Response to Steyerl’s How to not be Seen…
Before getting into the concepts presented in Steyerl’s piece, I think it’s worth talking about my journey as a viewer over the course of watching. My perspective and appreciation of the aesthetic choices and conceptual argument changed rapidly and drastically throughout. I think a lot about how we are communicating as storytellers, as artists, and I think about the accessibility of our methods of communicating. Initially, I was put off by this piece because it felt inaccessible to me. Had I been watching it for myself, either as a link online, or maybe even at a gallery, I’m not sure I would’ve completed the film.
At first, I thought it was a truly instructional video — I even started taking notes! I was frustrated by the “neutral,” robotic, digitally altered voice narrating because it made me feel emotionally removed from the material. And, then, once I saw Steyerl onscreen, I got annoyed that the narrator wasn’t obviously her voice — another layer of separation, of “impartiality.” I’m still not totally sure why it made me annoyed, other than maybe I assumed the video would be heady and pretentious. It wasn’t until the first way to become invisible was presented as “pretend you are not there” that I realized there might be humor in the piece. What an absurd thing! To be on a formal list! Being read to me by what sounds like a robot!
Once I perceived the tone to be more complex, not-overtly comical, I was a more willing viewer.
The next thing that really grabbed me was the cracked resolution target. The juxtaposition of the broken digital (the target, the key to being seen, being represented visually) and the dry earth peaking through, was evocative. Maybe it was the introduction to something organic alongside a wrinkled representation of technology that got me. I started to think more clearly in dualities and contradictions. A robotic voice (this time perhaps more feminine sounding?) began speaking about invisibility and introduces huge concepts like love, war, capital. Then we see this grand expanse of the natural earth surface, huge compared to this man-made, decaying target which allows satellites to focus, interpret, present visual representations of the earth’s surface.
I had a sense of the thesis of the video then, but not clearly. I felt the parameters to be organic/digital, real/represented, visible/invisible in an intuitive sense. I’m not sure at the moment I could have articulated that fully — but I felt willing to go on the conceptual trip. Though I continued to feel uncomfortable by the strangeness of the piece, I trusted the artist to communicate with me experientially.
The dancing/moving people-pixel scene made me think about invisibility/visibility as it relates to drone strikes. The way that literal targets are “visualized” by people thousands of miles away — and what “visualization” means to the drone operator. “Visualization” is not an accurate description, because many people, places, communities, are made invisible or disappeared (literally, obscured from visual capture by being behind something; literally, not being represented by thought/action ie: unforeseen casualties; literally, murdered, killed, annihilated). Drone technology allows very limited, specific visualization. It is flattening, dehumanizing. Reducing people to pixels, targets.
The Sims-like digital reality was disturbing to me. It felt like futuristic propaganda, a placating explanation for where the “disappeared, wiped out, separated” people go. This lush, colorful, gated, consumerist, place feels like what we are told the dream life should be. The narrator explains that this is where the invisible people go. The implication — we don’t think of them anyway, so why can’t we convince ourselves that they exist in this perfect, alternate, virtual reality? It’s like a blistering calling out of apathy.
I think there is still more for me to unpack from the end sequence. It’s a lot of references and call-backs and juxtapositions compounding and I’m not sure how to parse it. I was moved by it, especially with the music playing and the meta mash ups of shots that feel “real” vs. “pixelated” and those from the virtual reality. The tone exploded, getting much more exuberant with the music and text, but I was left feeling sad and disturbed. The descriptions of the invisible pixels forces us to visualize them in our heads, though they are not displayed onscreen.
Response to Goodbye Uncanny Valley
I found this video very engaging and stimulating. Unlike Steyerl’s piece, this one was very direct and upfront about wanting to communicate ideas. It was a clear argument and I’m so excited by the concepts presented.
