Catastrophes & Incidences

February 5 - April 15, 2012

OPENING 4 February, 7 pm

DNA, Auguststr. 20,

10117 Berlin / GERMANY

http://www.dna-galerie.de/en/exhibition/exhibition--current.php

Artists: 

Nezaket Ekici, Halflifers, Gary Hill, 
Christian Jankowski, Friederike Lorenz, 
Shahar Marcus, Andrei Ujica

Curated 
by Bjørn Melhus & Johann Nowak

VIDEO_DUMBO 2011

VIDEO_DUMBO 2011  / PROGRAMS    

HALFLIFERS - EAST COAST DVD LAUNCH & SCREENING                                     

HalfLifers: The Complete History (1992-2010), the definitive pixel packet of tulpoidal activation artists Torsten Zenas Burns and Anthony Discenza. For one show only, the HalfLifers will re-imagine Video_Dumbo’s hybrid screening zone into an uni-directional, construction-colored exploration projection vehicle, navigating a journey into the interior reaches of HalfLifers’s “videonic” backlog of afterlife relationships, psychic sandwich surgery, splatstick, and rescue rituals. 

FILM COMMENT MAGAZINE: HALFLIFERS DVD REVIEW

FILM COMMENT - JULY/AUGUST 2011

(EXPERIMENTAL PICK)

VDB.ORG - Halflifers: The Complete History, 1992-2010
LIKE Jackass FOR THE GUGGENHEIM, 

Anthony Discenza and Torsten Zenas Burns's
collaborative project, Halflifers, is a lo-fi series of Knoxville-esque camcorder stunts wrapped up in arts-grant language. "An ordinary domestic setting is recast as a psychoactive landscape in which the concept of function becomes situational and fluid." Translation: they smear food on each other in the kitchen. With a proclivity for hazmat suits, the media art duo perform poorly staged action scenes that repeatedly disintegrate into accidental slapstick. But their series, Afterlifers: Walking & Talking, with the duo playing zombies in a riff on Romero, achieves real frisson. Footage of the things zombies get up to when no one's watching is interwoven with a dead-on parody of the end-of-the-world panel discussions from Dawn of the Dead. It's proof that while zombie movies may have moved from the grindhouse to the arthouse, no amount of irony can prevent the image of the zombie from instilling viewers with Pavlovian dread.
--Grady Hendrix

ZOMBIE-PROOF HOUSE: THE VIDEOS

VIDEO DATA BANK / NEW WEBSITE

www.vdb.org
www.vdb.org/artists/halflifers
www.vdb.org/artists/torsten-burns

DiRosa / HALFLIFERS in ZOMBIE-PROOF HOUSE

CHICAGO UNDERGROUND FILM FESTIVAL 2011

THE 18TH ANNUAL 
CHICAGO UNDERGROUND FILM FESTIVAL
HALFLIFERS AND FRIENDS: REACTIONS IN REACTION
DVD LAUNCH & SCREENING PROGRAM
MONDAY, JUNE 6TH @ 6PM

Please join us for a video launch party for the compilation DVD,

HalfLifers: The Complete History (1992-2010), the definitive pixel packet of

tulpoidal activation artists Torsten Zenas Burns and Anthony Discenza. For

one show only, the HalfLifers will re-imagine the Gene Siskel Film Center’s

theater into a saturated fictional exploration curation vehicle, navigating a

journey into the interior reaches of HalfLifers’s “videonic” backlog of afterlife

relationships, psychic sandwich surgery, and rescue rituals. This

manifested spatio-temporal Chicago hub will sync up and collaborate with

other pictographic projection artists including Anne McGuire, Jennifer

Reeder, Joe Gibbons, Bjorn Melhus, Virocode, and Animal Charm.

