Tagged: Swoon Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

  • Dave Bonta 12:27 pm on April 2, 2013 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , Swoon   

    Nic Sebastian profiled at “The Third Form” 

    I was very pleased to see to my friend Nic Sebastian‘s contributions to videopoetry, audiopoetry, and online publishing in general profiled this month at “The Third Form,” Erica Goss’s column at Connotation Press. As Erica writes, “Nic Sebastian’s work … deserves a wider audience. She is a well-published poet, makes video poems, and has a wonderful speaking voice for poetry.” Included in the profile are several of my personal favorites of Nic’s own videos, as well as videos some of the rest of us have made using Nic’s readings of other people’s poetry and her own, a varied and growing collection.

    One of those videos is by Swoon, and in fact the column begins with a review of Swoon’s most ambitious project to date — Cirkel/Circle, featuring eleven poems by eleven different Belgian poets. I’ve also been privileged to see the full-length film, which isn’t publicly available on the web yet pending its screening in some upcoming festivals. In the meantime, you can watch the preview and read Erica’s description to whet your appetite.

     

  • Dave Bonta 12:45 pm on February 1, 2013 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , London Poetry Systems, Luca Nasciuti, Swoon   

    Celebrate London Poetry Systems’ 5th birthday Feb. 16 with Alastair Cook and Swoon 

    London Poetry Systems “came into this world when a few friends decided to put on a kind of club night mixing poetry, music and live visuals. We wanted to see poetry in a new context, one that made sense to us, that spoke of our generation.” They’ve emerged as one of the most vital spaces for contemporary filmpoetry and videopoetry screening in the UK. On February 16, they’ll mark their 5th birthday with appearances by, and live mixes from, Scottish filmpoem maker Alastair Cook and Belgian videopoet Mark Neys, A.K.A. Swoon, as well as the composer Luca Nasciuti, whose work features in the soundtracks of a number of Cook’s filmpoems. Other poets and musicians will perform as well. The location is Edel Assanti, near Hyde Park. Get the complete details from their Facebook event page, or, in a somewhat more abbreviated form, from their website.

     

  • Dave Bonta 11:18 am on October 1, 2012 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , Swoon,   

    Swoon interview and the upcoming ZEBRA festival 

    Erica Goss’ Third Form column for October features an interview with the amazing Marc Neys (a.k.a. Swoon) and a look ahead to the ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival this month in Berlin.

    I enjoyed getting a bit more of Marc’s backstory than I knew before:

    Although his work has the look of a seasoned professional, Swoon started making his distinctive videos only two years ago. “I watched a lot of movies when I was a kid,” he told me when we talked in August. “When I was fourteen, I told myself I would make a film someday. I watch movies with an eye to the way they’re made. It drives my wife crazy, but I’m always pointing things out to her when we watch films together, especially if the film isn’t very good.” Swoon’s experience – from running “the smallest theater company in Belgium” – just he and his wife – to playing in a band and singing in English when he was sixteen – come together in his poetry videos.

    His remarks on craft and technique were also interesting:

    Craft is very important in Swoon’s work. “I spend a lot of time looking at footage, but I have an eye for what I want. A bad film can make a great video poem – it’s in the editing.”

    He’s made most of his videos with “a cheap DV camera and some cheap German editing software. I need to upgrade my equipment, but I’m worried that better equipment will make me lazy. With my old equipment, I’m forced to be a better filmmaker. I want people to be impressed with my eye, not the camera’s.”

    As far as what the video shows, Swoon advises, “Videos should not just show what’s going on in the poem – as in, the poem mentions a leaf falling and sure enough, you see a leaf falling. I want something that takes more imagination.”

    Be sure to read the whole thing and watch the embedded videos.

     

  • Swoon 3:04 pm on April 24, 2012 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , Swoon   

    Filmmaker seeks poet 

    http://vimeo.com/40802011

    I am looking for a writer who is willing to let these three films inspire him/her to write three poems for them…

    Look and listen…absorb…look and listen some more…and write…

    I’m looking for three new poems (please use the titles of the films) written for these three videos:

    Disturbance in the maze
    Wailing Wall Crumbs
    Ghostless Blues (The story of Vladimir K.)

