15 September 2008

on video

I know I’ve said it before, but I hardly ever like video art. It’s too often either Slow Boring Cinema in an uncomfortable room, or a Nonsense Loop that leaves me mystified. Nevertheless I do try to go see video shows often, waiting to be convinced otherwise, or at least to have some justification for my prejudice.

I found a nice surprise the other night at the opening at Cardenas Bellanger, where I went at the suggestion of Lisa Cooley. Lisa was right – Carlos Cardenas is a nice and friendly guy, and I was pleased to be welcomed into a gallery for a change and able to have more than a stilted French conversation about Art. Oddly enough, several pieces in this group show reminded me of the work I saw just last week at Frank Elbaz... There seems to be a fair bit of New-Museum-esque installation and sculpture here using cheap mass-produced materials, like carpet scraps and plastic bags (Post-Modern Povera?)

The star of the show is clearly Alex Hubbard, who takes those low materials to new heights with his short videos that seem to document the simultaneous creation and destruction of that very type of installation. Viewed from a static central camera, a surface is covered in paper and strewn with objects that are tweaked or broken or ripped as we watch from above… paint is poured through a hole in a hat, a drum cymbal is cut by a chop saw. It’s almost like watching a drunk and angry Rube Goldberg make short films for some Surrealist Sesame Street. But the flat video screen, mounted on the wall, and the static composition make the work feel less like an investigation of the sculptural aspects of the objects and more like constantly changing paintings. They’re gorgeous.

Perhaps it’s my own prejudice again, responding to these videos as paintings, but I am struck by how dependent Video Art is on other forms. It’s still a hybrid medium; and that’s still a problem. I mean, how are we meant to approach any time-based artform like this? If it is the “Loop”, then I am free to wander in and away as I please, as with a painting, sculpture or drawing. The work becomes about the changing image (a Moving Painting, like Hubbard or Jeremy Blake) or perhaps, if narrative, a snippet unmoored from a larger story (or at least a story I’m not required to follow.) If it is the “Cinema”, then it necessarily has a beginning and an end, and I am expected to make some sense from the narrative arc. In this case, however, Video Art suffers from a longer and larger culture of Film and Television and our (including the Artist’s) corresponding expectations. If I’m supposed to watch from beginning to end, why not have actual start times (only rarely done at a gallery)?

Unfortunately, it seems many Artists (and their galleries) don’t quite know how to present the work, or try to do both Loop and Cinema at once. The physical space in which they’re presented becomes part of the problem, too. Too many times have I had to stumble through some cloth-covered entryway into a darkened room, sheepishly waiting for my eyes to adjust while the Art is In Progress. There is often just a hard bench for, say, 4 people, yet there are other stragglers filling the immediate entryway. All eyes insufficiently drawn in by the actual spectacle will turn at the interruption, making me feel like I’ve wandered into a pornographic theater mid-show. (And perhaps I may have...) I sit and watch, trying to catch up, until the video ends and restarts or until I come around to the part I walked in on.

I’m unclear as to what Video Art would have to do to free itself from these limitations. (One could say that only Video Games have grown as a truly New Medium…) The best of it so far uses those limitations to its advantage: Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller play with our Theatrical expectations in The Paradise Institute ; and Eija-Liisa Ahtila manages to make Looping Cinema that is emotionally powerful. The worst of Video is pretentious and derivative. Of course it’s even more true than ever that so many artists “just want to direct”… I guess for now, Entertainment beats Art.

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