Notes on art by Nathaniel Katz
Film and Video Installation
Response to Alex Field Installation #3
Nathaniel Katz
May 5, 2008
Alex’s latest installation is a culmination of his investigation into the mediation of information. It is an impressive room size installation that consists of two primary sites: an open space of information and a tunnel of information.
Continue reading ‘Respondent notes #3′
Film and Video Installation
Response to Alex Field Installation #2
Nathaniel Katz
April 14, 2008
Alex’s second installation is a successful and positive move from the conclusions of the first installation towards the defined site of the mediated space. The first installation required Alex to abstract the content in order to literalize the form. His interest is in the space of cinema as mediated experience. First content was removed to allow for an investigation of how we travel through mediated space and how that informs our experience of that space. The second installation brings content directly into conversation with experienced space, the space of the cinema and the cinematic space. Continue reading ‘Respondent notes #2′
Film and Video Installation
Response to Alex Field Installation #1
Nathaniel Katz
March 16, 2008
Alex’s site is the collapse of space through the mediation of information. We enter a long narrow alleyway making it’s way up and up to a hole in the wall. On one side is a building lit and inhabited by art students making art, on the other side is an old brick wall. The space we are in is a non-space, extra space, left over space. However, the actual physical site is more of a site of convenience, a way of illustrating a conceptual idea in the most direct way possible in order to grasp it in the physical. Continue reading ‘Respondent notes #1′
I’m taking a Film and Video Installation class this semester with Daniel Peltz. One of the really innovative formats that he incorporated in the class is the “respondent notes.” For the duration of the semester each student has a respondent assigned to them. The respondent visits the installation prior to critique and spends some time with the work and ideas, they then “frame” the critique. It is a really wonderful opportunity to have a colleague think deeply about your work and your progress and to do the same for another person. The following are my three write ups about Alex’s work, a super talented undergraduate student in the Printmaking department. I will ask my respondent whether I can post his write-ups on my work as well.
In grad seminar yesterday we critiqued my cow milking video. it was overall a really positive crit. most of the things that i wanted to get across did and were commented on as being successful. there was some discussion on the composition of the frames and the general format of the four frames. the majority of the conversation was around the actual choices in framing each of the shots and how they contributed or interrupted the flow and clarity of the ideas. why hadn’t i presented the actual screen shot? what of the awkward framing? what was commented and i feel is close to my feelings on it is that the awkwardness compliments the disconnect in the piece. the length of the piece has also come up as an issue and as documentation of a performative event i feel the integrity of the performance would be compromised by any editing. i tried to address the length by beginning to think about bringing other elements in to the piece. for me that meant the photograph and some diagrams outlining the potential outcomes. they weren’t serving to much of a purpose though and it was suggested to think about how the videos can interact with/within objects, while being careful that what works in the video now is not lost or that the framing becomes too heavy handed.
my disappointment was that perhaps the piece wasn’t challenged enough (with the exception of jeanne jo who always asks the tough questions). not because i don’t think the video is successful, but because i’m at a place where i’m not sure really where i’m going with the work. i have questions about what form the performative takes in documentation/ presentation, if at all. later, i was on the phone with dawn and telling her about my crit and the lack of tough questions and she asked me whether i tasted the milk. at first i said that, that, well, no, it was dirty and then i realized something really profound. while i had been talking about the piece (or what was most valuable for me) as creating an art context for a meaningful exchange between my father and i, i wasn’t actually present in the moment, in the actual performance. i was so caught up in making the piece that i hadn’t thought about the integrity of the cow (it was dawn who on viewing the first cut asked where was the cow, which led to my adding the cow close up), and it didn’t even occur to me to taste the milk that i had just learned how to milk. i’ve been doing all of my thinking before and after the making but have not allowed myself the presence in the actual making and that therein may lie an obstacle.
i’ve been working on a couple of new videos this week. the first is one where i stand and hold my open laptop with elevated outstretched arms for about 5 minutes until i can no longer hold them up and drop my laptop. in the second i am sitting on my legs holding my laptop on my lap for 15 minutes until my legs fall asleep and i try to get up to see if i will drop my laptop. they both continue to deal with my relationship to my computer through testing my body’s limitations. in teri’s class today, jessie shefron, the dean of graduate studies, was our guest critic and i showed the two videos as well as photos from my inside the computer performance. most of the comments seemed to focus on the production values and the vocabulary of video art. both of which are two really important areas that i need to spend some more time studying and thinking through in making the videos. other really good comments were about conceptual choices around the objects (computers) being evoked. jessie said something really important in the end, that was about how if the representation of every element is considered throughout then, these questions don’t arise and one has the ability to have that (don’t remember what she called it) moment where it is directly about the ideas in the piece and we experience it.
(i built a custom computer case that is big enough for me to fit inside of. i then was sealed inside of it with the functioning computer and an isight pointed at me projecting my image on the monitor outside).
Nathaniel:
Want to move the mouse icon on the screen.
Why can’t you see/hear us? Is that important to the piece?
Vito Acconci “Seed Bedâ€
Lucky: human form but disembodied head. He also thinks you are good looking.
Kind of like trying to make the Buckingham guards smile.
Jeanne: singing with you was kind of like ichating with someone, but weirder cause I would remember all of a sudden that you were inside the box and very near to me.
Also, I think you could make the computer components more evident, maybe giving us a keyboard, allowing us to eject the drive, move the mouse.
Lucas: reads like a pedestal
Geon moved the monitor around. It was funny. It looked like he was moving your head around. He also turned off the screen for a second. You turned into this passive aspect of the piece.
Gideon/Catherine: Not a meditative piece.
Serena: It feels like you are trying to provoke us to do something.
Yana: You are in limbo. (metaphorically)
Serena: Aggression/cage/box. The absence of the computer components means that the only thing we can do to trigger a response is beat on the box, mess with the monitor. So the box becomes less of a computer and more of a box or a cage or a form of entrapment.
Catherine: we are frustrated by your lack of response, when we know that you are inside, so we try to find ways to interact with you.
Lucky: might be too big of a box.
Andrew ames: what if the monitor were bigger and the computer had more detail?
Jeanne: check out Bob Wysocki’s work. He makes toys that are to scale of when he was a baby or a two year old. Ask me and I will give you more info, I don’t feel like typing it all. Xo.
Gideeon: what if part of your body was showing?
Lucky: not sure what your concept is now that we’ve seen the piece?
Jeanne: The cage aspect of it is more like Chris Burden’s locker piece.