Showing your work at a theater is tremendous entitlement. You have your audience’s undivided attention(hopefully) from the beginning to the end since your work is the only element to be observed in the space. In a exhibition setting, on the contrary, people would walk around wandering in their mind and attempting to see as many work as possible. As our professor perfectly described, “you’ll go out-of-fucks a man can give” by the end of a whole exhibition, I also found myself getting inpatient to finish a whole piece looking for something more visually captivating. However, my attention and curiosity were caught by some pieces which seem to share a similar theme: the duality of creation and destruction. 

The one I specifically liked was a 2 channel video installation called Eye/Machine I by Harun Farocki. I, as a media maker/filmmaker, point my camera towards people(my subjects) and scenery, which is determined by my human creativity and intention to tell a story. There are also other cameras that monitor, identity, and target objects for purposes like surveillance, quality assurance, and even attacking. Its origin comes from military practices and their functions are developed by a combination of algorithms, stored geographical data, and/or live footage. As Farocki points out how industrial production aims to minimizes manual work, there is a possibility of occurrence of war of machines. Although machines obviously have to be made by hands of human, they won’t need human’s brain and guidance to execute their task once they are produced. Through footage of military archives dropping bombs on specified targets from aircrafts, Farocki illustrates how emotionless and automatic machines are. Using two screens are effective in this case because it enables the artist to put more information, but right amount of graphic information to understand the story. Since having two screens next to each other adds another dimension, I actually got a little scared and intimidated by it and sensed urgency of the discussed matter. Footage from cameras located at factories to monitor machine’s effectiveness was very simple and repetitive, yet extremely powerful as they highlight how machines manage same heavy physical task repeatedly without exhausting themselves easily like human beings do. Theoretically and symbolically, the artist brings up intelligent machines’ capability to destroy, create and protect. Especially in military and war sphere, protection can mean a reason for destruction as they think they attack their enemies in order to protect their sovereignty and people. Thus, people are protected, but I cannot ignore the destruction that cause in other people’s lives and environment. This piece ultimately led me to reevaluate functions of camera and how it can be used in destructive ways.

I couldn’t help but notice some people stopped by to see a work, took some pictures, and left. So did I for some pieces, but I tried to take my time to fully appreciate each work. I red in other class that audience attention is, by far, the most scarcest commodity in distribution industry today. However, I realized that when we produce a powerful work, people will devote their attention and our story gets to the audience. That’s a good motivation to keep going!

I saw an exhibition called Chiron by an Italian artist Adelita Husni-Bey at New Museum on April 25th. The origin of the title comes from the Greek mythological figure Chiron which evokes the notion of the wounded healer. She addresses themes such as migration and displacement. The exhibition is located at the very end of South Galleries on the first floor separated from other work by a hallway and doubled black curtains. It created an interesting feeling in myself, feeling of not knowing what’s on the other side and of finding out what’s behind the curtains. Among the three short films exhibited, I liked the one that touches on immigration reform in the United States.

The film starts with a group of young women and men, who address themselves as lawyers, discussing laws whether they are tools of the law or the law is a tool for them. The footage includes close-ups of their hands and faces and uses techniques of pulling focus and taking one shots. Its soft focus and how it adjust the focus on the subjects create a feeling the camera is floating around the room not in an intimidating or surveilling way. Gaze of the lawyers is shared among them and does not directly address the existence of the camera. Two long shots reveal that the lawyers are in a typical-looking conference room and in an office. I thought heavily relying on the close-ups and using blue lights were very productive and creative ways of shooting the space since the conference room and office has almost nothing that’s visually pleasing to look at. What’s interesting is the subjects themselves and what they are talking about. B-rolls include observational footage of the abandoned houses, the lawyers pretending like they are typing something on a computer whose screen is turned off, and experimental/performative exercise. The computer footage, I think, is a symbol of them resisting to the system but not getting any feedback as they mention how the system(the law) in the United States does not support immigration and undocumented people and they face frustration of not being able to use the law to help and protect those people. Even though I know a little about theatrical exercise and technique which cultivate body-to-body relationships and break the physical and mental barriers among people, I was not quite sure what the participants are engaging themselves into for what purpose.

In a book called the World of Creativity(Sozo no Sekai), a Japanese writer Ayako Sono talks about how artists don’t have to explain anything further than the work itself as it should tell just sufficient amount of information the audience needs. I have learned that in visual/experimental  production, we don’t necessarily explain everything. However, reading the exhibit’s explanation really contextualized what I just watched. I learned that the film features members of an non-profit organization UnLocal that provides free legal representation to undocumented immigrants in New York City. Husni-Bey conducted a series of workshops there throughout last fall to address oppression, emotional depletion, and the psychological consequences of immigration enforcement. The participants of Husni-Bey’s workshop use theater and creative writing as means to de-individualize pain and to understand its political ramification.   

If I didn’t see the explanation board which I red after watching the piece, how much story and information I could get out from the artifice itself? The film is truly significant and experimental as it does not employ a conventional interview style, but it is still crucial to consider what details a filmmaker includes and omits in her/his work to effectively tell a story while maintaining aesthetic visual presentations.

The event was consisted of four shorts directed by Argentina filmmaker Eduard “Teddy” Williams including Could See Puma, I forgot!,, and Persí. As I started watching the first and second piece, I found myself constantly looking for a narrative of the film by picking up visual clues such as locations, behaviors, and dialogues between characters. That’s where I got really frustrated since I could not get any idea of what I was watching. What’s the storyline here? What’s the meanings of this image and intentions of the filmmaker? The films rather became more ambiguous and poetic. I kept wondering and realized that his films focus on the ordinal moments in our lives documented in unique ways.

I saw lots of abrupt cuts, unique angles and replacements of cameras, and less explanations. All the films focus on young males and how they interact with each other. The shared theme among the three pieces seemed to be nature, plants, and fruits such as boys hanging out in abandoned buildings, cave, and around their houses. The locations of the shoots are different for each film including Argentina, France, and Vietnam. However, the director did not use conventional texts indicating time and location or personalize characters. It actually depersonalizes the image and characters. I started to realize there are more similarities than differences among people all over the world. Third piece was very interesting and experiments with the boundaries of repetitions where sounds get extremely overwhelmed. All of the sounds are juxtaposed two sentences starting “Seems like A is B” and last throughout the entire film. Moreover, image the filmmaker chosen to go along with the sentences are footage taken from 360 degree GoPro attached to roller skaters and men dressed as women cruising a town with their car. Again, no explanations to those characters at all and the image seem to be pretty much observational.

Fortunately, after the films, we had the filmmaker himself coming up to the stage for a discussion. This is usually a time for me to problem-solve because I can have better understanding of the meanings, intentions, and methods of the filmmaking explained by the filmmaker himself/herself. I bet many of the audience had a plenty of questions to ask as we are usually used to be given sufficient information about story and characters. I would say it was the most interesting discussion ever. What I basically understood from Teddy talking about his films was that he follows his intuitive artistic creativity and always experiments with how he shoots and shows the image. I didn’t quite get the answers to my questions! I headed to my home feeling like having an unsolved mystery in my mind. I kept thinking about what I saw until the next day, and I came to a realization that, that is what experimental filmmaking is. Shooting with a camcorder on a tripod does not always have to be the way to shoot. The filmmaker’s work is significant as he always challenges the normative of filmmaking and storytelling. I was inspired to explore, find, and sophisticate with my style.