PFA Screening 3-07-07: Am I Making Art

This screening at PFA showed four video artworks: Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s Mouth to Mouth, John Baldssari’s I am making art, Vito Acconci’s Theme Song, and Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson’s East Coast, West Coast. I thought Cha’s work was particularly interesting; her mouth appeared in a swamp of video noise as she uttered something into the video camera. At some point during the showing, the video noise looked similar to streams of water randomly flowing on the screen. The effect made by the video noise exerted a sense of virtual reality. The juxtaposition of the mouth, the video noise, and the sound made by the mouth made me feel as if there was a gigantic mouth and we were all immersed in a void filled with noise and about to be sucked into the mouth.

I thought Baldssari’s video was the most bizarre of the four shown. Baldessari repositioned his body in a seemingly endless array of postures while uttering “I am making art.” The repositioning and utterance went on for about twenty-five minutes, and by the time it was over, I felt a strong sense of relief. I thought it was a bit painful to sit through the entire clip as he seems to make a mockery of what is art. Nonetheless, his work reminded me of what Bergson said about duration and becoming. Contrary to photography and cinematography where duration is obviously not captured, Badessari’s pause in between gestures also seemed to imply that there was also discontinuity of duration in video.

Acconci and Holt’s works playing back to back presented an interesting comparison of “reality” experienced by viewers through video. Acconci attempts to seduce the viewers by saying “come to me, I know you want to be with me,” even though he and the viewers were fully aware that the act of crossing into the video camera is not possible. His direct gaze into the video camera also had a penetrating effect that enhanced a sense of reality. I thought the act of his holding a cigarette was a very clever one. It showed the passage of time, and this was exactly the time experienced by the viewers. An element of reality was reproduced to accentuate the desired effect through cigarettes.

Instead of directly talking into the video camera, Holt and Smithson’s casual (at times humorous) conversation engaged the viewers to be part of their conversation in an non-intimidating way. Holt and Smithson didn’t look directly at the camera, instead they looked across the table where they were sitting. Even though it was quite obvious that there was no one sitting on the other side, it had an interesting effect in making the viewers felt as if we were in their “reality”.

- Cathy Hwang