If Revolution is a Sickness

I went to the Sculpture Center, which is located on Purves Street in Long Island City, Queens, to experiment with the experimental video by Diane Severin Nguyen. When I was finding out information about this place, their website said I had to make a reservation, which made me think it was probably going to be crowded. But there were only a few visitors when I got there.

           

I sat down in the middle of the floor on a red carpet to watch this experimental video. When they said this was an experimental video, I thought it would be all about the visuals, like we went over several artworks by different artists in the class throughout the semester, but surprisingly, it was the telling of a past history with voice-over narration. Through art, this was an effort to give a voice to their isolated life in a foreign land where they had to face an anti-immigrant government policy every step of the way. Most of the time, one can see a Vietnamese girl named Veronika as the central character in her yellow dress and red silk around her arms. Actually, the video had a color theme of yellow and red. The Vietnamese flag has five yellow stars on a red backdrop. The red strars represent bloodshed during revolution and the yellow strars represent the various classes attained through enormous sacrifices.           
            This girl only had the two options of staying depressed while alienated in a foreign land or doing something for the right cause to have the whole world hear of them. She chose the second option to keep their future generation away from the fostering of betrayal, self-destruction, and depoliticization.
            They had these very special sound effects utilized to synchronize with the movements of the characters. Actually, you can see this when Veronika first starts to make a dance move by herself alone. You will then see these Polish kids joining her in that dance routine. The sound effect is so powerful that sometimes it takes you away from the dance.        
            There were so many moments that looked poetic to me. For example, in the super-imposition of Veronika having her sandwich and the fountain water, this Vietnamese girl shaking her head to the beat of music that was supposed to be coming from her headphones, as if to say, how to know the one that is good when there are millions, running around a pole holding a ribbon that was tied to the pole, as if to say, no matter how she ran, she would still be running around the same pole all the time, their band dancing in front of the monuments, and her throwing a rock onto the rubbles.          
            The light reflection on her cheek from her sequined hat looked beautiful. Despite all the lousy environment around her, she keeps practicing the dance routine, and that image transitions into a set of shackles on a concrete pole, which entails the challenge of her work. The image of the reflection of the movements of the leaves in a cool breeze and rain water transitioning into her rehearsal of singing on the hammer, now that might have some significance in terms of labor force or something I am not quite sure of. The hammer that was supposed to be a microphone, portrays her rising slowly for the task. I also liked her using a piece of glass to slice a strawberry. Now, different individuals may have different ways of looking at things and they may find a different connotation in it, but to me, this is to say, when you are not at home, you find something around to work out certain things. The light reflection of a tree’s leaves onto the green grass on the ground looked gorgeous. I think this video was a good example of telling people that there could be a million ways to express their thoughts. All you need to know is the art of putting things together that make sense to everyone around you.        
            IF REVOLUTION IS A SICKNESS not only shows you the visual arts, but it also shows you the different approaches to mise-en-scene, structure, lighting, different dance postures, and story execution. Not to mention the different sound syncronization techniques. I really like the overall art experiments.

If Revolution is a Sickness

‘Midden’ Greater New York, MoMA PS1

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