    More info, mail me: swoonbildos@gmail.com

     

  • Dave Bonta 4:03 am on January 6, 2012 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , David Tomaloff, , Swoon   

    Videopoetry makers Swoon and David Tomaloff featured at CoronationPress.com 

    Check out this terrific interview with Belgian filmmaker Swoon and American poet David Tomaloff about their recent collaboration on a triptych of videopoems. I loved learning about their collaborative process and how they thought of each other’s work, and as an amateur maker of videopoems I was especially impressed by some of Swoon’s thoughts about his approach, such as:

    I love working with found material. Trying to give images, shot for a whole other purpose by someone you don’t know in a place you’ve never been, a new life and, more important so, a new meaning, is very liberating. It gives you a weird sense of power. Even the material I shoot myself is often not shot directly for a specific film. I try to build a library of images, shot by me and found footage, where I can wander around in when making a new film. On the other hand, it’s also very nice if I can shoot images the way I want them to be for a specific idea and poem.

    Read the rest (and watch the triptych).

     

  • Nic Sebastian 3:33 pm on September 1, 2011 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: cello dreams, , , Swoon, videopoem triptych, whale sound   

    Call for submissions or your poems are dying to be a videopoem triptych 

    Whale Sound, Cello Dreams and Swoon are looking for poems with which to create a videopoem triptych.

    Do you have a group of three poems you’d like to have published as videopoems? They could be three of your own poems, a set of three separate-but-related poems by you and two other poets, or a set of three poems written collaboratively by two or more poets.

    We are a trio of artists — Nic Sebastian, poet/reader; Kathy McTavish, musician; and Swoon, film-maker — who have come together to pioneer this novel method of poetry publication.

    Flight, a videopoem based on a poem by Helen Vitoria, is an example of our collaboration.

    To get a sense of how your videopoem triptych would look and sound after publication, visit Night Vision.

    Send 3 to 5 poems in the body of an email to Nic at nic_sebastian at hotmail dot com or Swoon at swoonbildos at gmail dot com.

     

    • Dave Bonta 4:01 pm on September 1, 2011 Permalink | Reply

      Terrific initiative! Can’t wait to see what comes out of it.

    • Swoon 4:03 pm on September 1, 2011 Permalink | Reply

      Thanks Dave. Really!

    • Donna vorreyer 4:32 pm on September 1, 2011 Permalink | Reply

      This is a wonderful idea…deadline?

    • hassan al falak 4:12 pm on March 8, 2012 Permalink | Reply

      what an interesting concept,sorry i am too late.i have just finished the performance of a trio of my poems (i am also a choreographer ad performance artist) and we will this month make a video. it would have been interesting to collaborate in this way. i like your site! please visit mine!

  • Dave Bonta 4:43 pm on August 24, 2011 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: process, Sherry O'Keefe, Swoon,   

    Interview with poetry-filmmaker Swoon 

    Montana-based poet Sherry O’Keefe has posted a great interview with the Belgian artist Swoon Bildos (Marc Neys) at her blog. Marc talks about his process, his background, and how he got into making videopoetry. It was gratifying to learn what a role Moving Poems has played in encouraging him. And Marc’s thoughts about what makes an effective videopoem are very much in line with my own:

    I (most of the time) try not to use obvious images. For several of my videos I used ‘city-landscape and crowded places’ where the poem is more ‘rural’, It often surprised viewers, but they like it on a second note.

    I catch myself thinking in the same way; for instance for ‘The Universe’ (my last video, Poem Neil Ellman) I thought about using Ice, Northern light,… I even tried it out…then said no and turned it around.

    It’s that turning around that I’m not afraid of. Be prepared to turn your work around, inside out…but with a gut-feeling.

    Read the rest.

     

c
compose new post
j
next post/next comment
k
previous post/previous comment
r
reply
e
edit
o
show/hide comments
t
go to top
l
go to login
h
show/hide help
shift + esc
cancel