Reading and Response #3- Projection: Vanishing and Becoming by Sean Cubitt
Sean Cubitt dives into some of the fundamentals of drawing and painting. He examines these principles and how they translate into video and film. Cubitt begins his article by historically diving into the Buddhist tale of the origin of art and how it compares to Pliny’s story of the origins of paining and use of light and shadows. These tales go into the origin of use of line, light, reflection, shadow, and projection. Projection is a very important word in this article. From artists projecting light and shadows onto prints, as well as lines and colors; Cubitt also explores the metaphorical meaning of projection. How we as humans use projection. It is vital in childhood and human development. Think back to when we were children and could not communicate properly with words we would have to project emotion to get across what we were needing. Projection could be literal, metaphorical, implied,etc. In video art you are able to project all of the above. With the creation of film and cameras artist had the ability to visually project their message. Rather that message be direct or implied, the artist had more resources at their fingertips to create their visual work. Art is considered a way to preserve. Video would be the ultimate preservation tool. To capture a moment in time, forever. A way to outlive Father Time. This made me think if this is something video artists consider when starting their project. Is that part of the purpose of using video? For this particular artwork to “cheat death”. With today’s technology like the internet and media platforms, even if a video is deleted does it really “die” or does it live forever in some spaces? Do artists consider that aspect today?
5 examples of time based art/video art/film/cinematic artist:
William Kentridge (South African, born 1955). The Refusal of Time, 2012. Five-channel digital video installation, black-and-white and color, sound, 30 min. Steel megaphones, and a breathing machine ("elephant"), dimensions variable. Jointly owned by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 2013. Purchased for The Metropolitan Museum of Art with Roy R. and Marie S. Neuberger Foundation Inc. and Wendy Fisher Gifts and The Raymond and Beverly Sackler 21st Century Art Fund (2013.250). © William Kentridge. All rights reserved.
Video Flag, 1995, Nam June Paik. Pictured on view at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in 1996. “Video Flag’s enormous bank of 70 14 in. CRT monitors represents the American flag’s stars and stripes through flashing imagery of technological advances and iconic moments from American politics: news stills, rotating shots of the State of Liberty, scrolling streams of zeros and ones (the binary language of computers), and a morphing sequence portraying U.S. president portraits, from Harry S. Truman to Bill Clinton. The always-present image of the flag serves as a backdrop against which these individual cultural events, personas, and technologies are experienced, recalled, and understood.” https://www.si.edu/tbma/work/video-flag
Pipilotti Rist, Open my Glade, Times Square, 2016. “For instance, he work of Pipilotti Rist is notable in the proportions that Video Art has taken in recent decades. In 2016, she was selected to exhibit her work in Times Square. The artwork consisted of 62 video screens, monumental in size, right in the middle of all the advertising screens in Times Square. On these 62 screens, looping over several days, numerous videos were shown. There, in the middle of one of the most emblematic squares of capitalism, she smashed her face against a window that was placed just a few centimeters from the camera lens. Her face deformed, her makeup spread out, she questioned, brutally, the gaze that the spectator has on feminine beauty.” https://blog.artsper.com/en/a-closer-look/what-is-video-art/
Looking for Langston, 1988. Photograph: Bfi/Sankofa Film/Kobal/Rex/Shutterstock
Isaac Julien | Looking for Langston, 1989
“More than a tribute to the American poet Langston Hughes and the Harlem Renaissance, Julien’s film is a powerful meditation on the history of black gay desire, the intersection of queer and black politics with art and activism, poetry and prejudice. The action plays out against a soundtrack mixing 1920s jazz and anachronistic 1980s disco.” https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2020/oct/17/warhol-steve-mcqueen-a-history-of-video-art-barbara-london
Lorna, 1984, interactive videodisk installation, infinite duration, video stills
“With Lorna, Lynn Hershman Leeson created the first art work that used laserdisk technology. Exploiting the interactive capabilities of the medium, the artist enables users to explore and intervene in the world of an agoraphobic woman named Lorna.” https://www.lynnhershman.com/project/interactivity/