2008

2' 30"

PLAY NOW

Crimes of Obedience

2012

18'18";

House of Cards
2009

3'

Aussie Wonderland
2016

2'15"

PLAY NOW

Baby Boomers Redux

2008

30"

Colour My World

2009

3'

Turning another happy song on its head

Cathy Vogan Live in 'MIMOSIS'
Melbourne International Film Festival 2009

Party Hard

2009

3' 40"

"The Final Statement"

TONE REGENERATOR
REANIMATED

from the DVD

< DESPAIR >

Methuselah

19'

available on DVD
"Memories, Dreams, Defections"

"A sensitive portrait by Cathy Vogan of the dancer Ernest Berk at over eighty years of age. His body, his wrinkles, his views on old-age and sexuality, his zest for life link up with a reflection on time from both a biographical and a scientific viewpoint. Experience and wisdom has gathered in the wrinkles of the skin just as in the warped bark of ancient trees. The recent death of Ernest Berk makes this approach to him as "Methuselah," the magician of life, a final poetic document of the times."

Median Kunst Archive 2003

Video Art Award
Videofest 1993

PLAY NOW

The Synchronizer

In the half-life of our Collective Dreaming, generally only the best elements will do. The "edit-room floor" is perhaps one of the safest closets for error, banality and inertia; while the screen becomes an opaque mirror for a new humanity - fast, funny, smart - with every line extremely well, but so invisibly written. Perhaps the real purpose of recording is not to remember, but through editing, to forget. But can we live up to the image?

Now try drawing a straight line as well as a computer.

"Synchronizer" is a 19' techno-comedy which dismantles the various arts of looking perfect. The film examines the mechanism whereby a culture's identity comes into place, starting with the auto-reflexive premise that this process is rather like editing a film. "Synchronizer" attempts to show that the film-maker - in life and onscreen - often has "an angle"; and it light-heartedly explores the possibility that false consciousness is more of a "musical" than logical contruct. But when the score has been so well written... who wants to "see the strings"?

We fictionalize our world, our society, and our very own bodies into the perfectly regulated instrument. We invent machines, substances and technologies, to facillitate our desire operate IN TIME, and through time to the tune of a conceptual metronome. Manifestations of this Zeitgeist may be as literal as the use of alarm clocks... to wake us up; or pills... to sedate, slim or save us; breast pumps... to synchronize the hunger of the next generation with the exigencies of this one's working day; the use of clippers... to ensure that our hedge grows into the more appealing form of a chicken, rabbit or little dog. Yes, it's all about topiary, in a way: the topiary of the rhymsters... (takes a breath)

All these fictions are part and parcel of the same desire that makes us selectively record, and edit our film: the desire to re-invent ourselves.

Videokunstpreis
Production Award 1997

Grand Prize
Video Leggere, Palermo 1997

TRANSCRIPTION
The Synchronizer's texts, songs and poems

 

Ship of Fools

CATHY VOGAN LIVE

PLAY NOW

with DOMINIK BARBIER
and HEINER MULLER
(10 year project)

Hamlet Machine
2003

90"

"HOLLYWOOD TRAILER"

www.hamletmachine.net

An ephemeral architecture made up of evolving images and sounds. Specifically, this entails the live performance of actors, 3 musicians, and the projection of video on to 12 synchronized screens over 4 stages. These images in volume are combined with the components of a material set. The actors are confronted with spatial elements that are in a state of flux, and with multiple temporalities.

HAMLET MACHINE on stage was 7 years in the making, and started its life with the playwright himself directing the actors. Dominik Barbier was the Scenographer, Graeme Revell was to compose the music, and I would work on the production of the image with DB. By late 1995, Muller's cast of 50 Hamlets (all farmers) and 3 Ophelia's had been chosen. We had filmed 30 hours of footage, and composited quite a few sequences. The show was only three months away when tragedy struck.

One week into working with his actors, Muller was rushed to hospital. He died within weeks. All but a few producers immediately withdrew from the project, and it came down to Dominik and friends, to finish the mammoth production alone. It could not go unmentioned that Pierre Bongiovanni (CICV), and Michel Kokosovsky stood firm in their support, and provided wherever they could, opporuunities for the project to advance in small increments. And I shall always admire Dominik's determination to see the project through to its conclusion, often at the risk of him being accused of "having fallen into Muller's grave". The project saw its final stages of completion in Lyon and Amsterdam, and it was finally premiered in July 2003 in Marseille.

