Paddy Johnson unfavorably reviews Doug Aitken's outdoor video installation at MOMA, Sleepwalkers, today in The Reeler. As usual she is good at exposing the fatuous reasoning behind a piece--in this case the decision by MOMA, Creative Time and the City to host it in the dead of winter so it will be a tourist draw like Christo's Gates*, a loser if ever there was one for art you aren't walking through at a brisk stride but are presumably expected to stand and watch--but I still have some questions about it. I need some more reasons to get off my ass and go (or not). Maybe she can elaborate on her blog [update: responses here]:
1. If the piece is supposed to be about a day in the life of ordinary New Yorkers, isn't that ruined by using celebrities such as Cat Power, Tilda Swindon, and Donald Sutherland, in the roles? If Aitken wants to flout the conventions of cinema, why use movie stars? Is Sutherland's "dancing on top of a cab" something ordinary people do, or only Michael Jackson?
2. Isn't a "non-linear narrative" the ultimate art world cliche at this point? What does this piece do to surmount that?
3. How do the moving images on sides of buildings differ from the corporate displays a few blocks over in Times Square?
*Sourced to an anonymous MOMA employee, but no one Johnson spoke to seems to have actually denied it.
I think that the most in'eresting thing in PJs review is the bit about the trailer.
I saw the trailer, ironically, on PBS (before Nature or something similar) and it got me excited. I'd need to see it again to remember why exactly, but the combo of music and the music-video style synched parallel action cuts of people rising was very cool and engaging.
In retrospect, it plays kind of like those epic old AT*T commericals: the archeologist is digging up some antiquity beneath an urban center, a monk is playing a gong in the Forbidden City, etc. This sort of global nostalgia for future worlds no one really believes in any more except in any positive sense except the ad people and dead sci-fi fanboys. (See the new ci*co ads for a similar take on "everything is connected.")
And then to discover that that sort of populist-futurist-utopian vibe actually doesn't manifest itself in the piece itself, well, hell.
Which goes exactly to your point about 90-foot x 5 video installations as being the self-righteous bastard step-child to the complete environmental pollution of Times Square. Can the medium of Big Ass Billboard ever surmount the message?
I guess I shall have to buy a hat, borrow a scarf, and sew up the holes in my pockets and go find out for meself.
line 2: please convert "say the trailer" to "saw"
and take and except or don't accept the primary except in line 7
media tree needs a post post media editor!
Not sure what you wanted re: line 7.
Let me know if you want a login.
I think you're so right... I went to see it the other night..
To me it felt 100% commercial... Like a dull version of Time Square!
Which was a shock... since CreativeTime is such a high quality organization.
Umm, not to take anything away from other arguments, but my (probably third) thought when I first heard about the project was to assume that any outdoor projection would probably have to be done during the winter months, since the sun sets as late as 9 pm in the middle of the summer. A late show would seem to present its own problems - for the museum and for many visitors.
Of course I myself haven't seen it yet, and I may not make it uptown in time. Actually, it doesn't really sound very compelling, perhaps because of my second thought: Why use movie stars? That one's now been pushed up to first thought.
it's worthwhile to note that my first preview of the project was in the form of advertising for it on the side of several MTA buses
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Paddy Johnson unfavorably reviews Doug Aitken's outdoor video installation at MOMA, Sleepwalkers, today in The Reeler. As usual she is good at exposing the fatuous reasoning behind a piece--in this case the decision by MOMA, Creative Time and the City to host it in the dead of winter so it will be a tourist draw like Christo's Gates*, a loser if ever there was one for art you aren't walking through at a brisk stride but are presumably expected to stand and watch--but I still have some questions about it. I need some more reasons to get off my ass and go (or not). Maybe she can elaborate on her blog [update: responses here]:
1. If the piece is supposed to be about a day in the life of ordinary New Yorkers, isn't that ruined by using celebrities such as Cat Power, Tilda Swindon, and Donald Sutherland, in the roles? If Aitken wants to flout the conventions of cinema, why use movie stars? Is Sutherland's "dancing on top of a cab" something ordinary people do, or only Michael Jackson?
2. Isn't a "non-linear narrative" the ultimate art world cliche at this point? What does this piece do to surmount that?
3. How do the moving images on sides of buildings differ from the corporate displays a few blocks over in Times Square?
*Sourced to an anonymous MOMA employee, but no one Johnson spoke to seems to have actually denied it.
- tom moody 2-02-2007 7:00 pm
I think that the most in'eresting thing in PJs review is the bit about the trailer.
I saw the trailer, ironically, on PBS (before Nature or something similar) and it got me excited. I'd need to see it again to remember why exactly, but the combo of music and the music-video style synched parallel action cuts of people rising was very cool and engaging.
In retrospect, it plays kind of like those epic old AT*T commericals: the archeologist is digging up some antiquity beneath an urban center, a monk is playing a gong in the Forbidden City, etc. This sort of global nostalgia for future worlds no one really believes in any more except in any positive sense except the ad people and dead sci-fi fanboys. (See the new ci*co ads for a similar take on "everything is connected.")
And then to discover that that sort of populist-futurist-utopian vibe actually doesn't manifest itself in the piece itself, well, hell.
Which goes exactly to your point about 90-foot x 5 video installations as being the self-righteous bastard step-child to the complete environmental pollution of Times Square. Can the medium of Big Ass Billboard ever surmount the message?
I guess I shall have to buy a hat, borrow a scarf, and sew up the holes in my pockets and go find out for meself.
- jinjc (guest) 2-02-2007 11:25 pm
line 2: please convert "say the trailer" to "saw"
and take and except or don't accept the primary except in line 7
media tree needs a post post media editor!
- j in jc (guest) 2-02-2007 11:28 pm
Not sure what you wanted re: line 7.
Let me know if you want a login.
- tom moody 2-02-2007 11:40 pm
I think you're so right... I went to see it the other night..
To me it felt 100% commercial... Like a dull version of Time Square!
Which was a shock... since CreativeTime is such a high quality organization.
- Mike @ ModernArtObsession.com (guest) 2-03-2007 5:38 am
Umm, not to take anything away from other arguments, but my (probably third) thought when I first heard about the project was to assume that any outdoor projection would probably have to be done during the winter months, since the sun sets as late as 9 pm in the middle of the summer. A late show would seem to present its own problems - for the museum and for many visitors.
Of course I myself haven't seen it yet, and I may not make it uptown in time. Actually, it doesn't really sound very compelling, perhaps because of my second thought: Why use movie stars? That one's now been pushed up to first thought.
- James Wagner (guest) 2-03-2007 6:45 am
it's worthwhile to note that my first preview of the project was in the form of advertising for it on the side of several MTA buses
- Jeff S (guest) 2-03-2007 2:57 pm