Andy Warhol: Screen Test 315, 61, 194

Andy Warhol’s pieces at the Whitney really surprised me. I found myself getting sucked in each time a film was playing. There was something so odd and entertaining about them. I wrote originally about Andy Warhol eating a burger which was very captivating. I can’t explain why but there was just something about It. However, while I was at the Whitney more of Andy’s work pulled me in. Some, in particular, was his screen tests. The Screen Tests are a series of short, silent, black-and-white film portraits, made between 1964 and 1966, generally showing the subjects from the neck up against plain backdrops.

What I found interesting about the films was how simple they were but also how complex. First off the lighting is set up to be harsh on the subject. It creates huge shadows and bright highlights. Secondly, the subject stands really still either looking directly in the camera or off to the side for a total of 3 mins. I did not learn that the projected movie was shown in slow motion as well which added to this uneasy feeling I got from watching the films.

I also felt like I was watching one of his paintings. The famous Marilyn Monroe painting, for example, was in my head when watching these films. I think it’s because the subject sits center in the frame from the neck up just like the paintings. I’m not sure if Andy was going with that but I wouldn’t doubt It. As I watched the screen tests I also was reminded of mug shots. The movie looked like moving mug shots to me and later when I did my research on the films I learned that Andy based this work off of the New York City Police Department booklet entitled The Thirteen Most Wanted. I found that interesting because I really felt like these could be mug shots. Another thing these films reminded me of was a horror movie. I felt like something scary was going to happen almost like a jump scare. They felt like old school horror movies because of the lighting and emphasis on shadows and highlights.

Andy shot these films on 16mm film, black and white. These films were silent and about 3-5 mins long at 18fps. I think he did a great job with them because even though they were only single shots of peoples portraits I found It very interesting and captivating. Watching It in a dark small theater helped too because I felt like I was watching something special outside of the exhibit. The environment added to the experience. The only thing I would have changed was the couple making out in front of me but I guess that can be part of a movie-going experience. All in all, I had a wonderful time at the Whitney and watching Andy’s films was eye-opening and a great experience.

Following up with the first exhibit I went to, I was taken to yet another museum exhibit about the use of technology within art. New Order is a compilation of older MoMA exhibits with use of many different interactions with technology, not focusing one a specific theme, but just one of general appreciation. The gallery held a range of levels of interaction between each of the pieces.
One example included a supermarket like display of bottles with inclusions of aspects of modern American culture. The items listed on the bottles were taken “literally” and ripped and dumped into the bottles. It proved one of my favorite pieces, as the items did not create a super ugly creation, but instead was aesthetically pleasing. Usually scathing social commentary creates something that looks ugly and is meant reflect the ugliness in the people watching This one looked cool, so I was actually intrigued to see what was in all of the bottles. Ironically, this may or may not defeat the purpose of the piece, but I enjoyed myself.
Another piece was a repurposed exercise bike with three monitors attached in front of it, so that you could look at the images as you pedal. I was more excited for the piece then I felt I should have been, because it ends up being this weird 3D woman who is supposedly supposed to interact with the bike. I was less interested about the supposed consequences of the peddling, and was in fact, more excited for the actual peddling. Being involved in the exhibit makes me excited, but I’m not sure if this was the point it was making. I still had fun for the minute I was on.
Lastly, there was this really weird video with weird 3 deletional object with an off-psychedelic vibe and house music, and an incorporation of a real-life video of and urban dance off. Making this piece more puzzling was the included introduction of it next to it, which included an author and a title, but no explanation to the artist’s attempt. It hurt my eyes. But it beat the piece of cardboard next to it.

“The New Order” exhibition in the Museum of Modern Arts was definitely an interesting experience because I personally have never been there until a field trip with the class. There were a lot of fascinating showpieces that caught my attention and there were also that I found strange weird and uninteresting. However, there was a showpiece that seemed to be having both traits as almost being on the edge of weird and boring but also captivating and enchanting. This show piece is called “Country Ball,” and it was created by Jacolby Satterwhite.

