mnartists.org: paul bernhardt

video: Lament

paul bernhardt — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 16:57:44 GMT

How do we love in the face of mortality? How do two people change when one of them learns they're terminally ill? This film began as an editing exercise I wrote and shot for students to use in Introduction to Editing with Final Cut Pro at Independent Feature Project-Minnesota. The current film was made with Joe Kim and Sarah Thorne March 3, 2009. shown: Foot in the Door 4. 2010. Minneapolis Institute of Arts.

video: Paris Journal

paul bernhardt — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 16:35:01 GMT

Heard at a distance, vendors hawking at two competing Paris produce stands are an enigmatic sound, part shouting and part singing. One of the vendors, Borgi Mhemni, has a clarion voice and a theatrical sense of presence. "Paris Journal" lets the viewer in on his street performance. Borgi's verbal inventions -- "put the Ivory Coast on your table," "the sun of Martinique on your table" -- evoke France's colonial history. Shown: "MNTV," Twin Cities Public Television. 2009. Walker Art Center, Best Buy Film/Video Bay. 2010.

video: self sound orchestra

paul bernhardt — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 21:27:58 GMT

This all-star lineup of experimental music group Self Sound Orchestra, shot live on March 4, 2008 at Minneapolis' 331 Club by Paul Bernhardt, included: Phil Harder (film projectors) Paul Harding (loops and samples) Kurt Froelich (guitar) and founder Danny Sigelman (drums, bass amp, guitar, organ). [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbDuGRhBVJc]watch this video now[/url]

video: bridges

paul bernhardt — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 19:27:50 GMT

(9:55, 2007-2008, video) Created in the aftermath of the shocking collapse of the 35W bridge, "Bridges" is a poetic meditation on the twenty bridges in Minneapolis and St Paul that metro area residents rely on daily to cross the Mississippi River. Juxtaposing tranquil images of the bridges with disconcerting structural information, this film evokes the potential danger that lies within the seemingly reliable infrastructure many cities are built upon. In addition to directing "Bridges," Minnesota filmmaker Paul Bernhardt also composed and recorded its musical score. "Bridges" has been selected for MNTV 2008 on tpt Twin Cities Public Television and is showing at Square Lake Film and Music Festival at 7:45pm August 16. Watch this video now.

video: bronze

paul bernhardt — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 15:09:57 GMT

How do we adorn our cities? John cast a pair of life-size bronze figures in his garage. "Bronze" showed at the 2008 Minneapolis/St Paul International Film Festival.

podcast: deck of cards

paul bernhardt — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 10:09:09 GMT

I wrote a different question on each card in a deck of playing cards. Each person draws a card, then I ask them the question on that card and we have a conversation. Think of anecdotes you've heard over coffee or beer or just sitting around with friends. People tell the best stories when they're talking about something they know or really feel or that happened to them. Everyone has experience living. This means everyone has something of substance to say. The Big Questions, the mysteries of life, how shall I live? what are the big patterns of life in our time. I got a small digital recorder of my own in late '06 and set to work imaging how to use it to interview a large number of people over time. A number of questions come to mind about how life is. One night in April 2007 I finally had a few minutes to myself to start writing them down. I was eating dinner by myself the night before a big conference in Vegas I usually go to. I wanted to pose the questions at random so I grabbed a Sharpie and a deck of cards and started writing one question on each card in a deck of cards. When I meet someone who's interested in appearing here, I ask them to draw a card. The question on that card forms the basis for our interview. I began the series with an interview with my friend Dan in the back of a moving cab in Las Vegas, Nevada on Sunday, April 15, 1007. You are of course encouraged to comment on this podcast at: http://blog.lib.umn.edu/bernh003/cards/ or simply subscribe to the podcast by copy-pasting: http://blog.lib.umn.edu/bernh003/cards/index.xml into your iTunes software or other podcast aggregator.

hands

paul bernhardt — Sun, 09 Apr 2006 08:42:39 GMT

This series is a gift for a longtime friend who works as a hand therapist.

image: hands

image: hands

image: hands

image: hands

image: hand

image: hands

image: hands

image: hands

April 4, 2006

paul bernhardt — Wed, 05 Apr 2006 12:59:19 GMT

Sous les pavés... un boulot? le respet?

three pictures

paul bernhardt — Tue, 22 Feb 2005 23:31:57 GMT

When viewing a contact sheet, series of video stills, or strip of photo booth pictures, it's striking how different the same person can look from one frame to the next. Having three frames of visual information, what did the person look like in the fourth, blank frame?

I asked people to go into a silver-based black-and-white photo booth -- the kind that takes four different poses and prints them in a strip -- then pick one, cut it out and keep it. The remaining three pictures are to be displayed. The three pictures are mounted to preserve the space where the fourth picture was.

I specifically avoided giving people direction about what to do in the booth, how to be photographed, what to do with the fourth image or how to decide which image to cut out.

Preserving the space where the fourth image was calls attention to the editor's role in shaping images. It also denies immediate spectatorial pleasure and posits viewer as voyeur, imagining an image that remains unseen.

31 people were photographed in Minneapolis/St Paul's two remaining silver-based, four-pose photobooths.

"Three Pictures" was exhibited at Project Creo/The Arts Center in St Petersburg, Florida, March 12 through May 4, 2005.

image: three pictures, 1-5

image: three pictures, 6-10

image: three pictures, 11-15

image: three pictures, 16-20

image: three pictures, 21-25

Radio K people

paul bernhardt — Tue, 01 Feb 2005 04:50:04 GMT

On October 1, 2003, [url=http://radiok.org/]Radio K[/url] had been on the air ten years.

