I watched Schwarze Sunde (Black Sin) by Jean-Marie Straub at MOMA. This film was made in 1988 on 35mm film and in German. It is based on a book called “The Death of Empedocles”, by Friedrich Hölderlin.

In this film, the plot is pretty much an older man, Empedocles, debating a younger boy, Pausanias, his disciple, “about the divine powers of love and strife that govern all matter, whether the strange and mystical elements of air, fire, water, and earth, or the mercurial and tragic behavior of gods and humans, mad in their compulsion to forsake nature and each other.” (MoMa) The film starts with a still shot of a statue, then the older man lays without moving on the mountain, all with dialogue in the back. The boy joins in after couple of minutes and they speak. There are only a couple seconds of shots where both are in the same frame. The pan shots of the mountain and the Sicilian landscape captured a great sense of location.

Another character is introduced. I wasn’t sure of his purpose or who he is. He dressed in tribal prints and spoke across from Empedocles and the camera switches back and forth on the two while they exchange dialogue.

The film ends with a woman now sitting on the mountain while an up and down orchestra soundtrack plays in the background. She speaks.

I didn’t understand the film due to the German dialogue, but the visuals were very interesting. However, the characters only exchanged dialogues in this film and there were little to no actions. The wardrobe made me believe it is back in time in ancient European history.

 

Upon my initial encounter with Bouchra Khalili’s video installation at MOMA, I was unimpressed. At first sight, the various screens spread across the gallery floor do not feature particularly compelling visuals. All of the screens appear to be showing a similar if not identical piece of video art. However, this is not the case and I soon realized that each screen featured a very different story and had greater political implications then a traditional piece of video art.

The project was produced between 2008 and 2011 when the artist encountered and documented the stories of illegal migrants making their way into Europe. Khalili’s work showcases a new way of map making, as the migrants draw their paths across borders and oceans a new map results. The paper map can be easily drawn upon; borders can be easily crossed with the migrant’s pen. This is juxtaposed to the hardships faced by the migrants who encounter opposition to their travels at each border they cross. In addition, each video piece features the same paper map with only the migrant’s hand in the frame. This leads to anonymity of the migrant but also brings the viewer closer to the piece, encouraging empathy with the individual’s experience. Khalili uses a similar shot composition for each story, placing the focus purely on the story and evoking a feeling that the migrant’s story is not necessarily unique. Rather, it is a comment on the ubiquitous nature of migrant struggle and the desire for life improvement through crossing of borders. The visual component of the piece gives scale to the journey that migrants take to reach their aspirations. The spread of eight screens across the gallery floor forms a tableau of anonymous stories and shrinks the massive diaspora of migrant stories to a more manageable scale. Through the piece I felt as if I were able to connect with each individual story and while I can never understand the difficulties these individuals faced, Khalili was able to bring me closer to understanding through the artwork.

What I really appreciated about this piece is that it does not explicitly take a side, although the artist’s intentions are clear, ultimately it is up to the viewer to interpret the migrant stories. Even though this may appear to be a politically motivated piece, the emotional and physical struggle of each individual story is the spotlight rather than any particular political objectives. Khalili is not out to prove a point but rather to tell the stories of those who would otherwise go unnoticed.

I was so moved by this work. I was moved by how the simplicity in its format communicates in such powerful manner such human stories. Its genius in the end lies in how efficiently it achieves the purpose to tell a story that on its own, with no redundant additives, can completely captivate a viewer. This work tells stories that are worth all of our attention.
As an aspiring filmmaker I have been struggling to find how I can produce work that gives me the highest satisfaction. Looking at this group of videos has shown me that to make a successful piece of journalist work, or fiction work for that matter, a filmmaker must focus primarily on the content of the work. To see how much restrain Khalili had in allowing the stories to speak for themselves is truly inspiring. In restraining all trickery that’s bound in filmmaking, in focusing only in the importance of the single image of the map as sole object of visual representation juxtaposed with the sound of the story teller’s voice, Khalilli gave us the opportunity to empathize with the person we could have been, with the people we never met.

