One piece I was able to see at the Metropolitan Museum of Art Bruer location on 76th street and Madison Avenue was, “Slow Angle Walk (Beckett Walk 1968) by Bruce Nauman. A fixed camera records Nauman as he repeats the same sequence of gestures: after kicking one leg up at a right angle, he pivots 45 degrees, letting his leg drop with a thump while extending his back leg at a right angle. According to the description on the wall next to this film, “These absurd motions take inspiration from the writings of Irish author Samuel Beckett, who described his characters’ awkward movements in excruciating detail.”

 

At certain moments, Bruce Nauman moves totally out of shot and only the noise of his footsteps indicate his presence. This way of treating his body with detachment through fragmentation and moving out of shot is reinforced by the perceptive confusion and the impression of weightlessness produced by the inverted space. In Slow Angle Walk (Beckett Walk), the spectators are confronted by a feeling of alienation which they experience while watching the artist in the doubly enclosed space of the screen and his studio.

 

Nauman abandoned painting for a wide ranging investigation of his own body as subject and object of his work, from latex and wax casting of body parts to a series of twenty-five films and videos.

In these latter works, the artist executed mundane activities in his studio – from walking and jumping to bouncing balls – where he explored “the kinds of tension that arise when you try and balance and can’t.” Nauman knew this kind of stripped-down, non-narrative movement from his association with Ann Halprin’s Dance Theatre Workshop in San Francisco which he was a part of for a while.

Two things that stuck to me about this film was the dullness and the creative use of the body to make sounds.

When I first came up to this film, I thought it would pick up or change at some point, but after about 6 minutes of the same action, I finally decided to read the description where it said that he did multiple hour long videos of these types of videos, and practiced for many hours at a time until it was perfect.  The intent wasn’t for the videos to be watching in its entirety, but rather something you could come back to throughout your visit to the museum.

The creativity in this piece, to me, was very unique because people walk every day, yet I’ve never thought steps could be seen as an artsy part of the human body. Nauman was able to recognize that and use it to his advantage to explore this new avenue in the art world and create something different.

What I was able to take away from this film was sometimes you just have to think outside the box and let your imagination take over, especially if you’re an artist or something of the sort. Also, it goes to shows how art can be expressed in many different ways and doesn’t really have a definition or look.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dasies is a 1966 Czechoslovak comedy-drama film written and directed by Věra Chytilová. Generally regarded as a milestone of the Nová Vlna movement. It follows two teenage girls (played by Jitka Cerhová and Ivana Karbanová), both named Marie, who engage in strange pranks.

I know the assignment was to go watch it at like a museum or a screening event but, we had a brief conversation about this film as a class and it sounded really interesting so I decided to watch it on Youtube.

according to wikipedia.com, “novatively filmed, and released two years before the Prague Spring, the film was labeled as “depicting the wanton” by the Czech authorities and banned. Director Chytilová was forbidden to work in her homeland until 1975.” This film is huge for the women empowerment movement in that it’s one of the first international films to be written, directed, and starred by women, which was unheard of at the time.

Throughout the film, the girls go on dates with various older men. In each scene, the girls cavort and eat lots of food while mocking their date, who is driven to the end of his patience, at which point the girls say that they are late for a train, and then ditch the man at the train station.

 

What resonated with me from the early stages of the film is the strong sibling dynamic these two girls have, very playful very in sync which gives it the real feel. When they go out to eat and the girl in the white dress eats like she never ate before is hilarious because she seems so out of place.

 

Throughout the film I get the vibe of a satire show on a late night, mostly because of the ridiculous scenes that appear along the film. the girls eventually go to a nightclub and cause a mini brawl. Marie II also goes to the apartment of a man who is a butterfly collector. In this scene, there are a lot of butterflies shown as still frames. The man repeatedly declares his love to Marie II, whom he calls Julie. At the end, she says that she wants to eat. In later scenes, the two girls lounge about in various rooms while listening to their suitors profess love for them over the phone.

 

While there is certainly an air of whimsy to this film, it is also made with serious themes – relative to both its origins, and to a much more far-reaching time and place. Daisies, and its creator, are major proponents of feminism; agendas clearly stated from the onset of the film. The Maries are frustrated with the labels imposed on them, being young attractive females. Remarking that society see them as “dolls,” they are forced to abide by these societal guidelines. They should not become scientists, they cannot be artists, they would never make it on their own; they must have fun while dating around, and quickly find a husband.

Constantly accosted with the knowledge that beauty and youth are fleeting , they are only told to have fun while they can, never to better themselves to ensure a brighter future. Any outburst from the duo is quickly recognized as improper: women are to speak gently and be polite, it is men who have large appetites and can speak brashly.

 

 

I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, on 86 street and 5^th Avenue, where I was able to catch a short film, which is considered one of the best arts created to date. Stasi City (1997) is universally considered one of the most impactful works of video art of the last half century, because it was one of the first films to date that could be classified as an experimental film. the four-channel video installation is a dizzying tour of the former headquarters of the East German secret police (Staatssicherheit) housed behind a nondescript row of buildings in the former East Berlin.

 

When I walked in the room and saw the movie playing on four walls all in different scenes yet syncing up at the same time really threw me. As an outsider privy to this place even existing, the circumstances that these rooms were in really emphasized torture and struggle. Throughout the film, there’s a boy floating around, and I interpreted that as a spirit that lingered in this place trapped forever because this is where he lost his life.

Another very interesting trait about this piece is that it’s a silent film. For a silent film to be this suspenceful and this attention grabbing I’m sure was a rarity when this first released in ’97. The slowness of the footage evokes surveillance, the feeling of being watched, as does the installation’s layout, which draws the visitor into a corner.

Jane and Louise Wilson, the creators of Stasi City, were able to bring to life a very dark and overlooked moment in German history which I feel also make this piece very historic. The fact that this was one of the first film pieces to publicly expose some of the horrors that were going on in these rooms really magnified the dehumanization that went on behind closed doors.

 

 

I was a Journalism Major at one point before switching to Media Studies and this piece really reminded me of a Feature Article. Not your typical “soft news” Feature, but more like a story that a reporter had been working on for a while, digging up as much information as possible to them expose corruption almost like a breaking news story or something to that effect.

 

 

I really enjoyed the silent film and it made me think a lot on more of a journalistic side in terms of the approach and making is silent to add that much more suspense. Jane and Louise Wilson had real courage to make such a sensitive film public, but by doing so, they let the world know what was happening in Germany behind closed doors almost like a reporter breaking a story on a government corruption scandal here in the United States.