The three protagonists of the case of this article were brought together by using the method of video deconstructionism, their artworks are on display and exposed at Pinchuk Art Center until April 27.
The three protagonists of the case of this article were brought together by using the method of video deconstructionism, their artworks are on display and exposed at Pinchuk Art Center until April 27. Towards each of the authors, we are going to apply his / her genealogical criterion, defining the geo location of respective video arts in coordinates between reality and fiction.
Pierre Huyghe, “The Host and the Cloud” (2009-2010, using the technology of voluminous sound). This movie in many aspects is exceptional: first of all, because for the author his video art piece is not a film in its traditional meaning. What is going on about is a real experience, acquired burden, half impromptu modeling of situations, and also — taking things from the perspective of an absent observer’s position and post-footage effects. Thus, a Parisian libertine kind of movie director came upon this project non-conventionally, what exactly boiled his / our inclination towards Deconstructed / Deconstructionism.
The events are happening in an abandoned Museum of French Culture, for good reason Huyghe for ages attentive to the topics of celebrating, carnivals, street events, and direct “vitality” of non-directed and nonintended situations. He recorded the lively acting of actors accomplishing the scenario, with coincidences ongoing between planned and entirely impromptu situations. We can say that the story’s overall scenario and the actor's crew were finally fixed just before the final cut of the movie. Some protagonists, for instance, simulated white rabbits, came to life in the art after primary editing of video footage, as a “post-footage” effect.
The movie consists of three parts: Halloween, Saint Valentine’s Day, and 1 May. Albeit, despite symbolically emphasized paraphernalia, entirely fragmented actions (mode of filmic actioning) didn’t get any sensual benefit from that. I have an impression that the plot and its description won’t add any understanding here. And the author himself spoke out against the position of “now I got everything right.” On the contrary, Huyghe offers:
1. The absence of film’s storyline in its traditional sense, that’s why being filmed the participants of the film event didn’t even know whether they are recorded or not. By that tactics the movie director gained the effect of “living onscreen spontaneity” of performance on site ongoing and total unpredictability, let’s say, of street “stories.”
2. Fixing the process of learning in a similar way to the process of desiring (how do I want something ...), the narration is unfolding from the perspective of an absent subject/observer, perhaps, deepened into the Unknown / Unconscious.
3. Contradictorily, driving on the popular intellectuals theory of Bruno Latour, Huyghe is about being an eco-systemically coexisting of all the agents, building perfect (from all possible angles) landscapes from all possible kinds of life of earthly biodiversity.
4. Descriptions of the above-mentioned celebrations, that arranged (as we all know) to mark a story’s lines, are unclear and turned upside down (however, yep, in “Halloween” there’s a bunch of human-like pumpkins, and “Saint Valentine’s Day” has some love scenes to enjoy).
5. Finally: Huyghe achieved his deconstruction of the pre-known due to the profound openness of the code. Taking aesthetic statement for granted, the director added all inseparable spots of the movie organism afterward, — like in the process of its biological maturation, phylogenesis, or ontogenesis.
Diana Thater, video installation “Chornobyl” (2011). The author explores post-apocalyptic and post-human environments of the abandoned as a result of the Chornobyl nuclear power plant disaster in the formerly Soviet town of Prypyat’, in her so titled video installation. Her innovative topic — is interactions between abandoned humans techno landscapes and wildlife. It felt like a similar fate is prearranged, in Ms. Thater’s opinion, for the whole technocratic civilization of us, humans living on the planet, in general, after all, the galaxy of wildlife (backed by the imminent humanitarian catastrophe) looks more sustainable, animals don’t have another option than just simple survival, they have lesser needs and everything is more or less understandable about that. The Thater’s video installation — 6 media players, equipped with the Lee filters, working in space of environment of a big hexahedron, so figures of visitors in the center of the room throwing their shadows on each facet — proves that Przhevalsky’s horses might be in the end more adaptable for the paradise lost of atomic energy engineers than anyone else, more civilized, kinds of life.
After all, the cycle got started all over again, and destroyed patterns of the Soviet socialistic past got into a new unprecedented life on the untouched patches of nature. In that way, in the depressive area of Chornobyl culture/nature dichotomy unconditionally takes over the latter one. Besides that, in her oeuvre Ms. Thater applies new digital technologies and visual effects, for example, experimenting with cameras and layering of pictures. This author’s work, created as a fieldwork video diary kind of documentary about the long time inhabiting Chornobyl, the experts compare with landscape video paintings, which has a peculiar feeling of temporality, its own special tempo rhythm. Deconstruction of Chornobyl — in fundamental absence of anything like narration, such as a type of formal and linear structure that had been previously implemented — besides implementation of the above-described concept of “hidden conflict of various species” (who will win?), in which right now simpler and wilder ones are getting the upper hand, not poisoned by the habits of cultural communication and premises of civilization domination; thus, simple and unpretentious effectiveness of biological diversity.
Christian Marclay, “Excessive fire” (2007). An artist born in Switzerland, Mr. Marclay is considered to be one of the fathers' founders of audio scratching — turn-tabling. In the video the author also uses a wide range of other popular video techniques: looping, of various fragments of excessively Hollywood movies with scenes of using weaponry of different kinds — getting ready, aiming, shooting. When you’re inside the multimedia space already, a visitor experience a panic feeling of total overwhelming brutal violence and military hardcore invasion in “my-self” of a so-called autonomous individuality, from all possible sides, angles, and in various rhythms, that demands permanent overload attention and careful onsite interaction. In fact, the ordinary situation of casual people’s lives locked inside a megapolis tummy, of an unprecedentedly unprotected (radical vulnerable, Mr. Jerry Saltz?) person. Like you and me.
That arrhythmia of Hollywood shootings emphasizes a few aspects. First, expressive fire, supposedly, aims life of the spectator himself/herself and expects to kill. Second, that’s fiction, no one is going to be shot down dead and I hope, wouldn’t. Third, deconstruction of Mr. Marclay: why have we to believe (give credits) to the quasi-realism of media (and any kind else!) Hollywood is an industry of desires, fiction, and spectacles — if no one will be ever shot dead after the imaginary shootings (calamities)? Why should you be so much influenced by and watching all that at all, ersatz, which wants you to get affected, emotionally, on the level of direct affections, overwhelming, but uselessly not dangerous at all in all other possible meanings/senses (for example, not proving itself intellectually or aesthetically)?