Screened at UnionDocs May 13th-16th, 2016

I saw a poster for this live performance and film project advertised at Hunter and have always wanted to go to Uniondocs so I went to check it out. It was really worth it! This was a hybrid piece combining live theater, dance and filmed documentary and other fiction images and was unlike anything I’ve seen. It began with theater, a reenactment of an interview or a slightly fictionalized version of a laundry worker telling some details of her life. We then saw images of a laundromat and an interaction on screen, then a live dance piece with the four actors who were not one character, but many characters each, at different points portraying laundromat workers and customers. The whole piece went on like this, blending fiction with non-fiction, film with live performance. After a while, I got the sense that interviews with laundry workers were perhaps hard to come by as many of the stories that the actors told were often women saying “My job is boring, there is nothing to tell, I don’t want you to film me”.  I found this very interesting because, through theater reenactment, we got to see into the documentary process, which is quite rare. I appreciated the honesty of this.

What I liked most about this piece was that it was never clear or straightforward yet carried a strong emotion — we heard snippets of conversation, two people ranting in different languages with no subtitles, a strange dance sequence in unison, an interview with a Chinese man at a laundromat with subtitles, two actors reading from scripts live in shadow profile. All of these different scenarios created feelings, without following a plot. It seemed that there was always space to go in a totally new direction — to bring in facts from history, to tell a personal story, to have a trivial conversation. At times the mood felt awkward, or sad or funny.

One thing I found very interesting was that probably at least half the audience watching this piece were some of the customers that the laundromat workers told some stories about — all the drop off laundry and what you can tell from a person by what is dropped off. In that way, it felt like a strange direct address to the audience. I liked the boldness and honesty of this piece.

Uniondocs itself had a nice vibe; it’s a small space, but  even though I arrived only 10 minutes before the scheduled start I was able to get a great seat in the second row. After the performance/film there was a Q&A with the directors and actors. We got to learn a little of the backstory which was really neat. The piece developed in 2014 from live performances on site at different laundromats — sometimes they were acting out scenes and interactions, and sometimes it was more abstract. While performing at laundromats, they began to talk more with customers and workers and hear their stories — which is how the film aspect of the work began to weave in. They plan to continue working on this project and continue to expand it and have future shows.

I highly recommend this piece. The combination of other arts besides documentary to tell this story was so inspiring and helped prove to me that there are no limits to how a story can be told and that audiences have a greater capacity than I give them credit for to appreciate the abstract and non-linear sides of storytelling.

Last Friday I visited MoMa to see the Mapping Journey Project installation. I didn’t know what to expect because I didn’t read about it until after I had seen all of the installations from start to finish. It took about 45 minutes to watch them all. I started watching somewhere in the middle of Project #3 because it was closest to the entrance and there was a seat available, but I stayed until it went black and restarted itself. From there I stood in a spot where I could see all or most of the screens so that I could see which one was about to restart, the next one to turn black was Project #6 so I went there. I continued to do this until I finished watching all of them; that way I could see each of them from beginning to end without having to wait around for a specific one to start over or having to catch one in a random spot. Watching it the way I watched it with the headphones on and everything made it feel like an immersive documentary, but my mind filled in the blanks that the qualified commentator is supposed to fill. The way these videos were shot reminded me of those “Draw My Life” videos on YouTube because you could only see a hand drawing on a surface and hear the person’s voice without their face while they basically told you a story about their life. I did some research and it turns out that the first “Draw my Life” video was put on YouTube in 2011, which is curious because that is the year that Khalili completed the project. You learn about these people and find yourself rooting for them but you don’t even know who they are. My favorite one was #5 it was also the longest. I liked it because of all the detail the person gave. Some people were more vague or distant, but he gave details into his personal feelings and experiences and he was really deep. And there were so many times when he could’ve died or given up but he always stayed positive and kept trying to reach his goals. You could tell he was a good person based on the way he spoke about life and the fact that the commanding officer in the prison was probably so fond of him that he offered him a job in his home once he got released from jail. You could tell that these were good people that don’t deserve to get thrown in jail and stuff they’re just trying to make a living and follow their dreams. I think the installation is more meaningful when you immerse yourself into it like I did, but people didn’t really seem to be paying much attention to it, they would just look at them for a couple seconds and walk away. After I finished watching everything I noticed that there was a little floor plan of the installation painted on the wall so I felt inspired to map my journey through Bouchra Khalili’s The Mapping Journey Project.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_cHB8Qru9U

