Rona Lesser
Tour Outline Blaffer Art Museum Spring 2011
It’s a Poor Sort of Memory that Only Works Backwards, First Take: Okay Mountain
Belgian artist, film and video art, who sees himself as a media archaeologist,.
Takes documentary, TV and original video and combines them to make his points
Pays attention to the influences of new media on us and how it changes our views of history
Title of show: comes from Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass
Looking back at history is a type of rewriting; there is always a double meaning or something hidden
Maybe the Sky is Really Green and We’re Just Colorblind, a you tube –o-theque/petroteque: interactive installation history of zapping starting inn 1930’s with the War of the Worlds radio broadcast, coming up to the 80’s when remote controls become important and film changed to video
News became obsessively repeated
Advertising changes as people can zap during commercials.
T.V. becomes like an alien from space invading out families
Introduction of TV. dinners, emphasizes the change
Dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y, 1997
Follows the beginning of TV and media coverage of terrorists, starting with early skyjackings up to 1997, foreshadowing 9/11
Tells the story of media- how news changes, how it becomes like a soap opera and adapts Hollywood’s aesthetic codes, logos, and sound bites. Also how terrorists begin using the media to tell their story.
Grimoprez states (article) He analyzes how the media participates in the construction of reality. A culture of catastrophe is being invented and with it a new way to look at death.
“It tells of how history is recorded and catalogued and how these techniques accelerate and accumulate memory almost as an excess of history. “
The chronology of hijacking is underscored by a fictionalized storyline based of a novel by Don De Lillo, which plays with how these notions
collide
Double Take, 2009:
Uses Hitchcock as a mirror for a period of history
Plays on the culture of fear in the cold war and the development of the influence of TV. , relates to our fears today: weapons of Mass Destruction as seen in media
Uses the interplay of commercials for Folger’s coffee, scenes from Hitchcock films, especially the Birds, and clips of the Cuban Missile crisis, Kennedy’s funeral, the kitchen debate between Khrushchev and Nixon
Folger’s commercials take on an aspect of fear, - poisoning, that goes along with the fears created by both the Hitchcock films and the political scenes.
Hitchcock and look alikes for Hitchcock_ when one meets one’s double one must die- one has to kill the other, becomes part of the emphasis of fear.
From Construction Histories: Grimonprex analyzes how fear and catastrophe are fed into the American household by television
Upstairs videos:
1. Where is your Helicopter? Cultural anthropology; investigates what it means when planes come into a small village, seen as birds, alien technology from the sky. , Filmed in the highlands of New Guinea
Okay Mountain:
Austin based collaborative of 10 artists, 5 now live outside of Austin, 5 still in Texas.
Started a gallery together in 2006 and then started drawing together until their main focus became collaboration
International acclaim came quickly
They spend a great deal of time talking about the works
This exhibit consists of three sculptures and a video all on the overall theme of sleep and the group
1.Trust Staircase: Self-affirmations and a fire walk, trust, must fall from the top and be caught, but the mattress on the back defeats the purpose of the group.
Notice the misspelled word on the top- intentional- why? It pokes fun at the rest of the self-help ideology: where would you see phrases like these? (Training manual, self help groups, popular psychology)
This sculpture has a two-sided nature, what lies on the other side of the staircase debunks the message of self-help