I saw two video artworks in two different places that drew a nice parallel in my mind. Nina Yuen's 'David' can be viewed at the NIMk in Amsterdam, Ada Kaczmarczyk's 'Litania' is at the Zachęta Gallery in Warsaw. I would have posted videos, but unfortunately none are available, so go and see them for yourself or just take my word for it.

1. Nina Yuen - David (2010)
'David' is an adaptation of a text by Carmen Delzell in which a woman enters into a pact with the devil and becomes eternally indebted to him. In the video Yuen performs a number of magic rituals to grant her wishes. The content recalls superstitions my Polish babcias enjoy believing and questions that arise from this, not to mention the implications a mantralike video loop adds to the general picture. Visually, it's beautifully disjointed and succulently coloured. The work was based on this fragment from Delzell's story: "It was beginning to get chilly. Money would really be tight when it got too cold to sell on the street, so I decided to go to a fortune teller. She lived and worked in a storefront in Chinatown. She was fat and sneaky-looking and had only one breast. But it turned out she was right about everything to come and she gave me three wishes. I wished for an apartment, a man, and an antique store...”

2. Ada Kaczmarczyk - Litania (2010)
Kaczmarczyk embedded her video in a small, garish shrine, crowned with a pair of golden high-heels. It strongly alludes to the countless Blessed Madonna chapels you can find in any crumbling courtyard or mud-splattered ditch in Poland. The playing loop portrays a set of young hands clutching what seems to be rosary beads amidst a huge pile of kitsch crap. Muttering, as many Polish babcias do everyday in their church pews, she recites her 'prayers' with great fervour - "I love spending money on crap, I love going out at night, I love painting my nails, I love ice cream sundaes with cherries and chocolate sauce etc. etc." It pangs with wit and brains and I like it.

(Images from artinfo.pl and nimk.nl)

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Apologies for the long periods of silence. I'm moving back to London on Tuesday. If anyone knows of a nice, clean, cheap, zone 2, 4 bedroom house in London, let me know! Photographs from Croatia will follow once I get them developed.

1. Marcin Maciejowski - Granice głupoty (2001)
2. RIP Lech i Maria Kaczyńscy?

Czekam na interpretację Maciejowskiego. Jego wystawa jest w Krakowie.

1. Jan Peter E. R. Sonntag (1998-2006) - GAMMAvert #2 an X-seascape (Another piece at the NIMk. Shame the photo doesn't emit gamma waves.)
2. A green flash
3. Jules Verne (1882) - Le rayon vert

HC Gilje (2009) - Blink
This is at the Sonic Acts exhibition in the NIMk in Amsterdam. You follow the splashes of light in a dark room. It is cool. I like it.
This is an excellent piece for running/jumping/skipping.

Fred Worden (2008) - 1859 (Sonic Acts 2010)
Worden's stuff is scarce on YouTube. His work is mainly concerned with the persistence of vision. I won't write more, you just need to see it. I had the opportunity to see his overwhelming "When Worlds Collude" yesterday at Sonic Acts 2010.

Tao Lin is creating a "North American Hamsters" iphone application, buy your hamster here.
I read his "Shoplifting from American Apparel" this past week; fucking brilliant.

And view my response to Subbacultcha Magazine's March cover by Simon Wald-Lasowski.

Sanne Sannes, Dutch photographer, took brilliantly intimate photos, died at the age of thirty.
He only worked with a hand-held camera and existing light, hence the extremely cool effects. His stuff was recently in FOAM.

Constant Dullaart - YouTube as a subject sculpture (2009)
Does this remind you of anything?
Excellent exhibition, Versions, in the Instituut voor Nederlands Mediakunst in Amsterdam. It is brimming with good, cool, subversive net art. This is a phone video of Dullaart's interactive sculpture. It does not do it justice, sorry, please consider it as an incentive to go and see it for yourselves/read about him.

1. It Wasn't Love (1992)
2. Me and Rubyfruit (1992)
3. Girl Power (1992)
All by Sadie Benning. I saw Sadie's videos at MAMbo last week. Please read about her.
I experienced a lot of nice things and good stuff in Bologna this past week. I will trickle them into this blog with time.

Leonie Purchas - In the Shadow of Things (2009)
Exhibition in FOAM Museum until October 25th.
Purchas sets out to document her family's struggle with her mother's OCD, depression and hoarding problems in a series of extremely good photographs.