Bruce Newman and Julian Rosefeldt
Bruce Nauman’s video instillation piece was very interesting; the exhibition was an extremely narrow white corridor wide enough for only one person to squeeze down it. Once you entre the corridor because it’s so small it forces you to walk to the end, and at the end AI two TV screens with a live feed from a CCTV camera behind you at the top looking down on you. As you walk towards the TV screens you apear to be walking away from yourself and when you turn to look over your shoulder at the CCTV camera, on the TV screen, your face turns to look at you. However, no matter what you do, you cannot see your face on the TV screen.
The fact that CCTV had only just come to existence when this was made, and wasn’t as widely used as today, would have made it much more interesting, as you are much more intrigued to see yourself on a screen. The experience of walking forward, following yourself, watching yourself walking further away, is slightly like a common recurrent dream/nightmare where you can walk for ever and not catch up with yourself and also never see your own face, this brings us back to our topic of phobias.
Julian Rosefeldt’s video instillation piece “American Night” is a large room with 5 screens placed in a curved line with a row of seats in front of them. Projected onto each screen was a different scene the first being a hill side, the second was of a cowboy western town set, the third was of several cowboys sitting around a camp fire, the forth screen had a set of a cowboy western saloon and the fifth screen had a woman standing out side a log cabin. All screens have the similarity of being recognisable sets from any American Western film.
For the whole time the first screen is really quiet and starts of with a landscape of a desert, but as you look closer something seems to be getter closer to you. After a while you see that it’s a cowboy riding a horse, the set changes to a hill side and again after a while in the distance you see the same cowboy riding his horse across the screen. This happens several times with different hillsides, like the cowboy is travelling somewhere. The second screen, with the western town set, stays exactly the same shot for the whole time except almost half way through, a helicopter lands and several soldiers run out into the set and the camera follows, then until they’re gone and the camera goes back to the static shot. The third screen with the cowboys around the campfire is an iconic point in a western until they start talking… They appear to be saying famous quotes from films to each other and then they start rapping. This is very interesting as films and rapping were not around then. The forth screen is the busiest. It starts quiet when the barman is setting up a stage and three man walk in, have a drink and start playing cards, which is also an iconic scene in a western. As more and more people fill up the saloon till it’s packed a female singer performs a puppet show about presidents of America including George Bush and Barack Obama (who let me remind you were not even born then) and then starts singing. As expected from your typical western film, a fight brakes out in the saloon and everyone joins in. As the fight is occurring, a small group of men ride up to the saloon and get off their horses, they walk in, in a line, stand and watch everyone fighting. The man in the middle lifts his gun and shots at the roof. Everyone in the saloon is silent and looks at the group of men. The piano player turns back to his piano and starts to play, but instead of playing a typical song from that time, he is playing Lacrimosa, a movement from Motzarts Requiem. Not only is this unexpected, but the men and women in the bar sing the passage like a coral society.
This piece is different from the other, firstly because we are the audience, we watch each screen as they begin to tell the artists story, but we are not the subject. The artist seams to be making a comment on a part of American culture, using iconic images from a janra of film that I am familiar with but my generation didn’t grow up with it, but my parents generation did, and lamenting its passing by using a Requiem.
Bruce Newman’s piece, relies on us stepping into that corridor, and making the film happen, it is playing with our own self image, and it is a solo experience rather than a group, shared one. The reference to our anxieties, which dream like feeling, explores our insecurities; whereas, Julien Rosefeldt, relies on our shared experience, of those familiar cowboy setting and makes us reflect on them, as they are from our past.
The fact that CCTV had only just come to existence when this was made, and wasn’t as widely used as today, would have made it much more interesting, as you are much more intrigued to see yourself on a screen. The experience of walking forward, following yourself, watching yourself walking further away, is slightly like a common recurrent dream/nightmare where you can walk for ever and not catch up with yourself and also never see your own face, this brings us back to our topic of phobias.
Julian Rosefeldt’s video instillation piece “American Night” is a large room with 5 screens placed in a curved line with a row of seats in front of them. Projected onto each screen was a different scene the first being a hill side, the second was of a cowboy western town set, the third was of several cowboys sitting around a camp fire, the forth screen had a set of a cowboy western saloon and the fifth screen had a woman standing out side a log cabin. All screens have the similarity of being recognisable sets from any American Western film.
For the whole time the first screen is really quiet and starts of with a landscape of a desert, but as you look closer something seems to be getter closer to you. After a while you see that it’s a cowboy riding a horse, the set changes to a hill side and again after a while in the distance you see the same cowboy riding his horse across the screen. This happens several times with different hillsides, like the cowboy is travelling somewhere. The second screen, with the western town set, stays exactly the same shot for the whole time except almost half way through, a helicopter lands and several soldiers run out into the set and the camera follows, then until they’re gone and the camera goes back to the static shot. The third screen with the cowboys around the campfire is an iconic point in a western until they start talking… They appear to be saying famous quotes from films to each other and then they start rapping. This is very interesting as films and rapping were not around then. The forth screen is the busiest. It starts quiet when the barman is setting up a stage and three man walk in, have a drink and start playing cards, which is also an iconic scene in a western. As more and more people fill up the saloon till it’s packed a female singer performs a puppet show about presidents of America including George Bush and Barack Obama (who let me remind you were not even born then) and then starts singing. As expected from your typical western film, a fight brakes out in the saloon and everyone joins in. As the fight is occurring, a small group of men ride up to the saloon and get off their horses, they walk in, in a line, stand and watch everyone fighting. The man in the middle lifts his gun and shots at the roof. Everyone in the saloon is silent and looks at the group of men. The piano player turns back to his piano and starts to play, but instead of playing a typical song from that time, he is playing Lacrimosa, a movement from Motzarts Requiem. Not only is this unexpected, but the men and women in the bar sing the passage like a coral society.
This piece is different from the other, firstly because we are the audience, we watch each screen as they begin to tell the artists story, but we are not the subject. The artist seams to be making a comment on a part of American culture, using iconic images from a janra of film that I am familiar with but my generation didn’t grow up with it, but my parents generation did, and lamenting its passing by using a Requiem.
Bruce Newman’s piece, relies on us stepping into that corridor, and making the film happen, it is playing with our own self image, and it is a solo experience rather than a group, shared one. The reference to our anxieties, which dream like feeling, explores our insecurities; whereas, Julien Rosefeldt, relies on our shared experience, of those familiar cowboy setting and makes us reflect on them, as they are from our past.
