The class trip to The Whitney Museum was the first time I had ever been. I was excited to go because it is one of my friend’s favorite museums. He had already gone to see the biennial and told me many great things. As I explored the museum I saw several pieces that I thought were amazing. My favorite works were from the artist, Tala Madani. The piece I found to be extremely interesting was “Sex Ed by God.” The animated video featured floating lips narrating sex while two other characters watched. At the end of the video, a girl takes everything and puts it into her vagina. I enjoyed this piece because it forced you to use multiple senses to figure out what was happening. You’re required to wear headphones to listen to the piece, which I think results in more concentration from the person watching the piece. I definitely watched the piece more than once in order to make sure I wasn’t missing anything crucial from one of the characters. The other pieces I enjoyed by Madani featured babies. One piece was a painting of a baby reaching for floating breasts. The piece made me think about the way a baby see’s their mother’s breasts as separate from her. They are food not an extension of someone they adore. The other piece featured four babies crawling away with light shining from their butts. In the corner there is a man offering something to the babies as they walk away. I have no idea what this piece means but I thought it was very amusing. I would be interested in finding out Madani’s inspiration for the baby pieces. Another piece that struck me was by the artist Puppies Puppies. I almost walked passed it without realizing it was one of the art works. The piece was called Trigger and consisted of three gun triggers mounted on the wall. It was very minimal but conveyed the message that these small triggers are what is the cause of the damage a gun can do. I thoroughly enjoyed the trip to the Whitney and will definitely be back.

Shabby but Thriving by A.K. Burns is a 36 minute video instillation at the New Museum. It features two projectors, two overlapping screens, and the viewing area is furnished with a stripped and gutted couch that has a blue under glow, and foldable stools. The intentionally dingy floor was also smattered with spilling bags of dirt, and white and neon yellow fishing lines extended from hand ornamentation on the walls. The two screens were set up in such a way that at times only one would be in use, sometimes there would be two different scenes playing at the same time, and other times the two screens were used in unison to create one whole image. Having one big screen and one smaller screen at an angle drew emphasis to important details and helped guide the focus of the viewer. The scenes were shot it in the New Museum’s 231 Bowery space, a prewar building adjacent to the Museum that houses the artist-in-residence studio.

The film had multiple subjects. In one portion it would switch back and forth between a semi naked white woman and a cross dressing black man taking out heaps of garbage through a basement and down a narrow stairwell. In another portion, there were children interacting with their environment in an empty off-white room, save for a couch. Both children dress in clothes that match the upholstery of the couch. One child is a girl wearing seashell pattern clothes that matches the couch as she plays with an aquarium. She grabs at the fish and sand in a way that is playful but childishly aggressive. It seems like she is trying to dominate this small ecosystem with what little power she has. The couch and the way she’s dressed contribute to a feeling of nostalgia, so that it almost feels like you are peering in on someone’s home movies from the 80’s. The other child featured in this project is a young boy with glasses wearing yellow plaid that runs around the room sometimes trying to swat at a fly. I was not able to tell if there was anything actually there, and the child himself also seemed confused and uncertain of what he was doing or why he was doing it. This contributed to theme of trying to exert control over surroundings even if it is to no end. Within the emptiness, the two children find things to give their day-to-day existence meaning, even if it harms things that are alive or imaginary.

Each subject interacts with his or her desolate and shabby environment in ways that are electric and dynamic. The blue under glow of the couch and the blue lights within the film made this otherwise nostalgic seeming piece become futuristic. The combination of found and constructed interiors blurs the line between what is real and what is imagined and felt. The description of the exhibit explains that the piece “ is organized around five elements: power (the sun), water, land, void, and body.” What really stuck out to me about this project was the way in which it drew attention to the ways we interact with our environment in both positive and negative ways. I am also drawn to work that explores issues of classism.

 

