Am I Making Art

The PFA never fails in providing very "interesting" array of films. Unlike Pine Flat, the Am I Making Art screening showed four films. This First was Theresa Cha's "Mouth to Mouth" which created a field of noise, mainly static and the sound a a running river, while bringing a mouth in and of of the picture. As it faded in and out, the month seemed for form different phonetic shapes. Although it was quite chaotic with the hyperactive static oscillating across the screen, the film was also sensual with the images magically appearing and disappearing at will.

The second film, "I Am Making Art" by John Boldesary, was a 15 minute single shot piece capturing a man creating different physical postures with his body. After each of the transitions to new positions he would say "I am making art". Each individual position created by the middle aged hippie man could represent a model posing for a sculpting class. The only exception is that Boldesary was not posing for a class, but rather the viewers watching his film. This piece seems to support the idea that there is beauty in movement. It was this idea that fueled the work of Muybridge, Marey, Bragaglia, and so many other photographers and film makers throughout history. Each of his movements are deliberate. As he bends like a contortionist, it represents an almost cinomatographcal vision because he holds each position as if they were captured in one of Muybridge's photographs of a galloping horse.

Next in the series came Acconchi's "Theme Song". On the superficial level of what is being recorded, a man lays in from of a camera attempting to seduce his viewers on the other side of the screen by using songs from The Doors and The Beatles to inspire and represent the emotions he was trying to exude. However in actuality, Acconchi was attempting to break down the space between the viewer and the performer. It acts as the inspiration for the movie Video Drone in asking the viewer to come into the film, and interact with the performer. Acconchi acknowledges the different worlds which are separated by the t.v. screen stating, in other words, that the film needs to work to become the same world as the viewer, allowing the viewer to enter into the film. However this is impossibly currently because "the world of film is not free." There are many constraints framing and trapping the performer within the box we know as a television or entwined amongst the rolls of film being shown through a projector.

The final film, East Side, West Side, by Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson captured a man and a woman (the woman from "Boomerang") talking at a table. The man is an artist from Los Angeles, and the woman an artist from New York. The two exchange a dialogue that plays with the cliche of the two types of artist at the time. The man represented the organic west coaster while the women played the role of the non instinctual East Coaster.

All of these films discuss the constraints on art, whether, location as in East Side, West Side, the idea of what art is, as shown in I Am Making Art, and even the technological constraints portrayed in Theme Song. These works also shares their connection with language. In the introduction of the films, the PFA curator stated that the series was created to commemorate Bruce Nalman's exhibit in BAM.