MODULE 5 LECTURE CONTENT: Collage, FILM + VIDEO REMIX

The collage-images below are by artist + writer William Yu. These might not meet the typical visual expectation of “collage”, however, they work with deconstruction and re-assembling in ideas + concepts the same way that more “visible” collages deconstruct and re-assemble images. The really compelling thing about these artworks - in my opinion - is that they work on a visual AND conceptual level. Yu is deconstructing classic films and in iconic visuals from the original films, replacing white actors with contemorary Asian-American+ Pacific-Islander (AAPI) and South Asian-American identified actors. This process both points out the lack of AAPI and South Asian-American representation in US film culture, and creates a vision of what that inclusion and representation could look like. Yu’s work will be covered more in depth below, and also in one of the Module 5 readings (also linked below).

Module 5 URL Reading Links - Same Content as Posted in Canvas, just original web format. Use if network connection is not an issue.

Remixing Gender - Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
New York Times - Why Do Asian-Americans Remain Largely Unseen in Film and Television?

INTRODUCTION

Picking up from last week, we explored the practice of film re-creations or remakes, and talked about how this approach relates to - and overlaps with - video and film remix. This week, we will be exploring film and narrative remix more in-depth, and examining how remix intersects with time in its affect on viewers and the possibility spaces it creates. Much like remakes and re-creations, remixes work with existing images, visual languages and/or known narratives.

With true remix, these existing works are deconstructed in some way - cut, altered, defaced, transformed, etc - and then recombined in a way that creates new meaning in their reassembled form. This new form retains some meaning of the original components, but the way they are reconfigured, in most cases, changes that original meaning. These new meanings are interpreted and read by the viewer - in many cases, these produce to what I call a re-imagining.

This term refers to the narrative that is produced by the viewer’s imagination in order to resolve the new meanings presented by a remixed artwork. In this way, these remixed works act as a type of conceptual time machine - they are capable of changing past associations to existing visual artworks or known narratives, which can lead to new possibilities for imagining and moving into the future. Don’t worry if this doesn’t quite make sense yet, the rest of the lecture and this weeks readings will be discussing examples of this phenomenon.

COLLAGE + 2D REMIX

Before continuing to discuss recreations and remixes, I will introduce one major precursor to video remix: visual 2D collage. This, along with audio remix, have directly informed the practice of video and film remix. There is certainly some overlap with visual collage and audio collage and remix, but they are distinct enough that we will explore the history of audio remix and its precursors - coded songs an hymnals, jazz, improvisation and sound systems - next week. I just want to be sure to clarify that even though we are discussing them at slightly different points in the course, none of these forms of collage or remix developed completely independently.

Visual collage was explored heavily by the Dadaist movement in Europe in the 1920s, and continued by the Surrealist movement in the mid 1920’s. This movement grew out of the reactions to the impact of WWI, as well as the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic. European artists experienced first-hand the destruction and human costs resulting from industrialized warfare. WWI was the first major war that utilized things like machine guns, tanks, airplanes and chemical weapons. It was also the first war to be photographed extensively, and these visuals were widely shared via newspapers utilizing advancements in printing technology and distribution.

Dadaism grew out of the social "rejection" of war as a product of "civilization" + "culture”. Many of these artists took components that symbolized this type of mainstream culture and technology - such as advertisements, newspaper clippings or other mass-produced images - physically cut them up, and then re-assembled them in ways that appeared non-sensical and abstract. From this perspective, the act of collage breaks down these symbols, and turns them into new symbols to express new meanings in the viewer’s imaginations. How do the artworks below correlate with this idea, and these writings by Dada artists:

“Dada wished to replace the logical nonsense of the men of today with an illogical nonsense,” - Gabrielle Buffet-Picabia

“The beginnings of Dada…were not the beginnings of art, but of disgust.”
-Tristan Tzara.

Contemporary Visual Collage + Remix

In most cases, contemporary visual collage does not relate directly to WWI, but the effects of deconstruction and recombination are often the same. Many artists working with collage intentionally engage with specific media, images and/or narratives in order to express a critical social or political viewpoints. Through the practice of collage, the resulting artworks present the viewer with new understandings of these social or political issues, and also create a space for new possibilities to form. This is an example the re-imagining phenomenon put forth in the introduction.

Nikkolas Smith

Ruben Marquez @broobs.psd

Lorna Simpson

#STARRING JOHN CHO by William Yu

Below are collage artworks by William Yu that overlap with the remakes and recreations introduced last week. Yu created a project entitled #starringjohncho that incorporates images of the actor John Cho into film posters that he did not star in originally. The original actors starring in these films were predominately white, and Yu’s artworks are meant to bring attention to the lack of AAPI + South Asian American representation in mainstream US films and television shows, especially as main, protagonist characters. These collages work with known narratives and films - they function (with a US audience at least) on a few levels. If the viewer recognizes that John Cho did not star in the original film, the images present a question to explore - why did the artist decide to create this image? What status quo does this image challenge? And, if the viewer is not familiar with the film enough to know that John Cho did not star in it, they are presented with visual evidence of a re-imagined reality, where, in their minds, Cho was the lead actor in these films.