SUPER-GIGANTIC HALFLIFERS "GRAVICLE" DOCUMENT

Radical L@TE:Super-Gigantic HalfLifers DVD Mega-Release Party

Radical L@TE: 

Super-Gigantic HalfLifers DVD Mega-Release Party

February 18, 2011; 7:30 p.m.; Gallery B - (Doors 5 p.m., DJ 6:30 p.m.)

Programmed by Steve Seid and Kathy Geritz

Join us for a launch party for the compilation DVD, HalfLifers: The Complete History, the definitive pixel packet of legendary activation artists Torsten Zenas Burns and Anthony Discenza. For one night only, the HalfLifers will repurpose Thomas Faulders’s BAMscapeas an omnidirectional, construction-colored exploration vehicle, navigating a 360-degree journey into the interior reaches of HalfLifers’s “videonic” backlog of afterlife relationships, rescue rituals, and psychic manifestations. This spatio-temporal hub will sync up with other portable pictographic projections by longtime friends and collaborators of the HalfLifers, including Anne McGuire, Darrin Martin, Jordan Biren, Ursula Brookbank, Christian Burns, and Animal Charm. The celebration will be consummated with an anthro-engineered dough object—by which we mean a sugar-frosted biomemory conduit activated by physical ingestion.
Special thanks to: Julie Chang (Zombie cake-maker)

Post-Conceptual Performance: Video, 1977 to 1997 @ LACE (LOS ANGELES, CA) & PFA (BERKELEY,CA)

Radical Light: 

Alternative Film and Video in the San Francisco Bay Area

Post-Conceptual Performance: Video, 1977 to 1997
(PFA - Berkeley, CA)
Sunday, January 23, 2011- 5:30 p.m - Total running time: c. 80 mins
Jordan Biren, Tony Labat, Anne McGuire and HalfLifers in Person
( LACE - Los Angeles)
Thursday, January 20, 2011- 9:00 p.m - Total running time: c. 80 mins

By the mid-seventies, the concept of the artist’s body as medium had evolved from arid performance to effusive provocation. Tony Labat emerged in 1977 with the remarkable series Solo Flight in which the artist’s identity is given sudden form through subtle ethnic gestures. With pithy performances like Laurie Sings Iggy and the Madonna Series, Leslie Singer took on the celebrity industry with an economy of parodic impersonation and food flinging. In These Are the Rules, Doug Hall enacted an authoritarian pose to deflate the power vested in political symbols. Where Cecilia Dougherty dismisses the patrimony of past mentors with her remake of Howard Fried’s Fuck You, Purdue, Jordan Biren reinstates The Body as a nervous engine of desire. Finally, Anne McGuire’s tortured evocation of psychic disarray, I Am Crazy and You’re Not Wrong, gives way to the frantic activation of domestic space in the HalfLifers’s highly caloric Actions in Action.Solo Flight (Tony Labat, 1977, excerpts, 20 mins, B&W, Video, PFA Collection). Laurie Sings Iggy (Leslie Singer, 1987, 4 mins, Color, Video, PFA Collection). Fuck You, Purdue (Cecilia Dougherty, 1987, 12 mins, B&W, Video, PFA Collection). These Are the Rules (Doug Hall, 1983, 4:39 mins, Color, Video, From EAI). My Life as a Godard Film by Whitney Houston (Leslie Singer, 1988, 4 mins, Color, Video, PFA Collection). The Body (Jordan Biren, 1990, 15 mins, B&W, Video, PFA Collection). The Madonna Series: 1-5 (Leslie Singer, 1987, 4 mins, Color, Video, PFA Collection). I Am Crazy and You’re Not Wrong (Anne McGuire, 1997, 11 mins, B&W, Video, From the artist). Actions in Action (HalfLifers, 1997, 10 mins, Color, Video, From the artist).—Steve Seid

HALFLIFERS DVD PROJECT 2011

HALFLIFERS VIDEO CHUNKS from TORSTEN ZENAS BURNS on Vimeo.

DVD PROJECT - 18 YEARS OF THE HALFLIFERS

"HALFLIFERS: 
AND WHO SHALL RESCUE THE RESCUERS?"

