Red Flag
Artist: Istvan Kantor
Work ID: 65759
Description: 1996 [colour, stereo, 4 min. 30 sec.]
Script, performance, director: Istvan Kantor.
Produced at PRIM, Montreal.
In 1995 Istvan Kantor was guest participant of a Joris Ivens seminar in Amsterdam, organized by MonteVideo TBA. A group exhibition, dedicated to the revolutionary Dutch filmmaker, followed the seminar. Being confronted by Ivens' politically engaged work, Kantor has chosen to confront Ivens' communist ideals in relation to his own neoist philosophy.
Collection:
Date Made: 1996
Materials:
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Work by Istvan Kantor
Levitation
Artist: Istvan Kantor
Work ID: 65772
Description: 1990.
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Collection:
Date Made: 1990
Materials:
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Robot Platform
Artist: Istvan Kantor
Work ID: 65767
Description: 2003
(Kinetic Scrapmetal Sculpture and Performance Machine Robot).
First used in February 1992 at Mondo Quatro, Phoenix Theatre, Toronto.
Robot Platform was constructed with the collaboration of sculptor and robot-maker Brad Smith. Its hydraulic mechanism has been assembled at the Funny Farm (Markdale, Ont.), in January 1992. In 1999 it was rebuilt and extended with digital control system.
The robot's body is made entirely from scrapmetal waste found in Toronto's industrial areas. It can be dismantled in two parts, base and top. The base of the robot is fixed, it holds the hydraulic mechanism, the motor, the pump and the cylinders. The top moves around in every direction, lying on an axis of rotation.
The performer struggles to stay on the platform while addressing the audience.
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Collection:
Date Made: 1991/1999
Materials:
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Dripping
Artist: Istvan Kantor
Work ID: 65771
Description: 1992.
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Collection:
Date Made: 1992
Materials:
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Coathanger Cult
Artist: Istvan Kantor
Work ID: 65770
Description: 1993.
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Collection:
Date Made: 1993
Materials:
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Living Statue
Artist: Istvan Kantor
Work ID: 65769
Description: 1994.
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Collection:
Date Made: 1994
Materials:
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Red Flag
Artist: Istvan Kantor
Work ID: 65759
Description: 1996 [colour, stereo, 4 min. 30 sec.]
Script, performance, director: Istvan Kantor.
Produced at PRIM, Montreal.
In 1995 Istvan Kantor was guest participant of a Joris Ivens seminar in Amsterdam, organized by MonteVideo TBA. A group exhibition, dedicated to the revolutionary Dutch filmmaker, followed the seminar. Being confronted by Ivens' politically engaged work, Kantor has chosen to confront Ivens' communist ideals in relation to his own neoist philosophy.
Measurements:
Collection:
Date Made: 1996
Materials:
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Gift to Rauschenberg: A blood-x action
Artist: Istvan Kantor
Work ID: 65774
Description: July 1st, 1998, Köln, Ludwig Museum.
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Collection:
Date Made: 1998
Materials:
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Black Flag
Artist: Istvan Kantor
Work ID: 65775
Description: 1998. [9 min. / stereo / col & bw / digitally mastered].
Script, sound, director: Istvan Kantor.
Computer animation, non-linear editing: Dariusz Karnicki.
Edited at Bullseye Digital Post, editor: Darren Jennekens.
Black Flag explores the architecture of textuality through the language of confrontation, contest and revolt. It juxtaposes the noise of the body-machine and fragmented passages of words to reflect direct relations to actual political issues (cutbacks, eliminations), social situations (poverty, daily survival) and individual existence (frustration, struggle). Its message is summed up in a political slogan, "Down with the government that starves us!", that repeatedly appears throughout the video, in the form of 3D animation and as refrain of a song, and seems to be the pillar of Black Flag.
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Collection:
Date Made: 1998
Materials:
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Executive Machinery
Artist: Istvan Kantor
Work ID: 65766
Description: 1999. Elektra Festival, Montreal, Quebec.
Istvan Kantor's continuous interest in the file cabinet is not a simple physical fascination or aesthetic obscession with the object but it rather represents a wider theoretical involvement with robotic sculptural systems and kinesonic information mechanisms. The simple monolithic file cabinets today are linked together by computers and integrated into a giant network that functions as a world wide information furniture machinery.
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Collection:
Date Made: 1999
Materials:
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Intercourse
Artist: Istvan Kantor
Work ID: 65764
Description: 2000. Ars Electronica, Linz, Austria.