There is something in this video that really captivates and one can’t just walk away from it. As Satterwhite said in one of the articles “Country Ball is an attempt to recreate a home video from the late 80s of my family’s mother’s day cookout.” On the first viewing, this video looked as something that came out of a very altered state of mind with a use of some psychedelic  substances. Although, it might still be the case, on the second more closer look on the video, I can really notice details and indeed images of people pouring and cooking something. In addition to that, there are 3D animated people dancing with real faces superimposed on their heads. Jacolby said that he had to “perform in front of the camera and green screen a hundred times; later inserting those videos into a virtual space to create Hieronymus Bosch “Garden of Earthly Delights” inspired landscape.” 3D space is also full of details and hand drawing and some real home videos inserted in the background. What I really liked about this piece is movements inside this 3D landscape.

There is a constant movement of the camera. There are a lot of tilts and pans and dollies and sweeps of a camera and it creates a momentum that engages a viewer and makes it so much more interesting and not dull. In addition, 3D generated figures are also always dancing of doing something and it adds to the constant feeling of movements. In terms of sounds, we hear a song and people having fun on a background. It definitely sounds as something coming from an old VHS tape because the quality of a sound is not that good. Overall, this video piece by Satterwhite is very unique because I could not help myself but to stay and watch it. The somewhat psychedelic visuals and very vibrant and oversaturated colors definitely played a role in. 3D environment was also very strange because there were almost no hard and sharp corners or structures, everything was very ambiguous and the shapes were bent or just weird looking.

Also, the small detail that I really appreciated was a moment in the end when two people figures seemingly try to put cards into a wallet and they keep doing it over and over while being strapped or chained to something. The first thing that came to my mind was the analogy with Greek mythology and a story of Sisyphus Rolling Rock Up to Hill.

The two pieces that I found the most interesting MoMA’s New Order: Art and Technology in the Digital Age exhibit was Mark Leckey’s Made in ‘Eaven and Harun Farocki’s, Eye Machine I. The first features a view that revolves around the reflective sides of a Jeff Koons Bunny. The camera isn’t seen in the reflection because the video is a digital rendering that has been transferred to 16mm film. What struck me initially was the odd feeling of seeing a digital image on 16mm film, the smooth and unnatural surface of the sculpture and walls juxtaposed with the film grain. Leckey doesn’t own the Jeff Koons piece but he inserts it into his studio and then transfers it to a physical medium. The piece made me think of the way in which the current age of digital media and the internet has seen a blurring of reality and fabrication. The digital age is a time in which the authenticity of information posted online is subject to question, and ideas sprouted on the internet can manifest themselves into real life actions. In the way that reality becomes augmented, our senses are too.

I found Harun Farocki’s  Eye Machine I interesting in the way it demonstrated the precision in video technology developed for automation. The video features images of digital displays that automated machines use to perform their tasks, juxtaposed with images of video technology developed for the military. The video demonstrates the relationship between domestic and military tech, with the latter outfitting the former. The military has always been the progenitor of domestic technology but something about the fact that the piece focuses on video technology gave me an eerie feeling. The piece shows the sense that we all use in a cold and calculating manner, devoid of life. An aspect of human experience developed for analysis, data processing and precision that no person would be capable of.

I really don’t like the movie Gummo, Harmony Korine’s gung-ho, mostly plotless, home movie-tinted ode to impoverished America. I find the film exploitative, generally unpleasant, and boring. (I recently watched the film again to make sure my opinion held up. It did.) I bring up my opinion of Gummo because Korine’s follow-up feature, Julien Donkey-Boy, is a very similar film in style, only this one has more identifiable main characters and even less plot. Critics savaged Gummo when it came out, and gave Julien Donkey-Boy similar treatment. Gummo has a lot of fans, including noted film directors, but I’m squarely on the side of the critics. So why do I like Julien Donkey-Boy?

