they don’t allow bees in here

I think the immortal Hannibal said it best:

It’s just a warm and fuzzy feeling when things finally start to make some sense. For me, the difference between video art and artful video is clearer. The video we watched, “Video Art” hosted by David Beech, was very helpful in distinguishing the two. It seems that the most important factor is time. In “Video Art”, they refer to time in Video Art as being non-hierarchical. I interpret this as meaning that each moment in time is no more important than one before or after it. What we get is footage that occupies space. In film, time is manipulated and distorted so that it serves to tell a story. A good example of this is the video they showed of a man shooting at an apple on top of a woman’s head. The way it was recorded was from a solitary 3rd person perspective, with no edits. approached from a cinematic perspective, there certainly would have been multiple angles to emphasize the tension building in the murderous act. Think of a showdown in any western and how tense they make it. They certainly have artistic aspects about them, like composition, but there is another fundamental difference.

Film is for entertainment, and that’s not a bad thing, but video art aims to get different reactions. Bill Viola’s videos certainly aren’t entertaining, they’re long and arduous. They invoke the kind of reaction where you start to question the meaningless moments in your life. You may find out that most of the moments in your day are meaningless. If you now recognize and identify these moments, do they suddenly have worth? Another interesting point was made about how home movies only record significant events, which infers that the events in video art are insignificant. Repetition and performing of simple tasks are common themes in video art. If you ever watch tv or movies, you must suspend your disbelief. If you’ve ever seen the tv show HOUSE, it may seem strange that they deal with a life threatening illness every week. But I think we’re supposed to assume that we’re only watching the significant events that are occurring. Again, time is manipulated for our pleasure as most of us would not enjoy watching an episode of HOUSE on week where nothing significant happens (but not all of us).

So is entertainment the difference? I don’t that’s unnecessarily so, because video art can still be entertaining. I found Gary Hill’s pieces to be entertaining because they are intriguing. There are movies out there that are meant to be entertaining that are terrible. Nashat says she uses elements of cinema to lure the viewer in, though video art is far more engaging while cinema is passive. Gary Hill says video is like a kind of thinking out loud. So if someone is engaging you in dialog, you participate. Films can make you think, but will they make you respond?

I was thinking about the title of this blog, and how it’s rather negative…so here’s the video explaining the reference. It’s from the show Arrested Development, which aired for three seasons on fox. It’s widely recognized as one of the best sitcoms in the past…well, since TV started. It centers around the Bluth family, who have been made wealthy through their not so ethical dealings in the housing business. Michael Bluth is the main character and morale lasso for his family, who are selfish, shallow, just generally amoral. The best part of the show is the humor and plot elements which are set up early in the episodes and carefully woven throughout the series. Unfortunately, only the first season is able to do this flawlessly as the second season was cut short, and they were forced to rush through the story. The third season is even more rushed as they were no doubt surprised that were renewed, so it’s evident that are trying to cram the whole story in before they get canned for good.

Although it may be gone, there still is hope for tv. It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia is similar to Arrested Development in that it centers around a group of selfish and amoral people…except they don’t have the moral center to reign in their mischief.  The show is far edgier as they deal with subjects such a stealing, a murder, abortion, and baby tanning. Oh, and they swear on basic cable…how awesome is that?

While we were watching one of the Brothers Quay shorts, I was reminded of this video by the band PSAPP. Although it’s nowhere near as intricate or as dark as the Brothers Quay’s work, there are definitely certain moments that are reminiscent of it…particularly at about the -3:07 mark, with the screws and the spider creature that emerges.

With Street of Crocodiles, it’s interesting to see where someone like Tim Burton probably draws his inspiration from. Stylistically, there looks like there’s a strong link to Nightmare Before Christmas… at least in some of the way the characters move and in the general macabre feel of them.

I never liked watching The Real World, so it’s no surprise that I dislike Chelsea Girls for the same reasons; Self important, egocentric twenty-somethings talking about their problems and expounding on the privileged, yet tough lives they are forced to live. Regardless of if Warhol did it first, I still feel very unsympathetic towards those people. Maybe because they help foster the irresponsible attitudes of the modern American culture. Even if they didn’t know about the serious ramification of substance abuse, they certainly could have taken a lesson from history that sloth and decadence aren’t the greatest of virtues. Even today, young people are continuing on this great ‘experiment’ of drug use. I’d like to see everyone’s data and hypotheses on that so far. Yeah, I know it makes me sound like a square, but didn’t Andy say something about needing to be a square sometimes?