Istvan Kantor's continuous interest in the file cabinet is not a simple physical fascination or aesthetic obscession with the object but it rather represents a wider theoretical involvement with robotic sculptural systems and kinesonic information mechanisms. The simple monolithic file cabinets today are linked together by computers and integrated into a giant network that functions as a world wide information furniture machinery.
Intercourse combines robotic sculpture and interactive video to connect old office furniture and new electronics. The simple act of opening/closing drawers of a file cabinet sets off a reaction in the other furnishing throughout the room. As the machinery of office furniture sculptures come to life, so do screened images of a naked body hooked up to electrodes. Insisting on the physical and on the presence and power of the body, Kantor entertains the possibility of transition, mutation and the beauty of the dialogue between electronics and body mechanics.
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Collection:
Date Made: 2000
Materials:
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
AXIOM/E (AXIOMACHINE)-2 (Repossessing the Body-Machine)
Artist: Istvan Kantor
Work ID: 65754
Description: 2001. Excerpt from video.
Installation / Performance.
Interactive Transmission Machinery .
AXIOM/E (AXIOMACHINE)-2 reveals Istvan Kantor's neoist panorama-vision of technological takeover: a hyper-utopian landscape dominated by monuments of information storage machinery and ruled by computer controlled body-machines.
First performed at the 2001 Montreal Elektra Festival.
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Collection:
Date Made: 2001
Materials:
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Executive Machinery
Artist: Istvan Kantor
Work ID: 65763
Description: 2001. Polysonneries, Lyon, France.
Istvan Kantor's continuous interest in the file cabinet is not a simple physical fascination or aesthetic obscession with the object but it rather represents a wider theoretical involvement with robotic sculptural systems and kinesonic information mechanisms. The simple monolithic file cabinets today are linked together by computers and integrated into a giant network that functions as a world wide information furniture machinery.
Intercourse combines robotic sculpture and interactive video to connect old office furniture and new electronics. The simple act of opening/closing drawers of a file cabinet sets off a reaction in the other furnishing throughout the room. As the machinery of office furniture sculptures come to life, so do screened images of a naked body hooked up to electrodes. Insisting on the physical and on the presence and power of the body, Kantor entertains the possibility of transition, mutation and the beauty of the dialogue between electronics and body mechanics.
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Collection:
Date Made: 2001
Materials:
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
lebensraum / lifespace – spectacle of noise
Artist: Istvan Kantor
Work ID: 65758
Description: 2004 [Excerpt from video: colour, 72 min.; stereo / mini-dv master / NTSC.]
(experimental feature video)
Written, composed, designed, directed and edited by Istvan Kantor.
Featuring Monty Cantsin, Volta and MachineSexActionGroup.
Computer graphics by Kristan Horton, Dariusz Karnicki, Pierre Zovile; camera: Istvan Kantor, Charles Kassatly.
This monumental work is impelled by a burning desire to confront the deadening forces that dominate today's technological system of control.
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Collection:
Date Made: 2004
Materials:
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Brothers & Sisters
Artist: Istvan Kantor
Work ID: 65757
Description: 2004 [Excerpt from video: colour, 72 min.; stereo / mini-dv master / NTSC.]
Script, music, sound, directed and edited by Istvan Kantor.
Computer animation: Dariusz Karnicki.
Edited at Bullseye Digital Post, Toronto.
Brothers & Sisters is a deliberately confrontational experimental video with socio-political edge, a dramatic fusion of manifesto like poetical statements commenting on the divers aspects of discriminative tendencies in technological society. Istvan Kantor continues to investigate multi-structural videographic presentation employing juxtaposed performance segments, overlapping layers of computer animation, biographical elements, photography, text and sounds. His fragmented narrative integrates ideological rhetoric, religious iconography, the phraseology of political activism, and flashbacks of childhood memories.
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Collection:
Date Made: 2004
Materials:
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Camp Theorama
Artist: Istvan Kantor
Work ID: 65768
Description: 2004.
Proposal for the Venice Biennial Canadian Pavilion
(3d model video).
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Collection:
Date Made: 2004
Materials:
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
MachineSexActionGroup
Artist: Istvan Kantor
Work ID: 65762
Description: since 1999. The body as a transmission device, orgasm as kinetic control system, epileptic seizure and sex related contractions of the body as information machinery, are some of the examples of my most recent interest. I try to explore these ideas through the collective efforts of Machine Sex Action Group.
