journal part 2

Week 9

Hollis Frampton- Poetic Justice: Possible Idea for remake. If I would do it though, I'd make it more fun. Perhaps mimicking the cinematic nature that the original subverts. Perhaps I'd redo a Michael Bay movie, or have some cutaway shots to the objects on my desk ( like my Akira figurines)

Colin Campbell- Sackville, I'm Yours: As someone from a similar --ville this really speaks to me. My friends, family, and I essentially had the same attitude where we were just gracing the town with our presence. I'm up for any art that's willing to parody itself. I actually have a friend who goes to school in Sackville there, and this sounds pretty accurate. I really enjoy this piece. Makes me want to do more persona and acting based stuff in my own work.

John Smith- The Girl Chewing Gum: A twist! This one had me fooled for a while. Film language is pretty all encompassing when we not only are completely aware of cinematic language, but actual behind the scenes movie language. I've been struggling with my self reflective writing instincts and it always makes me wonder who I'm making this for.

Pierre Huyghe- The Third Memory: This works really well because it retains a cinematic style in spite of itself, and the robber man actually has some swagger. Usually these kind of things are ridiculously boring because the guy is sitting down and speaks in a monotone.

Vito Acconci- Prying: This is really unsettling. I like the rhythm of it, it almost becomes like a boxing match or something similar. Attack-repulsion-rest. Over and over again. The most disturbing part is when she relaxes her body so that he can attempt to get her eye open again. The white eye is also pretty terrifying.

Open Book: The distortion of language is pretty interesting, and the power dynamic of Vito's pleading is also something to talk about, but that's what everyone else wants to talk about. I want to talk about the physicality of this thing. This turns the mouth into something else. I am now aware of every single element of Vito Acconci's mouth without being able to remember his face. This means his mouth is a different organ, without relation to a chin or a nose. It's pretty amazing how his mouth is still able to express pain, perhaps that's just projected empathy. I think the fact that his teeth are fucking gross helps express the alien pain being expressed here.

Cory Archangel: This is really cool. I like how contemporary artists these days are more fun. The internet has become a perpetual motion machine for nostalgia. People just keep worshipping the same fucking game from more than 20 years ago. Everyone is making stuff around Mario from Corey Archangel to some anonymous guy.

Week 10

Colin Campbell- I'm A Voyeur: I like how this isn't threatening. It's playful and a little narcissistic. I immediately identify with this voyeur. The male on male gaze is a nice change of pace. There isn't a threat of gender violence and now that a lot of the taboo around homosexuality has passed, it's easier to focus on voyeurism as an act in and out of itself. Definitely interesting in the age of the internet, with chatroulette and facebook where people actively put out for strangers.

Paul Chan- Baghdad in No Particular Order: Good Documentary. The Whitney Huston song is always going to be connected to Christian the Lion for me. It's effective and sad, but it follows documentary language pretty well.

Ideas for 2nd project

Gary Hill- Around And About: I want to take a heavily structured poem and break it down phonetically to mean something else and play the two versions together, one audibly and the other textually. Here's a sestina I wrote that I'm thinking of treating.

... meanwhile across town, Vincent was handing out leaflets infront of the bakery where Jerry worked...

These were written in haste, a testament

to nothing which Vincent believed worthy

of stacks and stacks and hours at the xerox

electric-mint coloured light shooting through

his retinas. “I’ve got so much to say!”

“I can’t say it anywhere else but here”

“Yes, I know, but what are you saying here

“I don’t make statements, It’s my testament

to existence, what else is there to say

Aside from I’m here and I am worthy

of your consideration, it is through

material I become. The xerox

is my voice and through it, Through the xerox

I extend new clunky genitals, Here

I am Mighty Hermaphrodite Through

cumming and birthing I spew testament

after testament, each one as worthy

As I, father, mother, am. What I say

no what I am, It’s too easy to say

but if I am, at you. If I xerox

my heart onto yours because you’re worthy

to have me there, your heart right here.

And there begat the fall, the testament

of a finger on a woman’s breast. Through

sudden sentiments come statements and through

an angry grip sounds form language. To say

“snap”, “crunch” means something as the testament

of broken fingers. Cascades of xeroxed

paper squealed around FatherMother here

reduced and puffy under the worthless

sun. “What did he even mean by worthy?”

“What did he mean by anything? He’s through

anyway.” And in the bakery, there

cracked and ripped, crying into cakes, He said

nothing, clutching remaining xeroxes

the corpse of his hyperreal testament.

Here under his thumb his face is xeroxed

with a caption that says some testament

to worthiness that he didn’t read through.

This proved to be next to impossible however. to create the amount of text files necessary to make this would overload my computer. I would have to make something like this on flash.

2nd Idea

combination of Prying and Open Book

To have water semi force fed to my mouth which will be the only thing in the frame. This would be intercut with footage from The Exorcists "Let Christ fuck you scene" and hardcore pornography. I would make my performance ambiguous to whether I am resisting or not. I would also work in music However when shooting this, my performance was problematic as it turned into me being actually drowned and I could only shoot a minute of footage at a time. I will redo this but the resulting footage lacked the ambiguous nature that I wanted. Especially after I shot footage of me just lounging around on the bed in my underwear attempting to imitate internet porn tease preludes. It felt kind of misogynist so I abandoned the idea for the time being.

3rd Idea

Open Book

Following the element of Vito Acconci's Open Book that I thought was the most interesting. The reduction of the mouth into an abstract organ, semi sexual, semi horrible. I played up the sexy element by making my mouth as seductive as possible. Slowly opening and then drawing the lens of the camera deep into my mouth. I did not say anything as to avoid any interpretation aside from the physical thing that was happening. You can hear me gag a bit at the end which is simultaneously sexual and ingestive.