My artistic practice has recently been mixed media sculptures, installations, and collages that are abstracted autobiographies. I think a lot about constructions of narratives of self, the failure of but desire to communicate the ephemeral, inability to truly connect with other humans, our relationship to time and our repeated behaviors despite deep seeded urge to change, our obsession with superficial distractions and how we enable ourselves to ignore basic needs/desires, gluttony, apathy, ego. I think there are a lot of parallels here, conceptually, with the work of artists in The Wilderness. The relationship between The Frontier (capitalistic spectacle, constant innovation, market-driven) and The Beyond (this apocalyptic, meaningless, nothingness) felt very resonant to me. And The Wilderness, of the options, is where I’d like to live. It reminds me a little bit of what adrienne maree brown calls visionary fiction, a kind of fiction cultivated by Octavia Butler (who I’m reading for the first time now) that present a future that is “terrifying and compelling” (Emergent Strategy, pg 37), not utopian, not apocalyptic, strange, familiar. It is different in that there is something very human and bodied about Butler’s writing, but there is an aspect of challenging power dynamics, existing at the fringes, contending with unavoidable constraints/realities, and science-fictiony that seems related.
I watched another Warburton video – about Spectacle and Speculation and Experimental Animators. I appreciated the conversation about the relationship between the artist and the art (the labor). Warburton raised the issue that Steyerl uses technical experts to create her videos, so while she raises issues about labor, conceptually, in her work, she doesn’t (as Warburton argues) really confront her own relationship to those who work for her. I liked that Warburton is the creator of his own work.
A few key takeaways, maybe for my tumblr:
Why does success = invisibility? Why completely hide the material?
Digital grotesque
Technology = the body of power to satirize
Accept + embrace the “materiality” of the medium
Cool 3D World
I feel like I could go on and on! Such interesting stuff. So many implications. I think certainly these concepts I could easily weave into my more tactile work and absolutely incorporate into my future digital pieces. I am still nervous about the medium though. It feels so… far away from me? Unembodied? Heady? Niche? But, all the more reason to dive in and engage!
Why IMA?
I had been looking into grad programs for more traditional fine arts MFAs and found most programs weren’t as intellectually rigorous or interdisciplinary as I wanted. My background is in visual arts and theater and I majored in sociology in undergrad. Basically, I’m really excited about storytelling, how it’s a vehicle for community building, revolution, and personal healing. I like various mediums and didn’t want to commit to one in particular. And, I wanted to stretch and learn something that could complicate my practice. I had been making personal autobiographical mixed media works (with related essays) made up of my own saved or everyday objects. Making was an act of healing for me. But, I wanted to grow to start collaborating with others, especially non-artists, to see how objects creatively re-contextualized and many individual stories could make up a larger portrait of some aspect of what it’s like to live today. I got excited at the prospect of working from interviews and hopefully collaborating creatively with the interviewees. Soundscape-making and video-making were of interest to me for that reason. IMA seems to be at the intersection of all of these interests.
Docs/Groups I Find Inspiring
This is a really good question. I know I need to do more research. To be honest, before IMA, I hadn’t been following or seeking out documentarians/video artists who are making things that I’m interested in.
Since starting IMA, I’ve been exposed to lots of new artists already. Here are three that I learned of recently that I’m excited to follow/learn more about:
https://bear71vr.nfb.ca/
Leanne Allison and Jeremy Mendes, who made Bear 71. A friend told me about this VR Experience last week. It’s an appeal for environmentalism + cross-species empathy told through combination of extensive surveillance data and imaginative storytelling techniques.
Robert Greene, who I heard speak at IMA a few weeks ago about his film Bisbee 17. I’m seeing it tonight. But, regardless of how I’ll feel about the film after viewing, I loved the questions he raised in the Q&A — why don’t we, as audience members, think about editing and bias in documentaries as much as we do in fiction? How ethical is any of it anyways? How exploitative? What is the role of the director in a non-fiction piece? Who is allowed to collaborate?
and Chris Smith, who made Jim and Andy, a documentary I loved. I loved the subject matter, the strangeness of it, the window into process and performance (also something I’m interested in). I imagine I’m more interested in the portrait/process of the portrait Jim as Andy, than in Chris Smith, but maybe not.
Emerging Media 1 