06-08-2004
Videoprogram Channel ZeroYael Bartana,
Trembling Time (06'20' 2001)
There are not many things that can make the traffic on a motorway come to a standstill. In a place where people collectively do the same thing - move from A to B - the reason for stopping has to be more urgent than the individual will. In Trembling Time, we witness such a situation. The road is full of stationary cars, all facing the same way, the occupants are getting out to stare motionlessly into the distance, where they will be going. Waiting until they can drive on, until they can continue their journey. The traffic starts to flow again, and then stops once more, but the motion is unavoidable. The people are on their way as part of an endless stream.
Bartana clears the way for the viewers to make up their own story from the images. She uses various techniques to make room for different meanings: the course of time is upset by the editing; the images are slower, and flow wonderfully smoothly into each other. The situation on the road gradually changes into a performance, a rhythm of forms and colours, light and shadow. What we see is no ordinary traffic jam; the impatience that comes with a tailback has made place for serene resignation.
Jordan Crandall,
UCSD Visual, Heatseeking (Course) (05'00', 2000)
It's night-time and two men are playing a game of golf. They are taking it in turns to hit the ball, and when they change over, they make threatening movements around each other. They exchange piercing glances, the sound of striking the ball rings out like a shot in the night. It is clear that this is more than just a game, because the players are extremely focused on each other, and it is in fact too dark for a serious game of golf. Their behaviour is cocky, aggressive, as if they are driven by a force that is hiding in the dark, causing them to concentrate fixedly on each other. When, instead of the ball, one of them hits the other with his golf club, the tension snaps, and their bodies can be seen wrestling on the ground. The darkness encompasses the men and turns the golf course into an arena for them to fight their battle.
In the cinematic registration of this event, in inky blue, green and black, the men are very like actors bravely playing their roles. But these shots alternate with images recorded by a surveillance camera. Here they are grey, granular silhouettes being registered like violent offenders. This has a disillusioning effect, because now they look more like real men, victims of their own passions. Moreover, it suddenly changes the viewer's involvement. From a spectator in the arena you turn into a furtive witness to an offence, as if it is you yourself, from the darkness, who is the force that controls the course of this struggle.
Ant Farm,
The Eternal Frame (24'00'', 1976)
The Eternal Frame is an examination of the role that the media plays in the creation of (post) modern historical myths. For T.R. Uthco and Ant Farm, the iconic event that signified the ultimate collusion of historical spectacle and media image was the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963. The work begins with an excerpt from the only filmed record of Kennedy's assassination: Super-8 footage shot by Abraham Zapruder, a bystander on the parade route. Using those infamous few frames of film as their starting point, T.R. Uthco and Ant Farm construct a multi-levelled event that is simultaneously a live performance spectacle, a taped re-enactment of the assassination, a mock documentary, and, perhaps most insidiously, a simulation of the Zapruder film elicits bizarre responses from the spectators, who react to the simulation as though it were the original event. The grotesque juxtaposition of circus and tragedy calls our media 'experience' and collective memory of the actual event into question. The gulf between reality and image is foregrounded by the manifest devices of Hall's impersonation of Kennedy and Michel's drag transformation into Jacqueline Kennedy. Hall, in his role as the Artist-President, addresses his audience with the ironic observation that 'I am, in reality, only another image on your screen.' In the uncanny simulation of the Zapruder film, however, the impersonations are not as apparent, raising the question of the veracity of the image. Image and reality collide in a post-assassination interview; while both President Kennedy and the imagic Artist-President are dead and entered into myth, Hall discusses his role like an actor having completed a film. Through a deconstruction of the filmic image, the artists underscore the media's importance to contemporary mythology -- in which greatness is more a measure of drama than substance -- and the extent to which it can be manipulated. In light of television's transformation of the American political system -- and the later election of a movie star tothe presidency -- The Eternal Frame continues to ring a truthful and haunting chord in the American consciousness.
Klaus vom Bruch,
Das Duracellband (10'10', 1980)
Series of three tapes: see also: Das Propellerband / Das Duracellband / Das Alliertenband
In this series of three tapes with the ultimate ironic title of 'Warum wir Männer die Technik so lieben' (Why we Men adore Technology), vom Bruch questions technology's nature and its goals. Technology (which, it is often assumed, will help us build a better world) is also a weapon that leads to destruction and oppression. All too often, technological developments have their origins in the machinery of warfare. Equally technology is often propagated and introduced to 'man' as if it were per se seductive, desirable and even erotic. Vom Bruch demonstrates this by means of technology itself. Through his virtuoso editing he reduces sequences of images to just a few seconds. the soundtrack (which is loud, severe and almost physically tangible) imbues the images with extra power. In this tape, the battery, the food of technology and technology itself, is imbued with a power of its own. The accelerating rhythm and eafening sound of the battery's rapidly and constantly repeated images define all the other images: from inane and 'innocent' toys that are totally dependent on batteries to the bombing of Nagasaki. Because of these images juxta position, the toys lose their innocence and the air strike is shown to be the consequence of a stupid and even fatal mechanism.
