The Curtain Closes

Less than 40 days left of the Bush regime.

It’s been a trip I can’t say it’s been fun.

But, making fun of Bush has. Just look at the amateur videos on youtube mocking Bush.

After sitting watching videos from the 60’s to the current Top Grad A video artists of the 21st Century in a Video Art History survey, it seems the videos were more social-politically charged early on in the 60’s and 70’s. But, yet we have something in common with the 60’s another unpopular war and equally unpopular President. However, Nixon’s approval rating was higher than George W. Bush’s at a whopping 39%. Bush will go down in history as possibly the worst President.

Yet, what we woefully lack is political videos in galleries and museums and more war protests. Where’s the rage and the angst? In a nation of half-lidded prozac zombies in reveries the flat affect has left many youth drugged to the gills on anti-depressants to even give a shit. In this climate of war Pipilotti Rist’s videos are just sitting on the shallow end of the pool- surely to  drown in it’s own depths.  Many drugs have doorways. Take the trip. But, anti-depressants leave you behind at the train station. No experience, no feelings.

Pippi’s I Want To See What You See video is aesthetically pleasing to the eye and technically excellent editing, but in a climate of war it feels empty like cheap rave videos from the early 90’s backdrops for XTC and techno clubs spotting the landscapes of Europe.

Pipilotti Rist’s I Want To See What You See 2003

We have the technology and it’s less expensive than 30 years ago and now we are left with videos that feature aesthetically sensual swirls and color chroma fades to mimic surreal dreams for acid raves from Europe. That’s fine and dandy for some but I’m in search of something more…

However, overall I have been impressed by the history of Video Art in it’s relatively short time span… we’ve come along way baby from Nam Pak June or have we?
Over a million videos are featured on youtube and how many are worth watching or would be considered to be Video Art?
Who will be the next great video artists that historians write about in history and in the Gardner’s Art History Text Books bible?  Who will decide? Will they decide by popular vote by how many hits your video receives on youtube?
Will it become a numbers game?

Isn’t everything in America a numbers game? Capitalist America ? Isn’t that the real, American Dream?
God forbid,  it becomes the next Reality TV show- be the next “Art Star”. (Who the fuck come up with that god awful name?) Shame on me if I’m the first to mention it and somehow bring this ungodly beast into fruition to destruction of Art for once and for all.

But, it’s only a matter of time. Star Search morphed into American Idol raping the soul of the music endlessly with each new and horrible season. It’s a train wreck and America can’t stop watching. Addicted freaks, drooling on themselves in a fast food stupor. Oh, I am mistaken pop music is entertainment not an art form. That’s right. Rock is Dead. How could I have forgotten? Long live Rock. It was nice knowing ya.
When Rocking Stones features Miley Cyrus and the Jonah Brothers as rock stars, we as a society are fucked. The soul of rock and roll has been sold to the highest bidders. Corporate sell-out bastards.
How the fuck do kids growing up understand art if all they exposed to is bad pop music and videos on MTV? It’s someones responsibility to pass the torch, but who?

I dreamed I was sitting in a beautiful looming cathedral for cinema, a historical theatre with wooden seats covered with ripped velvet chairs, a large screen and a huge red curtain that closes before the main feature begins to roll. The building breathes, each story lives and dies within it’s walls. The architecture itself  is alive.
Cinema is still a high art form, and some film-makers still see it as such.
Not all film-makers have sold their souls to Hollywood for cheap effects and old hacked stunts and formulas. Not everyone has jumped the shark…
The curtain opens and a movie begins begins.
It begins, I can no longer bear watching as a passive viewer anymore.
Unfortunately, I think some bastard hacks have found art to be a formula and to make a quick buck off of it –they want the artist’s lifestyle – they want the fame, but do not want to invest a lifetime into developing an authentic personality or soul. They want to be the next Jeff Koons. Fuck Koons.
Luckily, for them most critics have no background in art history, or in the studio arts and have no idea they are being sold a load of bs. Like a used art salesman or a ex-attorney of law. All the same fast talkers, full of hot air. Pompous bastards.
They search desperately and endlessly to find the next big thing, no different than the music industry, another new art star.
I get up and leave the theatre and the curtain closes on this dark city of dead dreams, my personal fear and loathing in Seattle.
I came to find the American Dream.  I came to find one honest politician in this scene.

