| |
Syracuse or Bust
I almost went to Syracuse... I applied to the MFA program in Video Art (now it's Transmedia) after I broke up my girlfriend Cynthia two or three years ago. Going back to school seemed like a sensible thing to do and classy way of leaving town. But for reasons I won't really get into here, I decided to stick it out here in Vancouver.
Anyway, the application required a "statement of professional goals" and this is what I came up in response (if you've read the "manifesto" from 2003 you'll notice I have liberally plagiarized myself).
A SINCERE STATEMENT OF MY PROFESSIONAL GOALS -- 100% HONEST!
I make zines -- or that's how I got started, anyway. I was inspired by the writing, drawings and comics created and distributed by my peers in Vancouver (typically twenty-something, overeducated and underemployed). The basic philosophy behind zines is pretty straightforward: 1) anyone and everyone can make art (and should); and 2) anything you need, you can beg, borrow or steal.
* * *
I make videos. I've dabbbled in various genres: performance, documentary, narrative, "minimalist music videos" and experimental media deconstruction blooblah but in a way, they're all glorified home movies. I put together little compilations on VHS or video CD (the poor man's DVD) and basically give them away or exchange work with other artists. That's how I get to know people, and people get to know me.
I don't know why, but I seem to concentrate most of my attention on people I meet at work or through social circles. Maybe because it's other people that I'm really interested in -- real relationships rather than screenings in more exciting places I'll never go, or only visit for a day or two.
There are two ways to explain this: 1) think globally and act locally, 2) I like warm bodies.
* * *
So I get screenings at festivals and galleries and thousands of dollars in grants, yet I stubbornly persist in thinking of myself as outside the establishment, belonging to some kind of cultural underground. I've been seriously challenged on that stance. And the truth is, I'm tired of that worn-out pose.
After washing dishes, digging ditches, driving a delivery truck, moving furniture, phtocopying real estate brochures, walking racehorses, whoring in the film industry, and raking leaves off the lawns of rich people, I long to be a student again. And someday, if I play my cards right, I want to teach.
I used to joke that BFA = Bachelor of Fuck All
And MFA = More Fuckin' Authority
Now that I'm thirty-five, I'll take More Fuckin' Authority, please and thank you.
* * *
In a perfect world, there wouldn't be a difference between being a student and a teacher. In this imperfect world that we live in, grad school is a pretty good compromise. The challenge -- my professional goals, if you want to put it that way -- is to maintain my sense of self within an institutional setting, and cultivate the social environment in which creativity can flourish for myself, as in Vancouver by my slacker buddies. Yeah, in a way, all we did was do drugs, listen to music and watch movies, and talk talk talk all night long. But we bonded, and learned to take care of each other, and nursed each other out of our prolonged adolescence into something more closely resembling adulthood.
* * *
For the purpose of this statement, I will venture to define an artist as someone who seeks unconditional love from total strangers. You have to be sort of polyamorous... not quite content with the love you did or didn't get from your family, perhaps not even fully satisfied with the loving embrace of your Significant Other.
I used to think of art as something akin to masturbation: basically just loving yourself. But recently (as I've matured and managed to wean myself off of pornography somewhat, and awkwardly struggle to love another warm body) I think that art is about relationships. After getting over the novelty of discovering my own voice, I long for a conversation and not an empty echo of praise or criticism. Ultimately, I want to share the kind of transformative effect of art I have experienced, its sort of orgasmic potential. I hope that what I'm trying to do with my work in video is in evidence in this statement: I'm trying to find a way to speak directly, honestly and meaningfully with an audience.
Even if that is just one person.
Like you.
--- Meesoo Lee ---
...................................
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
| |
Sorry Not A Winner
I was walking home from the racetrack when I got the idea for "everlasting" scratch & win lottery tickets... Following some curious impulse, I bought some scratch & win tickets and had them laminated all on one block of East Hastings. It was kind of an obvious joke, and I was initially just grateful to have something "I did" to give away. And it was appealingly cheap, i thought. Art for a buck. And I really mean, art that cost _me_ a buck, more or less. I'm used to giving work away because video has been so cheap and easy to copy but recently my "art is free" philosophy has been somewhat challenged by making objects that are either limited in number or more labour-intensive. (I still like to give things away but I have to be more judicious so that ultimately the works are valued as gifts, rather than just free stuff.)
Anyway, I was thinking about the value of scratch & win tickets in terms other than money. Luck, hope, faith, desire, freedom, escape: cheap dreams. I thought about laminating the tickets as a way to preserve, and elevate, those non-material values. And what about the losers? I started digging through the garbage for discarded scratch and win tickets. I observed that whether they were left neatly in piles or half-scratched, crumpled or ripped, they carried the marks of loss, resignation, frustration and bitter disappointment. How funny/sad, the fall from commodity to garbage in an instant, like the pop of a balloon. I thought I might laminate the losers too, until I realized that they'd be nicer as buttons, almost hermetically sealed in a mylar bubble.
Digging through the garbage, and having fun doing it, was weirdly liberating. I had to laugh at myself for feeling anticipation at bending down to trash level, and the thrill of victory if i found a handful at once. For a few weeks, I could not walk down the street without succumbing to the compulsion to check the garbage of convenience stores. At first, I was just greedy. Then, later I became more discriminating, a slightly more discerning collector (much preferring the evocative "Sorry, No Gold" to the more perfunctory "No Win This Time"). And then I got jaded -- I had so many, I'd seen it all and I couldn't possibly save 'em all, that it was becoming meaningless. It was a good time to quit.
I gave away over a hundred buttons. I let people take their pick. I'd like to think I found good homes for a lot of unwanted babies, preserved a piece of paper that fell from the flights of fancy to the gutter... saved from the graveyard where cellophane cigarette wrappers, take-out coffee cups, chewing gum and cigarette butts go to die.
|
.........................