For my second post, I went to MOMA. In the second floor, tucked in a corner far away from the larger displays, is a small screen. The work, Broken mirror by Song Dong, is so small a video installation that you can almost miss it. Mr. Dong has had other work at MOMA.  In 2009, he has a large installation that consisted of hundreds of pieces from his childhood in China. Although the two works are different in scope. Mr. Dong explores similar themes in both works. As an artist, Song Dong is interested in exploring the past, present, and future. He likes to contrast the traditional with consumerism. As China has grown into a super economic power, its society is facing a shift from its nationalist identity into a culture of modernism and and consumerism. The rise of cheap labor and global companies has choked China with smog and high rise buildings. It is not uncommon to see multi- millionaire neighborhoods shove shoulders with the poorest districts in the country.

In Broken glass, we are presented with an image of a man walking and another man riding a bike reflected in a mirror. Seconds later, a hammer appears. It disrupts our perception of what we just saw. The hammer holds for a few seconds of suspense. There’s an inevitability of destruction that keeps us wondering.  The hammer bangs on the mirror to break it. Sometimes, it takes two strikes. At some points, people quickly react when they hear the mirror breaking. As the mirror breaks, another scene reveals. The artists does this a more few times, comparing cars with scenes of quiet parks.  I think that this creates an illusion of how we perceive reality. Our environment is always changing and because we are always adapting, we don’t become aware of the changes in our society. This disruptive change of scenes makes us think about these changes.

I went to see Maya Deren’s Witch’s Cradle at the Met Breuer for my post. The film was assisted by Marcel Duchamp, i’m not exactly sure what role he played in its creation, besides being a subject, but from what I was told the film exclusively belongs to Deren. The film is silent and in black and white, assuming that was the easiest method to go about creating an experimental film in the mid 40s. The film seemed to have an apocalyptic vibe, though I wasn’t so sure — I suppose music would have helped discern the meaning attempting to be conveyed but it was silent.

From what I can remember there was a lot of slow moving parts, that of magic and MC Escher-esque images that would glide across the screen (presumably made by Duchamp) while a woman watched them in a sort of awe.

By the end of the short film (approximately 13 minutes) the woman had somehow become a witch, or ritualized, with a pentagram with detailing sketched into her forehead. Confused as if she woke up with it from a dream, she looked in a mirror at it with grief and a somewhat sad acceptance. The film was presented as one of Deren’s unfinished works so I can’t really rate it or give a thorough opinion since presumably this is not the form she would have liked it to be shown in.

What I found interesting was that the entire film was filmed in a small area, I looked it up after viewing and saw that it was all filmed in a museum gallery space. This made me think of our class discussion on “the studio” and how this is essentially a piece made in that setting — creating a film with available or created figures instead of using the external world as an object or setting.

For my third outside screening I decided to head back to the Whitney ( I went for my 1st outside screening ) and check out Steve McQueen’s “End Credits” for the Whitney’s 5th floor collection in the “open Space” gallery. Last time I went to the Whitney I did not stop by the 5th floor, and this time I was so excited to get the opportunity to see such a grand space. It’s an entire floor completely free of any walls or columns, just one large open floor plan.

For McQueen’s piece, the large room had two projections going on at both ends of the room. You got to choose a side to sit in front of, which meant your back was towards the other screen. The two screens were scrolling through endless government documents, many of which I saw were signed by President Hoover. The projections on both screens were not synced up, and were scrolling too fast to really read the documents, but really only pick up a few words here and there.

Also playing over the loudspeakers was a man’s voice reading out what was assumed to be the documents displayed in front of the audience, but it was hard to tell at first because this was also not synced with either of the projections. Every now and then when a piece of information in the documents was “redacted” and female voice would interject the man’s and say “redacted.” It was pretty jarring.

I think this piece was really interesting because of how chaotic it was. People around me were chatting, the screens were displaying so much information so quickly. And trying to listen to the voice and read the documents at the same time was obviously impossible, and it made my mind race. I also was a little unsure of the backstory of the exhibit, so I was a bit confused about the information I was trying to take in. Also, one of the security guard people on the floor kept running around and telling people to put their phones away when they tried to take a picture. They didn’t have up any notices about this, so I was able to get a good photo before being scorned.