Whereas Gummo had mostly non-actors from dark corners of Nashville, Harmony puts recognizable people front and center this time, including Gummo superfan Werner Herzog, and Trainspotting’s Ewan Bremmer in the titular role. Julien is a fast-talking, hyperactive schizophrenic. His sister is pregnant. His brother’s into wrestling. His father is tough on him because he wants his son to be a winner. They live in Queens. Julien hangs out with people with disabilities. And…that’s pretty much the whole movie. There’s no real plot, it’s just a series of vignettes involving the family, all shot through a shakily-maneuvered standard-definition digital camera. Actually, shot through a digital camera, then converted to 16mm film….then converted to 35mm film. The resulting image is very grainy and oddly-colored, giving the film a unique, deliberately terrible look, and that’s already assuming that it’s a scene where Harmony isn’t shooting with lower-quality cameras or filming what he’s shot off a television screen. It’s possible to see the film’s caution-thrown-to-the-wind cinematography as helping to put the audience in Julien’s kinetic mindset, or as presenting the film as a series of dysfunctional home videos. In addition, the film opens with a certificate saying that the film was produced under the guidelines of the Dogme 95 movement. One of the guidelines is that the camerawork must be handheld, and many films produced under the movement have similarly shaky camerawork. However, since Harmony appears to have ignored every other rule in the Dogme 95 guidelines while making this film, I’m not going to consider the movement in regards to his cinematography. I honestly have no idea why that certificate is even there.

Julien Donkey-Boy is among the first films to be shot digitally, and it’s fascinating to see Korine take advantage of new technologies at such a young point in the medium. Scenes are shot a low frame rates using delayed exposure, giving everything a blurred, hallucinogenic look. Editing is rapidly-paced at times—to the point where one scene is entirely made up of half-second shots. His MiniDV camera can be maneuvered with ease, which he demonstrates with his frenetic cinematography. Digital video seems freeing to him, and the audience gets to witness him try out the tools he now has at his disposal.

One of my major complaints about Gummo was that I believed it used legitimately marginalized people to create a sideshow-freak aesthetic. While I admire Korine for giving such people parts in his film, it felt exploitive. Despite Julien’s recognizable main cast, many of the film’s supporting players are non-actors with physical or mental disabilities. Julien spends portions of the film at what appears to be a facility for people with disabilities, and there is a real sense of community among the residents that Gummo’s cast lacked. I really felt for Julien when he joins everyone in dancing at a birthday party with the others at the facility. There’s a sense of genuine warmth in this scene that is surprisingly not diminished by the fact that there is an extended sequence of a performer at the party eating several cigarettes and bringing them back up to smoke them. Also, Herzog plays cards with a man who has no arms, and therefore does everything with his feet. As this is a Harmony Korine film from the 90s, we are supposed to accept these events at face value.

This brings me to an aspect of the film that has always intrigued me, which is that I’m not sure how much of it is staged. Many scenes in this film are shot and played out as if Ewan Bremmer went to certain public locations and acted like a schizophrenic. A lot of scenes in this film are shot like a hidden camera show, with the cinematographer shooting from a distance as Ewan improvises. This is especially curious in what I can loosely refer to as the film’s climax. Julien’s sister has just given birth, but the baby was stillborn due to an ice-skating accident. Julien takes the baby’s corpse and brings it home with him. (It’s heavily implied that Julien is the baby’s father.) What follows is a scene of Julien getting on a Queens bus with the dead baby as people look at him in confusion…and it doesn’t look like acting. The video quality is noticeably lower as well. It’s feels like the world’s darkest episode of Candid Camera.

While we’re on that subject, I’m not sure what the overall tone of the movie is. In one scene, Julien fantasizes about getting a call from his mother, who died in childbirth. She says that she’s a dentist in the afterlife and gives Julien tips on dental care. It’s rather absurdist for what should be a heart-wrenching moment. Plus, there’s Werner Herzog. Oh boy, is there Werner Herzog. He walks around the house with a gas mask on for no reason. He tries the string from the Venetian blinds around his neck and opens and closes the window by moving his head back and forth. He calls a stream-of-consciousness poem Julien created “artsy-fartsy,” before describing the “Do I feel lucky” scene from Dirty Harry at the dinner table with the reverence of an art film critic. It’s utterly hilarious. What exactly is Harmony going for here? A wrenching but heartfelt and funny portrait of a dysfunctional family? A rather politically-incorrect prank film? An excuse to have people just do random stuff in front of a video camera?

Maybe there was a reason Harmony made this a Dogme 95 film. The Dogme 95 manifesto said that directors were no longer artists, and set out to tell interesting stories while showing life as it really was. Maybe Harmony, 26 and already considered either the art house’s biggest pariah or a misunderstood genius, was trying to capitalize on a new and interesting film movement. Or maybe he considered this film a story of life that nobody else filming in New York City wanted to tell. A story of the marginalized and forgotten in the biggest city in the country. It’s rare to see something like this and Gummo released by a studio like Fine Line Features, a division of a major Hollywood studio and media conglomerate, and I haven’t seen much like it since. Harmony, meanwhile, seems to have moved on in the past few years. His latest film in his surprisingly-short oeuvre, The Beach Bum, was his first to receive a major theatrical opening, while his previous film, Spring Breakers, was his first major release in general. I guess he got tired of being “artsy-fartsy.”

