic universe; a near synaesthesic experience. The viewer is invited to suspend disbelief and regard a sympathetic universe that cares about human existence so much, that it is prepared to arrange itself into an orgy of symphonic audio visual pleasure for our express enjoyment – a rejection of Quentin Meillasoux’s statement that the universe ‘is not for us’, and a blissed-out reversal of the humiliation afforded to the human by the Copernican revolution.

For Hollands, the idea of a White Queen represents a desire to return to the “white light at the mouth of infinity” – a past and future destruction, at once the Big Bang, and the extreme whiteout of thermonuclear holocaust. The light of the stars, travelling across vast space, can only ever be as facile as a T.V. image. What we are seeing is an image of something that has already ceased to exist. To paraphrase Ray Brassier: the universe is ‘already dead’. And watching it die, with us still in it, is a very beautiful experience.

The opening of The White Queen will also coincide with the release of Desdichados; a double disc CD¬/DVD collection comprising the soundtracks to Hollands‘ last two videos alongside his last film Telepathy 101.  The title, meaning “unhappy or disinherited ones” is a term first used by Sir Walter Scott in Ivanhoe, it was then used as the title of a poem (El Deschidado) by Gerard De Nerval, and later quoted by T.S. Eliot in 'The Wasteland".


James Hollands is an experimental filmmaker, writer and musician, and former curator of the Horse Hospital in London’s Bloomsbury.

‘I know this isn't technically correct
I have actually researched this project
I know my science is flawed
And this is just allegory
I know
Their universe is expanding.
But mine isn't.’

- J B L Hollands, 2012

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The universe will run daily except Sundays from 7th September until 22nd September between 7:30pm and 10pm.
Divus Praha PR Contacts:  Helena Čtyřoká, news@divus.cz, +420721445082

Additional information about the Prager Kabarett program available at http://www.pragerkabarett.cz
More about Divus and other projects available at
http://www.divus.cz, http://www.umelec.org and http://www.easternalliance.net
Divus Pragerkabarett, Bubenska 1, Praha 7