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“Self-portrait” is 4′6″ x 2′ x 2′ and is constructed using plywood, 2×4, plaster, and found objects. The 2×4 and plywood make a podium covered in plaster on top of which rests the found objects, all covered in plaster. On the support of the podium is written a quote by Stephen Hawking, reading, “I think it says something about human nature that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. We’ve created life in our own image.”
The quote is the basis on which the sculpture rests. Parts of other sculptures and projects from throughout the semester are all represented somehow in this culmination of sculptures, but each one had to be destroyed in order to create something new. In each of those previous sculptures, and in this one as well, lives a part of the artist, and so to create life in the artist’s own image, other parts of the artist were destroyed.
It’s all part of a greater good.

an attempt at photographing the quote written on the stand (really hard to see):

“Greenhouse” is essentially a two-part sculpture. The larger part is approximately 7′ x 8′ x 8′ and is constructed using plywood and 2×4’s. The plywood is shaped into a three-sided room with no roof and with three large windows, one of which measuring 5′ x 4′ and the other two each measuring 3′ x 4′. The interior of the room is painted completely white.
The second part of the piece consists of a 3′ x 6″ x 6″ podium made of pieces of 2×4, on top of which rests a halved plastic bottle filled with dirt and Zinnia seeds. The podium sits in the center of the white room, and a grow light surrounded by styrofoam cup hangs above it. Another light constructed in similar fashion hangs in the corner of the room, projecting light through pink-tinted packing tape.
The idea of “Greenhouse” is to create a greenhouse-type space within a space. One plant grows in the center of the room, and the tinted light in the corner represents the array of color that is present in every-day greenhouses. The stark white of the room creates a sterile, synthetic contrast with the organic idea of a greenhouse environment. Aside from the conceptual lack of color on the walls, the white also helps technically in reflecting the light from the “flowers” so that it appears more vibrant than it would otherwise.

this is the final product:

these are “process pictures”/”the building of..”

 EDIT: here is the third edit–

Sorry, I forgot to take another picture since the edit–here’s what the piece looks like now:

My first sculpture in Sculpture 1:

sorry for not having a white background–i couldn’t fit the piece in the hallway and back up enough to get the entire piece in the picture (or even close to the entire piece).

My first reaction to Pipilotti Rist’s “I’m not the girl who misses much” was… I don’t know. It’s difficult to put into words. Basically all I could think of was, “What the hell,” and “This is completely the basis for the Alvin and the Chipmunks voices, and maybe the mice in Cinderella too.” I know it’s not insightful and I know it doesn’t comment at all on meaning or video or art or anything, but really. Its hard to get past those first impressions.

Once I got past them, though, I realize that I like what she’s doing. I like that she wants to make art, and she wants to use a camera, and she just does it. There’s no real editing and there’s no real props or costumes (or even clothes in some areas). I mean I guess I don’t know if she actually planned this video out or not, because I guess it really could have taken her weeks or months to come up with and develop the idea, but it comes across as spontaneous and new and I like that. It touches on something that I really had trouble with when thinking of a video to do for the class — I felt like I couldn’t film anything until I knew exactly what I was gonna film and how I was gonna do it. I wish I had experimented more and tried not to think so much. I think better art comes out of not thinking and over-thinking, but just doing.

Today is our last class.

Its funny, cause it seems like just yesterday I was going to Carole’s office to tell her I was gonna drop this class because of how much I hated it. (Just kidding). (But only a little bit kidding).

Before I go into what will end up being a non-cohesive post about video art/artful video (as it seems all my posts on this blog end up lacking cohesiveness), I want to say that I’ve really learned more in this class then I thought I would, especially with my video-watching disorder. I always love when I recognize things from a class in an out-of-class context, because it makes what I learned feel more real to me, like it actually exists in the world outside of a classroom (or board room) situation. For example, I was reading about the Venice Biennale and looking at images for a paper I had to write, and some of the pieces I looked at reminded me of Matthew Barney and Paul McCarthy. After further reading I realized that art critics thought the same thing, as many of them from several sources compared the works to those artists.

I thought that was special.

But in regards to video art and artful video, I don’t know if my actual definition has changed a lot over the course of the class. I mean, I more fully understand how to back up what I originally said, but I dont think that what I originally said has changed. (My original answer to the question is at the bottom of this post for convenience. You’re welcome).

