Simply September 23rd

Recently in class, my Professor screened a handful of video pieces over the span of two class periods. During this time I watched and developed some opinions on the videos being shown. Here they are...

In Chel White's " A painful glimpse into my writing process" I fell into the precision and pattern-making style of the imagery. The stylings of this video, including the addition of audio reminded me a bit of the Intro to "Thank You for Smoking." The most noticeable feature of the video was the collage style animation. Most likely this process was done using a scanner which was insanely detailed, well lit/color corrected and intense. I especially liked the sandwich imagery which was colorful and pleasurably saturated. In addition to using scanned imagery and collage aspects, the video made me feel like these things I was watching were forming a landscape of nouns; Physical things In a mental world. This self portrait made me believe that Chel White gets many ideas and conflicting points of view when in "the writing process." In support to this feeling of conflicting ideas the tone made me feel intimated by numbers. It was all these visuals things that were going on at once which drew me in. It is this collage style content of the video that receives much respect from me.

Another video that I thought did a great job exemplifying a self-portrait was Sadie Bennning's piece "If every girl had a diary." (1990) This video, portraying female struggling to come out in the world as a lesbian, was very evident of the artist 'self.' The black and white video in the confessional style was a very intimate and drew you in to the imagery. The ambient noise of street and cars, honking, etc gave the feeling that you were inside, with the artist coping with the same issues. The audio, I feel, represents the rest of society moving along, leaving this one person behind. Camera movement and interesting framing also played a role in depicting the true feelings of the artist. The piece was narrated, however I don't believe the narration was necessary in making observations about the video being watched.

peace out people.
DFJ