 

It wasn’t until I read up on the piece when I got home that I understood it better. This is about the work and documentation the FBI had on Paul Robeson, a singer, actor, and civil rights activist. This all went on during the time of McCarthyism and the red scare, and it really was emphasized by the way McQueen chose to show the audience this information. For me, at least, the events that happened during the red scare and the kind of emotions people felt about communism just seems chaotic and a lot to take in. It’s also ridiculous, in a way, to see how much absurd effort and information went in to trying to take someone down, when really there was no reason for such harassment. It was definitely an emotional experience, and a really interesting piece to see.

 

 

For the second outside screening I went to Moma to see Bouchra Khalili’s The Mapping Journey Project. 

Projected on several screens are different stories of people who have had to travel illegally throughout South Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Middle East.  Each screen tells a different person’s story map.  The projections are of a map of the areas the person traveled.  The individual narrator would trace out their journey and explain how and why they traveled to each destination.   All of the stories were subtitled, but Moma also provided benches for seating and 3 headphones per projection.  The projections were situated in diagonal rows and while viewing one story a person could see what was happening on another screen.

I think this curiosity about what each screen held kept people moving from projection to projection.  From far a way it would almost look like each screen was showing a loop of the same clip, just at different times.  But each map was specifically curated for each narrator.  The journeymen came from all different types of backgrounds and ages.  There was even one with a young Somalian girl.

The length of the stories varied a bit, but they were all relatively short and easy to re-watch several times.  The commentary people gave about the videos while watching them gave an added layer to experience, that might please some or anger others.  Personally, I did not mind the extra chatter and interactions with other Moma guests.  There was no real way to quietly intake each person’s story, and depending on their situation I often found the need to decompress between viewing another map.  Luckily, the videos were short and it was easy to re-watch one if had missed a part during my first view.

Unlike traditional film, this viewing was open and spaced apart; you were forced to move from place to place.  Just like the narrators, there was nothing sedentary about the experience.  Even though there was not a lot of movement on the screen, the distances traveled and the many lines created by the chaos of their journey was visually striking.  The shapes created by the mappers, and more importantly the geopolitical reason why these people had to make such travels left a lasting impression.

Khalili’s exhibition will run through August 28 and is highly recommended.

Ernie Gehr’s CARNIVAL OF SHADOWS at MoMA is a reconciliation between the old and the new, and a celebration of the formal magic of the moving image.

The main piece in the exhibit is a five-channel video projected onto a large wall. Each channel takes for its source an early 20th century shadowgraph. The shadowgraphs were essentially long strips of paper run through vertical black bars. This interlacing effect would produce the illusion of movement of the figures drawn on the strips. Each shadowgraph in CARNIVAL contains its own narrative sequence; like Gulliver’s Travels, often the comedy or fantasy narratives that were common in early, simplistic animation.

Gehr takes six of these shadowgraphs and projects them next to one another, such that the illusion of horizontal movement continues from one screen to the other, from one black bar to the other. This, along with the many other ways Gehr digitally manipulates and abstracts the shadowgraphs (jumping between vertical lines, decoupling the top half of a figure from the bottom, etc…) leads to the total loss of any narrative cohesion. Instead, we get an endless parade of shadows marching forever rightward (or for the 20 minute runtime of the piece). CARNIVAL OF SHADOWS isn’t a celebration of cinema’s power to tell a narrative; its rejoice is in something much simpler; that inanimate images can be brought to life at all.`   

The piece becomes a celebration of the moving image itself. In its abstractions, and in its size (too large to take in at once), Gehr asks you to participate in the carnival, rather than simply admire it from a distance. I don’t expect that anyone stays for the full 20 minutes. In fact, in the time that I was there, most people stayed for less than one minute. But that struck me much like an actual carnival, where people are so overwhelmed by all the sensual pleasures that surround them, that their attention can only be held for a moment. CARNIVAL OF SHADOWS doesn’t seem to mind. I think it wants to be brief so it can remain delightful. In that dark room, against the wall lit only by the digital projectors, you can walk by and become one of the shadows brought to life by the magic of cinema, marching in their parade.