Week 7: Tues. Mar. 2

1. Watch the videos and read about the works below.
2. Write notes on videos based on questions below.

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Make notes on two of the above videos. What strikes you in each of them? Describe the ways artists use the media of video technologies to create affecting experiences for viewers. How would the works be different if these media were not used? What do you think the conceptual prompts/instructions were for the performers?

Michelle Pearson Clarke

SUCK TEETH COMPOSITIONS

Suck Teeth Compositions (After Rashaad Newsome)

3channel, HD video installation with sound. 16×9 format, 9:47. 2018

• Sounds like linguistic performances.
• Explores issues of Black authorship, appropriation, identity and belonging by conducting choirs of women or colour
• Nonverbal gestures and vocalizations
• Suck teeth comes responds to and extends the shade compositions.
• Sucking teeth is an everyday oral gesture shared by Black people of African and Caribbean origin and their diasporas.
• Sucking teeth is west African in origin
• It signifies a wide range of negative affects. Irritation, disapproval, disgust, disrespect, anger and frustration.
• African-American blackness has a form of authority in the mainstream and how POC experience is understand to mass culture.
• From watching the video it does seem as if the teeth sucking signifies frustration.

What strikes me about this video is my own unawareness of this teeth sucking gesture. Watching so many people go through it in the video makes me thinking that this is a common thing ( which the caption says it does.) I also liked that it extended a previous project, drawing out the signing ace it and kind of added another layer of meaning -Michelle Pearson Clarke is adding the list of Newsomes.

I don’t thinkThis project would have the same effect if it had been a photo series, or a print. I think having it a series of clips, as well as, multiple dividing the screen is effective because it projects a sense of multiplicity.

The conceptual prompts/instructions might have been to react to something with teeth sucking. Or maybe, to think of something that makes you do it.

Basil AlZeri

Basil AlZeri

The Mobile Kitchen Lab.

• Caption says that AlZeri invites guests to identify the Palestinian stories of land, resources and labour that are built into their recipes. So, their work is about identification, food, collaboration.
• Durational performance? Not recorded I bet.
• Instructions are provided by his mother, via skype.
• I think that using the camera to bring spaces together. In this instance, AlZeri is bringing the space his mother occupies and the art space he is performing. It is also interesting that the mother is informing his work. Like something of a tradional/ritual is being passed on.
• It is crucial that this is over Skype and caught in person, and not broadcasted over video. I think the conditions that AlZeri has set-up allows for a sense of urgency, and almost immediacy.

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Final Video:

Yes or No

“Yes or No” is a collaborative work that was conceived and organized by Claire, Emil and Myself. The video captures a tile layout that mimics Zoom group calls. Each square represents a participant who is asked a series of questions in which they can only answer with yes or no. They are to follow the questions in sequence. The questions asked are not tied to any theme.

For me, the responses reflect a dilemma of binaries. Most participants perform a general discomfort, especially when using yes or no fails represent their position to the question (parts of the questionnaire did not provide yes or no questions). The video also reproduces  a number of other things too, like contemplation  and irony.