The Curtain closes on this time period this reign of terror by the Bush Administration- what new joys or horrors do we face next? Do I sit back and wait and passively watch. No, I’m done being a passive observer.

But, I am seeking the American Dream just anyone else is.
Just like Hunter S. Thompson was in his large white whale of a Cadillac driving across the desert to Las Vegas.
Or am I seeking to find Soul?
Soul of the artist reflected in the artists’ work.
What if the artist has no soul can he be a true artist or just a skilled technician or craftsman?
I like the early years of Video Art  history back in the mid 60’s it’s raw, edited often poorly, bizarre, repetitive and often redundant.
But it’s new and it’s unique. In it’s rawness there’s something real.

Era of cinema is changing from majestic theatres of wood and velvet curtains to big box corporate malls with no soul, no history, nothing, the movies being produced match perfectly.
What of Video Art? It’s always been the bastard child- where do you put it? How and where to show it?
Video has been around for 30 fucking years and it still not found a home in  American culture. It’s either for commercial art, music videos or the purpose to make a buck and streamlined to not offend anyone. The adventure is gone.
Then there’s the amateur movement that thinks that by being untalented and having nothing to say is indeed an art form- missing the whole purpose of art in the first place.
I’m a member of neither of church of thoughts. I choose to be an un-believer. I don’t want to drink the Kool-Aid- no thank you, Mr. Jones.

Art is a religion. Video is my God. I’ve seen those take Art so serious and frantically…hail Jesus, speak in tongues, I am your fucking Saviour, I’m Jim fucking Jones.

Can true art be created in a climate where Art is repressed? Where an artist must toe the corporate line? Be a cocksucker and be politically correct at the same-time?  Hypocritical puritanical tryannts has artists by the balls. If it’s not the corporate suits it’s the religous reich trying to subdue the artist. Has American progressed since the 60’s or has it grown comfortable? Are artists brave enough to take a stand?

Where is the beast, the shadow side artist to howl at the moon and scream injustice?

I  liked the fast and dirty appropriation of early 90’s political videos.  Ministry’s Al Jourgensen’s has made a career out of bashing the Bush family for over 20 years with appropriated footage in videos and projected on stage. Video collage or image ripping was big in the early 90’s with Bush senior in office but has been side swept for slick corporate videos of the eMpTvy generation  and the cult of amateur “indie-rock” video work. Shoe gazing and complacency rots the brain. Right where the suits and pigs want you. Consumers but don’t rock the boat. Fear of being polticially incorrect so stay fence walkers.

On the polar opposite Bill Viola has taken video close to cinematography. Beautiful story-telling and long shots in and the lightening is rich. Zen Buddhist minimalism in approach. But this isn’t just eye candy, there’s much more. One of the most amazing video projections for live music ever.

Bill Viola La Mer for NIN’s The Fragile Tour (video footage by Bill Viola and additional camerawork by Bob Campbell)
David Lynch has started filming in video as well, with his last movie Inland Empire shot on a Sony DVD camera. He loves film but fell in love with the instant accessibility of video has to offer. Seductive medium.
Both artists have excellent sense of composition and lighting. and are masters at what they do.
They are taking video and bringing it to a higher art form to that of cinema the lost art.

I’ve been inspired by many videos and films from the razor slicing the eye in Dali and Brunel’s film Un Chien Andalou….gorgeous black and white, surreal, horrific and sexual in it’s perversity.

To the back tracking in Alice by Gary Hill , David Lynch and Angelo Badlametti must have seen his work and been inspired for his surreal TV series Twin Peaks. Pure verbal, audio brilliance.

Life is too short to watch or look at bad art, better to take that time and make my own bad art. Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly- better than turning into a blocked artist or aging art critic that could never make it as an artist. I want to beat my chest and howl. I want to go over that edge rather than be safe.
I am filled with intense images, thoughts and ideas and so little time to complete them all. So much to say- so little time it’s frustrating. I know I will die not reading every book and watching every film I want to see…but it’s time to write my own story and make my own videos.
It’s time to stop watching others work and stop being a passive viewer it’s time to go make my own work for some other asshole to dissect.

