Month: November 2021

Liquid Reality MoMA Exhibition

Yoselin

Shigeko Kubota’s, Liquid Reality Exhibition, is an immersive viewing of videos using sculptures, essentially destroying the constraints of viewing them through a TV box. Kubota being among the first-generation artists to embrace video, uses different filming techniques and editing to distort how videos should be viewed and how they can corporate nature, technology, and time. While visiting the exhibition, the light room had works of plywood and sheet metal all taking on a structural form of what the videos constituted.  Three Mountains, for example, was footage from three different terrains shot by a moving car but installed inside a mountain (pyramid-like) structure and with distorted mirrors and angles. This work along with Duchampiana: Nude Descending a Staircase, utilizes structures to present distorted video footage but this alone combines the creative aspect of having a stand still structure play moving film that evokes time stopping for the person viewing the work. Interestingly, I was more surprised by her first work Berlin Diary: Thanks to My Ancestors, just the use of having handwritten kanji tied on top of the small television with its static background truly invokes the idea that viewing video can be transformed into a creative artistic element.

            While the light room exhibition was thoughtful and truly showed the origins of what Kubota portrays, the dark room opposite to it with its similar techniques personally leaves viewers more transfixed. Using mirrors and flowing water creates a stronger aesthetic along with the low illuminated room making the water’s light reflect on the walls and floor. This side of the exhibition had three works starting from the Video Haiku-Hanging Piece which creates a visual representation of a poem from a hanging pendulum ball where the video is reflected from the ball to the mirror on the ground. Only viewers who are present at the time can view the video on the mirror being stretched by the swinging ball. River and Niagara Falls are similar because they depend on the use of water flowing and the videos being mirrored by the water for us to view the video, looking at the flow of the water as it moves in time. Here again we see the relationship of a structure and its video viewing, how both overlay one another to trap us into a fall-sense of moving with the video but standing still through it.

            Unfortunately, the dark room was more favorable to the audience at the exhibition rather than the light room and I could understand that most would find the aesthetic structures more intriguing. However, it feels that as we walk through the exhibition starting from the light room to the dark room it connects with one another to showcase the emergence and growth of video visualization in time and creativity using stand-still structures. Sometimes we can find viewing videos to a simple activity and not much work is needed to enjoy what we watch, but when we let go of viewing video constraints, I understand how Shigeko Kubota wanted to create a form of artistic work. While her videos may appear distorted, the simple act of having to be present in time to truly view them being reflected in the structural works and adding nature in her work just makes the footage realistic.

-Yoselin Castelan Ramirez

Liquid Reality MoMA Exhibition

‘Midden’ Greater New York, MoMA PS1

Dale

Last Sunday, I went to MoMa Ps1 to explore some experimental videos of Greater New York at MOMA Ps1 in Long Island City, Queens. I got to the place where they were supposed to have their video playing in the basement area, and then I heard something familiar. I had been watching those native films for my American History Class, so I could tell that it was Native Indian sound, but they had nothing projected on the wall, so I thought it hadn’t started yet. Later, I noticed that the video was already being played, projected on the floor that was filled with pebbles.


They had this video called “Midden” by renowned artist Alan Michelson. Born in Buffalo, he grew up in Boston, and, after attending Columbia University for a time, returned to New York in 1989. “Midden” refers to monumental mounds of oyster shells that were present when Dutch colonialists started to settle in present-day New York City.
Many of his pieces were horizontal, reminiscent of early panorama art and the woven wampum belts that served as a cultural touchstone for his people. The artist’s obsession with shorelines as liminal zones had led him to go from southern Ontario to Queens to capture video from the bows of boats.

He had the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn projected onto tons of oyster shells placed there to make it look like a shoreline. You don’t see natives playing their instruments, but you can hear the sounds of songs and drums from behind. The video art in a way feels like a shadow, but then the shadow would not be in color. The video seemed to show the cityscape along the river being shot while driving around or from a running train. You would see the cityscape and water a little opaque but in color and, surprisingly, without the sky part, completely transparent
Michelson does not consider himself an “environmental artist.” But he has long been preoccupied with the destruction and transformation of the Indigenous environment by colonialism. Michelson’s doing something different to leave people in wonder and present his brilliant art through which he could pay homage to his people, the Lenapehoking, and their ancestral homeland was a brilliant idea in itself. I did not know that he himself was Native American until this point. Also, I subsequently discovered that the melody playing in the background was the music they used in the Delaware skin dance.


According to what I read, Michelson would go to New York City’s local restaurants and collect oyster shells, reseed them, and carefully release them into the sea. Now, as I have mentioned above, these native Indians wear bracelets that are made out of the pink part of the shells, and they call this wampum. This wampum not only has aesthetic value, but it also has spiritual value, and his collecting that massive number of shells to make it noticeable from all around or say to give it a louder voice to the cause he is working on is great art. Personally, I believe this video art was experimental for Michelson, but it has already contributed a whole new dimension to modern video art. I never thought in this way that one could utilize their art to have their voice heard in a broader social arena. I think more and more new artists like myself will be inspired by this genius art in the coming days.

See Ya..

‘Midden’ Greater New York, MoMA PS1