Painting, the word. I used it in description of two videos I presented last night at Recess. This is the word that the conversation revolved around for better or worse. Were they paintings? Did they have to do with paintings? Were they “about” painting (I hope not)? I was reminded of the specific ways that they were not paintings.
Would the discussion have taken such a particular course had I not mentioned that word? Should this not have been the test laboratory for me to discover others’ cold read of an object which for me has a great deal to do with painting, but which could very well have little to do with it for someone else? Should I have kept my mouth shut? I had a sculpture teacher who insisted in critiques that the group speak before the artist is permitted to. This rule also precluded asking the artist questions.
I have seen it happen during other WIAM critiques, have been a part of it, talking more about what the artist said about the work than about the work itself. I have wondered how and if it should be avoided. Having now experienced this from the other side, the questions return.
My friend Vin pointed out a failure on my part in the way I arranged the DVD. I strung all three videos in a row to play consecutively on one long loop. I should have rather shown the works that I was claiming for painting each on their own on a loop for some duration of time before switching to the next. Surely only in that way could they ever even hope to relate to painting and could be read as such without discussing it.
But why dismiss the discussion that did occur? Ostensibly, it was general, about the question of medium and whether that mattered. But of course it matters, and it was clearly something that I was concerned with, whether or not the work would have said it if I hadn’t said it. It is also a question that potentially concerns everybody, as opposed to the more parochial concerns of my specific decisions and whether they added up to anything that made these videos (which is, yes, what they actually were) worth the effort of watching. Perhaps this concerning of everybody makes it more useful a conversation for more people.
Would the discussion have taken such a particular course had I not mentioned that word? Should this not have been the test laboratory for me to discover others’ cold read of an object which for me has a great deal to do with painting, but which could very well have little to do with it for someone else? Should I have kept my mouth shut? I had a sculpture teacher who insisted in critiques that the group speak before the artist is permitted to. This rule also precluded asking the artist questions.
I have seen it happen during other WIAM critiques, have been a part of it, talking more about what the artist said about the work than about the work itself. I have wondered how and if it should be avoided. Having now experienced this from the other side, the questions return.
My friend Vin pointed out a failure on my part in the way I arranged the DVD. I strung all three videos in a row to play consecutively on one long loop. I should have rather shown the works that I was claiming for painting each on their own on a loop for some duration of time before switching to the next. Surely only in that way could they ever even hope to relate to painting and could be read as such without discussing it.
But why dismiss the discussion that did occur? Ostensibly, it was general, about the question of medium and whether that mattered. But of course it matters, and it was clearly something that I was concerned with, whether or not the work would have said it if I hadn’t said it. It is also a question that potentially concerns everybody, as opposed to the more parochial concerns of my specific decisions and whether they added up to anything that made these videos (which is, yes, what they actually were) worth the effort of watching. Perhaps this concerning of everybody makes it more useful a conversation for more people.
This reading is a trap, however, because both levels can be spoken about at once.
Can the group be said to have an intentionality? Can the group “intend” to talk about Painting the way you or I can intend to talk about Painting? I would say yes, but add that what the group talked about—painting and medium—should not be allowed to obscure that many specific things were said by individuals about the things themselves. The pieces functioned as springboards from which to talk about medium and so if there was not a sustained discussion of any one piece, analyzing it or one’s reaction to it unit by unit, that is not to say that I could not discern, if perhaps obliquely, different people’s sense of and liking for specific works.
A brief recollection. Someone who I could unfortunately not see, challenged me on whether I have any business talking about a medium that is not mine. For me, this is exactly the point, making it my business, not talking “about it” but doing (or trying to do) what it does in another medium, using that alien medium’s specific properties. Legacy also sounds a doubtful note, not questioning whether video has the “right” (that is my word not theirs, based on my interpretation of what I remember their having said) to concern itself with the concerns of painting, but whether mine actually do. She relates them more concretely to cinema and a specifically digital way of relating to materials and visualizing the world. David underscores this point by talking about narrative and progression, and I embarrassingly have a hard time explaining how I came to decide how a piece will progress. The best I can stammer out is something about chance and evolution, and how the pieces kind of make themselves. Most of what I do comes down to pruning. Ari helpfully points out that there is already a solid history within video that sets itself in the trajectory of painting. This is all true and the point is well taken, the only way over is through: there is not a contradiction between relating to painting and remaining within video and its specific material properties and effects.