That Sunday night, October 5, a reception was organized for alumni/ae. Ali Lozoff and others had come back to volunteer and help current Radio K students produce an extravaganza of local events across town, and this night was going to be the closest thing to a reunion. I knew there would be a lot of Radio K people there, perhaps not to be seen again for a long time, so I brought a camera.

Usually, when making a portrait of someone, I take dozens of pictures, most of which are never seen again, then select one or two. I try to catch the person's vibe and help them feel a little less uncomfortable with the wierd thing of being in front of that relentless eye at the front of the little black box -- and under all those lights. It's a bit of theater I enjoy as well as a moment that lets me gauge just how anxious a person is about having their picture taken.

That night, I wanted to have tech in hand but leave a little something to chance. I decided to try exposing just one frame of film of each person who sat for a portrait (unless I saw them blink). The 57 final images are from a total of only 72 exposures.

Throughout the reception that evening, Arden Durham was upstairs shooting interviews for her documentary on Radio K, which I can't wait to see. I had volunteered evenings and weekends that summer working with students and staff at Radio K to coordinate interviews with people who had worked there in its ten years, and to help shape the interviews into short spots that aired discussing Radio K's history. So, many of the people in these photographs had just been interviewed -- either some minutes earlier by Arden, or some weeks earlier by a current Radio K student -- about what it was like when they were there.

L., profile

paul bernhardt — Mon, 17 May 2004 05:04:21 GMT

Oakland, California, March 7, 2004 Polaroid Type 55

Paris Holocaust Memorial

paul bernhardt — Wed, 24 Mar 2004 16:16:15 GMT

Quai de l'Archeveché, Île de la Cité, Paris Just behind Notre Dame, on the eastern tip of the Île de la Cité, is a site. At ground level, the memorial looks like a low cement wall. Walking closer, there is a narrow stairway leading down, toward the river, into a small plaza bounded on all sides by high cement walls. The sense of isolation is profound. Traffic, birds and the river just outside can all be heard. Quai de la Tournelle, filled with people taking a pleasant summer stroll, lies just across a short span of river. Iron bars span the window. Every element of the memorial's architecture enacts imprisonment. I am enjoying freedom of movement and the luxury of travel. Experiencing simulated imprisonment in the middle of Paris gives me pause. This might not be much, but it is not nothing. The work is retrieved from brutalism by the contemplation visitors bring to it. A very narrow passage perhaps two feet wide leads off the sunken plaza away from the river. Each of the two facing walls inside this passage is installed with a grid of 100,000 small points of light. This is the memorial to the estimated 200,000 Jews deported from France by the Nazis. Outside it's a busy day at the height of the tourist season during an unusually hot summer in France. The nearby Place du Parvis Notre Dame is jammed with visitors from around the world. Perhaps a dozen other people visited the memorial in the hour or so my wife and I spent there. The site is not called the Paris Holocaust Memorial. I'd thought of it that way when I learned of its existence while researching our trip, but was surprised to see, upon reaching the place, that it is called the Mémorial aux Martyrs de la Déportation. To my ears there is a lot to unpack in that name. I wonder what resonances this name carries in France. The memorial was dedicated in 1963 -- 18 years after the liberation of the death camps, 19 years after the liberation of Paris. Nearly every adult in the country could remember the Vichy regime. I suppose even those who refused to acknowledge what had happened knew what "deportation" referred to, but it still sounds euphemistic compared with "Holocaust." More troubling is the word "martyr." In this historically predominantly Catholic country, does this word evoke the suffering of Christian saints? Is that narrative being imposed here? Of course the word is also used in a political and military context to mean someone who dies for a cause. Ten years earlier, George Goldberg and Alexandre Persitz's Tombeau du Martyr Juif Inconnu down the street in the fourth arrondissement also used the word. I remain curious about this word "martyrs" in French. I am also curious about a number of things related to the creation of the memorial. This site on the Quai de l'Archeveché had been the location of the Paris morgue from 1864 until 1910. I wonder how that fact figured in the plans for the present memorial. The Seine rises every spring, and it doesn't have far to rise before it reaches the memorial's barred windows. It would be interesting to speak with its caretakers about practical matters such as how long the memorial is closed, how the electrical wiring is kept dry, how water leaves the site, and so forth. May it be visited for many years to come. see also: the Shoah Memorial, which opens its doors today (January 27, 2005), next to the Tombeau du Martyr Juif Inconnu: 17 rue Geoffrey l'Asnier, 75004 Paris; http://memorialdelashoah.fr flood of 1910: http://world.std.com/~swrs/library/no_bridge.htm Paris morgue: http://www.prov.vic.gov.au/provenance/ no3/DeathDecencyDeadHouse1.htm

animals

paul bernhardt — Wed, 24 Mar 2004 15:51:18 GMT

image: Brooklyn Heights

image: lions, Cranbrook

rue de rivoli, paris, 4eme

paul bernhardt — Wed, 24 Mar 2004 15:49:59 GMT

shapes

paul bernhardt — Wed, 24 Mar 2004 15:48:43 GMT

image: steel plate, Chicago

image: steel plates, Chicago

image: steel plate, Chicago

image: steel plate, Chicago

image: steel plate, Chicago

image: steel plate, Manhattan

image: untitled