SMU Video Art Spring 2020

The concept of giving up artistic abilities and almost artistic rights in the form of single channel videos is super interesting a point I had never thought of before. Having to take your work to galleries in the form of an installment rather than putting them into film festivals. It's a more economic savvy way about doing work in today's world as galleries tend to pay more than just the recognition you might get at film festivals but still this severely alters the way artists go about creating their work, as it has to be thought of as installment now instead - something that people will walk in and out of at their own will. Not only will the work of the artist change itself in timing, technique, delivery, aesthetic and meaning but it will also severely effect the way people take in the work as well. Feature films and those shown in theater settings have a full cohesive tone that leaves the audience feeling a certain curated feeling from this film. Instillation pieces can and w...

I think what I found most interesting about the Laura Mark's reading had nothing to do with the art at all. While it was helpful to learn about multi-channel works and things of that nature, she discussed something that all artists can relate to no matter what their medium; money. Marks details out how finanials work in certain situations, and has now made me aware that there are ways to "crack the system", so to speak. One specific example was that arranging furniture and calling it Art made more money than displaying video art in a gallery. On the contrary, video artists seemed to be making a pretty penny when galleries would pay them to create work, which would then later be sold. This insight into how going about making work was my biggest takeaway from this reading.

While reading Laura Marks, Immersed in the Single Channel, I actually learned quiet a bit. I thought it was interesting to actually read and understand the difference between how you would display your work and the difference from multi-channels. The part that really surprised me though was the amount that an artist could be paid, not always, for showing in a theater versus a gallery setting; or on the other end the amount that the artist will have to pay to show their work.

Craig Baldwin's Mock Up on Mu was much more interesting than I thought it was going to be. Although I had little to no knowledge about the artist or the work being shown, I had the idea that the dialogue stuffed, feature film length, experimental movie was going to get old after a while but that didn't seem to happen. The visuals from the older films remained extremely interesting and grasped the audience fairly well throughout the entire movie, it was extremely helpful that these clips were intertwined with modern day footage that the artist made himself. This kept the story and the ridiculousness of the film alive and current while also allowing the audience to breathe from the overflow of older, unconnected film footage. The overall concept of the story was hilarious and really well laid out, and the intricacy of the dialogue that remained heavily consistent over the length of the film kept the audience engaged by using almost poetically laid out sentences that sometimes wen...

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/316907952_Food_as_a_Medium_Between_Art_and_Cuisine_Rirkrit_Tiravanija's_Gastronomic_Installations_Aesthetic_Practice_of_Cookery/link/5918000f4585152e19a113de/download

When reading this article by Thomas Beard, I have to agree with most of my classmates.... how weird is this? But honestly, I think what most people find "amusing " or "artistic" is just weird to me so that could be part of it. After researching Whispering Pines, and watching pieces of different episodes, it became clear to me that "strange" might just be what they are going for. It was interesting for me to watch Shana Moulton's character spend so much of her time, money, and personality into creating a "perfect" world, yet no matter what occurred it was never good enough. I think that is an interesting concept to grasp because I feel like in today's society that happens with so many different people and those people hide it pretty well. Another interesting part of an episode was her "morning ritual." It was actually humorous to watch because her alter ego, Cynthia, was portrayed as a bored, hypochondriac housewife who was...

The first thing that came to mind when reading this article about Shana Moulton was - this is really strange. But i'm pretty sure that's the whole point of her Whispering Pines series. She focuses on the niche products and entertainment in todays societies that have to be curated for people or else they don't stand a chance against their competitors. After watching portions of the whispering pines series, the point of aesthetic accomplishment within ones life became more aware to me. Her character puts extensive time and money into creating her world around her, yet after completing all of these tasks / arrangements she sits down on the couch and remains empty inside. The surface level of tranquility is something that everyone attempts to show others, in hopes of convincing them we are completely ok and calm in life - when in reality we are constantly in a panic underneath the surface. Moulton does a good job of representing both sides of this equation. Moulton,

A quote from Sirk says that you can't make a film about things, you can only make films with things. These works by Shana Moulton seem to solely focus on specific objects, or "things". The subject of these works seems not to be her, but rather, the different whimsical and random objects that seem have a personality of their own. Puzzles, crystal light, artificial waterfalls. All of these objects seem to interact with Moulton, and are more than just static objects. They become alive and are just as much of a character as she is. She also uses different icons and imagery that seem to bring in ideas of institutions, but these seem to be very separated from the "objects".

A quote at the end of the article resonated with me " So what’s changed? In short, the archive has exploded." Works like Whispering Pines are drawing from an archive of pop imagery, domestic patterns, new ageism, psychedelics, and domestic patterns to create a new hybrid commentary on our daily lives. Such a mixture, with so many various elements, would not be plausible in any other age but the digital one we are currently inhabiting- how could such a mish mash of elements possibly come together into a single body of work. The archive has allowed for an artist to draw from a diverse array of sources and to construct intersections, hybrids, and new ideas like never before. Whether an attached cushion, or a video portal, we are living in an age where there is more flexibility in the elements utilized, there is now a more abstract definition of what something means, and our own interpretation of it is more easily skewed,

     This was my first time hearing of Shana Moulton's work. After reading the video description in the first paragraph it seemed like something I would really need to see, so I looked it up on youtube. I watched Whispering Pines 3, which was seven bizarre minutes long and also, curiously enough, marked as a children's video by Youtube's algorithm.      The thing I found most interesting that was mentioned in the reading was the part of Moulton's projection that "featured a seemingly endless array of logos [...] related to the rubric of "women's health." This work in combination with the video series draws attention to the caricature of a woman that different eras have birthed and how ridiculous they are. It reminded me of an essay I read on why commercials and branding for menstrual products are transphobic and also so so strange. It was like an ad for women's deodorant or razors but longer and only slightly more strange.

