Week 8
10/11/2010 at 5:03 pm (Uncategorized) (2010, FACS3938, Video in the Expanded Field)
There were a number of presentations today. The one I found most intriguiing was Nutka by Stan Douglas (1996), which featured 2 overlayed (interlaced) videos with separate audios combined together. It would have been interesting to see it at a gallery because the sounds come out of different speakers. As the videos move in different directions, the sounds follow; making it more difficult to comprehend at times.
Baghdad in No Particular Order by Paul Chan (2003) was also pretty interesting to watch, since people around the world do not have information about how people in Baghdad are faring apart from through what they see and hear in the news. It was a compilation of video clips showing the lives and surroundings of people in Baghdad; showing that they are just like other people, trying to live their lives after war. A wide range of languages are used now and then, perhaps to reach universal audiences. It shows a different perspective from the stereotypes shown to us by the media.
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We watched some videos afterwards:
1) John Smith – The Girl Chewing Gum (1976)
- Prescription vs description
- Different ways of looking at something
- A narrator telling the audience what to pay attention to
2) Hollis Frampton – Gloria
- Silent
- Sheets describe what would happen in next shot. No actual shot is shown on screen.
- Continuous, rhythmic…Past and present are blended. (Things from the past, the photographs, are present in the present moment)
3) Pierre Huyghe – The Third Memory (2000)
- 3 different perspectives on the same story
4) Stan Douglas – Win, Place or Show (1998)
- Predetermined selection of shots (by computer). Shots can be combined any way to change the story.
- 2 cameras