DOUBLE DVD SET WITH CATALOGUE 2011

DVD'S INCLUDE VIDEO WORKS FROM THESE SERIES:

AFTERLIFE SERIES 2004-2008

PIONEER SERIES 1999

I.S.L.A.N.D.S. SERIES 1998-2010

ACTION SERIES 1997

RESCUE SERIES 1994-1997

INSTALLATION DOCUMENTATION 1997-2002

EARLY WORKS 1992-1994

SLIDESHOWS / TEXTS

AFTERLIFERS: WALKING & TALKING - VIDEO/STEREO/23:00/2008

ACTIONS IN ACTION - VIDEO/STEREO/11:00/1997
RESCUE SERIES (RESUE PARABLES / RETURN TO RESCUEWORLD)
VIDEO INSTALLATIONS

(I.S.L.A.N.D.S. CRAFT / BARNLANDERS / UNIVERSAL RESCUECRAFT)

(VISIONARY DRAWING BUILDING)

(VISIONARY DRAWING BUILDING)
2009 ONLINE ARCHIVE AND BOOK PROJECT
CURATED BY MATT BUA & MAXIMILIAN GOLDFARB
"MOBILE" CATEGORY

2009 CRAFTSPACE (DOUBLER) - HALFLIFERS
2009 UNIVERSAL-RESCUE CLUSTER & GRAVICLE - HALFLIFERS

HALFLIFERS GROUP SHOW IN MARCH 2009

The Stan Brakhage Symposium

The Fifth Annual Brakhage Symposium
March 14 and 15, 2009
10:00 a.m. — 9:00 p.m.
University of Colorado at Boulder
ATLAS building

We will be screening:
DAY ONE - SATURDAY 3PM
AFTERLIFERS: WALKING & TALKING - 22:00/2007
ACTIONS IN ACTION - 10:30 / 1999

HALFLIFERS GROUP SHOW IN JULY 2008

Catharine Clark Gallery presents:
Cummings, Birk, Diaz Hope, HalfLifers at Catherine Clark Gallery
July 19 - August 23, 2008; opening Saturday, July 19, 5-7pm, San Francisco
MORE INFO: www.cclarkgallery.com
Catharine Clark Gallery's New Location
150 Minna Street, Ground Floor (between 3rd and New Montgomery)
San Francisco, CA, 94105 - 415-399-1439

Catharine Clark Gallery
Solo Exhibition: Timothy Cummings: "Last Call"
Installation: Sandow Birk selections from "Leading Causes of Death in America"; Andy Diaz Hope with Laurel Roth
Video Project: AfterLifers: Walking and Talking by HalfLifers (Anthony Discenza and Torsten Zenas Burns)
July 19 - August 23, 2008

Catharine Clark Gallery announces the upcoming solo exhibitions of new paintings by Timothy Cummings, titled "Last Call". "AfterLifers: Walking and Talking", a collaborative video project by Anthony Discenza and Torsten Zenas Burns, will be featured in the Video Project Room. Selections from Sandow Birk's "Ten Leading Causes of Death" will be featured in the back gallery, along with a collaborative installation by Andy Diaz Hope and Laurel Roth. An opening reception for the artists is Saturday, July 19, 5 - 7pm.

For Cummings, last call is a state of existence where the perpetual desire to nurse a drink functions as an antidote for the pain associated with a more sober experience of contemporary life. In an era of continuous bad news, Cummings argues, many dangerously choose diversion over engagement. Cummings' zombie-youth admonish the viewer that without awareness and action, we may soon face a political reality that is devoid of choice, where our voices are rendered silent, and we too resemble the zombie characters of horror films.

HalfLifers, Anthony Discenza and Torsten Zenas Burns, working with reimagined zombie-characters in their collaborative video work since 1994, exhume cinema's favorite incarnation of mindless, decaying mortality in the hopes of breathing new life into this misunderstood figure.

