C.O.P.S. class notes: Hello/Goodbye 07/17/11

B. Zedan
I'm a blank image because this stupid WP layout is stupid and makes an ugly forced image if I'm not here

I’m taking classes at the Conceptual Oregon Performance School this summer and I’m a huge nerd. Here are my notes from class and related links. This is a video based class so the majority of the links are videos.

Class notes/discussion topics:

  • Initial aspects of endurance: impressing others, consistently topping oneself or others.
  • Endurance as viewer: How long will you watch?
    • Once you’ve seen/watched it, you “get” it.
    • Question of the necessity of watching a long form piece in entirety.
      • [see Andy Warhol’s “Sleep”, from the YouTube comments: “imagine this 10 minute clip lasting 5 hours, yeah, crazy shit”]
  • Watched the San Diego Zoo’s Polar Cam while class read “A Hunger Artist” aloud.
      • [apparently the live cams at night are soothing/interesting, just barely seen waterfalls, abstract night vision]
    • Shift from initial interest in spectacle to boredom.
    • Longer work looses you from finite time frames, allowing you to come and go.
  • Everybody can smash a guitar on their head. (Chunky smashes guitar on head) So why do/imitate it?
    • Documenting assholery.
      • Bas Jan Ader, Fall 1 [watched last class]
      • CKY Roof Fall [not a good example, but their early work does reference the masculine body work of folks like Ader]
    • Public interest hasn’t waned, but the bar has risen.
    • Memetic ability
    • Cover band: take a piece of something that is popular/powerful
  • Why watch it?
    • Atrocity tourism: this is terrible, do you see how terrible.
    • Why else?
  • Günter Brus: Vienese Actionists, 1965 action
  • Documenting the challenge, the dare, Guinness Book of World Records
  • Japanese game show, “Pass the Critter”
  • Sidebar: Shepard Fairey Obey Giant Mayday Jeffrey Deitch
  • Criss Angel Mindfreak

 

Miscellany:

  • During the guitar smash video it was remarked that the room “was perfect” and agreed that to create that same space on purpose for use in a video piece would be difficult. Set dressing is, like costuming, a surprisingly detailed and involved process. It takes work to make something have natural looking detail that informs the piece. Note the falconry (and “avian control” van in the foreground pint-balancing video. You can’t make that shit up.
  • WTF video source: Found Footage Festival
  • WTF video and edited video source: Everything is Terrible
  • WTF edited video source: Four four
  • Supercuts can be definite viewer endurance, due to repetitiveness