Great conversation today about the boundaries between videographic criticism vs. online video vs. found footage films vs. video art vs. [whatever else]! I hope we might continue the discussion here outside of class. Here are a few links to spur your thoughts (as well as the various links from the Week 10 Schedule:
- Arthur Jafa’s video “Love is the Message and the Message is Death” got cut-off in-class – here’s a (illicit) link to watch the whole thing.
- More on Jafa: the New Yorker profile I mentioned, and a short piece on his video, including an embedded link to a “pirated gallery video” of the work.
- On the question of exhibition contexts, you might consider “Videographic Frankenstein” – this was an in-person exhibition at Stanford curated in 2018 by Shane Denson (Stanford professor, scholar of Frankenstein, and videographic critic) in honor of the 200th anniversary of the book. The exhibition was in a room with a number of monitors with headphones, so you could focus on one of around 8 videographic pieces at a time. This online publication curates those pieces for ongoing consumption. As you’ll see, the pieces range from more conventional videographic essays to more experimental “art” pieces. (I contributed a video that’s more of the latter, in a deformative vein…)
I look forward to seeing what more y’all have to say about these boundaries between art and criticism, online access vs. in-person exhibition, free vs. (very) expensive, how such works speak to different audiences, etc.!
Sample Video Commentary: What Is Neo-Realism?
This 2013 video by the acclaimed video essayist kogonada, originally published in Sight & Sound magazine, is deceptively straightforward. On the one hand, it seems like an explanatory video that provides a comparison between two versions of the same film – we could probably read the transcript of the voiceover and understand the essay’s key argument about the differences between Hollywood cinema and neorealism.
But kogonada’s tonal mastery adds additional dimensions to the video that transcend the ideas expressed by the words alone. First off, the use of the split screen allows us to experience the distinctions between the two versions, not just have them described via prose. The video lingers on the extended shots, recreating the effect of duration that kogonada suggests is an essential component of neorealism – just as filmgoers would see Terminal Station‘s takes endure beyond normal expectations, we experience them surpassing the Hollywood norms, feeling the effect of the neorealist aesthetic.
Additionally, kogonada frames the entire piece in a suggestive and poetic tone. Instead of using the academic framework of an argument, thesis statement, or reference to other critics, he posits the entire video as an experiment requiring a time machine. Is this science fiction? His voiceover tone certainly suggests that something is a bit off from conventional academic discourse. This opening frame locates the entire video within the realm of speculative fiction, even though its content is fully rooted in history and critical analysis. Thus when he arrives at his conclusion, drawing the link between neorealism and the essence of cinema, it feels less like a conclusive argument by a persuasive critic, but more of a hypothesis offered by a somewhat mad scientist (or artist). Thus the videographic form embraces a poetic mode that encourages a degree of uncertainty and abstraction, much more than we would expect or allow for in a written essay.