Thanks George,

It’s been a strange and bizarre dream.

Walmart: Buy, Consume and Die

Brave New Video Channel.

Nathan and I made this video on Black Friday Nov. 28th, 2008 in response to the death in Wal-mart on this fateful “doorbuster” shopping day.

Brave New Video

Video is a brave new medium for artists to communicate socio-political commentary, statements, and concepts inexpensively. It is easily accessible and can be distributed globally via the Internet, on video sharing websites such as Youtube, to an international audience.

Video is relatively young compared to other venerable art mediums ¬¬— and as such, it is often not accepted in the film or fine art world. Despite this fact, it has carved out its own niche and has attracted its own unique following.  It still may be considered the cheap bastard cousin of film by some, but it has become a seductive art form in itself and has caused some filmmakers to rethink their previous stance.

Video is still in its adolescence; full of angst and rebellion.

“Buy the ticket, take the ride.” —Hunter S. Thompson

“American journalism has been cowed- intimidated by the massive “flag sucking.” and patriotic orgy.” Hunter S. Thompson Kingdom of Fear

The artist can control the artistic direction of filming, editing, soundtrack and distribution without relying on corporate involvement or gallery representation.
Video empowers the artist to pursue his or her art without depending on corporate grants or commissions that often require the artist to compromise their vision and underlying message.

Corporate media is designed to bring advertisements to consumers via readily cheap entertainment. Unfortunately, it is not geared to educate or inspire the masses. Just browse the magazine racks. They are filled with glossy full-color ads with seductive photography but very little meat or substance to sink your teeth into. The fact is, television is an on-going joke that we all know is a mind-numbing distraction to keep society doped up on dreams and hopes of fame, riches, and glamour. Yet, there is still a very large portion of the populace in complete denial of this fact.

Just look at all the reality TV shows and tabloids and all the “yellow journalism” in network news programs like Fox News. We were warned by Orson Welles in his film Citizen Cane, but perhaps no one was listening or the newspapers just took notes and continued on because it still sells. Capitalism is religion and money is god. So, it continues…the cycle of excess.
Early videos in the 60’s and 70’s were documentaries of protests, used by activists to show “the other side of the story” that mainstream news stations willfully neglected. Powerful images of the Kent State University protests help change opinions about the Vietnam War.

Video artist Richard Sierra used his video as a social commentary about television being a one-way communication tool and to criticize it by using the media and the format of videotape on television. In his 1973 piece, Television Delivers People, he exposes the mentality behind television stations and how they think of themselves as large advertising agencies. The video appears as an authentic emergency bulletin, informing the viewer via telecast prompters with scrolling text on a blue screen, with musak playing. The overall message states that television’s number one goal is to advertise, not entertain, so as to keep the free market capitalist economy flowing.

The Internet, unlike television, allows interactivity with its audience and a democratic voice for the masses. It gives a platform or a podium for the artist’s voice.

”Students and academics are always democracy’s foot soldiers.” —Naomi Wolf

Naomi Wolf warns in her book The End of America that we are undergoing a fascist shift where freedom of press and free speech will be restricted and eventually shut down. Therefore, it’s of paramount importance to continue to speak up and not be intimidated. Throughout history, artists have always been the foreseers of the future and have played an important role in the world by pointing out the ills of society.

In Sinclair Lewis’ satirical, 1935 classic It Can’t Happen Here he shows step-by-step how theoretically, a fascist shift could indeed happen in America.
In this dystopic near-future scenario, the artist must be self-reliant and capable of guerrilla-marketing tactics to reach their intended audiences.

Just recently the video footage of NPR’s Amy Goodman being unlawfully arrested at the Republican National Convention was uploaded to Youtube within hours of the incident. It is important to have access to the truth when it affects the civil liberties of a free society.

Without video and a free distribution outlet such as the Internet, we may not have found out about Goodman’s arrest until later on—if at all—through the tightly controlled and censored corporate news channels.

It is important in these times to speak up and not be silent. It is time to enter a new era of Brave New Video to speak up and not be silent.

“To be silent is un-American.” —Naomi Wolf

Welcome to Brave New Video- Betty X