First of all, I think time plays a huge huge factor in deciphering between video art and artful video. In artful video, time is like the main character of a movie. It pushes the video along (or, lots of time, the narrative) and without it the video generally would not make sense. I guess that then assumes that most artful video is also narrative. In video art, the viewer is much more aware of time, but the only reason it really needs to exist is because it is essential to the being of the media of video. Its the third dimension that makes video what it is. The fact that many video art pieces can be looped shows that time is there to sort out that third dimension, and really for nothing else. There is no necessary stop point of start point. Video art’s time is a circle, and artful video’s time is a straight line.

I think the budget difference between the two is obvious–artful video usually (but not always) has a much higher budget than video art. I do have to say, though, that while watching Cremaster 4, the only thoughts that kept going through my head were, “If this is so low-budget, how do they pay for those racing cars? And what pays for those aerial shots of the island? And how are they filming underwater?” –Yes, those seriously were the only thoughts going through my head while watching it. I’ve given up on trying to pin meaning on videos like those, because I feel like meaning is so relative with video art. The concept is completely up to the viewer.

I think that’s all I have to say about video art and artful video for the time being. I will probably end up coming back to it again, but if not, goodbye forever, blog.

[Original Response] — I’ve been hesitant to respond to this question until today, but here it goes.
I keep chewing on this question and the same response comes to me every time–why does there have to be this ambiguity between the two terms? Why cant they just be read as “video art = art done in a video medium” and “artful video = video done in an artistic fashion”? I’m fully aware of the whole semantics issue: what EXACTLY is art, how can you really give it a concrete, black and white, this-is-art, this-isn’t definition, etc., but I think that in most cases it’s pretty clear as to what is made with art in mind and what is made with video in mind.

Example: Of the videos we’ve watched so far, the best examples I can think of come from Metropolis and Rain. I feel like Metropolis is more artful video–its a video first, and artistic expression second. Rain is video art in that it is art first and video second. I guess another way to think of it is this–video art first comes as an artful idea, the same way a drawing may come to an artist, or a painting to a painter. Video is just the medium chosen to express this particular piece of art. If whoever filmed Rain had decided to use paint and canvas to express what they wanted to say, I think it could have been done. On the other hand, Fritz Lang had a video in mind first. The way in which he presented his video is artful–he could have done it in a different way, like a documentary or something, but he chose to make and artful video instead.

I may be trying to oversimplify this more than it is meant to be, and I know I’m not the most articulate person in the world, but hopefully this makes sense to somebody.

So reading through everyone else’s blogs I found a couple to be more interesting than others, but one in particular struck me (and I don’t remember whose it was, sorry). But the author of it wrote about how, after the past few classes and the past few artists we’ve watched, they’ve begun to think twice about what video art really is. After pondering that for a second, I decided that I might have to do the same.

Paul McCarthy and Matthews Barney have presented to me a completely new way of looking at video art. I don’t understand much of what they do; sometimes I’m so taken aback by the grotesqueness of their content that I forget it could be anything close to art.  As someone else on another blog said, what would their mothers think if they saw these videos?

Looking back on my previous post about video art vs. artful video, I think I originally thought that all video fell into two categories: narrative and avant-garde, abstract-type stuff. I didn’t include video-taped performance pieces in either category, and I still don’t know if I would. To me they’re just performance pieces that have been captured on video, and when I watch Matthew Barney and Paul McCarthy, thats the group I categorize them in. They can go in the unrelated-to-video category of performance art, although then I guess you could say that the video my group made a few weeks ago doesn’t classify as video either.

(Two side notes on Matthew Barney and Paul McCarthy though–I found it much easier to watch Paul McCarthy than Matthew Barney. I don’t think it was because of content, but I think because of how much it intrigued me/grossed me out that he would be so ballsy as to, say, make a baby doll poop out a giant who knows what and film it and call it art. It made me think. The only thing I could think about while watching Matthew Barney was, “What IS that, and WHAT is he doing?” Second side note–for whatever reason, I found the last video clip on the Paul McCarthy video hilariously absurd and have been looking for it online, but I don’t know what its called… anybody?)

So. Ultimately this came  out to be a two-part post, one part on me re-evaluating my definitions of video art (and I don’t know that I’ve actually come up with a new definition; I think really I’ve just become more confused), and one part on a little bit of my reactions towards the recent videos we’ve watched.

Theee end.

I just came back from the eagle’s nest, where I walked right through one of the groups from this class filming their performance piece.

