recent press on Brian Doyle
ABC, Blanco
y Negro Cultural, Arte, Video, "11-S, Las Peliculas de las hechos",
September 18, 2004
"El pasado 11 de septiembre, el Museo Renia Sofia reunio
en un ciclo diez videos que viajan a la memoria colectiva del atentado
contra las Torres Gemelas, y a todo lo que haya podido venor despues...
...The Light, de Brian Doyle, recoge los chorros
de luz, los focus que iluminan los trabajos de desescombro de la Zona
Cero. Esos disparos luminosos, al final, en un curioso efecto optico,
parecen capturar a un fantasma - los rascacielos del World Trade Center
- y son caminos frustrados en la oscuridad de una noche obligada."... – Laura
Revuelta
[The Light, of Brian Doyle, collects spurts of light, the work lights that illuminate the clean up of Ground Zero. Those luminous shots, at the end, in a curious optical effect, seem to capture a ghost - the skyscrapers of the World Trade Center - and they are frustrated roads in the darkness of an inevitable night.]
Newsday.com, "Noel
Holston On Television", This Week's Picks, July 4, 2004
Reel NY
Thursday, 10 p.m., WNET/13
"Experimental Directions" encompasses four short films, including Brian
Doyle's "The Light," a tour of America the beautifully lit.
24/7,
PBS finds “Reel New York” in Brooklyn: Focus on Homegrown
Filmmakers, June 7, 2004, p. 18- 24.
...July 8th marks the “Experimental Directions” a filmmaker can
take…featured during this week is Brian Doyle’s “The Light” which
is already accumulating kudos wherever it is shown, according to [series Producer
Garrison Botts]. Fourth in the 30-year-old Williamsburg resident’s series
on phenomenon, “The Light” works to challenge the original perception
of the Tribute in Light, what Doyle called “this official reaction by
the city and a handful of artists to the event.” Using the tribute as
an anchor, Doyle filmed light coming from various sources in different weather
conditions to build a narrative of an “unseen society building a progression
of lights that progresses to the brightest light ever made.” The majestic
and heavenly shots, which were technically difficult to shoot, were matched
with ambient sound that was a “minimalist expression to support the light.” Doyle
said his ideas are experimental but not far from the movie and television aesthetics
people are used to. “I think it is going to be a really interesting forum
to get experimental video out in a larger context,” he said. “This
will have a much larger potential audience to people who wouldn’t expect
to encounter this kind of stuff. It is a great way to test your ideas.”…by
Christy Goodman
roberta
fallon and libby rosof's artblog, Wednesday, January
14, 2004
"Let there be wind"
Brian Doyle's video "Current" of tickertape floating through
noisy, unpopulated urban canyons--shot during the 2000 Yankees ticker-tape
parade--is the second reason to visit Vox Populi Gallery this month,
the other being the Screwball exhibit (see Jan. 12 post). This video
is about more than the lyricism of the floating debris wafted on air
currents. Without a soul on the streets, the paper becomes a stand-in
for people, buffeted by the wind, aimless, yet a spiritual presence even
amongst the giant buildings.
The paper piles up on the street in trashy gusts
and decoratively wraps around a tree until its limbs are obliterated.
The streamers break up the impersonal geometry of glassy skyscraper facades
and float like birds across the distant blue skies peered up to from
street level. And in the deep urban dark spaces, the paper shot against
the sky and against the buildings becomes the smallness of a day and
of human existence vis a vis the big city and vis a vis the big sky.
It made me think of Jeff Wall's enormous light-box-illuminated photo, "A
Sudden Gust of Wind (after Hokusai)," that hung in the 1995 Whitney
Biennial. But Wall's piece includes the people, who are also buffeted
by the wind. The installation, two side-by-side television screens and
a bench on a platform were meant to evoke the experience of being in
a remote-TV satellite truck, peering out the two back windows. This is
video as landscape in which the sky represents remote nature, but nature's
air currents live amongst us and enliven the scene. By the way, the World
Trade Towers appear in this video, which was taken before 9/11 but has
an apocalyptic tone. – Libby Rosof
Senses of Cinema, How We Talk about Things: Report on the 32nd
International Film Festival Rotterdam
“With Current (2001), a short video and installation piece by Brian Doyle,
history is likewise re-registered, though in this case it appears as a prefiguration.
