'Reckless Behavior' 2006 Getty Film Short Event (slightly revised)
Having attended the Reckless Behavior short film presentation at the Getty Center, the montage of hyper active characters wearing colorful makeup (Ryan Trecartin’s short film ‘A Family Finds Entertainment’ (2004)), the shots of what people do with there bodies in relation to there environment (Patty Chang’s short film ‘Shaved (1998)), and the mundane acts of everyday life in these shorts left me feeling uneasy. Although all of the shorts were able to familiarize the spectator with a particular scenario, whether it was a women smiling while cutting the rope that supports the swing she is sitting on (Kate Gilmore’s short ‘Down, Smiling (2006)) or a young man getting piss drunk due to chugging 10 beers (Mike Long and Jesse Sugermann ’10 Beers in 10 Minutes’ (1998)), how the short films were represented purposely made familiar acts in everyday life unusual. Is this an act of protest that conveys a radical message or is the spectator made to feel so uneasy that the feeling of social consciousness never enters his or her mind? Are we in Los Angeles being given these images in the hope that our programmed way of looking at cinematic representation is altered forever?
Critically viewing a piece of art that is propelled and contained in the Getty(which is on a hill), distances the spectator. Art is to be observed. You must stand at least 2 feet away from the art, each genre of art has its own special event listing, and you along with the literati (depending on what event) get to witness the pleasures of art. Let’s not kid ourselves....... A revolution in the realm of art can be televised so that the middle class can feast their eyes on a mainstream representation of the object, packaged so that all levels of society can learn how to want it, and sold just like a Prada bag for every million dollar baby to wear while he or she claims to be more street. Instead of harping on the so-called revolutionary elements within the film shorts, the recurring themes of how people fetishize objects, destroy objects, and shots of how the body is degraded takes the viewer away from the normalcy of living in the extremities of everyday life. Since the author of this piece of writing wishes to stray away from the uplifting and orderly feeling that only baroque religious art can convey, lets move on to the event Reckless Behavior.
‘The family is poison!!!’ the mother of the character Skippy says in Ryan Trecartin’s short film ‘A Family Finds Entertainment’. After kissing his father, the character Skippy exaggeratedly says, “ Daaaaaaaaaddy you’re a revoluuuutionaaaary.” Skippy’s self-conscious reference to incest, how he interacts with his dysfunctional family, and how he wishes to be captured on film is familiar to the spectator. We have all seen shows like Married with Children right? Now, replace Bud Buddy with a gay male character, take away the network sensors, replace the mother with an older women, replace the father with a younger man, add some filmic skill, add self involved young people with colorful paint on their face, and you have Trecartin’s ‘ A Family Finds Entertainment.’
What is surprising about the short, is the way that Skippy uses humor in his exaggerated saying. His funny saying signals to the spectator that the short is conscious of how mainstream media exploits familial dysfunction and so called alternative lifestyles. The simple act of exploiting a taboo by capturing a son and father kissing on the big screen makes the audience fetishize what they are looking at. Instead of magnifying the seriousness of the issue by allowing the audience to fall into their own moral judgment as seen in the Springer Show, Skippy’s saying cuts that tension and makes fun of how the taboo is normally used in the media. The short’s loud colors (seen in the painted faces of its characters and set designs), and rapid fire shots, are similar to watching a Hype Williams video (Check out the video ‘Control Yourself’) or a fruit juice commercial. All and all, the short made me laugh and taught me how mainstream media conventions, that are bolstered as innovative, can be represented as unusual, idiotic, and usually contain a history of technique. Talk about your postmodern way of looking in an era where memory has no authentic location, and seeing is a multitasked function. Sounds familiar doesn’t it!