        I chose to watch this film named “Akher Wahed Fina(The Last of Us),directed by Ala Eddine Slim in MOMA. This 95 mins film reveals the story of two men silently traverse a vast landscape, they get in the back of a smuggler’s truck. Sooner, they get attacked by men with guns and one of them escapes to sea, he sooner finds himself in an endless forest, where a kind of spiritual journey unfolds. What makes this film interesting to me at first was that it is dialogue-film, which to me is a rare thing to discover in films that are created nowadays. But that also puts the challenge in character’s facial expressions and the arrangement of the outline in order to keep the story cohesive to the audience. The protagonist’s facials expressions and the scenery shots got me interested the most in this film. I like the way how the director first uses close-ups on the protagonist to enlarge his emotions and then jump out to medium shots of his whole body and then long shots combining with the scenery and himself to show the loneliness of him trying to find a way out but somehow get surrounded by all the objects in the forest. There were some lines displayed after the gunmen trying to attack him and he was escaping to somewhere else, I remembered clearly there was one line that says “I vomited humankind, I surrounded myself along with natural and forest”. That was my favorite line in this film and I think that also highlighted the central idea which is to mark down the negative side of humankind and how it deeply affected and destroys the beautiful nature between each other. The man is a traveler, but the cruelty of humankind gave him disappointment so he then ends up with finding himself in the forest and looking for his own path. There was one scene when he fell into the big hole and underneath he found out the dead body of the baby bear and the sharp weapon that were used to kill the bear and he also got stabbed because he fell down and the weapon went through one of his knees. That made me think of the nature of humankind and how people create weapons that are fatal and use them against each other and nature species. The man also struggles with wolfs in the woods and that lights up one of the theme of this film : the struggle between man and nature and also the situation with contemporary migration. Towards the end I found one shot was very interesting to think of which is when the man was sitting by himself after seeing the death of old man who healed his wound. At night here came up with the bright light focusing upwards the man and as the man moves, the light moves as well. But the light doesn’t approach any closer, it was just in the further distance and lights up towards the man. The film leaves the open ending which the protagonist took of all his clothes and stands in front of the river and show his back to the audience. That makes me think whether he then jumps into the water and committed suicide or he wants to go up to the waterfall and discover the path or he gave up on his human nature and disappear in the woods.After all, I think this film evokes ourselves to think the humanity and struggles between humankind and nature.  

I experienced a fourty five minute three channel video installation by John Akomfrah called The Unfinised Conversation. The video focused on the life and work of a theorist named Stuart Hall. He was a cultural theorist. John Akomfrah used archival footage of international events and a set of Stuart Hall interviews and intwins them. It felt like mesh of two documentaries. It also focuses on Stuarts Hall concept of ‘becoming’.

The installation had three screens side by side. It was not used to complete one image, instead each screen had its own image or video. I found it most fascinating when a screen or two screens would go completely red to draw the viewers attention to one particular screen. Also the choice of red instead of just black. The red maybe was related to some of the difficulties and struggles Britain was facing and darkside of how some immigrants didn’t make it. Sometimes the side screens operated as if they were trying to help create the scenery of the environment. There would be nature or a cultural video of a city and its people. The video would have chuncks of Stuart Halls interviews but there wasn’t a consistant flow of when you heard his voice and you also saw him.

The video focused a lot on . The struggles of immigrants and feeling not apart of a culture although they are actively participating and learning about it. The issue of assimilation of immigrants is an important topic that many Americans think about weather or not they are immigrants. Stuart Hall speaks out and mentions no matter how much he studies or changes to assimilate he will never feel like a Britain citizen. The video would go from moments like these with Stuart voice and image to the archival footage of historical events taking place in around the world. The archival footage would have a different person narrating. It would shift back and forth. When the story would change there was a small moment of silence but it would start up very suddenly and end the same way. It felt like fragments of history and Stuart.

 

Trance film is where a protagonist or a supporting character is in a dream like state, in other words imagine what is shown in the film to the audience. Watching the movie, a few things strike the eye first. From limb close-ups in the opening sequence to shadow illusions to the then-assumed fact that the protagonist is stuck in some sort of a time loop –only to find out that it’s just another illusion– to a distorted and decaying reality, to recurring items such as a key, a knife, and a record player, this movie portrays the idea of dream state in a unique way for its time. In this short analysis, I will try to explain these things from a personal perspective.

The movie starts with an arm extending through the sky, and dropping a flower on the ground. The protagonist reaches for the flower, grabs it, and through the reflection of her shadow on the wall, we see her smelling the flower as she walks towards a building. She climbs up the stairs, as reaches for her purse, pulls her key out. The key with the dramatic soundtrack banging with its every contact with the ground, falls down the stairs. She then grabs the key again, and enters the building. She acknowledges three items: a knife, a phone, and when she makes her way upstairs to the bathroom, a record player. She then scans the room, and falls asleep on the couch. Up until this point, a somewhat formula in shooting and narrative can be made: The shadow illusion as she walks towards her house; little-to-none portraits, merely her feet and items are clearly shown; a closing barrel like show to demonstrate the audience that the protagonist is in fact falling asleep. All checking the boxes of theory of causality and continuity. After this point, however, the things get a little bit Inception, so to speak. As the protagonist’s eyes close, she catches a glimpse of a woman in a dark robe walking towards the horizon on the road. In that instance, the camera moves back to the woman’s shadow, clearly chasing the woman in the robe. Within one more iteration, the protagonist finds herself in a time loop where she chases the woman in the robe, decides to enter the house and follow the same path of actions. But in each time, her former self, or a piece of her, is left in the bedroom. Also, this dreamlike state in which a time loop is active seems to decay with each iteration of itself. In second iteration, the protagonist catches a glimpse of the lady in the robe inside her bedroom, but as if she’s forcing things against the natural order, the climb up the stairs becomes a dreadful reality that’s physically warped to keep her away from her room. Right before the final act, the protagonist and her two former selves play a game. Each character belonging to different times grab a key in hopes of revealing who the lady in the robe is, and as the last iteration grabs the key, the itself is revealed to be a knife — which was in fact what they hoped to reveal with the game. She then grabs the knife, and moves to her sleeping self. As the last iteration of her dream state kills her, she wakes up to her husband asking her to sleep in her bed. In a series of events, she realizes, once again through the existence of “the knife” that she’s in fact in a dream that encapsulated her odd iterative dream state. As she breaks the mirror, it’s discovered by her husband, who casually walks into their house with the same kinda flower that got her into this mess, that she was in fact dead the whole time.

