I would like to investigate different modes of communication with the drama infused viewer, trying to dig into their inner will to exhibit their banality. This viewer is one in the age of reality TV and YouTube (which legitimize this type of exhibitionism), hence in the age of the idealization of a man without qualities. I would like to propose an ambivalent power dynamic between the piece and the viewer based on themes of the self exposed to “the other” and “the other” exposed to the self. I would like to reach out to the viewer by presenting the work with recorded personas performing simple, everyday activities. Then I will attempt to install/juxtapose the video in a certain form in space to bring another psychological level for the viewer to encounter. I would like for the three: video-space-viewer to have equal parts in what the piece actually ends up becoming. I hope that my work’s possibilities will shift from one viewer to the next based on incorporating their personal perception.
personal site:
www.AnnOren.com
3 comments:
alice in flash land
What struck me about your work right away was how you never let the media aspect---which in your work is developed and interesting itself---get in the way of the narrative or emotional scope of your aims. You never fetishize the technology itself, but put it to work in pieces that are carefully considered in terms of their sculptural and emotive logic....in their kind of psychological 'closeness', the way they ask you to experience something intimate, disjunctive, and often highly atomistic, but mediated by this cold technology that shouldn't allow you to do so.
Your statement makes me wonder if YouTube and MySpace truly legitimizes something like exhibitionism. Exhibitionism is the compulsion to show something. It's a mildly negative comment about ambitious communication, usually used by conservative energies to reduce dynamism and flux. MySpace and YouTube are criticized for showcasing empty, boring exhibitionism; but the true power play inherent in YouTube and MySpace is not an act of legitimization, but rather the free use of personal expression as a vehicle for advertising. Advert used to have to pay for content to ride along on. By appearing as a liberator / source of new legitimacy, MySpace and Youtube have subverted the desire to communicate (via video or a profile).
I see your video installations as topographical maps of this process and other power relationships that you have decided to articulate and create in physical/video form. You are modeling the power structure.
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