Potter-Belmar Labs

Ritual Abuse Music Video

Potter-Belmar Labs created the video for "Ritual Abuse" by Hickory, North Carolina's Naked City Cinema.
See it on Vimeo.

Ritual Abuse from Potter-Belmar Labs on Vimeo.

Interview with Jason on ExhibiTricks blog

Paul Orselli, of Paul Orselli Workshop in New York, interviewed Jason on his ExhibiTricks blog.

Jason chatters a little bit about his background, his inspirations, and his thoughts on the future of museums.

PBL Video Retrospective at the McNay

TOMORROW! June 30 at 6:30 in the Chiego Lecture Hall at the McNay Art Museum

join us in the theater this week for the Big Screen Communal Viewing Experience of a selection of our works from the past decade!!

the lineup of videos:

San Antonio Casts A Spell (2009) / Promotional Trailer / 1:00
...
42nd Ann Arbor Film Festival (2004) / Trailer / 0:30

Fortune (2008) / Promotional Trailer / 1:30

Settings (2005) / The Edge of Elysium / 4:00

San Antonio Casts A Spell (2009) / Party, Fun, Joy / 1:40

Dual Observation Cabinets (2000) / video documentation / 1:20

I Am Curious (Remix) (2010) / video documentation / 2:00

San Antonio Casts A Spell (2009) / Sleep, Deserved & Deep / 2:20

Fortress (2003) / 4:50 (featured at the top of this blog post)

San Antonio Casts A Spell (2009) / Health / 3:30

Odysseus (2008) / by Julian Stark / 8:00

Nine Questions (2003) / video documentation / 3:00

San Antonio Casts A Spell (2009) / Clean Water / 2:50 SAN ANTONIO PREMIERE!

Thirteen Views in Arid Lands (2011) / 13:00 WORLDWIDE SINGLE-CHANNEL PREMIERE!

Camp Artpace

This summer, we worked with kids at Camp Artpace to create this series of beautiful panoramas in a project inspired by our Window Works piece, Thirteen Views in Arid Lands.

Each kid picked a pose from a stack of artwork-themed postcards that we brought; then we all went up to the roof, stood in a circle, and acted out our chosen postcard pose. One kid would take the camera, stand in the center of the circle, and take pictures while turning to create a 360º panorama, which we then printed out and assembled.

Thirteen Views in Arid Lands at Artpace Window Works

"Thirteen Views in Arid Lands"
MAY 12, 6-8:30PM (RECEPTION), on view through Sept 1
ARTPACE WINDOWWORKS 11.2

Announcing PBL's new series of 360-degree scrolling landscape vistas, shot in time lapse and presented in a set of peephole cabinets, viewable through the windows from the sidewalk outside Artpace.

Our panoramas were made using an intervalometer and a robotic tripod head that we designed, built, and programmed.

Revealed in these vistas, clouds and weather spread through the sky, winds shake plants, humans and animals dart almost imperceptibly.

The videos, their presentation, and the pair of cabinets allude to the ancient traditional Chinese landscape meditation scroll, hand-cranked canvas panoramas of 19th century North America, the enormous panorama rotundas, and early penny arcade peephole spectacles. Text that appears in the videos was borrowed from reports and journals of U.S. soldiers looking for the last free Apaches in the Southwest in the 1880s, as well as quotations from the Apaches themselves, including Geronimo.

This exhibition is supported in part by the Texas Idea Fund and in part by The Cultural Collaborative, a division of the City of San Antonio's Office of Cultural Affairs.

Colloquium No. 7

Right when you thought March couldn't get any more awesome, BAM! Colloquium in your face!

One should note with great interest that all the artists presenting in the seventh Colloquium are recipients of the Artist Foundation of San Antonio award.

Refreshments of all sorts will be available at the adjacent El Tropicano Tiki Bar.
See you there.

Colloquium VI

The sixth Colloquium is at hand! Grab your coat and put your shoes on!

colloquiumsa.blogspot.com

The McMillan's video installation, What Stands Between Us and the Sun

In the online version of ArtLies magazine, you can read Leslie and Jason's review of Megan and Murray McMillan's latest video installation, What Stands Between Us and the Sun, now showing at Axiom Center for New and Experimental Art in Boston.

Two selected minutes from I Am Curious (Remix)

For those of you who missed the live performance of I Am Curious (Remix) in September, here is a consolation prize:

I Am Curious (Remix) by Potter-Belmar Labs from Potter-Belmar Labs on Vimeo.

I Am Curious (Remix) – post-performance report

First of all, thanks to everyone who came to fill up the Heights Theater. You were a great audience, and we really enjoyed meeting those of you who came to talk to us after the performance. Thanks also to Aurora Picture Show, and the Heights Theater.

We're very happy with how the performance came out, and hopefully we'll be repeating it at other venues in the future. But being able to perform it at the site that got burned down for daring to show the original film, well, there's no substituting the historical thrill of it.

Of course, we've got other projects planned as well, but they're not mutually exclusive. Stay tuned!

I Am Curious Remix

As part of Aurora Picture Show's Media Archaeology festival, PBL will go to the Heights Theater in Houston this Friday, September 17th to reminisce about arsons past with a live cinema performance. You could think of it as a seance for a controversial movie, or a Citizen Kane-like post mortem examination of a puzzling reaction. What was this film, why did it draw fire, and did it deserve it?

In June of 1969, arsonists set fire to Houston's Heights Theater during a run of the controversial film "I am Curious (Yellow)," by Swedish writer/director, Vilgot Sjöman. Live cinema artists Potter-Belmar Labs will investigate this history within the context of late-60s Houston, taking into account the broader censorship movement of the age as well as the phenomenon of reactionary violence in our own time. Potter-Belmar's live cinema performance will center on a remix of Sjoman’s film, exploiting the kaleidoscope shape of the film in their performance. Mature content warning.