Personally, the fact that Maya Deren decided to use the score by Teiji Ito made the whole movie all the more meaningful. The way music kicks in during scenes is established early in the film, and it never changes throughout the film. In my opinion, this is particularly important, especially in a non-narrative silent film; the traditional movie follows a brief conclusion after the climax, but in this case, the previously established sound set gives the idea that there’s more to come (ie. second and third iterations). On another note, four step sequence where her third iteration has to fight her consciousness and travel through beach, grass, pavement, and rug surfaces is particularly an indicator as to human minds strengths on subconscious level. Overall, I’m not surprised that this movie was received the way it did. It has behavioral aspects that are both challenging and breathtaking, both of which are welcome. I wonder if Christopher Nolan had taken notes from this movie as his movie, Inception, clearly has some elements taken straight out of this film.

I visited the Blum & Poe art gallery to which is holding an exhibit on Agnes Varda. The name sounded familiar and I realized that I have seen some of her work in previous classes so I was very interested to see an actual exhibit on her. The gallery had a screening room of a short piece she did called Le Triptyque de Noirmoutier. The film was projected using three projectors and displayed on the wooden paneled door. The individual images were all still camera and comprised of a beach shot, a kitchen shot, and a cupboard shot. often times when one person (the main cast considered of an elderly woman, a middle aged man and women, and a young boy) would walk off screen from either a left or right direction they would end up in the other room or the beach itself (the beach instantly however)

The film is a 9 minute loop. I walked in what I assumed was the beginning but as it looped again for me I’m now thinking it could have been the end, the transition happens so fluidly it’s hard to tell. The spacing of the the room and placement of the viewing area puts the viewer in a position that their whole eyesight is filled with the film, almost giving it a sense of difficulty of which frame to focus on, not wanting to miss any detail or action in the other frames. This kept my eyes moving at all times, waiting in suspense for an action that sometimes would never come. The film depicts daily life at a beach side home, with the women doing house work while the man reads the paper and the child plays outside.  The noises would mix together from the three visual spaces, the sound of waves are accompanied by the peeling of potatoes and the clanking of cups in the other two spaces.

I was told that I was able to touch the board and pull the hinges closed if I wanted too, I didn’t since I was a it unsure but I like the idea that it was an interactive aspect of viewing the film, that the viewer can open and close the doors like the woman were opening and closing the cupboards, putting the viewer inside the space if they so desire. I think that may have been the goal for Varda, as she grew up in the same area with her family that this film was shot and that she wanted to bring the viewer in to be a part of her world, a part of a family..

While at the Met Breuer, I screened many films and viewed many pieces by Brazilian artist Lygia Pape. The film that caught my attention the most was one titled Divisor (Divider). The piece featured a large group of people wearing one large white sheet with holes in it for their heads while they walked down a large street. The film itself was a recreation of Pape’s performance art piece of the same title that was a statement against the dictatorship in Brazil at the time. What interested me about the film was how the sheet created a large mass out of the individuals that wore it. It forced them to walk and march in a very uniform manner, which was highlighted by the blaring white of the “divider” itself.

The film also featured many close-ups of the people wearing the sheet. The camera would often pick one person out of the group and then follow them as they walked down the street. This allowed the viewer to closely gauge and watch the reactions of those participating in the film. At times, the participants would even pull out a camera to take a picture or film the spectacle around them. This made think of our culture today and our desire to capture video and pictures constantly. The film focused on some of these individuals as they looked through their cameras, walking along with everybody around them.

At various points in the film, the participants would duck out of the head hole of the sheet and disappear underneath. It was impossible to see them under the huge white fabric. Because the “divider” made the people walk and look like a uniform military or police, I wondered if the Pape was trying to suggest death at these points in the film. The other participants continued to march in the same order and fashion that they did before, but as the film continued more and more places where there were once people was now just a white blank space.

Even though I could not pinpoint exactly what Pape might have been trying to suggest in this piece, watching the massive shape of people and movement was quite mesmerizing  and beautiful. I noticed that much of her  work, including some of her other films, dealt much with geometric shapes moving in a space. The final image of the piece was the “divider” now void of people and just moving as it were a flag in the wind.