Romans in the Decadence of the Empire - Thomas Coutoure 

I was reading Bridget’s post about Andy Warhol and she makes a point about how he’s incredibly manipulative. While I can’t say that I disagree completely, I feel like he’s being made some kind of lightning rod of blame for the problems of others. The point of how these videos manipulate you into watching them keeps coming up and it seems to me that maybe we’re surrendering our wills too easily. Like the denizens of the factory, are our expectations of Andy Warhol too high? They made their own decision to leave their lives behind and try make it to stardom. I think the same is true for reality television. It’s entertaining to watch and it’s probably a tad amoral. If there really was such an outrage about this kind of programming, then it would have been gone years ago. People love it, though. Some are willing to admit to it, but majority of people will not. So if it offends you, then don’t pay attention. If you like it, then just enjoy it and don’t complain about it.

Not having read the actual magazine, I’m not sure how much I can say about in terms of opinion. However, from what I saw on the website, it looks like something I would probably enjoy. The thing I liked the most was this scrolling ticker that featured excerpts from interviews that Andy has done with celebrities. They’re very casual and candid, which is something you don’t really see in too many celebrity interviews. I also enjoyed that they’re all taken out of context of the original conversation, and this adds to just how bizarre they are.

HMMM….I just realized that these Andy Warhol quotes are scrolling text, much like that of another artist….much like the vandalism that occured in melchers two weeks ago….very interesting indeed.

Nam June Paik and Andy Warhol seem to have this running parallel of their cult status as artists who revolutionized ways about how we perceive art, and who were both forerunners of video art. But I feel like because they’re so well known for what they’ve done, that their earlier works which informed the later are largely ignored. You can see the foreshadowing in Warhol’s early illustrations with his interests in reproduction as he worked as the commercial artist. Paik was trained as a pianist and made a name for himself as an Avant Garde Composer through the 1950’s. In 1958, Paik met Composer John Cage and it seems from that point on, Paik shifted his focus from music to the visual arts. Despite the differences in their styles, I think they both shared a similar philosophy in regards to their acceptance of the minor imperfections as part of the artistic process. Warhol’s work in the 1950’s is very organic and earnest, but he does a 180 and embraces an seemingly apathetic attitude. The actual finished products of his silk screened work have never been touched by the artist’s hand, and soon he even has others working on art for him. Nam June Paik’s live broadcast of “Good Morning, Mr Orwell” was plagued by technical difficulties, but Paik accepted these saying that they enhanced the mood.

I think one of the steps in AA is to surrender to a higher power, and I feel like that’s something that these guys did. To a degree we can have a controlled entropy, but eventually you’re going to have to surrender your art to the higher power.

Le Vampire - by Jean Painleve

This film seems to me to be an early version of what we might think of as a ‘National Geographic’ documentary. But unlike most educational films of the following decades though, this one is full of lush imagery and imagination. These creatures are being macro analyzed and personifying human emotion. In our daily routine, we rarely give thought to the tiny microcosms. We might glance over something as seemingly insignificant as a caterpillar, but in the film it is full of rythm and precision. The narrator compares the vampire bat to a crippled man hobbling along and describes how it administers its kiss of death. Suddenly we start to see the beauty in the subtle nuances that take place around us.

After viewing this film, I was left questioning why this is classified with the avant-garde films. It almost seems more romantic to me. But once again, I need to understand the context of when and where this film was made. After World War II, perhaps it’s a time that we look more closely at the world around us and appreciate what it has to offer.Avant-garde is about pushing boundries and challenging the norm, so I guess in a way I would agree that this film is just that.

*update 9/26*

I was thinking more about Le Vampire and the way it is narrated reminded me a lot of the movie Amelie. The intro to the movie seems that it may have been inspired by Painleve, in the way that they both have this rich narration that draws you in. Hmm….

We saw a bit of this video for ‘brain injury day’ in psychology class, and it is very fascinating. The part of Clive’s brain responsible for storing new memories into old memories was destroyed by encephalitis. He is completely a completely conscious, lucid, and intelligent human being, but he lacks any sense of the past or the future. Even stranger is that he has all his old memories in tact from before his disease, so every few moments for him is as if he’s awaking from unconsciousness. I couldn’t help but think how this might relate performance or video art. Perhaps they’re not so different from Clive himself.

“Clive’s world now consists of a moment, with no past to anchor it and no future to look ahead to. It is a blinkered moment. He sees what is right in front of him, but as soon as that information hits the brain, it fades. Nothing makes an impression, nothing registers…As soon as he’s perceived it, and looked away, it’s gone for him. So it’s a moment to moment consciousnesses, as it were, A time vacuum. And everything before that moment is completely void, and he feels as if he’s awakening a freshed the whole time.”