Now, imagine this short film. A Sex Pistol’s record is placed on a record player. Once it’s placed on the player, it starts to spin and the song ‘God Save the Queen’ plays. The spectator watches it spin several times. While the record spins, a person places gasoline on the it and sets it on fire. As the audience watches, they can also hear the record burning. The fire is extinguished and the short ends. Tom Dale’s ‘Back Seat Driver’ (2004) is a short that one could easily dismiss as destructive teen angst, but the general observation of how an object is destroyed takes the spectator away from the rapid shot media coverage of scenes of destruction (reminds me of the coverage of 9/11). The time involved in burning the record, allowing the audience to hear what it sounds like, and extinguishing the fire is all done in one long shot. The short signals to the audience that the act of destruction was planned with a beginning and an end. Now, why would anybody burn a record on film and ask the spectator to watch? Why not? Ever heard of a show called Jackass? Or ever seen an explosion on the news? Now, think about how that same explosion was planned and think about watching it in one long shot from beginning to end. Well, the media won’t let you see the process of an explosion because that would make the audience ask questions. The revolution is always televised on Fox, NBC, ABC, and CNN. Tom Dale exploits the viewer’s general assumptions about the representation of destruction and makes the viewer uneasy by making her watch a one shot short.
One of the most disturbing shorts that begs the question why capture playing dead is ‘Where You’ll Find Me’ (2005) by Laurel Nakadate. The short is about a woman who pretends to be dead in the most elaborate ways and in different locations. Whether it is in the middle of train tracks or on a statue of an eagle, the woman literally shows the viewer how she stages death. Interestingly enough, in the middle of the short, the woman seems to stare at the audience while she pees standing up. Why does this scene exist? The short seems to mock playing dead. As the audience witnesses the woman stage her death, a good portion of them burst into laughter. The woman sometimes positions her death in isolated places and the reaction to her death in populated places is none existent. She invites people to stare and hopes that someone is paying attention. The shock of watching a woman stage her death on top of an eagle is almost as shocking as watching her piss on the big screen. She wants to get a rise out of the audience, but the problem is that the audience already finds her acts comical. The short is conscious of how the audience will react to the woman. Although we are use to seeing violent acts in the media on a regular basis, by the end of the short, the audience grew silent. One can definitely feel the uneasiness of watching the woman play dead, and the short ended with the woman continuously staging her death.
As of now, these shorts exist as a reminder to the viewer that the routines in everyday life like working yourself to death or having a ravenous need to buy products does not have to be normal. The level of technique and social consciousness in the film shorts provide the viewer with humor taken in to the realm of late capitalism. An age where every part of the body is used as a form of labor and seeing (in multifaceted ways) contributes to the buying and selling of images. The familiar themes within the shorts taken in to the realm of the avant-garde would cause the viewer to dismiss this type of art as boring or unimpressive.
If this is the case, we have to question what our definition of what art is and I am willing to bet it has humanistic properties. We have to be able to distinguish art as a form that is particular to a time and place. Instead basing our criteria of art on a humanistic religious form that had a very different purpose, and style than postmodern art, we must be critical of all artistic styles. Art in the realm of late capitalism aims at showing viewesr how supply and demand works. A world where identity is sought after through commodity fetish, and information is purposely represented in fragments. If new representations of the body and commodities foster the supply and demand in an economic system, we do not have to be taught how to distinguish between the value of an arm vs. the value of a pair of shoes. All we have to do is learn how to need things.
In this case, the shorts in Reckless Behavior intend on capturing art specific to late capitalism ( I am tempted to describe this age and how we have all inherited a multiple personality disorder, but I'm going to save this for another time or untill someone asks me). In depicting the destruction of everyday objects, the art form is conveying that we can pluralize the significance between objects being destroyed along side images of bodies being degraded on the big screen. This type of pluralization through looking is a normal occurences to us.
Each short (classified as part of an ‘aesthetics of risk’)conveys a feeling of uneasiness associated with normal everyday acts in order to take the viewer away from the barrage of messages given to her in the everyday. The film shorts, especially being displayed at the Getty, allows the spectator to form a conclusion based on what is being seen. The general uneasiness that the audience feels also reminds them that acts of destruction are not simply random occurences, but orchestrated spectacles. The feeling of uneasiness leads the spectator to question what is being shown, and maybe if were lucky, allows the viewer to relate the construction of film images with everyday life. This is a start that will hopefully propel the viewer to think about what forces (world politics= gender, race, class) construct and represent media images. Isn’t this all we can ask for when viewing art? In this case and this time, you better believe it!