I enjoyed reading this article, due to my previous experience with Shana Moulton's work, her Whispering Pines series always catching my eye for that uniquely artificial she constructs in each short. To see it broken down and analyzed did increase my respect for the works. I've always struggled to draw a proper parallel to what exactly captivates me about these shorts, but I think Beard nailed it by comparing it to the works of David Lynch, which is an excellent comparison. Both of those respective worlds are absolutely drenched in their own heavy aesthetic decisions, and I suppose in a way I could truly see those two projects operating in the same world with one another. Cynthia's ongoing story is one of the first key pieces of video art that really gripped me as an artist, the usage of that subtly sinister vibrant world works in toeing a thin line between what counts as video and film for me.

It's interesting to recognize the body as a vehicle of representation rather than it being its own physical entity. With this thought a body can represent a whole culture of people or a single person - it is not confined to its own physical limits and can be distorted and transformed through the use of props and different forms of video art. Alienation within society is common among many, so when video recording devices became common to the people they were able to look at themselves in a way they had never seen before. Seeing themselves as a form of representation of the subject being filmed rather than particularly noticing that it was indeed themselves. This separation of the self within this medium is a very interesting thought, and definitely something I had never thought of before. The world of video art is open to anyone these days so the different thoughts of the self, its physical and metaphorical entities are available to the public at anytime - on streaming services such...

I think its interesting that he even categorizes people as either hot or cold media, depending on their involvement. Having a specific type of person, in terms of media representation, in the office of the president of the US will have a direct on impact on the way they present themselves to the public and thus how the public will react to them. When the idea of hot and cold media was presented to me I expected it to only be about certain forms of media presentation formats, but I forgot about the one thing that controls them all - people. Different types of media (hot vs cold) are always directed at specific types of cultures (hot vs cold) to get the most positive response. It's pretty wild to have these thoughts about media and its controlling elements of society this early on in the development of modern technology and entertainment. 

I think that it is powerful how a performance piece can really have the power to connect with each person that sees it. I enjoyed reading about how most performance pieces have a strong meaning of "identification" behind them and really shines light on how the performer views that specific topic.  I also read a few of the other students comments on Kathy O'Dell and would also like to agree about how crazy it is about the accessibility of videos in this day and age. (Snapchat, Instagram, Vimeo, and all the social media sites) When we think of performance art I think most people think about a play, dance, magician, etc., or something that we could just see on TV or a recording of.  We also don't think about how back before the 2000's era there was no video camera or access to the internet. I love how when people would do a performance before the camera age, you had to physically be there to witness it instead of just accessing it on the computer.  I think that t...

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I enjoyed reading about "identification" when it comes to performance pieces. One of the things that makes a performance piece so powerful is how well the audience is able to connect with it. The fact that the main material of the piece is the human body makes the identification easier. It then got me thinking whether or not performance that is only seen later on video is as powerful as performance viewed in the moment. When video is incorporated into a performance, the body is no longer the main material used in the piece, the video camera is. Does that take away from the performance? I also thought it was interesting thinking about how video art was not always accessible to the public due to the lack of technology in the past. Videos are so accessible to us today with the Internet that it is easy to forget that back in the 70s they had to rent out gallery space just to show their videos. Now, if they wanted to get their videos out to a bigger audience, they can put it on y...

I think one thing that really stood out to me is O'Dell's recurring use of mentioning a sort of domestic space to act as this home for video art and performance. Especially considering this early stage of video art where the medium was just a frontier in countless ways, where the TV alone is basically recent history. Her idea of presentation vs representation was better illustrated for me when describing Vito Acconci's work in which he performed publicly as a deranged individual demanding people not go near him. Early video art in general gives the feeling of this unexplored territory and given how fast the contemporary art scene developed in the turn of the 20th century it's really interesting to see how it further grew within the confines of this domestic home of the art world.

Feels a bit pointless to retread much of what has already been said in the class lecture, which is to say that Marshall McLuhan's viewpoints certainly show their age to that of a modern audience. Media which may have been "cold" at the time have warmed (as television has changed drastically since it's initial infancy at the time of McLuhan), but while I can drone about what McLuhan got wrong and that he's an old man yelling at a cloud in my twenty-first century mindset, I'd rather explore his idea of hot and cold media and how it plays into current forms of media. Looking at the internet, we can look into various forums, social media networks, and so forth, and attempt to place those constructs into ideas of hot and cold media, but I personally believe the internet is a form of media that isn't so easily placed. Despite the passivity of Instagram, where you simply look at images in a way that can be argued hot, there is a process to make accounts, follow...

It was very interesting to read this article as someone from 2020. The media that McLuhan talks about, in some instances, is seen in a completely different context today than it was when he was writing. For example, a telephone back in his day was considered a cool medium due to its low resolution. However, nowadays, a cellphone may be considered a hot medium because of how high definition it is. The phrase "filled with data" that was associated with McLuhan's definition of a hot medium could very well be talking about a cellphone. Not only has technology very much been advanced from McLuhan's time, but many values and ideals that were talked about in this article are now very much looked down on. For example, when I read about his idea of a "backward countries", I had to remind myself what time period this was written in. Referring to other countries as primitive is inherently racist and hard for me to read.