Burrito Bay
2009 - Film & Video (Film & Video)
26:48
George Kuchar
Burrito Bay is a video by George Kuchar that follows the format of a diary or travelogue centered on a tropical trip to Acapulco, Mexico. The footage was filmed during the production of Tropical Vulture , a cross-generational collaborative project between George Kuchar and his then student, Mexican artist Miguel Calderón. The video strays away from the conventions of documentary: Kuchar adds an array of effects such as fadeouts between scenes, overlaid digital shapes traversing across the frame, and a strange, unexpected soundtrack. These effects, together with the lack of a cohesive narrative, give Burrito Bay a dream-like, surreal quality that is commonplace in his work. Whether through scenes of roadside urinating, the group lounging in the poolside, preparing breakfast or staying indoors on a rainy day, Burrito Bay gives us a glimpse into Kuchar himself and the inner workings of his mind.
George Kuchar was a key figure in experimental and independent filmmaking in the Bay Area and more broadly across America. He gained prominence through his Super 8 and 16mm films produced throughout the 50s, 60s and 70s. Some of his most well-known titles such as Hold Me While I’m Naked (1966) gave him international recognition and legendary status in underground cinema. In the 1980s, after more than three decades of working with film, Kuchar transitioned to video, and subsequently created hundreds of low-fi, diaristic videos that oscillated between real life and fiction. Many of these camcorder pieces featured Kuchar or his friends as actors, and he also regularly collaborated his students from the San Francisco Art Institute. Throughout his very prolific output of over 350 films, Kuchar was known for pushing the limits of film and cinematic tradition, and for creating a distinct visual language that was joyously nonsensical and reflected his extraordinary humor and wit. Whether featuring UFOs, weather, defecating, urinating, or forbidden passions—Kuchar embedded his eccentric videos with himself, often at his most intimate and profound.
Colors:
Related works of genres: » american experimental filmmakers, » artists from the san francisco bay area
© » KADIST
Sergio De La Torre
2011This is not in Spanish looks at the ways in which the Chinese population in Mexico navigates the daily marginalization they encounter there...
© » KADIST
Bruce Conner
1978In 1977, as an already-established artist best known for his films, Bruce Conner began to photograph punk rock shows at Mabuhay Gardens, a San Francisco club and music venue...
© » KADIST
Lynn Hershman Leeson
2017Using the seminal 1958 film Vertigo as a launchpad, Lynn Hershman Leeson explores the blurred lines between fact and fantasy in VertiGhost , a film commissioned by the Fine Arts Museums in San Francisco...
© » KADIST
Nathaniel Dorsky
2010Dorsky’s pieces included in the Kadist Collection are small still photographs from twelve of his most important films...
© » KADIST
Sadie Benning
2017In borrowing and subverting images from popular culture, Sadie Benning exposes the media’s role in constructing false and oppressive stereotypes of women, with regard to gender and sexual identity...
© » KADIST
Trevor Paglen
2017Trevor Paglen’s ongoing research focuses on artificial intelligence and machine vision, i.e...
© » KADIST
Ari Marcopoulos
1998A photograph of a tin box full of marijuana simply titled Green Box, speaks to the constantly changing status of the substance–once taboo or illicit, now a symbol of a growing industry in Northern California...
© » KADIST
Colter Jacobsen
2010The title Untitled Passport II was first used by Felix Gonzalez-Torres in an unlimited edition of small booklets, each containing sequenced photographs of a soaring bird against an open sky...
© » KADIST
Amy Balkin
2012Data mining is a computer software process that can involve the neutral or benign analyzing of internet data for patterns, however, it can also imply the more sinister activities of surveillance or subject-based information gathering...
© » KADIST
Colter Jacobsen
2007Victory at Sea is a simple mechanism made from cardboard and found materials that mimics the Phenakistoscope, an early cinematic apparatus...
© » KADIST
Lutz Bacher
2016Sweet Jesus is a sound installation by Lutz Bacher that consists of a found recording of James Earl Jones’ iconic voice reciting biblical genealogy from Matthew, Book 1...
© » KADIST
Felipe Dulzaides
2006I Am Cuba— “Soy Cuba” in Spanish; “Ya Kuba” in Russian—is a Soviet/Cuban film produced in 1964 by director Mikhail Kalatozov at Mosfilm...
© » KADIST
Fran Herndon
1962Working independently, Herndon experimented at the forefront of a now-canonical method—appropriation—by painting additions into found images from magazines such as Life and Sports Illustrated in a way that imbues the resulting works with mythical significance...
© » KADIST
Lynn Hershman Leeson
2007Lynn Hershman Leeson’s genre-bending documentary Strange Culture tells the story of how one man’s personal tragedy turns into persecution by a paranoid, conservative, and overzealous government...
© » KADIST
Trevor Paglen
2020The Black Canyon Deep Semantic Image Segments by Trevor Paglen merges traditional American landscape photography (sometimes referred as ‘frontier photography’ for sites located in the American West) with artificial intelligence and other technological advances such as computer vision...
© » KADIST
James T. Hong
2012Taiwan WMD (Taiwan and Weapons of Mass Destruction) is part of a long-term research started in early 2010 on the history and aftermath effects of Japanese biological and chemical warfare in China during WWII, as well as the unknown history of Taiwan’s nuclear program...
© » KADIST
Bruce Conner
1995Bruce Conner is best known for his experimental films, but throughout his career he also worked with pen, ink, and paper to create drawings ranging from psychedelic patterns to repetitious inkblot compositions...