Side note: Metrograph preceded this film with a selection of two music videos and a commercial directed by Korine. The first features Bonnie “Prince” Billy’s No More Workhorse Blues set to a video of an African-American man with literal dollar-signs in his eyes and a woman in a bridal gown and blackface. The two do various activities, which are all shown in loops of a few frames each. The other video was for Living Proof by Cat Power, with a slow-motion scene of a high-school track meet where a woman is running with a cross on her back, with the other runners dressed in hijabs. They felt like videos from a karaoke machine you’d find in your dreams (or nightmares, particularly in the former video). An ad for Thornston’s chocolate uses similar visuals as the Workhorse video, with a young boy contemplating while people around him seem stuck in brief by repeating moments of time. Everything returns to normal when the boy realizes what wants–he was writing down something to be put on a personalized piece of chocolate. Harmony’s attitude towards promotional materials is that he knows he’s been commissioned to sell something, but nevertheless remains true to his experimental vision, if not fond of using controversy to attract eyes. Much of the Metrograph audience were amused when the final clip turned out to be an ad for chocolate–although I’m not sure what anyone would have initially thought that ad was for based on the imagery. I just hope Bonnie and Cat had seen Korine’s work before they hired him.

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!

A couple of weeks ago I went to Metrograph for the first time to see The Juniper Tree an experimental film written and directed by Nietzchka Keene. What interested me initially about the film is that is stars a twenty year old Bjork and was shot in Iceland. The movie is based on the fairy tale written by the Brothers Grimm, which also was a factor in my decision to go watch it.

The film begins with two sister traveling away from their hometown after their mother was brutally killed by stoning and then set on fire due to accusations of being a witch. The older sister, Katla tells the younger sister Margit (Bjork) that she will find a husband and cast a spell on him to love her and support the two of them. When they come across a man named Johann whose wife had passed Katla does exactly that. What she didn’t expect was his young son Jonas to see through her rouse. The young boy sees Katla casting a spell and sewing her footprint into his father’s coat. He is cold towards her and suspicious of her actions, driving a wedge between her and his father.

Margit and Jonas begin to connect and he shows her his mother’s grave. They put flowers on it and Margit finds a ravens feather. She enchants the feather and ties a string around it to make a necklace for Jonas, stating that his mother transformed into the raven and left the feather as a means to protect him. While by the waters edge with her sister, Margit has a vision of her mother. Unable to see into the spiritual world Katla begs Margit to explain what she sees, but she is unable to put it into words.

These visions happen more and more often, driving Margit to venture out into the wilderness at night, following her mother’s ghost to the edge of cliffs, under waterfalls, and through the woods. At dawn her mother calls to her and she wakes Jonas to join her outside. They sit in front of her mother, and the mother reveals a hole in her chest. Margit reaches her hand through the whole and the screen is filled with a flock a birds covering a clear sky. Coming out of the vision, Jonas is asleep beside her. When she wakes him he states that no one was there in the field with them, that he did not see what she saw. Later, Jonas becomes more and more suspicious of Katla and tells his father she is a witch. Johann wants to leave her but her magic is far too strong for him to break free.

Jonas becomes indifferent and runs away. Katla finds him and argues with him on the edge of a cliff but Jonas yells at her stating that her magic cannot harm him. He wields the feather that was from his mother and states that she is protecting him. She tricks him by saying if his mother is really protecting him that he should jump and see if he lives. Of course the young boy plummets to his death. Katla thinks that her problems are over, she sews the dead boys mouth shut, cuts off his finger and keeps it, then sends his body a float down the river. That night she cooks a stew and puts the boys finger in it, casting a spell that will cause Johann to forget about his son. As they eat, Margit finds the finger in her soup and internally freaks out, knowing what her sister has done. After dinner she buries the finger at the site of Jonas mothers grave.

