Real Bodies: Video in the 1990's

tele- distance

Real Bodies: Video in the 1990's
Art History [0141-6790] Lajer- Burcharth, Ewa. Year 1997 volume 20 pages 185-213
Fantastic article i read online in the database, 29 pages long so i skimmed it but wish i could have read the whole thing!

Gary HillI believe it is an image in light of the other (1991-1992)

Video work using images of text and the male body, rotating as if to imitate the turning of pages which can be heard through the audio with the installation. Hill 'defamiliarizes' the body, uses the screen as a mirror. Ok. i took down notes too quickly and now i have no idea what context they were in. Lajer-Burchart mentions Lacan a lot, firstly his idea of " The Real", experiencing ones bod as a remnant or loss, incompleteness of the self under the gaze.
The monitor is a ubiquitous object that structures our experiences and reality of ourselves- how true is this for the majority of the population?

Watching television is like taking black spray paint to your third eye.- Bill hicks

Inasmuch it is always taking place 1990

'You constantly see and thus imagine yourself and the world as a screen image'-pg 190 Lajer- Burcharth, Ewa

This work features sixteen caseless monitors, why didn't i think of that? Each shows a fragment of his body; foot, torso, chest, back, diddle. By saying diddle did i make it awkward...? These images together create a whole but fragmented body, intimate close ups of skin that barely seem to move creates abstract shapes and textures. In the article his work is described as 'anti- television', it does not tell a story, has no narrative, (it loops) and destructs the television as an object, taking it out of its original frame and letting the artists skin become the screen.

You relocate trust and knowledge of your body to the image on the screen. An example that comes to mind is looking fat in a photo, you're going to believe what the image tells you. Rather than looking down at your physical body you judge yourself based on images of it in photographs and videos because you believe that this is what other people see. By YOU i mean humans collectively and not necessarily everyone or even the person reading this. We think that technology knows us better than we know ourselves, and we put our trust in it. Scales to weigh yourself, personality tests online, the women onscreen having ideal bodies, faces, hair. wan.

Mona HatoumCorps etranger 1994

This work is my favourite of Hatoum's, it consists of a cylindrical viewing booth with circular projections on the floor of endoscopic views of the inside and outside of her body. Being projected from above you have the option of walking around the image or through it, becoming the screen yourself. She has recorded the sound of her heartbeat and breathing which plays inside the installation. The Real Bodies article describes the work as a sexual threat, vulgar, disturbing and distasteful (awesome :)) The images projected move between interior and exterior views and are all unfamiliar views of the body that are usually excluded from images of the self. These views of the body have been made visually intolerable by dominant cultural representation of the body. We are use to seeing images such as the ones i have made, 'pretty', sexual, feminine. The viewing booth is like when you go to a sex shop and pay $10 to go and have a beat while watching porn. eeew. This is so unlike porn even though it is images of the artists vagina and anus among other things. The extremely close up microscopic views are like medical images so you don't get those erotic connotations of sex, penetration etc.

My work definitely has those sexual connotations. The video of the lips (Edit 1) it very sensual, the dribbling slightly removes it from being purely sexual, making it clumsier and dirty. Mastication of the self is very different to this, more violent, dirtier in a literal sense, more feelings of abjection, disgust. It feels like the lips are now in control, they are still the same lips but have shown that they are not purely a sexual object. The hair being consumed is of the same body as the lips. Both hair and lips are fetishized, revered, beautiful, feminine. This is all subverted when the female is consuming itself. Apart from the fact that nobody would be willing to eat hair for an art project, it is important that the lips belong to me, that it was my idea to 'endure' this act and I'm doing it to myself without (direct) pressure from someone else.
Red Porn is my favourite as i feel it can stand on its own as a video work. It combines the previous two videos in the way that it is still sexual but the more you watch it the more you are repulsed by it. It is something you want to look at but in the same tone feel that you shouldn't be viewing. The image of the lips first came about when trying to imitate screen siren posters with their seductive smiles and inviting pouts. Stills from my footage could be mistaken as a still from a Hollywood film.