Shabby but Thriving by A.K. Burns is a 36 minute video instillation at the New Museum. It features two projectors, two overlapping screens, and the viewing area is furnished with a stripped and gutted couch that has a blue under glow, and foldable stools. The intentionally dingy floor was also smattered with spilling bags of dirt, and white and neon yellow fishing lines extended from hand ornamentation on the walls. The two screens were set up in such a way that at times only one would be in use, sometimes there would be two different scenes playing at the same time, and other times the two screens were used in unison to create one whole image. Having one big screen and one smaller screen at an angle drew emphasis to important details and helped guide the focus of the viewer. The scenes were shot it in the New Museum’s 231 Bowery space, a prewar building adjacent to the Museum that houses the artist-in-residence studio.

The film had multiple subjects. In one portion it would switch back and forth between a semi naked white woman and a cross dressing black man taking out heaps of garbage through a basement and down a narrow stairwell. In another portion, there were children interacting with their environment in an empty off-white room, save for a couch. Both children dress in clothes that match the upholstery of the couch. One child is a girl wearing seashell pattern clothes that matches the couch as she plays with an aquarium. She grabs at the fish and sand in a way that is playful but childishly aggressive. It seems like she is trying to dominate this small ecosystem with what little power she has. The couch and the way she’s dressed contribute to a feeling of nostalgia, so that it almost feels like you are peering in on someone’s home movies from the 80’s. The other child featured in this project is a young boy with glasses wearing yellow plaid that runs around the room sometimes trying to swat at a fly. I was not able to tell if there was anything actually there, and the child himself also seemed confused and uncertain of what he was doing or why he was doing it. This contributed to theme of trying to exert control over surroundings even if it is to no end. Within the emptiness, the two children find things to give their day-to-day existence meaning, even if it harms things that are alive or imaginary.

Each subject interacts with his or her desolate and shabby environment in ways that are electric and dynamic. The blue under glow of the couch and the blue lights within the film made this otherwise nostalgic seeming piece become futuristic. The combination of found and constructed interiors blurs the line between what is real and what is imagined and felt. The description of the exhibit explains that the piece “ is organized around five elements: power (the sun), water, land, void, and body.” What really stuck out to me about this project was the way in which it drew attention to the ways we interact with our environment in both positive and negative ways. I am also drawn to work that explores issues of classism.

 

        I chose to watch this film named “Akher Wahed Fina(The Last of Us),directed by Ala Eddine Slim in MOMA. This 95 mins film reveals the story of two men silently traverse a vast landscape, they get in the back of a smuggler’s truck. Sooner, they get attacked by men with guns and one of them escapes to sea, he sooner finds himself in an endless forest, where a kind of spiritual journey unfolds. What makes this film interesting to me at first was that it is dialogue-film, which to me is a rare thing to discover in films that are created nowadays. But that also puts the challenge in character’s facial expressions and the arrangement of the outline in order to keep the story cohesive to the audience. The protagonist’s facials expressions and the scenery shots got me interested the most in this film. I like the way how the director first uses close-ups on the protagonist to enlarge his emotions and then jump out to medium shots of his whole body and then long shots combining with the scenery and himself to show the loneliness of him trying to find a way out but somehow get surrounded by all the objects in the forest. There were some lines displayed after the gunmen trying to attack him and he was escaping to somewhere else, I remembered clearly there was one line that says “I vomited humankind, I surrounded myself along with natural and forest”. That was my favorite line in this film and I think that also highlighted the central idea which is to mark down the negative side of humankind and how it deeply affected and destroys the beautiful nature between each other. The man is a traveler, but the cruelty of humankind gave him disappointment so he then ends up with finding himself in the forest and looking for his own path. There was one scene when he fell into the big hole and underneath he found out the dead body of the baby bear and the sharp weapon that were used to kill the bear and he also got stabbed because he fell down and the weapon went through one of his knees. That made me think of the nature of humankind and how people create weapons that are fatal and use them against each other and nature species. The man also struggles with wolfs in the woods and that lights up one of the theme of this film : the struggle between man and nature and also the situation with contemporary migration. Towards the end I found one shot was very interesting to think of which is when the man was sitting by himself after seeing the death of old man who healed his wound. At night here came up with the bright light focusing upwards the man and as the man moves, the light moves as well. But the light doesn’t approach any closer, it was just in the further distance and lights up towards the man. The film leaves the open ending which the protagonist took of all his clothes and stands in front of the river and show his back to the audience. That makes me think whether he then jumps into the water and committed suicide or he wants to go up to the waterfall and discover the path or he gave up on his human nature and disappear in the woods.After all, I think this film evokes ourselves to think the humanity and struggles between humankind and nature.