The very next day a large juniper tree has grown at the grave, and the raven has taken up residence in it. Margit rushes back to the house and confessed that her sister has killed the boy, but she did not mean to. Her sister flees the farm in fear of her life, leaving Johann and Margit alone together. They live on and continue to care to the tree and the raven.

Many aspect of this film intrigue me and leave me grasping for meaning. First of all, I really enjoy the juxtaposition of Johann and Jonas Christianity and Katla and Margits Pagan practice. Another idea that comes to mind is the assumed naivety and innocence of woman, how seemingly the devil and woman do not go hand in hand, the age old conflict between ancient constructs and modern femininity. That’s why I appreciate Katla character, she is evidently evil which goes against the “ideal form” women “should” encompass. Keene breaks from these traditional ideals of women, and creates this dark female lead character.

I appreciate the use of birds in this film as well. To me they symbolize the idea of freedom and change. When Margit explains that the raven is Jonas mother, it made me think that this is a necessary change in the boys life. He needed this to push himself to confront Katla and try to save his father from her suductive grip. When Margit touches the hole in her mothers chest she is transported into a flock of erratic birds flying in the sky. I understood this as her want to be free of the gift of sight, of the life that she is forced to live. Margit want freedom from her sister, from her life, to live as a normal child instead of being caught in confusing magical world that tortures her with visions of her deceased mother. Watching this film once was not enough to gain a true understanding and I want to see it again in the future.

In an era where technology seems to permeate every aspect of our lives, with often terrifying consequences, it seems like we are powerless to control the digital behemoth we have created as if it were some kind of algorithm-powered Frankenstein monster. MoMA’s exhibit New Order: Art and Technology in the Digital Age demonstrates this relationship between the real and digital worlds in ways that I found creative, amusing, and often terrifying. Using a variety of methods including self-run computer animation, sculpture, video, photography, and even film, the art and their artists paint a vivid picture of our current world.
Among my favorite pieces was Skittles by Josh Kline. At first glance, it resembles a simple beverage refrigerator like you’d find at a convenience store—perhaps MoMA added concessions before the exhibit. Look closer, though, and things become less appetizing. Smoothies with questionable—and often inedible—ingredients line the shelves, with each flavor offering a different lifestyle. For example, the Williamsburg flavor is made with bits of credit cards, American Apparel, kale chips, kombucha, microbrew, quinoa, and agave. Yummy. It’s pretty obvious this isn’t real, but if you’re the kind of person who consumes kale chips, kombucha, quinoa, microbrew, and agave while wearing American Apparel, you embody what people imagine when they think of someone who lives in Williamsburg. What you consume is what you are—and here it is, bottled en masse for your convenience.
While I’m on the subject of consumerism, Augmented Objects by Camille Henroit features objects bought on eBay and from street vendors, coated in epoxy, tar, and sand. The results look somewhat similar to their original counterparts and are now unusable. As a result, “Henroit thwarts the normal flow of objects, commodities, and digital networks of exchange.” The black blobs on display look burnt, as if a volcano had just erupted. It’s a chilling metaphor for the futility of our current materialistic lives.
Some of the artists had decidedly less fun with their pieces, including Trevor Paglen with his piece, It Began as a Military Experiment. It presents a series of faces, their features marked with letters around the edges. The images were used by the Department of Defense to compare faces, creating a database of facial recognition that could be used to develop an algorithm that could identify people—which today is on a much larger scale and no longer just part of a private domain. Other pieces were utterly fascinating from a technical level, such as a number of holographic images that I found astounding (though initially a bit hard on the eyes).

The piece I was intrigued by, as well as unsettled by, the most was Xenix by Taylor Robak. Presented on seven screens, the piece depicts what appears to be multiple iterations of an operating system. Graphics depict such trivial tasks as storing food in a refrigerator, scheduling TV shows, chatting, and playing music in the background. One some of the screens though, are guns and a bomb that are initially created in real-time using 3D software. A map often shown in the center of the screen implies sinister military purposes…yet nothing really happens. There are none of the consequences we’d expect from such a setup. At the same time, it shows how much of our lives is carried out on our smartphones and desktops, and perhaps darker things in the future.
In general, I really enjoyed this exhibit, and I liked the ways various artists addressed the roles technology plays in our lives in ways that are unorthodox and ambiguous, but unsettling nonetheless.