A selection of prints from Sandow Birk's series "The Ten Leading Causes of Death" alongside a chandelier constructed from pills and hypodermic needles by Andy Diaz Hope and Laurel Roth, similarly examine how certain behavior, generally in excess, contributes to a zombie-like existence that can lead to a general apathy towards life.

LOVE TERRORS GROUP SHOW

LOVE TERRORS
Curated by Jeremy Stern
An Exhibition Featuring Artists from the Bemis Center for the Arts in Omaha, Nebraska:
Claudia Alvarez Mathieu Borysevicz Terry Rosenberg and
HALFLIFERS: Torsten Zenas Burns & Anthony Discenza
Eisentrager • Howard Gallery
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Oct. 8 - Nov. 20 2007 / Reception: October 8, 5-7pm

"FUZZY LOGIC" SCREENING

The Centre d’art et de diffusion Clark Montreal,Canada
Fuzzy Logic
Saturday April 14th, 2007 - 8 pm / Video

Phyllis Baldino, Messieurs Delmotte,
Eric Duyckaerts, Manuelle Gauthier,
Mai Hofstad Gunnes, Halflifers,
Buster Keaton, Karin Kihlberg &
Reuben Henry, Mrzyk et Moriceau,
Erik Olofsen, Alix Pearlstein,
David Yonge.

A video program by Patrice Duhamel
Comprised of two axes, one investigating science, and the
other fiction, the program Fuzzy Logic is steeped in idiocy.
What “idiot” is, in its fundamental sense, is untranslatable,
irreducible. As Jean-Yves Jouannais suggests in his book
L’idiotie (“Idiocy”), it will be a question here, of observing
how these video practices articulate
themselves as forms of life, art, politics and resistance.

These “deviant” practices exhaust us. They present
themselves as disqualified and limping, but nothing is
able to strip their passionate determination from them.
We like these practices because they reproduce not only
the sacrificial figure of the artist that society requires
to validate its laws of behavior, but also because
they depict the artist who, literally, blows it. We hate
these practices, or love to hate them, because they make
us laugh at what we do not ourselves do, while
making us forget that it is only art.

The Centre d’art et de diffusion Clark is a non-profit
organization run by a collective of 27 members, all artists
and cultural workers. Active in research as well as
production and diffusion, Clark defines itself as a flexible and
polyvalent meeting place.

The Centre is unique in grouping a variety of autonomous
and complementary spaces in a single location. In addition
to the gallery’s two exhibition rooms and individual work studios,
in 1998 the Centre created Atelier Clark, one of
the rare woodshops on the island of Montreal that is open
to the public and offers both specialized equipment and
professional-level technical support.

Since 1998, the Centre’s exhibition calendar has been
paired with a program of research and creative residencies
which permit a number of artists and
collectives to produce work within its walls.

STUTTGARTRANSAWARDFORMATIONAL CHUNKWICH

STUTTGARTRANSAWARDFORMATIONAL CHUNKWICH
1997/2007 HALFLIFERS HOLYOKERESEARCH RECONSTITUTION GOOPAKS

HALFLIFERS:HOLYOKE/OAKLAND

HalfLifers is a collaborative entity which seeks to chart the stress
fractures of a world growing ever more complex. Encased in our
protective gear, armed with a variety of adjectives, splatstick
routines & biorganic products, HalfLifers is ready to plunge into
reimagined zones of concern and construct healing rescue narratives.
Synthesizing our tools from such disparate models as speculative
fiction, docudrama TV, play therapy, and the local hardware
megastore, HalfLifers forges ahead on a never-ending mission to
recover the self from the constant threat of psychic disintegration,
and generate new evolutionary scenarios.

