karl f. stewart
videos / photographs
Buda Goes to Pest . preview
00:01:40 / 00:10:55
Single channel video.
Hungarians refer to themselves as the Magyars. And in October 1956, the Magyars rose up in defense of their right to be free as individuals and fought against being used as collective slaves under the Soviet imposed communist government of Hungarian born Mátyás Rákosi.
The film poetically speaks of the origins of the symbol of the uprising - the Hungarian fag with a hole in the middle of it.
Soundtrack featuring . Radio Free Clear Light and Zahorcsek Juhos Mária
Creation of project finished in June 2014
My Shadow an Illusion of Me . preview
00:01:18 / 00:03:10
Single channel video
The film plays with the tension between images of shadows, a text describing shadows and an audio independent from the images and text. This juxtaposition of each element one to the other in the end creates a sense of lightness appropriate for a shadow.
Soundtrack featuring . Kyron aka JC Mendizabal . Spinning Interlude 1
Creation of project finished in October 2013.
Images in a Nondescript Fountain . preview
00:01:00 / 00:05:30
Single channel video
Some would say water is a reflection of us. And though we walk by sources of water almost everyday, we frequently never notice what we are reflecting back onto its surface. Images in a Nondescript Fountain is a video of reflected images found in a fountain located outside the museum K 20 in Dusseldorf, Germany. It is also an elaborated version of a previous video entitled K 20. This video is a part of my water period work and a continuation of my Alice in Dusseldorf series. Other videos related to water include Flowing to Blue and Fish RED.
Creation of project in September 2013.
Transgenesis a Lexicon . preview
00:01:35 / 00:05:05
Single channel video.
Transgenesis is a panorama of the current terminology used to describe the practice of species manipulation.
Trans ▪ genesis is loosely defined as the altering, metamorphosing, reconstructing or revolutionizing of the genetic code within one or more species. Today we collectively call this genetic modification. Enclosed in the concept are a myriad of programs ranging from computer and biological mental thought processes to nanotechnologies to political or philosophical constructs. A number of these programs are not only being constantly manually implemented, but many are running on automatic. Today we have the continuous substitution of what was once called natural with what is now artificial.
The video revolves around the theme of Simulated Nature contrasted to Nature as the original source of life. This is a concept I have touched on before in San Francisco : The unearthly beauty of simulated nature in contemporary architecture, The Trilogy of Noise, Fish RED and Fish Pool. These works are glances at the idea Nature has been supplanted by notions of manufactured reality which lack primordial essence.
Soundtrack featuring . Radio Free Clear Light . Aways
Creation of project finished in December 2014.
I Don't Need Their Voices . Memories of a Recent Future
00:05:30
Single channel video
There is not a generation alive that has lived in an era of global peace. During the last 100 years, humanity’s more recent generations have only seen death and destruction as the guiding rule for life – World Wars I & II, the genocide committed by the regimes of Lenin, Stalin and Mao Tse-Tung, the mass murder of Armenians in Turkey, the Korean conflict, the Vietnam massacres, the mass genocide by Pol Pot’s regime in Cambodia, the Indonesian genocide of East Timor, the conflicts in Africa (i.e., Algeria, Burundi, Congo, Ivory Coast, Eritrea and Ethiopia, Liberia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Sudan, Uganda, Zimbabwe, just to mention a few), the death squads of Latin America, the genocide committed in Bosnia and Kosovo, the sixty-year genocide of Palestinians and more recently the military invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, the state-mafia-terrorist-revolution-invasions of Egypt, Libia, Tunisia and Syria, and the mass murder of these people. And don’t forget the ever present mass genocide of billions of human beings by starvation and the spread of man-made bio diseases throughout the world.
A question we could easily ask ourselves is, because of our continuing human tragedy, have we become numb to humanity? Today as humans beings, do many of us only see life in its relationship to ourselves, but not to humanity as a whole? I would suggest that as human beings we no longer want to know or be held responsible for what our ignorance and indifference is doing to our fellow human beings. The refusal of millions of beings to objectively look at the preposterous claims by governments that 9 11 was carried out by Florida flight school students who had learned how to fly Pipers and Cessnas during the Summer before hijacking a Boeing 767 (a plane which seats 290 people compared to a Piper or Cessna which seats four) lead to the destruction of Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and Syria - and is now slowly but surely destroying Western civilization. Our neglect to control the sinister side of our human behavior has wreaked havoc on our planet.
Soundtrack featuring . Radio Free Clear Light . Moonstruck
Creation of project finished in January 2014.
Flowing to Blue
00:09:00
Single channel video installation.
Abstract thoughts reflected on the river Sorgue, taken in France at L'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue, in three parts. Flowing to Blue is a part of my water period work and a continuation of my Alice in Dusseldorf series. Other videos related to water include K 20 . Fish Red.
Soundtrack featuring . Radio Free Clear Light . Worlds Within
Creation of project finished in Augut 2013.
Fish RED Our World Is Plastic . preview
00:00:53 / 00:03:09
Two-channel video installation to either be projected or shown on large monitors.
The video draws attention to the use of Simulated Nature in today's world. Specifically the video addresses the concept that contemporary society has relegated Nature to second-class status and has substituted it with plastic.