Shot during the 2000 Yankee ticker-tape parade in New York City, the film features
a flurry of paper caught in a storm in lower Manhattan: toilet paper caught on
skeletal tree branches, cyclones of paper funneling up to the sky, no people
whatsoever. Though the film was shot a year prior, the eerie, desolate images
of Current fix themselves within the context of our memories of 9/11. Current
resists being understood as anything other than the uncanny echo of an event
yet to unfold.” – Genevieve Yue
Film
Threat, Slamdance reviews, (
of
5)
“A very simple event becomes an eerie omen of destruction in Brian Doyle's "Current."
Paper, riding the wind, invades New York City. Helicopters fly above the skyscrapers
as if inspecting the scene. The amount of paper grows, tangling in tree branches,
gliding against buildings. Sheets of it fall like snow. Perhaps it's a celebration,
but where is that smoke coming from?
What first appears to be a parade of some sort quickly begins to look like
the aftermath of 9/11, but what Doyle really filmed was the 2000 ticker tape
parade for the Yankees, which was in the heart of New York City. Almost a year
later the World Trade Center went down and produced similar results. Frankly,
it's all kind of creepy, especially when the audience isn't told what it is
seeing. (I learned all the information from the press release that accompanied
the film.)
Viewers will take what they want from this nearly silent display of nature
and man, and therein lies the film's strength. I went from thinking that it
looked like the end of the world, to it looking like a parade of some sort
and then back again, making this perhaps the most haunting six minutes of film
I've seen in a long time. Simply superb.” – Doug Brunell
New York Independent Film & Video Monitor, New York Underground Film Festival
“…the judges wisely awarded a Special Jury Prize For New York City
to Brian Doyle’s CURRENT, an experimental video documentary whose bleak
and sweeping downtown paper storm strikes remarkable notes about 9/11 and the
nature of information and visual context. If that sounds vague, see the movie
and ask Doyle how he completed it last August.” – Peter Hall
Indiewire, FESTIVAL: Uncomfortable, Stupid, or Fascinating:
NY Underground Film Fest Runs The Gamut
“The very poignant collection of September 11 inspired pieces, "Six
Months Later" covers the gamut of emotions that our country has gone through
since the tragedy. Everything from the angry, rambling old man in Monroe Bardot's "A
Message to Bin Laden," to the corporate suspicion of Ashley Hunt's "Lockdowns
Up," to the wind-blown trash and vacant urban valleys of Brian Doyle's "Current" uncovers
a sliver of our new national psyche…
This collection best demonstrates that the greatest strength of the New York
Underground Film Festival is the same as the New York spirit, its constant
unpredictability and a scrappy, visceral celebration of human creativity.” – Tim
LaTorre
Cinemad, The Chicago Underground Film Festival
“There were some strong experimental image/edit works, capturing childhood
fascinations very nicely…CURRENT (2001, Brian Doyle) shifts, turns and
catches you in a dream of floating scraps of paper in a huge city.” – Mike
Plante
Cleveland Free Times, The Reel Underground
“Here in the underground abide….purely nonverbal video essays [of]
data static on the Infobahn (Brian Doyle’s Current).” – Charles
Cassady Jr.
BBC News Online, Online art to look forward to
“With the medium of internet video-on-demand continuing to fall short of
its full potential, FW:Fwd (www.fwfwd.org) presents an online exhibition of video
art that succeeds by keeping things simple an not striving beyond its resources…Brian
Doyle’s Current comprises simple shots of tape from a baseball parade,
blowing in front of the World Trade Center a year before its destruction…for
anyone interested in the possibilities of video art, this is more than worth
a browse.” – James Bregman