While the HalfLifers project exists as an accidental juncture of
fairy tale, 22nd century sitcom, and emergency training seminar
gone awry, the goal of the project is ultimately empathic and
restorative. Simultaneously embracing physical humor and a
sense of nostalgia for alternate realities and timelines,
HalfLifers imagines a futurological slapstick which provides a
cushion against the alienating and disempowering effects of
the modern technologic state.
Within the HalfLifer cosmos, an endless series of cyclical crises
unfolds, in which the distinctions between mental and physical,
animate and inanimate, ritual and disaster are collapsed; a
tragicomic zone of perpetual mishap abutting regions of deep
seated anxiety and loss of identity. The frenzied inhabitants of
this zone exist in a permanent flux of emergency and recovery,
where therapeutic calamities are catalogued and explosively
re-staged in a continual attempt to maintain psychic cohesion.

The HalfLifer working process is spontaneous and improvisational.
Performative scenarios evolve out of specific props or locations
that suggest the presence of unresolved conflicts. By entering
these spaces and triggering improvised "crisis re-enactments",
ordinary activities and settings are transformed into interior
landscapes charged with potential hazards. Temporal turbulence,
loss of memory and/or identity, equipment failure, and complete
physical collapse are just a few of the obstacles that may be
encountered. Only through healthy physical movement and the
repeated application of organic by-products can communication
pathways remain open and our mission sustained.
The residual electronic transmission, or video,
resulting from these procedures functions as a psychic poultice,
absorbing latent anxieties and transforming them, via absurd
humor, into restorative parables.

At precipitous moments, the turbulent energies which fuel
these transmissions acquire enough force and/or financial
support to create temporarily solid manifestations within
normal space time. These tulpoidal environments, occasionally
forming within institutional and commercial exhibition space,
offer viewers a chance to physically interact with the normally
intangible structures of HalfLifer space. Within these zones,
as in our video work, the concept of "functionality" is
recontextualized as a metaphor for an ongoing process of
internal restoration.

HalfLifer Themes/Operating principles/Concerns:
The world in flux, crisis: The accelerating pace of
technological advance results in individual
disempowerment and fosters a pervasive underlying anxiety.
Out of this collective anxiety springs an obsession with
the impotent body and fetishistic fantasies of control which
in turn propel further technologic acceleration. Our
fascination and faith in technology is not rational at all,
but rather reveals a kind of primitive magical thinking
which holds us in thrall even as we refuse to acknowledge it.

The establishment of ritualized activity, play_acting,
semi_dramatic re_enanctments as a technology of control
over psychic and physical realities.Endlessly deferred resolution;
cyclic crisis; a morbid obsession with the failing vitality of the
body and the deteriorating health of mental processes; a constant
attempt to re_integrate body and mind. The state of the body is
projected outward onto space and manifested sympathetically by
animate and inanimate objects alike; attempts to heal these objects
thus represents a ritualistic technology designed to heal the self.
Thought processes based on magical thinking or sympathetic
magic a "law of similars" in which the representation is fluidly
interchangeablewith the represented, or in which the part
holographically figures the whole; for example, a toy hammer can
be used as a psychic focusing lens to enable the mind to produce
the effects of a real hammer, a single leaf stands in for an entire
tree.The collapse of boundaries between linguistic and/or functional
categories; for example: Organic object as technological device;
food as transportation medium; physical injury as memory.
Substition of mental or physical state with spacial location, and vice
versa _ hence illness, loss of memory, identity crisis, etc. as "regions"
in which we get stuck; and movement through space equivalated with
movement towards a psychic reintegration.
Micro/macro _ a confusion of scale; an interchangeability
between toy scale and "real" scale.
The conceit that mental processes can manifest themselves
tulpoidally, that is, as physically solid projections perceivable
by others and independent of the subconscious conflicts from
which they arose.
A fascination with multiple planes of reality, alternate futures
and pasts existing co_terminously.
Nostalgia for fictitious histories and futures, nostalgia as a
fetishization of memory; memory as the foundation of
consciousness and thus identity
Slapstick / Splatstick as play therapy or a kind of
ritualized restorative activity.
Plenty of fake blood.......