Videography Artist Research
Research Expectations:
In your sketchbook include: the artist name, birth/death date (if applicable), interesting facts about their work, watch at least one of their videos and comment on it (think about content, the way it was filmed, transitions, color, setting, filming, anything you notice), write down any ideas that the film inspires. Write down what the video was about and if possible, include thumbnail sketches of scenes.
William Kentridge
With his video "History of the Main Complaint" (1996) serving as a backdrop, William Kentridge discusses how artists draw upon tragedy as subject matter for their work and how drawing itself can be a compassionate act.
https://www.sfmoma.org/watch/beach-life-william-kentridge-and-tide-table/
https://www.mariangoodman.com/artists/49-william-kentridge/
Reference:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1oK5LMJ3zY
Cory Archangel
If Urban Outfitters made artists, then Cory Arcangel would likely be the product of their labors. This Brooklyn-based multimedia bro’s work deals with what he calls “the preservation of obsolete technology,” and obsessively harnesses the dubious power of everyone’s favorite font: Comic Sans MS. This translates to the hacking of old-school video games to comic effect, the programming of drum machines to play retro beats on loop and the creation of humorous YouTube collages – though admittedly, all with a palpable sense of warmth and affection for his subjects. His most famous work is Super Mario Clouds (2002), where he physically hacked a Nintendo Super Mario game cartridge so all that was visible are the clouds sailing lethargically against a backdrop of blue sky on loop. This allowed viewers to cloud-watch digitally, much in the same way they might do in “real life.” While the YouTube video merely shows the actual footage, when exhibited, the work was projected on many different screens at different heights and of different sizes, creating something surreally immersive. A few years later, he created the video collage a couple thousand short films about Glenn Gould (2007) , a masterpiece of editing which took clips of amateur musicians playing instruments on YouTube and spliced them together to create a reconstruction of the first of Johannes Sebastian Bach’s “Goldberg Variations.” This followed on from something arguably much more fun: a YouTube video that painstakingly edited together footage of cats walking on pianos to create Arnold Schoenberg’s classic atonal piano piece “Drei Klavierstücke.”
Reference:
(https://www.highsnobiety.com/p/best-video-artists/)
Andrew Thomas Huang
Not many artists can count Lost creator J.J. Abrams as a fan of their early work. That said, not many artists have produced a debut film that was nominated for Best of YouTube in 2007 and watched by over six million people. Huang’s breakout film Doll Face is equal parts inventive and unsettling, acting as a searing (if not exactly subtle) critique of the influence TV has on our self-image. While Huang took a meeting with Abrams the day after graduating USC, he resolved to stick with the short film medium until he struck upon exactly the right subject for a longer feature. Since then, he’s directed adverts for brands like Google and Lexus and music videos for artists like Avi Buffalo and Delphic. After raising $8,000 via Kickstarter for a new art project, Huang directed the 10-minute technicolor short “Solipsist,” which won the 2012 Special Jury Prize for Experimental Short Film at Sundance and was an Official Selection at the San Francisco International Film Festival. Abrams isn’t Huang’s only famous fan. This year, he has spent most of his time collaborating with none other than Björk. The pair worked together on a 360-degree virtual reality video for her song “Stonemilker,” where viewers could interact with the video at MoMA PS1 in Long Island City or at the Rough Trade shops in London or New York/ There was also a moving album cover for Vulnicura and an intense ten-minute video for the single “Black Lake”.
Reference:
https://www.highsnobiety.com/p/best-video-artists/)
Hannnah Black
A standout piece is her film My Bodies (2014), which assembles audio clips of black female recording artists (Rihanna, Beyonce, Whitney, Ciara ) singing the phrase “my body” and lays them over a montage of images of wealthy white men (Black describes Googling the words “CEO” and “executive” to source the images). The images are so close up the viewer almost gets lost in their pores, creating a surreal, disjointed commentary on traditional biases surrounding race and gender.
Reference:
https://www.highsnobiety.com/p/best-video-artists/