david bennett

David Bennett is really strange. I think he lives in his head and comes out of it every now and again when he has to in order to interact with others. But even when he does that, I wonder how much he still remains inside David’s world, the place that is swirling and visual and funny. So when David does a performance, sometimes it is well thought out, like his Vivisexing project, other times it is completely made up and he is phoning it in, an example of this is when he crawled to the side of the couch in the study room and tried to push the couch with his legs to the other side of the room. Granted, we all liked it, but we knew he just came up with the performance a few seconds before he did it. And maybe that is ok. I think david’s sometimes haphazard way of performance is a good balance for those of us who take it really seriously. David reminds us that there are really silly and dry things about this medium of expression, and that in doing so, it reflects life. David also really likes parties. He loves going to and throwing them. He makes some of the best posters for a dumb Friday night party that I have ever seen. Some of us think that the last art show was shit, but David really liked it because of how it made people feel and he likes to entertain. As a matter of fact, I am on board with him on making a alternative space tutorial in order to find more places for art parties. I think that when David approaches performance, he considers the party. He likes to feel a kind of satisfaction in everything that he does, even if his projects look like they lack a sense of satisfaction, like his Vivisexing performance. A strange kind of satisfaction happened between the two characters, even though they were sad. David Bennet loves music as well. I think that he sees words as lyrics and motions as sound. For one performance, he played music, and at the art show, he developed that idea further. He likes ambient sound that swells and repeats. I think that his newer performances will most definitely include this concept. David’s performances, like his 2D work reflect a kind of inner world that he sometimes gives us access to, like when he repeated the phrase “tiny horses” for an entire class. We didnt know where that came from, but he was so amused by something about that phrase or image the phrase made that he just repeated it. His music is personal and internal too, he never engages the audience. And even his video for this semester was about something only he was going to look at. All this internal world stuff makes David and interesting fellow. People are drawn to him and this shtick, he doesn’t disappoint either; I still cant figure him out and I am around him a lot

western

For this video project I wanted to explore a few different concepts. The most obvious being western, but I also wanted to simply begin to understand the medium of film making as well as attempt to undo myself in icon form. I will begin by discussing how this film project reflects “western” themes and then move on to the other concepts involved. My designated week for mod two was western theme. Fo r this, I decided to divide the theme into two major ideas. The first idea was based on a type of “Hero With A Thousand Faces” narrative in which the ‘lone ranger’ was one that the western film highlighted, but was prevalent in much of American culture. The second idea was the icon of the western: the masculine form, the gun, and the justice. The two, I think, coincide, but I wanted for us to look at films with those ideas in mind. How does Kill Bill reflect these concepts just as much as Outlaw Josie Wales? When is the image stronger than the narrative, or how do we apply the cowboy idea to “heros” in the local paper? With that in mind, I wanted to make a performance where I “killed” myself. I had a face off with myself and lost. But my issue with this was whether or not the physical me should die or the video me. Each ending had merit and each ending could reflect that western showdown, but the good guy should always win, and here, that line was faint, if not nonexistent. I liked that conflict, but once I did the performance, I thought about how there could be all these outcomes, all these chances because I could fluctuate between good and bad. For the western, I think, that dichotomy must exist I could become good or bad based on the way I handled the gesture of pulling the gun out. And that is where the idea for a longer video came into play. For the video, and like a few performances I have done, I wanted to dissect and explore the various ways one gesture can shift and change. So I pulled the gun out a lot in front of the camera and played with how that movement can grow and imply a number of things. Here, I think I definitely covered the icon component of westerns, while at the same time, responding to other video and performance artists. I think that this project was similar to Hannah Wilke’s videos, such as her film Gestures and So Help Me Hannah. My piece is similar to Gestures in that I attempt to explore/ exploit a single movement over and over, confronting the camera and engaging the viewer. In So Help Me Hannah, Wilke walks around the city naked with a gun, implying gender roles and the power of the gun, I think my video is similar in that I reference the image of female with phallus, but I try to negate a completely female form by only showing myself from the shoulders up, clothed. I wanted to create a kind of narrative using the clips I gathered. The first chapter was confrontation, in which I stare down the opponent. The second chapter was preparation, getting ready to duel, to kill, to defend. The third chapter was posing, an homage to characters like Travis Bickle; funny and strange and threatening. The fourth chapter was shooting. The fifth chapter was recognition, and this came as either satisfaction or fear or guilt. The sixth chapter returned to the first, only now it was confronting the action, unsure whether or not the action was good or bad. I think the result was a myriad of forms, pictures, and gestures that derived from one iconic image. I like that. However, I am still interested in how that can be interactive. How can I shoot myself in video or live that can create a dynamic narrative? How can I be more selective in my clips so that the powerful images really stand out? I do not want to copy those clips from films directly. I don’t feel like I need to. My audience knows those images so well that I only need to reference them. However, I think there are editing choices I could have made that would be more cohesive, such as how my sepia and black and white are used. This is a work in progress for me, and I want to see how this vast idea can become tighter and more effective.