Anyways here are some pictures.
I've never thought of these as relevant to the work I'm currently making, but as shards of something that might surface later.
The first are still images of VHS home videos paused. They are all from the same trip to disneyland, I believe I was in 4th grade? The last few images are screen capture from youtube videos of people filming the ride they're on. (there are tons of these)
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| Disneyland Hotel |
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| Self Portrait on the Jungle Boat Cruise |
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| In line for Indiana Jones |
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| In line for Indiana Jones |
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| The Matterhorn |
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| Splash Mountain |
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| Space Mountain (with lights on) |
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| Space Mountain (with lights on) |
ReplyDeleteI think these pictures are interesting - what do you see their future being? What do you think about the distortion and layer of snow from the video and copying process? I mean, are these as clear as you can make the images, or are you trying to create a haziness, more haziness? No value judgement implied, I think there is conceptual weight either way.
I like the ones of space mountain. You indicate that the lights are on. . . are the lights not usually on? They look like the inner workings of something mechanical - the innards - they don't look like the expected sleek finish of a theme park ride. So that is interesting to me. I think of being in a theater after a movie when the lights come on, and even though it is sort of a half light you can tell that it is a little dirty and sticky and oily and stagnant. I guess it is when the house lights go up that you come back to reality, isn't it? It is the trigger to start thinking about where you parked your car and so on. But when the movie is playing, you don't think about the people around you, or the spilled sodas, or the germs. I don't know where exactly I am going with this. . . . but by adding the simple notation, 'lights on' you made me think of our willingness/ability to be transported by theme parks and movies and other entertainment industry type thingies.
Also in these space mountain pictures the light is weirdly pea-soup colored. It is unnatural and thick. There was this night club that I used to walk by on my way home from school called Lime Light. Late at night it would be open and have this green light shining on the facade and the line of people waiting to get in. And it was weird cause it was supposed to be (well, I guess it was) pretty posh, but all these people dressed for clubbing looked near death in this lime colored light. They looked like their movements were slowed as though the light itself was heavy. This is all to say that I think there is something really eerie in the color of that light.
I just realized that I should say something more specific to further the aforementioned discussion of Disney. . . . I guess these go in a different direction that the idea of hand drawn disney characters or fan fiction. Because here you are going straight back to the source in a sense. You are approaching it form the other side. You are going back to this thing that you loved as a kid, and through the years of perspective and the distortion of the media it was recorded on it is rendered absurd (are you trying to render it absurd? . . I am not sure yet).
ReplyDeleteHunter.
ReplyDeleteThese images are amazing man! Such a fractured look at our beloved disney land which embodies for me everything terrible and frighteing about vacation, travel, destination, etc.
the video adds a really uncomfortable layer to the subject matter. Its all so early 90s looking like right in there between american funiest home videos and Full House, but fucking eerie. The familiarity of the subject is interrupted really well by the lo-fi aesthetic of video. Anyway, i think you have some really potential source material in what you hve posted and espically if you say there is plenty more...
I guess none of that was really ciritcal in any helpful way -- more just horn totin.... -- sorry. I am a little under the weather from too much sun and my brain is not working its best.. ill try to say sopmetign more educated and critical later...
It's time that I made a reemergence in the blog. I realize how much I've been missing out on and how helpful it is talking with you all. I feel really comfortable because I know you all, but it's not psychologically masturbatory like so many of my conversations can be. I actually, you know, think about stuff when I talk to you and get excited about work and am happy to get lost in these kind of vorticular though processes in order to understand something. All this to say, I need to participate more.
ReplyDeleteAlright, so these images: There is a poignancy to the one of you on the "Jungle Boat Cruise" that is interesting because you're talking about how your memory of Disneyland is a memory of yours that is pure happiness in your mind. This image—I understand that images lie and everything. Sorry, I should have said blah blah blah Zuromskis blah blah blah every photography student ever blah blah blah—this image says otherwise. So is it revisionist history on your part that the Disneyland trip was nothing but sunshine and smiles or is it just the photograph that is doing that? And then why include that photograph if you want to talk about the kind of clarity in childhood simplicity and happiness vs. the cynical lens we view adulthood through? Are they about naivete that we associate with being young and growing up and also with happiness in an ignorance-is-bliss type of way? This again makes me think about DFW and one of my favorite parts from Infinite Jest and also Pynchon in a review he did for Love in the Time of Cholera, both about naivete and the obsession we have with associating that to stupidity and both things to happiness or gooey sentimental ideas like basic happiness or love. Because world weary cynics are world weary and cynical because their not naive. But I don't think you're making that case with these images, but rather you're interested in where the drop off was and the strangeness with Disneyland as this monumentally artificial arena being the setting for what you remember to be real, unadulterated happiness, pure and simple. Does that feel embarrassing or, like, I guess I mean is do you feel weird like you're buying into the artifice of Disney as advertised as a place where dreams come true for kids with anthropomorphized mice and no fear of finances or inopportune erections or grad school or divorce or executing your parents will or incontinence or other things that come with adulthood? Because they are still images from home videos and they are paused images, I get a sense that they are cherished and cared for, but they are also made uncomfortable by the static and distortion which might be exactly what you want. But, there isn't enough of the Happiness that is really interesting to me.
(Cont'd cause I went over apparently—)
ReplyDeleteThe Space Mountain ones are really interesting to me because I went on Space Mountain when the lights were on. They don't tell you that the lights are going to be on or anything so I was expecting the same Space Mountain I had been on a few times earlier in the day. The pitch black, the sudden drops that you can't anticipate that makes them scarier in some sense and also easier to handle in another since the anticipation on most roller coasters is the crux of terror for me and I think most. But then the lights are on and it's a total let down. It's exposed and all of its appeal is removed. I actually make use the expression "it's like Space Mountain with the lights on" when something is underwhelming or disappointing. I don't know if I invented that or not, but I arrived at it independently if I didn't. Or I think. But, that is in essence about the let down when the artifice is lifted just like Kate was saying about the house lights in a theater. I am always always let down by that and it is jarring and dispiriting. Which is very much symbolic of what it's like to grow up and feel let down and disappointment by the reality of a lot of things. But I think it's more than just constant disappointment and pessimism. Isn't it? I don't just sit around and brood everyday. Only every other day. It's probably just because I'm so interesting in insecurity and self-consciousness as a hinderance to human connection and experience, but I think that is the most salient thing that I noticed growing up that had an effect on my happiness. It was kind of my willingness to feel happy in a way. Happiness, when I was a kid came from being unabashed and silly and not being concerned, truly, with how I was being perceived. But even that fades quickly. In elementary school I was already vying for popularity and attention in the "right" ways as I understood them. I'm still jealous of people who can do even simple things like dance in public and not feel debilitating shame. That's the heartbreaking quality that I see in the one on the Jungle Boat Cruise. Unhappiness in children just breaks me.
I feel like I just gave a critique, but you said yourself that you weren't really even considering this work as something you're really concerned with at the moment. Funny that you have all of these projects on the side that are as well thought out as the singular body of work that I tend to be working on at any given time. I probably delved into my own shit and digressed totally from what you were thinking about, but hopefully some of that was germane and maybe even modestly intelligent at times.
Cliffy speaks!
ReplyDeleteHow about that as a show title/theme "its like Space Mountain with the lights on" or some iteration there of. . .?
More soon.
Jesus. I just re-read my ramblings from yesterday. Where it isn't rife with typos, I'm still not sure it makes any sense. Sorry.
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