I initiated a new research into the yet unexplored territories of "machine sex action", "body-machine performance" a number of years ago while exploring the hardware of the file cabinet and the pelvic motions of sexual intercourse. The first performances investigated the in-out, back and forth movements of the cabinet drawers and the pelvic gestures of the user in relation to the archival information storage systems of technological society.
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Date Made: since 1999
Materials:
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
The Trinity Session
Artist: Istvan Kantor
Work ID: 65760
Description: The Trinity session features the action based technological media work of MachineSexActionGroup. It explores the socio-physical aspects of trans-kinetic ecstasy and the techno-orgasmic ambiance of high-speed informantion exchange through a site-specific machine-cult performance focusing on robotic stimulation, desktop eroticism, office furniture-sex and cybersportecstasy.
The video was produced for the TransSexTech residency project at Trinity Square Video, in Toronto.
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Date Made:
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Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Intercourse
Artist: Istvan Kantor
Work ID: 65765
Description: Interactive transmission machinery in progress.
The File Cabinet Project (since 1993).
Istvan Kantor's continuous interest in the file cabinet is not a simple physical fascination or aesthetic obscession with the object but it rather represents a wider theoretical involvement with robotic sculptural systems and kinesonic information mechanisms. The simple monolithic file cabinets today are linked together by computers and integrated into a giant network that functions as a world wide information furniture machinery.
Intercourse combines robotic sculpture and interactive video to connect old office furniture and new electronics. The simple act of opening/closing drawers of a file cabinet sets off a reaction in the other furnishing throughout the room. As the machinery of office furniture sculptures come to life, so do screened images of a naked body hooked up to electrodes. Insisting on the physical and on the presence and power of the body, Kantor entertains the possibility of transition, mutation and the beauty of the dialogue between electronics and body mechanics.
Measurements:
Collection:
Date Made:
Materials:
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
AXIOM/E-1 (Repossessing the Body-Machine)
Artist: Istvan Kantor
Work ID: 65755
Description: Excerpt from video.
AXIOM/E-1 manifests Istvan Kantor's obsessive interest in the body as individual machinery unit in relationship to systems of social machinery. Invaded by technology, the hardware of the newly repossessed body-machine is now the extension of all softwares, wired up, plugged into external devices, shackled to keyboards, perpetually on-line, processing information, transmitting messages, interacting through a unifying network.
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Date Made:
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Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Accumulation
Artist: Istvan Kantor
Work ID: 24868
Description: Excerpt from video.
Accumulation presents Istvan Kantor's "accumulationist theory" through reinterpreting already existing images and using these images as illustrations for a purposely confusing rhetoric. Through his obsessive reinterpretation of images, raging loop-machine editing, animated hyper-texts, sampled noise sequences, sudden and explosive inserts of counter-frames, Kantor confronts our established perceptions.
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Date Made:
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Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Broadcast
Artist: Istvan Kantor
Work ID: 65756
Description: Excerpt from video.
Broadcast explores the beauty of urban decay and the body as transmission machine. Its hyper-dramatic nonlinear narrative links short segments of increasing tension and feverish intensity. Istvan Kantor comments on the architecture of noise in technological society in relation to broadcast transmission and the values of individual autonomy. While new high-tech condos are changing the cityscape the protagonists of BROADCAST are invading abandoned warehouse buildings and climbing up to the roofs to broadcast their hallucinatory performance-manifestos, introducing their own bodies as telecommunication hyper-devices.
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Date Made:
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Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Machinery Execution
Artist: Istvan Kantor
Work ID: 65761
Description: The body as a transmission device, orgasm as kinetic control system, epileptic seizure and sex related contractions of the body as information machinery, are some of the examples of my most recent interest. I try to explore these ideas through the collective efforts of Machine Sex Action Group.
I initiated a new research into the yet unexplored territories of "machine sex action", "body-machine performance" a number of years ago while exploring the hardware of the file cabinet and the pelvic motions of sexual intercourse. The first performances investigated the in-out, back and forth movements of the cabinet drawers and the pelvic gestures of the user in relation to the archival information storage systems of technological society.
Measurements:
Collection:
Date Made:
Materials:
Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
Footage from Blood Painting
Artist: Istvan Kantor
Work ID: 65773
Description: National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa.
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Collection:
Date Made:
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Virtual Collection: Original CCCA
