Today we had a lecture on moving image as for Weird and Wonderful we can create a moving image piece if we wish. We looked at a lot of different artists but there was a few that I liked and found a little bit unusual.
The first artist was Alex Prager who we looked at last week. We watched two clips of hers but the one that I found really strange and odd was La Grande Sortie. I wasn't really to sure what it was about but I thought that it was about a woman who had stage fright and then as soon as she went on stage she went into her own world, but throughout the clip I suddenly thought it was a man performing but then realised it wasn't as then at the end of the clip the lady that was performing was in the audience and walked out which is when the clip stopped so I am very confused as to what it was all about.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=QrK5UEzCKf4
Kahlil Joseph's Wildcat was one of the only ones that I really liked. I liked it because of the story that was behind the movie and the filming was immaculate and amazingly put together. The film was about black cowboys which stereotypically don't exist because of this myth that everyone has grown up believing. The movie is shot in black and white which I think has been done purposely to link with the concept of the movie. A lot of people just think in black and white and don't think about the bigger picture, Joseph is also through his film trying to prove a point that black and white people are the same and should not be stereotyped. By using black and white he has made the focus just on the cowboys, I think that if he had used colour it would have distracted us as the audience, he's been very clever in using this technique. The music that he uses in the background is very mysterious. He also made the movie in memory of 'Aunt Janet' who I'm not sure who it was but I'm guessing it was his auntie, the movie also featured Wildcat Ebony Brown and the Wildcat Ranch, Larry Phillips.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vd2BGeN44BE
Shirin Neshat was the next person's clip that I watched and felt very weird about, but I guess that's good seems as the brief is weird and wonderful! His clip Turbulent was all about the soundtrack and not necessarily the people featuring in the clip. There are two people singing in the clip but both at separate times, one male and one female. The man sang first and had an audience but had his back to them and the female had no audience but was facing where the audience would be. I couldn't work out why they were both facing opposite ways but I could only guess that Neshat is highlighting the differences in men and women. Because the man sang first it meant that the woman had her back to us for 4 minutes and was wearing black which is a long time for the audience to guess what's happening. I was really confused by the whole movie and a little bit creeped out because what they were singing was quite dramatic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2DNMG2s_O0
The last movie we watched that I found very strange and really couldn't work out what was going on was Maya Deren's Meshes of the Afternoon. It was based on a surreal landscape that had an odd faceless silhouette walking up the street but I couldn't work out who it was. There were no faces revealed at the start but as the clip progressed more faces were revealed but looked like the same two ladies and a man just being repeated. The only thing that I did pick up from the clip was the three significant objects that construct the movie:
Key
Knife
Mirror
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KamHwKHg64o
The other artists we looked at were:
Gregory Crewdson
Juno Calypso
Laurent Fievet
Tracey Moffatt
Maya Deren
Stan Brakhage
Hollis Frampton
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