Video art

Kraftwork + House Music

As someone who has never listened to house music of any sort, it was fun looking through each of the links. Nothing like being exposed to something totally different in one dose! By far the most interesting to me was Chip E's "Time to Jack" The use of the repetivtive vocals was intertesting.

It reminded me of a song a friend of my in high school use to blast, Bruce Willis is Dead. Though at the time I was kinda like "WTF is this," knowing what I know about house music now, I can definetly pick out the clear inspiration.

Perhaps the most interesting thing for me about the Kraftwork documetry was the discussion about their influence on hip-hop. It definetly speaks to the post-modern crisis that genres keep creating themselves out of other genres. The cycle continues.

Advertising Vs. Prop

I think there is a huge difference between advertising and propoganda. While yes, they are both attempting to persuade, I think the main difference lies in the audience.

Advertising is so succesful because it has relied on a the exact science of breaking its audiences into tiny groups. Black, White, Lation. Age 20-25. Age 40-45. Generation X, Y, Z. Male. Female. Income levels. Interest groups. The combonations are practically infinite. Yet advertising broke the code. Each advertisement you see has made an exact combonation of these, trageting a direct group.

With Propaganda, there are no demographics. When a propganda message goes out, there is no care for who sees it. They are trying to persuade everyone. Lets turn to the ever overused example of Nazi Propganda. When they created the posters, there only dempgraphic was non-jews. They were trying to persuade EVERYONE to believe in their party.

Propaganda also distorts facts. Now while advertising does this to some extint, there are government groups whose main task is to shut down people who make these false facts in advertising.

I think that the intent is what really seperates the two. People can lambaste advertising all they want, but I truly don't think it has any curel intentions.

EVA & ADELE + Flashmobs

AVA & ADELE say they have come from the future. They also are deeply in love.
Some things they won't reveal. Like their real ages. They refer to themselves as "walking museums."

They also state that neither of them is a woman or a man, and that they have in fact created their "own sex." The bald heads are masculine, yet the dress is completely feminine. Also every detail down to the symmetrical way their carry their purses, and wear their jewelery is absolutely stunning.

Why do they do this? For spectacle? Because they're in love and refuse to spend anytime apart? Who knows. Maybe a little of both. But they are certainly beautiful to look at. And their story is quite moving. Eva went through the process of a trial just to have her sex changed on her birth certificate to "female." They also sate that they've never spend a night apart since they fell in love. Going through all that trouble leads me to believe maybe this isn't all for spectacle. Maybe it started as something more pure and just evolved itself.

As for flashmobs, this probably my most favorite. Talk about decontextualization. In an airport is probably the last place you'd expect to see a flashmob. Though I wonder if it made anyone late for their flight.

Iconoclast+Orlan

i·con·o·clast/īˈkänəˌklast/

Noun:

A person who attacks cherished beliefs or institutions. A destroyer of images used in religious worship. Is Orlan "iconoclast" in the religious sense? Aside from having people dress like priests, no. But she is certainly an iconoclast in the sense of attacking cherished beliefs -- and she'd probably be offended if you said she wasn't.

Orlan's whole intent was to attack the "institutions" of the view of women -- as objects, as symbols, in their "cherished" roles. Everything she did sought to attack that view. And I feel that the view of women and their role is in fact an "institution." She also is an iconoclast in her method of extrapolating the beauty rituals of other societies. The fact that she even features them probably makes some more traditional members of those cultures cringe and call foul. But she is purposefully stripping them from their context, removing them from the institutions they are rooted in, and having the viewer observe. 

I would comment more on her surgery videos, but since I faint at the sight of blood, I think my eyes were closed most of the time. Sorry.

I'm not sure if I necessarily agree with her methods. I think that the Guerrilla Girls were probably more my speed at getting the feminist message across. While not handling the exact same issues, they certainly had similar aims. On that note, I'm sure you could call the Guerrilla Girls iconoclastic with their art as well. Hell -- if they weren't they wouldn't be very useful would they?

I thought the Lady Gaga video was surprisingly amazing. I have never been one for Lady Gaga, though I appreciate her views on the LGBT community, and the video was actually quite stunning. Once again, it amazes me how much of what we learned in the class, as niche as it may seem at first, is attacking still embedded in our  popular culture.

Xerox Project- Claustrophobia.

For my project, I only focused on two body parts: hands and the face. I've titled the piece Claustrophobia.
The process began with trying to capture a image of my face on the scanner. I wanted it to almost look like the person had received some bad news over the phone.

After that, I glued layer upon layer upon layer of hands. I played with the lightness/darkness on the xerox machine to achieve a variety of colors on the hands, so it didn't appear flat.

I wanted the hands to look like they were beginning to crush the face underneath; piling on and inching closer and closer. I wanted the hands to also act as a metaphor for stressful situations. Each hand represented a stress causing factor, all piling until there was barely a hole for you the breathe.