Done To
"Done To" (sometimes called "It Is, Done To") consists of simple camera frames which are silent and/or unconnected to a complex soundtrack running parellel to the images. There are brief instances where image and sound meet; however, the majority of the images are overtaken by at times symphonic, at times cacophonous soundtracks which displace the normal filmic viewing experience.
Lawrence Weiner
Casts & Crew
Also Directed by Lawrence Weiner
Writes Weiner: COLLAGED COMPONENTS COLLIDE IN THIS CARTOON - SINK OR SWIM LOOKS AS IF BUILT AS AN HOMAGE TO THE 'LOONEY TUNES' PREMISE THAT WHAT DOESN'T MAKE SENSE MAKES PERFECT SENSE: AS LONG AS YOU EITHER BELIEVE - OR KNOW. A SIMPLE PRESENTATION OF A SLICE OF LIFE (EMPIRICAL REALITY) DOES NOT APPEAR TO BE THE OBJECTIVE OF SINK OR SWIM.
Using the structure of a feature film as its basic format, A First Quarter adopts the principles of nouvelle vague cinema. Simultaneous realities, altered flashbacks, and plays on time and space, are all components of the form and content of this film. Because it was originally shot on video, then kinescoped to 16mm film, A First Quarter has acquired a softened, poetic look. The dialogue derives entirely from the creation of the work as it is spoken and read, built, enacted, written, and painted by the players. As scenarios build, they appear as tropes, one after another.
In cooperation with the Swiss Institute, Lawrence Weiner teamed up with cinematographer Kiki Allgeier to realize WATER IN MILK EXISTS, a fresh skin flick that challenges both artistic and pornographic conventions. The film contains quotations from the artist's children books, austere dialogues on string theory, animations, as well as a lot of carnal action. A multitude of events accompany the launch of the film, mingling porn and art as two of today's most lucrative industries.
Wild Blue Yonder fuses animated drawings and text with video footage of Weiner's friends, colleagues, and family. Weiner recontextualizes the everyday, leveling gestures, conversations, actions and interactions into a system of codes that blur the boundaries between what is choreographed and what is improvised. Weiner's visual grammar (arrows, horizons, frames) suggests motion and borders; the relationships of the animations, aphoristic text, and conversations activate questions of intimacy within the conventions of physical and personal space.
"In this video the artist states that it is a public freehold work which demonstrates what could be art within his responsibility. Like Beached it was also shot in a marshy area near the sea and in sequences that are separated by dissolves. One sees five different actions that are related to BROKEN OFF. The artist breaks a tree branch, scrapes and kicks the ground with his foot, snaps a stick in two off a fence, scrapes a stone with his fingernail. At the end he pulls the line plug from the video." — Alice Weiner.
Lawrence Weiner film from 1999
16mm short film from 1981.
In a nearly bare loft space, Weiner's performers cluster around an octagonal pink table, enacting a series of what seem to be choreographed exercises or processes: playing patty-cake, grappling for possession of rectangular blocks, kissing and embracing, engaging in bizarrely coded conversations.
TRACCE / TRACES took place in the sky, from August 16 to August 25 2020, through a series of aerial banners that flew along the Roman coastline. For ten consecutive days the works were visible to thousands of people on the beach.
Shifted From the Side is conceptually identical to To And Fro... and was probably made the same afternoon. The object used to demonstrate five possibilities of what could—but not necessarily should—be the artwork is a pack of Lucky Strike cigarettes. As in To And Fro..., the camera is static. The pack is on the right side of the screen; as the text is read, the pack is shifted back and forth. The hand retreats from the object each time an act is completed before sliding it from side to side across the table.