Archive for the ‘hayleysilverman’ Category

Friday, May 28th, 2010

Surveying the American Cultural Habitat by Hayley Silverman is a video composed of a short clip appropriated from a Bollywood musical which the artist slows down, plays in reverse, plays in forward motion again, and, then, in reverse again in an endless loop.

The action of this slowed down, reversed, and endlessly looped clip involves a South Asian woman holding a video camera in front of her face as she slides horizontally into the middle of the frame, removes her eye from the camera viewfinder (which is pointed directly at “us,” the viewers of the clip) and, then, smiles at “us” in a sort of half-awed, half-patronizing gesture of approval.

Also, the soundtrack of the video is a piece of music which is itself slowed down, played, reversed, and looped, resulting in a low, ominous undercurrent to this otherwise brightly colored and happy imagery.

As one begins to view through this loop, perhaps the first thing one tries to do is rationally understand it—to deconstruct all of these elements described above and, then, piece them back together into a satisfying story.

For example, the collision of the anthropological-sounding title—Surveying the American Cultural Habitat—with imagery involving a South Asian woman pointing a video camera back at “us,” the viewers of the clip, might lead one to say that the work is in some sense, anyway, inverting the practice of “othering” back out to the “American” viewer who is watching the clip.

It is not the “American” who is surveying her cultural habitat; but she who is surveying the “American” cultural habitat.

Perhaps.

But, as one continues to view through the repetitions of the loop, one may realize two additional things:

1. First of all, as one watches the repetition of the clip, one’s understanding changes each time—each repetition involves the present experience of the clip—yes—but also both the viewer’s ever-increasing past understandings of the clip as well as their future predictions for their understandings of the clip.

Thus, each time one views through the loop, one experiences a different clip with a different understanding which it affords.

2. And, second, due to this continuous change in understanding, it becomes difficult to assume that any effort at rationally understanding the clip will ever come to any ultimate fruition.

Every time one thinks they understand it, the next time one views through the loop, that understanding is mutated by the experience of comparing the understanding to the actual viewing of the clip.

And, at that point, one might catch on to another level of understanding in the work:

What the viewer is show to be othering here is (in its own way) the video itself.

By looking at the work in the hopes of decoding it, dissecting it like a forensics report, one is going to miss it every time as it continuously slips out of one’s grip.

As such, one’s attempts to understand the work must then be conducted with a certain humbleness—an automatic understanding that no understanding is final.

Friday, May 21st, 2010

Pre-Sensation by Hayley Silverman is an approximately four minute video in which one views a  laser pointer track over the projected image of another video which itself depicts rhythmic hand-held camera movements over sculptures representing “natural” forms and abstracted nude bodies.

The motion of the laser pointer here is composed of improvised, arcing motions which reflect the improvised, arcing motions of the camera over the sculptures depicted in the projected video.

Additionally, the video is paired with an improvised jazz score by a band named “Willendorf” and is also intercut at one point with several shots of a male sculptor as he washes the dirt from one of his sculptural tools and, then, from his hands.

Silverman’s movements with the laser pointer are legible as a sort of pre-intellectual, pre-sensational sensuality harmonizing with the shapes of the sculptural forms.

The fact that she is pointing her laser beam and her camera lens all over these sculptures, though, is not a neutral gesture.

Rather, the aggressive scopophilia on view here in which the laser and camera ogle over representations of breasts, thighs, penises, and asses is an act of primitivist othering which mirrors and, thus, brings to the forefront, these sculptures’ own participation in this process.

That is to say, as one views the laser pointer and camera scope-out these sculptures as if they were sexual conquests, one feels, perhaps, empathy with them as in—hey, you’re basically raping it with your eyes instead of considering the object as an equal being.

In turn, the sculpture’s own problematic relationship to idealizations of otherness is, then, almost unavoidably brought to the forefront of one’s view on the work.

The history of primitivism in 20th century art, after all, (of which the sculptures depicted in this video are in sincere dialogue) is (it is widely thought) premised on an illusion in which non-Western cultures are presumed to be closer to nature and, thus, more pure than self-loathing technologically-tainted Western cultures.

What was intended as praise for these cultures, is received—in reality—as the worst kind of imperialism in which anyone outside of Western culture is reduced to a myth or a symbol of purity—that is, non-existent (or if  existent, then existent only in order to serve as a reflection for Western culture).

Now, it’s important to emphasize the fact that the performance here is intercut with images of a white, male sculptor (ostensibly the sculptor of these sculptures) as he washes the dirt of the sculptural process off of his tools and hands.

By including this particular footage, Silverman both upsets the rhythmic flow of the performance, as well as nudges one’s view on the work towards the fact that the sculptures here were created by a white male artist as an instance of primitivist art.

Additionally, the fact that the name of the band who scored the video’s improvisatory jazz score—“Willendorf”–is presumably taken from the twenty-four thousand year old nude sculpture, the Venus of Willendorf, also nudges one in this direction.

As such, the performance’s physicality and sensuality activate one part of one’s mind, while the artist’s careful critical framing of this very physicality and sensuality, activates another part, a counterpoint, calling into question its own premises.