Disengaging to Engage

After Laura Mark's presentation on Monday, a few things sank in to my mind that I felt were worth sharing with everyone. My ideas relate to experimental film by trying to define what we are doing when creating experimental film.

In the film "Vacuum" by Adel Abidin, we watch a man take a vacuum out on to a frozen lake and begin vacuuming snow. The point that the artist was trying to make by this video is mystifying. But to demystify this mystery for myself, a thought ran through my head, "Engaging by disengaging." I'm not sure how I came across this idea, but I believe that it is very relevant to the video. Basically, my thoughts were that when we watch experimental films, is it the point of the artist to engage the viewers by showing them something they don't understand? In this sense, the viewer is shown a perplexing barrage of imagery and auditory information that form a puzzle for the viewer to solve. This makes the viewer's senses become heightened and make them more aware of even minute details within the film. In "Vacuum" I feel we (the audience) are left to interpret the film for what we ourselves think, I'm not sure if any one answer is correct. Maybe the idea is to be incorrect, forcing ourselves to think of numerous answers to the problem - all of which can help explain different aspects of the film, in the hopes that we do come to some sort of conclusion or interpretation.

Another idea that ran through my head that seemed to be enlightening to me was, "Believing is seeing. Seeing is believing." Again, I don't know how it popped into my head, but during the film "In This House" by Akram Zaatari, we are shown video clips of a man digging a hole in the ground next to a house. He is surrounded by men that we cannot see. The man holding the camera is told by the people surrounding him to not shoot their faces. This leaves a little mystery behind as to why they do not want their faces shown, furthermore what else are they not showing us? The obvious answer seems to be that the people who requested their faces not be shown in the film are trying to avoid some sort of persecution for being there and taking part in this dig. But what if there is another reason? People's faces get replaced by anonymous tone sounds that signify which person is speaking, creating the feeling of a high-tech computer or even a computer game. With two frames in the picture, one showing evidence and other items that have some sort of significance to the dig and why it took place - again the feeling of a confidential video file being portrayed to a person that shouldn't be seeing it, is conveyed.

After the presentation given by Laura Marks, I was content with the understanding that sometimes artists are forced to disassemble something, in order to recreate it in different lights or perspectives. I enjoy this idea that the death of an idea can lead to the rebirth of an entirely new state of thinking. I believe that this is the driving force in many of art installations. Creating by destroying - in itself - seems to be an art.

So remember, next time you are struggling to see something new from something you have been looking at for years, maybe decades. Disassemble it in your mind... destroy it... let it rebirth a new concept, a perspective, a light. This is art.