Friday, September 17, 8PM
Location: Heights Theater, 339 W. 19^th Street
FREE Admission

spokeNine opening for Kamama

Tuesday, July 6, 9 PM

smART Project Space, 1906 S Flores, San Antonio, $7

Jason Jay Stevens (aka spokeNine, and one half of Potter-Belmar Labs) will perform a new composition, "Six Strata and the Planetary Boundary," an eight channel sound work for advanced and primitive electronic instruments, with samples from Shostakovich, LBJ, and decades of field recording.

The headliner is Kamama, a collaboration between Audrey Chen (cello, voice, electronics) and Luca Marini (percussion). Chen lives in in Baltimore, where she is an active member of the free improv scene. Luca Marini currently lives in New York.

Also performing--for their first time together--the quartet of Putnam/Rivas/Rubio/Woodard, a supergroup of local improvisers, including members of The Islands and the Sea, The Cartographers, and The Grasshopper Lies Heavy.

Visit

http://heavydenim.org/

for more about this show.

Santa Fe - Currents 2010

Just arrived in Santa Fe today! Potter-Belmar Labs' Double Thunder is showing in Currents 2010, which opened this evening. We are amongst some great company & a few familiar faces in this stunning exhibition of contemporary video art. There about 2 dozen installations alongside 4 ongoing programs of linear work which have been divided into 4 screenings of about 1/2 hour each.

Check it out if you can!!

El Museo Cultural de Santa Fe
In Santa Fe's Railyard District - next to the Farmers' Market / across the street from SITE Santa Fe
june 18-june 27 / 10AM - 7PM
FREE EVERY DAY

Goin' to California, part 2 - PBL at the Egyptian Theater

On Sunday, May 23, LA FilmForum present Potter-Belmar Labs at the Egyptian Theater on Hollywood Boulevard!

Nevermind the movies! Come see CINEMA mixed LIVE before your very eyes! Like you've never seen it before!

Time, space, and the unknowable aleph, old cowboy movies and a mysterious cocktail party of ghosts--from the past! from your past!, a terrible fire and a cosmic escape! All this and more!

Egyptian Theater, 6712 Hollywood Blvd
7:30 PM, Sunday May 23
$10 general admission

For lots more information about the show, including quotes and pictures, see LA Filmforum's page.

Goin' to California, part 1 - PBL at Other Cinema

SATURDAY

May 15, 8:30 PM, $7 admission

at the ATA Gallery, 992 Valencia, San Francisco CA

Here's what Other Cinema has to say about their upcoming live cinema show:

Rolling in on the Starlight Express, Leslie Raymond and Jason Jay Stevens are back again in our live-cinema lab with another completely new A/V performance. The couple creates a real-time mix of improvised cinema, manipulating audio and video, weaving sampled media and original work, cut-up and stitched back together on the fly. It's been called "the storytelling of the future." We are honored to host them as they move up the West Coast, returning by popular demand! Opening the show is a half-hr. ensemble of old and new works, hot off the hard drive of our English ally Vicki Bennett (People Like Us), another practitioner of cut-and-paste collage, where found footage is re-contextualized with a Surrealistic edge. Vicki is posting her greatest hits, plus these three debuts: Parade, Skewed Gardens, and an exclusive mini-marvel for OC!

You heard it here, folks, People Like Us and Potter-Belmar Labs, live and all-new, only $7!

21st C Psychedelic trip report

Wow, there wasn't an empty seat in the house last night. Thanks to everyone who came to share our externalized brain-dances. And to all who tried to come but were too late to snag a seat: don't despair, there will be more. Keep an eye on us, we'll welcome you wherever we go.

Pictures of the performance at PBL's Flickr.

21st Century Psychedelic, PBL performance at San Antonio Museum of Art

Potter-Belmar Labs brings the psychedelic light shows of the 60s to the Post-Modern age with this live performance of moving image and sound, utilizing laptops and other electronics. Collaborating since 1999, artists Leslie Raymond and Jason Jay Stevens have performed live cinema across North America, in addition to exhibiting interactive installation art and single-channel experimental video. In keeping with the flavor of the Psychedelic show, PBL will perform their handcrafted audiovisual hallucinations, offering colorful optical fantasies and intriguing sound sensations.

Colloquium Blog

The Colloquium is a roving series of artist talks, each with its own roster of a half dozen San Antonio-area artists from a wide range of media, backgrounds and ages, and always at a rapid pace--like a peecha kucha for the arts, complete with slideshows and a little bit of high octane cross examination by the audience.

We have a new site for The Colloquium, with records of past events and announcements of new ones. Visit!

http://colloquiumSA.blogspot.com

PBL at Chicago Filmmakers

PBL will be in Chicago on Saturday, March 20th to perform their brand of live cinema at 8 PM at Chicago Filmmakers, which is at 5243 N. Clark Street in Chicago. Watch the dynamic duo weave their improvised audiovisual hallucinations onto the screen!

You can see the Chicago Filmmakers calendar of events here: http://www.chicagofilmmakers.org/navkino.htm

Colloquium V - thanks for coming!

Thanks to:

Everyone who showed up at the fifth Colloquium to enjoy the arts and popcorn along with us. I had fun, did you have fun? It was fun.
The artists, who shared their stories and motivations with us. Squids and cookies and glass and theater and burlesque, oh my.
Southwest School of Art and Craft, for providing the venue, the food and drink, and a lot of help and kindness.

There are pictures of the event available at the Potter-Belmar Labs Flickr.