Mark Leckey Made in ‘Eaven

Mark Leckey is a British contemporary artist, working with collage art, music and video. His found object art and video pieces, which incorporate themes of nostalgia and anxiety, and draw on elements of pop culture, span several videos. This week I visited the MOMA with the class and experienced his work.

Projected onto the wall was his piece Made in ‘Eaven. The piece revolves around an image of a stainless-steel bunny by artist Jeff Koons, which is apparently, one of the most coveted objects on the art market. The bunny sits on a pedestal in the center of an empty room which I didn’t know but is Leckey’s studio at 7 Windmill Street, London. As the piece plays we are brought in and out from the bunny with a series of pans and zooms. However, what I started to realize was that there was no camera present in the reflection. The video also seemed very smooth and unnatural almost like the movement was fake. That’s when I found out that the video is half fake.

Mark Leckey uses technology to his advantage in this piece. The bunny is not actually in his studio. I believe that he combines real footage and digital tools to create this piece. He essentially makes It feel like the bunny is actually present in his studio. The image is a digital fabrication transferred to 16mm film. The reason we do not see the camera in the reflection is because the bunny is digital. He reflects the areas of his room onto the bunny which makes It seem very realistic. He makes the viewers believe that all of the film is real and none of It is digital. It almost feels like magic.

I think that what he did for this film is great. The new world is all about technology and how it’s ever expanding. Combining real imagery with digital imagery is experimental in so many ways. He brought this art piece that a lot of people are familiar with into his home without actually bringing It into his home. He did It so well that It’s super convincing, so convincing in fact that he probably tried to convince himself that It was really there. Incorporating real imagery and digital imagery is the way of the future. A lot of people do It, especially in movies. I think he really nailed this piece by choosing to combine the digital world with the real world. If the camera was present in the reflection all of the magic present in this film would be gone for me. If It was possible for him to get the bunny in his studio, he could have filmed It and got rid of the camera digitally. However, I know that wasn’t possible so this takes It to the next level. I found this piece very interesting and encaptivating regardless of It being a single shot film of a bunny in someone’s studio. It’s the magic that is present in the film that really drew me in. As I read more about the piece I began to love It even more.

 

 

On Saturday, April 27, 2019, I attended an exhibition of the Karrabing Film Collective’s work which is currently on display at MoMA PS1. The Karrabing Film Collective is a group of indigenous artists, filmmakers, and activists living in the Northern Territories of Australia. According to the museum’s program, the collective makes use of its films and installation art as a “form of grassroots resistance and self-organization.” This exhibition is the first time that the collective’s work has been displayed in its entirety within the United States.

The Karrabing Film Collective consists of around 30 members of all ages, from children to elderly people. Since having been established in 2011, the collective has produced an impressive body of work which consists of nine short films, both single and multi-channel, as well as accompanying sculptural installations. Each of the films and sculptures set their aim on addressing issues facing indigenous people in Australia. Their films, which are semi-scripted, incorporate elements of both documentary and fiction filmmaking. Though dramatized, and often satirized, the collective’s films are informed by their lived experiences within settler colonialism.

One of the films, which I was able to see in its entirety, was the single-channel film When the Dogs Talked (2014). The film was projected on a wall inside a small gallery room. In the center of the room were five chemical waste containers. The containers, which were one of the sculptural elements included by the collective, also functioned as seating for the film. This is a significant symbol, being that the indigenous people were expelled from their lands and have been forced into areas which are in dangerously close proximity to chemical waste areas.

The film, which was divided into chapters, was one of their more narrative works. The film centers around a large group of indigenous people living in a house in the country. The film opens as the camera pans through the home. There are sleeping bodies covering every inch of the frame. As the rest of the house sleeps, one of the adult women quietly sneaks away and is seen walking out into the country. The rest of the house is awoken by a knock on the door, a department of housing has come to evict the group if they are unable to speak to the homeowner. It then becomes clear that the woman they need to speak to is the same one who had left the home in the early morning and now the group has no way to contact her. The rest of the film follows the group as they travel out into the wild Australian countryside in search of the woman. While they are on this search, the elder members relay traditional stories to the younger members of the group. This film, like a majority of the groups work, addresses the relationship between the indigenous people, the land, and the interference of colonial institutions.