The video images are of fish in a shallow fountain located outside a major corporate headquarters in Düsseldorf, Germany. Aesthetically the fountain harmonizes well with the building. It is a motif architects use with success in many localities in urban areas. The title Fish Red points to the design function of the fish. The audio track instead, represents ocean sounds from Nature. And the text, overlaid on the images, discusses the concept of our relationship to Nature in contemporary society - is humanity today still a representative of its Source.
The theme revolving around the contrast of decorative nature to Nature as the original source of life is a concept I have touched on before in San Francisco : The unearthly beauty of simulated nature in contemporary architecture, and The Trilogy of Noise, Fish Pool and Transgenesis. These works are glances at the idea Nature has been supplanted by aesthetically ethereal manufactured realities which lack primordial essence.
The installation could also be accompanied by photographic prints . HERE .
Creation of project finished in October 2014.
San Francisco . Street Portraits
00:10:36
Single-channel video installation.
The installation could also be accompanied by photographic prints . HERE .
Creation of project finished in October 2012.
San Francisco
The unearthly beauty of simulated nature in contemporary architecture
00:05:44
Single-channel video installation.
The installation could also be accompanied by photographic prints.
Creation of project finished in October 2012.
videos without a preview
Video of Shadows Title A B or C . preview
00:02:06 / 00:07:00
Single channel video
The video is an abstract portrait of the shadows - understood to include also our actions - which precede us and follow us through life. The video is a reflection on a question I have been asking myself recently which is, are human beings, not just figuratively but literally, shadows here on Earth. The question comes from the consideration that if shadows are used as a metaphor for human beings, are human beings a metaphor for something else? Are human beings cast back onto the Earth's surface as something else's shadow? If humanity is something else's reflection, then only when we learn to stop living as shadows can we hope that one day together we will shine.
Soundtrack featuring . Radio Free Clear Light . Someday Together
Creation of project finished 201
Berlin Conversations . Up Down Nowhere
00:07:05
Single channel video.
The expression life is full of ups and downs seems appropriate for a video based around escalators. These moving stairs come and go and always end somewhere. In this video the destination is the platform of an S-Bahn, U-Bahn or the Hauptbahnhof in Berlin. And after all the ups and downs I have taken, a question lingers ... through all our journeys, where are we? Escalators and train stations are possibly a good metaphor for life. At the end of the escalator, another journey always begins. And the ups and downs of an escalator eventually form circles. We call them routines, history repeating itself. At the end of the ride we end up nowhere in particular and oddly enthusiastic to repeat the experience.
There are several themes which run in the background in the creation of this video. What I feel should be the most obvious point is that there is no storyline. No one meets someone else and gets married. There is no drama played out. I do what I call video art. It is the simple notion of presenting everyday aspects of life in an aesthetically intriguing series of visual images. I call this the poetic in the midst of chaos. It is the search for beauty in a world which has turned against itself. This is a concept I have written about in my artistic statement and will not belabor the point any further here.
Today there appears to be an abundance of films/videos telling stories. I often wonder if this is a result of humanity's sense of feeling lost in a Universe we conjecture about, but know nothing about. Stories are maybe our way of looking for meaning in a life which in many ways could seem meaningless.
I do not have a story to tell and only offer the casual spectator a view on a world which I have seen and maybe you have ignored. Notwithstanding the difficulties of life, I easily find endless beauty to be experienced in the midst of our continuous mayhem.
I believe images are sensual. And as I move through Berlin, I find the city to be a visually seductive town. It is a physically rough city which still wears the scars of its history, but its beauty has never faded. And it is with these thoughts I attempt to make escalators and platforms visually alluring.
This town is rapidly becoming a gentrified city where its radical is chic, and its artistic tension is waning. Up Down Nowhere is a tribute to the Berlin which is or was always here, there and maybe nowhere, but is and always has been moving.
Berlin Conversations is a series of videos on the images and sounds of The City. Up Down Nowhere is the second video in the series
Soundtrack featuring . Radio Free Clear Light . Experience is a Tunnel Remix
Creation of project finished March 2014
k 20
00:03:30
Single channel video installation.
Some would say water is a reflection of us. And though we walk by sources of water almost everyday, we frequently never notice what we are reflecting back onto its surface. K 20 is a video of reflected images in a nondescript fountain located outside the museum K 20 in Dusseldorf, Germany - thus the title of the video. It's a part of my water period work and a continuation of my Alice in Dusseldorf series. Other videos related to water include Flowing to Blue and Fish Red .
Soundtrack featuring . Kyron aka JC Mendizabal . Cosma
Creation of project finished September 2013
Animaux Découpages
00:04:50
Often times the personality of an animal extends only to the dining room table as a roasted chicken or a grilled steak. And though we are fairly understanding of cats and dogs, we frequently lose touch with the complexities of other domesticated animals. Animaux Découpages are portraits of common farm animals. It's a look at their perceived personality through a photograph. Why would I want to be a Cow . Why would I want to be a cow ... Why would I want to be a cow ... They heat you ... They eat ... Why would I wan to be a cow ... I came into this world all big eyed ... Now I'm big all around .would I want to be a cow ... Why would I want to be a cow ... They heat you ... They eat you ....
Creation of project finished December 2012