When I saw the recent acquisitions expo at the Guggenheim, I found the dichotomy of my own work represented through the selection of works (its like when you read a book by an acclaimed theorist and you find ideas that correspond with your own - affirmation, it makes you feel, well, like your on to something, or, that at least you can't be too wrong..) and it made me happy.
Theres the black and white stuff, the photographic which isn't, the loneliness and emptiness, the strange absence (which, I find it hard to tell: is this a representation of our time, or is it an absence in our time, a need we attempt to fulfill through these images?), architectural scenes, void.
The work by James Casebere, whom I didn't know about before, wasn't the only ones that fit this category but the one I found most interesting. Heres some random stuff of his I found online:
Supposedly all the picures are photographed using models of places that he built himself.
The other pole in this dichotomy describes a sort of frenzy, a hunger, an ecstatic party, sick, insane and high. ///Im reading Baudrillard (Fatal strategies pg 114) "The media make the event, the object, the referent, disappear. But perhaps they only serve as support for a strategy of disappearance which would be that of the object itself"///: . Ryan Trecartin falls in this second category. I love his videos, they have that thing, that Barthes describes in Camera Lucida, "punctum". They are arresting. I'm not sure if I understand, if he is trying to communicate anything specific and I don't really care. It hurts in a good way, like scratching a scab...
(...)
But the new 20-year-olds…
Because things are accelerating so fast, when someone wants them to talk about “internet culture,” they’re going to wonder what the hell you’re talking about. They’re not going to understand the concept of it being separate. I think it’s going to cause a breakdown in dichotomies, and how people try to contain dialogue.
So the videos in Any Ever were largely made in a house in Miami. How long did you live there?
A year and a half. It only was supposed to be two months, and then it turned into this really large project. We kept renewing the lease and the house kept getting crazier and crazier.
It looks pretty wrecked by the last videos. What did the neighbors think?
Everybody was OK with it. In Miami it’s houses, not apartments. You can make a lot more noise. It was a really nice experience, actually. We made a shitload of noise, we lit tons of stuff on fire, and no one ever called the cops. When we were done with sets we would put them in our front yard. It started to look like a huge trash dump. Actually, I’m surprised I never shot a scene in it because it looked amazing.
It went up to about 15. But there was a lot of in and out, and the doors were always open. Nothing felt lived-in. Everything was from Target and Ikea, and none of it had any sort of life outside of the movie. We didn’t have a dinner table. We didn’t have anything. If we did, it was a prop, and it was broken.
That must have affected the project.
I like working that way. I’m really into accidents within a context. And I like what happens when you construct a whole space where everything psychologically connects with the idea. So no matter what… Let’s say everyone got food poisoning. We would have to use the beds and the props that were already there, and that would become part of a scene. Like all of this, it was as if there was no outside.
From an interview that you can find here: http://www.vice.com/read/ryan-trecartin-596-v17n11
Some stills
Which reminds me of Petra Cortwright (note I have only seen her work online but it looks really nice): http://www.petracortright.com/hello.html
But maybe its just that they are all colourful and sort of violent... Ah, but isn't that a sign of our time...
NY, Brooklyn, with a fan on and lots of candles,
12-12-28