It was embarrassing to know that I would be in their footage, asking “What are you guys doing?” Its funny to be on the other end of it.

It was also a bit embarrassing that I didn’t see their video camera going in, but did see it when I came out. I DEFINITELY would have avoided it if I had seen where it was.

One of my friends was actually in the post office when I went in to pick up my package. I had seen him walking down campus walk towards me when I opened the doors to walk in. He didn’t come in for another couple minutes, and I later found out it was because he’d opened the doors, seen the performers there video taping their performance, and chose to walk around to the other entrance. He asked if I’d realized that I’d walked right in front of their camera. (I hadn’t).

Anyway. I know this post lacks cohesiveness, but I thought it was strange how different it is to be a spectator than it is to be a performer of the same situation, even when I know who the performers are and why they’re filming what they’re doing.

My inability to remember anything video is exactly analogous with that feeling you get after you’ve driven somewhere and can’t actually remember the drive. I come out of a theater and know that I was at least alive for the previous two hours, but don’t really remember anything besides that. I generally get that feeling after watching videos in this class too.

Today’s class just spurred that thought, and I figured I should get it down somewhere.

Other things that make me question my consciousness, in case you’re interested:

driving (obviously)

showering

walking to/from classes

most of my classes

running

I’m gonna repeat watching movies, just to emphasize how I really, REALLY just cannot watch movies

drawing/painting

In summary, today’s class made me think about and realize that most of my life happens without me really knowing that its happening, and thats really depressing.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Andy Warhol is the most manipulative person I have ever encountered (albeit, through a television screen).

With that said, I can’t get enough of him and his work. He frustrates me; what he does to people frustrates me, and whenever we watch anything about him in class I get worked up and angry and ELATED, because for the first time I’m actually feeling something in this class. At first, I hated everything about him. We watched the first half of the documentary on him and I couldn’t STAND him. He had, to me, only one admirable trait—he wanted something badly and would do anything to get it. He wanted to be famous and did anything and everything he possibly could to achieve that, including using people practically to death. But even in achieving his goal, he seemed inhuman and soulless to me. It seemed like once he became famous, he played it off like it was no big deal, like it was inevitable that it would happen to him and that he was bigger than fame. He would isolate himself at events and force people to come to him, and instead of presenting himself as a respectable and accomplished artist, he came off (depending on whose account you got) as either shy and timid, or arrogant and pretentious. Not only that, but he used whatever he could to get to the top, including people. At the end of the first class I had little interest in him, and what I did think of him was all negative.

Now that I’ve learned more about him I can’t believe how fascinating he was. The inhumanness that I at one time found extremely unattractive in him is now one of the defining qualities of his that makes me so interested in him. In regards to his “reality TV” similarities, I think his inhumanness is what makes his work so avant garde. When Andy got behind a camera, the camera absorbed him (or maybe he absorbed the camera. It’s hard to tell). Its like people stopped craving the attention the camera would give them and started obsessing over the attention Andy could give them. Everyone wanted the fame that Andy had, and they all thought that Andy was the one who would give it to them. The camera that Andy had was merely a tool. People needed Andy’s attention and they wanted him to LOVE them, maybe not in the emotional sense but definitely in the desirable sense, and Andy used this to his advantage. He used them to build his fame rather than allowing them to use him as a stepping stone. Everyone thought that if they could make their way to Andy, he would do outstanding and monumental things for them, when really it turned out to be the other way around. He was a parasite, but an extremely intelligent one in that he made his hosts believe that the positions were actually reversed.

Today, reality TV does the same thing, but the Andy Warhol is now a video camera. Normal, fame-craving individuals will find their way to a video camera and wait for it to make them famous, when really all they are is fuel to an already-raging fire. They will do anything for the attention of a camera, whether it be marooning themselves on an island for weeks at a time or eating God knows what kinds of animal organs in huge quantities. People are wiling to degrade themselves so much and seem completely blind to it, and it is all fame-driven. The camera sucks what it can out of people, cuts and pastes everything down to size, and profits from it. In ten years no one will remember the individuals who made up reality television; they will only remember how huge reality television was, just as no one remembers Andy’s actors as much as they remember Andy.

Andy Warhol may be the most manipulative person I’ve ever encountered, but his equivalent can be found in a video camera. They each are merely observers—they capture what they see and make what they want out of it, and people are such attention-whores that they don’t even notice how much they’re being used.