Yesterday, I got tickets to a small cineplex theater called the Metrograph in the Bowery, and they was screening a documentry from Istanbul. Istanbul is one of the oldest cites in Turkey where cats is seen to be sacred animals. The documentry is interveiw based and is told in Turkish but from the cats perspective so most of the camera angles are low to the ground. It’s a national custom to treat the cats with love and respect so the people in the street make room for them when they walk through the crowds. These cats are strays but they do not behave in a way you’d expect a stray animal would behave in America. The first cat we meet Sari is a golden cat who meows for food but we see whenever she gets a large piece of food we follow her to an apartment basement. In this apartment ground floor lobby is a group of kittens where we learned to be her children. I already mentioned that the documentry was an interview based film. They interviewed the humans who interact with the cats on daily basis. A shopkeeper who looks after Sari says her pesonailty changed after she had her children she used to be very carefree but now she is very serious and focused. Then we meet Bengu who unlike Sari who searches for food Bengu serches for affection. So we would see Bengu getting groomed from a stranger, or he would meet up with a friend who owns a boat and he take a boat ride with him. Then we meet an aggressor who pick fights with other cats, and cats being already territorial animals Psikopat is always in confrontation with other cats. So the documentary introduces them as Sari the Hustler, Bengu the lover, and Psikopat the psycho. All nicknames that reflect their different personalities. the film follow seven cats that live day by day and the way they interact with humans is interesting. It almost like they’re very self aware and independent. It’s a very interesting documentry and you should get tickets to the Metrograph and check it out.

Lygia Pape: A Multitude of Forms is the first monographic exhibition in the United States. A Multitude of Forms is an exhibition at The Met Breuer. She combined geometric abstraction with space and body in a unique way. When you enter the exhibition room, you will see lots of sculptures, prints, photography, and short films. There were lots of interesting works in her exhibition. However, there was one short film that caught my eyes. The film called “O OVE” which means “The Egg”. This film was performed at Barra da Tijuca beach in 1967. The film was a single-channel digital video, super 8 film, color and 1 minute 20 sec. “O OVE” designated actors activate symbolic geometric props to create the drama of this work. The film shows three large cube-shaped “egg” and three actors. Each actor was in the large cube-shaped “egg” and then they rip off the box. They came out from the box and played small instrument with a big smile. The final scene showed Pape sitting on the beach in front of the large cube-shaped boxes and three actors were standing on the back of the large cube-shaped boxes. Finally, the image freeze. Pape “represented a generation’s utopian desire to create a new society” through the large cube-shaped “egg”. Through the large cube-shaped “egg”, Pape wanted to show the symbolism of rebirth.

I really liked the video because I could understand what Pape wanted to say through this video clearly. When the three actors rip the box and came out from the large cube-shaped “egg”, audiences could see their feelings because they were smiling and then playing small instrument and dancing. This showed that not only their situation but also their emotion. Even though the video was very short, the video included the main idea clearly. However, I wanted to see more images about Pape. Pape just appeared at the ending scene like 5 seconds just sitting so I wanted to see her more. Overall it was really interesting piece.

The Maribor Uprisings is an interactive documentary about the protests in Maribor, Slovenia. The film was presented at Union Docs by directors Maple J. Razsa and Milton Guillen as a live participatory event wherein the whole audience participates with each other in the decision-making process of the interactive documentary.

The story itself is very simple. It’s a story of corruption in government ranging from exclusionary legislation to embezzlement countered by the people of Maribor demanding accountability. Their demands and their anger evolved into organized and guerilla protests against the Slovenian political elite. The protests spanned the sum of four months and amounted to 80 hours of footage for the directors to navigate. They explained their choice for an interactive documentary as the footage itself demanding a voyeuristic experience. They wanted to create an experience which echoed global uprisings and our insurgent generation.

Before the film began, the directors explained the decision-making process. Throughout the story we were given checkpoints with two choices on how the story would unfold. We had to democratically and collectively decide which choice to make. The legitimacy of the democratic process can be argued since the directors still had the primary power over the process and made the executive decisions over the progression of choices. This point, however, supports the primary thesis of the film: the interactions between the audience and the directors, the roles each audience member inferentially plays, and the debates between audience members reflect the same social dynamics which take place during actual protests. One definitive choice the directors made to counter the reality of an apparent power hierarchy within protests was to give priority to femmes and people of color during discussions. The directors also explained if people feel they can easily speak up in crowds, they should give room to people who find it difficult to speak. Concurrently, people who find it difficult to speak in large crowds should challenge themselves and make choices for the audience. Once the rules were set, the directors prefaced the start of the film and said there is “no way back from the chaos.” Then the film began.

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