REMAKES AND RECREATIONS AS REMIX

The works of Yu and the other artists above relate to what you all did with your Module 4 Studio Projects. Remakes and re-creations can present an opportunity to include new elements and perspectives along with the original narrative. While I regard Ferris Bueller’s Day Off as an 80’s classic that is relatively timeless with a narrative that many different viewers could relate to, it is also very homogenous in terms of representation. By remaking this film in segments, each of your are able to combine your interpretation of the narrative and also include a much more diverse range of visual approaches, formats and even actors. The approach to this project, and the fact that so many different artists contributed to the remake, places this type of re-creation within the “remix” category as well. Viewing a known narrative in a new format, with a combination of new and old images, makes a space for viewers to imagine a new narrative and also question the noticeable differences between the two. This is very similar to the methodology Yu employs.

Recreations can also expand on its source material by providing alternative narrative for viewers to fill-in on their own. This can be achieved via changes in format, presentation, or through changing specific narrative circumstances. An example of this narrative re-imagining can be seen in the video short Breaking Bad: Canada Edition, below.

Here, the original narrative is re-examined and understood from a different perspective after being presented with an alternative narrative possibility / circumstance. In this way, both a new story is told, and an old story is seen from a new standpoint. This type of narrative re-examination can be further pushed by viewing films or TV series through an entirely different narrative format or structure.

This can happen, for example, when viewing a film as an in-person theatrical performance, or, as in the artworks below, an 8-bit Video Game. When viewing this video, consider how the change in format and presentation might communicate a new viewpoint or perspective.

REMIX + RE-IMAGINATION

In the last 10 - 15 years, digital video editing tools have made remix more accessible to artists and filmmakers. The videos below all fit squarely within the remix category, and include clip compilations, memes, mashups and other forms of digital recombination. While these types of video collage and remix are often comical and/or absurd, consider how they also work to create completely new narratives. What kinds of stories do you find yourself creating or expanding upon? Do they change the way you understand the original tropes, styles, stories and other remixed elements?

As evidenced above, many of these remixes or mashups take on a comedic approach. Humor, however, does not negate meaning or effectiveness. To me, these achieve a special level of the absurd that is both hilarious and engaging - I am laughing, but I am also understanding the tropes and structures utilized by romantic comedies and family-friendly sitcoms in new and different ways. These videos change the way I might watch a romantic comedy in the future - if a bit of editing and a different voice over can convince me that Clarice Starling and Hannibal Lecter are enjoying a happy romance in Silence of the Lambs, how much do I really trust or believe the relationships presented in any other romantic comedy?

Remixed Narrative Mash-ups

The videos below go a step farther with the form of remix by constructing completely new, long-form narratives completely from existing films clips and footage. In these examples, editing is key to communicating this new narrative, and each clip or cut contributes to part of a new story while still referencing its old story. This is another way that remix works with TIME - these clips exist in dual spaces and communicate multiple narratives simultaneously. While watching these narrative remixes, the viewer’s experience shifts back and forth between the new narrative / meaning and the original narrative / meaning. This constant flux creates its own possibility space, and is another way of achieving a potential re-imagining within viewers.

Christian Marclay’s The Clock

In 2011, artist Christian Marclay produced, directed and edited a film that was essentially a 24 hour remix similar to the super-cuts above. Marclay compiled a film with clips that featured time or a clock in hundreds of feature films, presented in the chronological timespan of a single 24-hour day. The narrative element in this remix is directed by the passage of time, and this generates its own unique narrative. Before watching the introductory video below, consider the process and undertaking required to produce this film - not only did Marclay edit together 24 hours of footage from clips under a minute long, he also needed to locate these clips among an enormous archive of original sources.

Watch 1 or 2 of the excerpt clips below

Watch this video: Christian Marclay on Time, Perception and Remix

Political / social remix

PAUL MILLER

To conclude this module lecture, I’d like to discuss a few remixes that have a directly stated social / political goal. While the remixes above touch upon many different themes and perspectives, and present viewers with new possibilities, these remixes work within a very specific framework to achieve a desired, intentional outcome.

Paul Miller AKA DJ Spooky uses remix to explore the powerful effects that film can have on an audience. In his project “ReBirth of a Nation”, Miller “remixed” the film Birth of a Nation, originally directed by D.W. Griffith in 1915 (and briefly discussed in Module 3.) This film, which was the first feature length film produced and shown in the US, used the purported narrative of post-Civil War families to present a propaganda film aimed at dehumanizing Black Americans and perpetuating violent stereotypes. Even at the times of its release, the film was heavily criticized for blatant racism and idealizing the Ku Klux Klan. While many protested its release, others celebrated it, and this film became a point of contention that incited even more violence against oppressed people of color in the US at the time.

Referencing the current political climate of 2017, Miller decided to revive this project, entitled Rebirth of a Nation, which he originally began in 2004. Using remix as a conceptual principle in this work, as well as many of his other works, Miller talks about using remix and collage in order to both clarify and identify different systems of oppression operating within our society and culture, and also provide methods for dismantling them. Part of this deconstruction sometimes involves creating something else - a new narrative, or a new idea - but not always a fully realized “solution”. This type of work can be challenging to view - if needing more context, link to an insightful Atlantic article here.

Jon McIntosh

Jon McIntosh’s Gender Remixer is an interactive media project that creates mashups of commercials for products aimed at girls and boys. The combinations produced are often hilarious, but the juxtapositions also challenge the mainstream ways in which commercial advertising reinforces gender roles and stereotypes. In highlighting these absurdities, these remix artworks point out different norms and constructs to challenge, which connects back to the Dadaist collages from the beginning of lecture. In this deconstruction and dismantling, a new space is created for change and possible transformation, starting in the viewer’s imagination. This is a core component of remix, which will continue to be explored next week.

http://www.genderremixer.com/