CREDITS

PLAY NOW

with DOMINIK BARBIER
and HEINER MULLER

I Was Hamlet
.
(EXTRACT)

1994
.
3'

 

"The Odour of Soap"

"As a child, I heard the adults say that in the concentration camps, they made soap out of the Jews
From this time on, I can no longer touch soap, and I abhor its odour.
For the Mise en Scene of Tristan, I am living in a new apartment in the town of Beyreuth.
The dwelling is as clean
As I have ever seen.
Everything has it's place: the pots and pans, the plates, the cups, the glasses, the double-bed.
The shower - "Made in Germany" - could awaken the dead.
On the walls, flowers and Alpine kitch. Order presides here.
Order too, in the vegetation... behind the house.
In the silent street in front of the Hypobank, when I open the window for the first time:
the odour of soap.
The house, the apartment, the garden, the town of Bayreuth... all stink of soap.
Now I know - I speak out against the silence - what it means to live in Hell
Neither dead, nor a murderer.

Auschwitz was born here, in the odour of soap"

Heiner Muller, 1994. "I was Hamlet" Documentary 73"

CREDITS

PLAY NOW

with DOMINIK BARBIER
and HEINER MULLER

I Was Hamlet
.
(EXTRACT)

1994
.
6'

with DOMINIK BARBIER
and HEINER MULLER

No Way Buster
.
(EXTRACT)
.
1994

6'

This intercontinental love story takes the form of an actual pathway of initiation, that the visitor/spectator must follow. It's a modern Odyssey, at the speed of the electronic, in all its glory. The No Way Buster Project is an epic of intercontinental passion, and a lure toward the mortally splendourous electronic image.

Is intercontinental passion proportional to the square of the distance that separates us? Is dream in fact born of distance? And if separation from the image of oneself is at the origin of the idea of death, is separation from the Other at the origin of the idea of Passion?

PLAY NOW

with TERRY GILLIAM

The Making of
BRAZIL

1992

13' 27"

Our Paris studios, FEARLESS, played host to this production in 1992.
Yann Nguyen Minh directed, and provided miniature sets,
while Dominik Barbier and Léonard Faulon
provided electronic and other sculptures.

With master decorator, Jean Rene Bader
("Delicatessen", "City of Lost Children"),
they created the electronic environment
that would pay homage to Gilliam's landmark film.
.
I edited, and never got to meet Terry.

 

Thanks to my talented students and colleagues at the
THE EUROPEAN SCHOOL OF VISUAL ARTS
for their kind particpation in the making of this film.

u r l

2009

6'

u r l _ o n l y

Not DAVID BOWIE...

Soditty

2003

3'

"Long distance love and kisses, to the girl who never misses
Any opportunity, to sing in public lavatories..."

This was my mother's birthday surprise, on the 9th of December, 2003.

The DVD was sent from Paris to Sydney in advance.
It was hidden from her until a live telephone link-up.
We had been living 20,000 kms apart for 16 years.

Mum and I both love to sing, but only she in public lavatories.

I didn't know it at the time, but a month later,
I would start my one year journey back to Australia.

Line-a-Speed

2004

3'

(view with red-green glasses)

 

In Memory of the artist JOHN DEEBLE

If you can get hold of some of those red-green glasses, he is in 3D.
The masking is pretty crappy at the end, because I was in a hurry to finish.
Nevertheless Deeble's charisma shines through his tits, of which he is off.

"He was such an Angel
And such a Diable

Born on Christmas Day
He died of self-inflicted wounds"

 

Lachbox
The Music of Laughter

1997

1'

This was an attraction I set up for SUDWESTFUNK, a German TV channel, in their foyer.
It was to to promote my film 'THE SYNCHRONIZER', which had just won the 1997 Videokunstpreis.

I set up a big funny box with a 2-way mirror reflecting the image of a TV screen, and a hidden camera. When visitors entered the LACHBOX and started viewing, I captured their reactions.

 

COMING SOON

?