Johan Grimonprez,
Ko Bar Weng or Where is Your Helicopter (25'00', 1992)
This experimental video document depicts Johan Grimonprez's investigation into the first contacts between Papuans in Irian Jaya, the former Dutch New Guinea, and a group of Western anthropologists landing among them 'as if they came from nowhere' in June 1959. Grimonprez made exceptionally economic and effective use of film material from the archives, combined with quotes - running along at the bottom of the image - in which the Papuans put their experiences of the strange visitors into words. They express their amazement and bewilderment at the visitors, but at the same time, a great consciousness and even mild irony rings through: 'We never tell everything. We always keep something for the next anthropologist'. The word Kobarweng from the title means something like 'the sound of an aeroplane': the arrival of the strangers is always associated with the helicopters and aircraft in which they came ('Where did it all come from? Out of the sky'), and which initially put the Papuans in a state of utter confusion. Grimonprez gives it the sound of shrieking birds... The changing perspective of Kobarweng..., now from the air, then from the ground, in combination with the sometimes disturbing statements from the Papuans, creates confusion over who is actually investigating whom, over who is really the Other...
Les Levine,
Suicide Sutran (30'20', 1974)
In this tape by Levine, John Giorno (American sound poet, actor in Andy Warhol's Sleep) plays the lead. He repeats the texts spoken by Levine. The repetition in the text itself, and the voices talking over and repeating each other, turn the text into a whirlpool of words, only fragments of which are intelligible. The viewer becomes hypnotized, or rather, brainwashed. The tape reveals great political involvement. It is full of references to the hippie culture, the horrors of the Vietnam War, the hypnotizing and seducing effect of consumer society due to advertising, etc.
The tape begins with the sutra (Asian sonorous poem) Dakini Software. The text alternates with TV images of commercials, cartoons, sports programmes, and news. The images are recorded by filming the TV screen, which gives a flickering effect. The flashes of light bring about an even more direct connection between the images and sound, with the result that text and image reinforce each other. Dakini is a Buddhist doctrine, and software refers to computer programming, so this is brainwashing based on Eastern wisdom. John Giorno is dressed in typical hippie style, with his black hair tied back in a knot. The second allusion to Asia and Buddhism is the altar standing in the background.
In the second part of the tape, Levine and Giorno are reciting the Suicide Sutra in exactly the same way. 'Everyone is invited to participate in this film, and the way to do that is by intensifying your body (…), becoming totally uptight. It has to do with locating your body in space and locating the space in your body. Okay, suicide sutra…'. Where, in the first part of the tape, shots of Giorno were intermixed with TV images, here we occasionally see an extreme close-up of an eye. The text becomes more and more vehement, and when, in the story, the suicide has taken place, all kinds of wartime memories spring to the writer's mind. He speaks of napalm, burns, low-flying aircraft, and of being trapped, things that in all probability refer to the war in Vietnam. 'And you hear the long roar of a jetplane, and it's getting louder. (...) A napalm bomb. Napalm is sliding everywhere and it covers your skin and you can't believe it's happening. And your skin is burning and every inch of you is burning. Napalm that can't be rubbed off or put out.'
Jayce Salloum,
Once You've Shot the Gun You Can't Stop the Bullet (07'00', 1988)
The material for this tape was recorded over a period of three years in diverse places such as Beirut, Jerusalem, Las Vegas, L.A., N.Y.C., Tijuana and Vancouver. A 'faceless' man appears periodically who apparently serves as a leitmotif: his presence is indicated by the hands that touch or pick up objects such as a flower, sunglasses and a steering wheel. There is no linear storyline despite his repeated appearance; these images are rapid and fragmentary although sometimes they reveal some political situation (for instance: the price of war in the Lebanon). In addition Once You've Shot The Gun... does not seem to have been made in order to show coherent and localized places and realities. Rather it expresses the sense of alienation and powerlessness that the outsider (the viewer or the maker) can feel in terms of realities other than his own.