I will not recount the entire conversation, but will simply end with the open-ended conclusion that talking about what the artist says, even if overly general, does not replace and can often serve as the skeleton for discussing the work in its particularity. The words the artist tosses out are not as haphazard as she may think, and she reveals herself in the way she explains herself more than she realizes. These words are as much fair game as someone else’s and had they not struck either a chord or a nerve they would not have been pursued as far as some other path of inquiry. It is not a question of holding the artist overly accountable to her words, but of the group selecting which are the most interesting or problematic applications of words to the pieces at hand, regardless of who utters them. A dispute is more interesting than an analysis, or is what makes an analysis interesting in a group setting.
Can the group be said to have an intentionality? Can the group “intend” to talk about Painting the way you or I can intend to talk about Painting? I would say yes, but add that what the group talked about—painting and medium—should not be allowed to obscure that many specific things were said by individuals about the things themselves. The pieces functioned as springboards from which to talk about medium and so if there was not a sustained discussion of any one piece, analyzing it or one’s reaction to it unit by unit, that is not to say that I could not discern, if perhaps obliquely, different people’s sense of and liking for specific works.
A brief recollection. Someone who I could unfortunately not see, challenged me on whether I have any business talking about a medium that is not mine. For me, this is exactly the point, making it my business, not talking “about it” but doing (or trying to do) what it does in another medium, using that alien medium’s specific properties. Legacy also sounds a doubtful note, not questioning whether video has the “right” (that is my word not theirs, based on my interpretation of what I remember their having said) to concern itself with the concerns of painting, but whether mine actually do. She relates them more concretely to cinema and a specifically digital way of relating to materials and visualizing the world. David underscores this point by talking about narrative and progression, and I embarrassingly have a hard time explaining how I came to decide how a piece will progress. The best I can stammer out is something about chance and evolution, and how the pieces kind of make themselves. Most of what I do comes down to pruning. Ari helpfully points out that there is already a solid history within video that sets itself in the trajectory of painting. This is all true and the point is well taken, the only way over is through: there is not a contradiction between relating to painting and remaining within video and its specific material properties and effects.
I will not recount the entire conversation, but will simply end with the open-ended conclusion that talking about what the artist says, even if overly general, does not replace and can often serve as the skeleton for discussing the work in its particularity. The words the artist tosses out are not as haphazard as she may think, and she reveals herself in the way she explains herself more than she realizes. These words are as much fair game as someone else’s and had they not struck either a chord or a nerve they would not have been pursued as far as some other path of inquiry. It is not a question of holding the artist overly accountable to her words, but of the group selecting which are the most interesting or problematic applications of words to the pieces at hand, regardless of who utters them. A dispute is more interesting than an analysis, or is what makes an analysis interesting in a group setting.
The question of medium remains interminable, even if we find ourselves in the historical condition of post-medium-ness. What a medium is remains partially (perpetually?) undefined, and so even if we are past the question, the question of what we are past remains unknown. Is a medium its form or materials, what it tends to look like or how it tends to appear? Is it a way of making, of relating to materials, a set of actions which if taken will terminate in an object that can be said to belong to this or that medium? Or is it a problem or set of problems that can be tackled through apparently differing formal structures, material substances, and constructive procedures?
A big thanks to everyone who came out, paid attention, and offered insight. —Brian
2 of the 3 videos shown last night (the third is unfinished and so is not yet online; the first is more the one I was claiming addressed the concerns of painting):
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