UbuWeb Film & Video: Takeshi Murata
Untitled (Pink Dot) (2007) Takeshi Murata b. 1974
Finding a source that went more in depth for this piece was difficult, but as stated on the Ubuweb site “In Untitled (Pink Dot), Murata transforms footage from the 1982 Sylvester Stallone film Rambo: First Blood into a morass of seething electronic abstraction. Subjected to Murata's meticulous digital reprocessing, the action scenes decompose and are subsumed into an almost palpable, cascading digital sludge, presided over by a hypnotically pulsating pink dot.”
Takeshi Murata was born in 1974 in Chicago, IL. He graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1997 with a B.F.A. in Film/Video/Animation. He has had previous solo exhibitions at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC (2007), gallery.sora, Tokyo (2007) and The Reliance, London (2007). His work has been included in exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2007), Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (2007) the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin, Italy (2007), Deitch Projects, New York (2007), Foxy Productions, New York (2007) and Gladstone Gallery, New York (2006). Murata currently lives and works in Saugerties, New York.
What I found to be the most fascinating about this piece was how unrecognizable the source footage has become. With our reading the description, I would have never realized these were clips from such a well known movie. The wording used in the videos description that the “action scenes decompose” feels very fitting as the sounds are incredibly eerie and distorted as well the video which often times is so distorted you can’t exactly make out what is happening on screen. The concept that interests me from this video the most is the combination of audio and video distortion to alter the viewing experience of something, even if it is something well known and previously understood.
UbuWeb Film & Video: Mona Hatoum - Corps Étranger (1994)
Corps Étranger (1994) Mona Hatoum b. 1952
This piece is described by the art site Boiler Room to be given access to Hatoum’s body through a “medical lens”. Through this video we are given direct access visually and almost physically to her literal insides through a camera. Hatoum said that while she waited a bit to make this piece, she had long been thinking of the idea and was inspired by the concept of surveillance which she had become very aware of once she moved to London.
Mona Hatoum was born into a Palestinian family in Beirut, Lebanon in 1952 and now lives and works in London and Berlin. She has participated in numerous important group exhibitions including The Turner Prize (1995), Venice Biennale (1995 and 2005), Documenta XI, Kassel, 2002, Biennale of Sydney (2006), the Istanbul Biennial (1995 and 2011) and The Fifth Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art (2013).
I find this piece to be both incredibly interesting and incredibly challenging because of how uncomfortable it made me. The concept of seeing a human body in such a direct way is something foreign to me mexican or otherwise. In the video, the camera reaches every part of her body from her scalp, inside her ears, inside her organs, to around her vagina. Upon reading the theme of surveillance intended by the creator the piece makes much more sense and I find it much more interesting.
I would like to further research the archives for pieces with similar effects with or without the physical body. I like pieces that are jarring with very literal meanings. My relation to the poor image is different or “imperfect” art that is not just easily accessible to the viewer, but seeks sending a message more than it seeks personal gain.