26 Nov 2006
 |
NEWS FLASH
Meesoo Lee, an unemployed 36-year old man living in Vancouver, BC, Canada has completed work on an all-white Rubik's Cube -- the only one known to exist in the entire world. "It was very satisfying and I'm happy with the end result," he said. Lee insisted that he could not have completed the work while holding down a regular job.
The project required at least seven Rubik's Cubes and a tube of Instant Krazy Glue. In the early stages of the process, Lee cut his hand while using an Olfa knife to remove the coloured plastic tiles. The plastic tiles frequently snapped in pieces or cracked while being removed, making it necessary to purchase an additional cube to provide a sufficient number of undamaged white tiles. "It would have been a lot easier if they made 'em with different coloured stickers, like on the old Rubik's Cubes that I remember growing up with," said Lee. In spite of cost overruns the total budget remained under $15. Art historians could neither confirm nor deny that the estimated value of the completed work may be as high as $1,000,000 (CDN).
The Rubik's Cube, originally invented by Hungarian professor of architecture Erno Rubik in 1974, is considered to be a material representation of some complex mathematical principles, as well as a tremendously popular puzzle for children and adults worldwide. However, Lee claims his all-white Rubik's Cube has no practical value. "I've been saying I'm an artist for years, and hopefully, this proves it."
|
|
|
Manifesto (circa 2003)
"Why Video Art Is Great And Everyone Should Love It (And Me)." *
-----
(ahem)
I enjoy being a video artist when I am getting grants or screenings, and sometimes when I am ego-surfing on the net it seems like a kind of accomplishment, even something cool. But secretly I am embarrassed, even ashamed that this is all I have managed to accomplish with my time and effort. I am more brilliant than that! I know it!
I could argue that video is simply not appreciated as an art form but the truth is that "video art" is not that demanding. It's not as hard as drawing realistic hands and faces, or chiselling a slab of marble into the soft contours of human flesh. You don't need years of dance training or have to have the perfect body. It's so easy. Any fool can make a video. But then why is so much of video art so bad?
I think so much of video art is bad because 1) people feel that they have to work hard at something in order for it to have some kind of value (aesthetic or material) and 2) because it is "art." Why do we have to work hard at something to make it worth doing? Because we are no good. And because we want to be loved, and only good people deserve love.
Maybe there's something to be said for having technique, craft... there should be rewards for effort, determination and discipline and all that. But as far as aesthetics are concerned, most video art that has been laboured over too long winds up looking like Frankenstein's monster -- a clumsy and grotesque "experiment", an aesthetic abomination patched together with bits and pieces of dead matter (theory, inappropriate literary and cinematic conventions, graphic design, dance, poetry and other artistic flourishes) -- a soup of bad art. It's amazing how much garbage you can throw into a single-channel video -- and people will have to sit there and watch it!
That's the power and pitfall of a time-based medium. Since you've often got the audience in your clutches, it's tempting to think that you can force feed them. But you can't. You don't really have a captive audience unless you are a seducer. Of course, it helps to be funny or have something interesting to say, and sometimes I think you can get pretty far with good looks or a catchy song. So why does video art have to be "art"? The answer is, it doesn't.
Apparently, it's not enough for art to be pretty, it also has to be smart (= arty). I guess I would tend to agree that art (and artists) should be smart, but then I was also brainwashed into believing that art has to be "critical". It's not really true, but the more people who believe it leaves all the more grants and teaching jobs for the rest of us brainiacs. Some people are more inclined to be critical viewers than others -- so what? -- they probably had an unhappy childhood. Some of the best and purest video art (on television) is being made by complete morons. Video has to be engaging or entertaining or people won't watch (or if they have to watch, they won't care). Anything and everything from pretty flowers to atomic explosions can be "engaging" but it really helps if there is something at stake for the viewer for taking the time to notice or care or have an opinion which counts. The viewer (or the audience, or God) has to be allowed to experience something and be fully in possession of it. If your viewers consistently report that they didn't "get" what you were trying to communicate then you have failed. The audience has to "get it." They don't necessarily have to understand what "it" is and "it" may even be an experience that they may desire to conceal from other people as much as share (eg., incestuous desires, rape fantasies) but they have to experience something directly as a result of watching the video be it laughter, tears, impotent rage, desire, loss or pity. (Those are some of the popular ones... you get bonus points for "nameless" feelings that you can't quite articulate). The experience of the work is what the work is, not what the work is about.
It's easy to fuck it up. It's easy to put in lots of arty content and to assume that your video will be art because it is (obviously) about art. It's also easy to get in the way by wanting too much to impress, to be understood or appreciated or admired -- having too much to say. I don't think the audience is really interested in what the artist has to say. They want a good show, or maybe they want to confront an unpleasant truth for themselves... And it's tempting to believe that a thorough and exhaustive explanation of the work (it's "interpretation") is what qualifies it as art. But if your audience feels restless or bored or is vchecking their watches (not a good sign) then that's really what the work is... it's the experience of it, not your excuse for it. The experience is what was shared and that's what all those hard-earned taxpayers dollars went to waste for. And that's why most people leave video art alone: it generally sucks.
I believe, and want to support the idea, that an artist can be (is) essentially selfish and egocentric. C'mon: we all care what other people think and we all want to be loved. Artists are needy, needy people. Even the most annoying performance artist just wants a hug and a shoulder to cry on. Money is an acceptable substitute in some cases but the unconditional love of strangers is the real thing (I won't concern myself with the kind of love that takes place between two people here -- I don't know anything about that). An artist needs an audience, even a single someone else to care (not including friends and family). And it's not enough to have someone watch your stupid video and to simply like it -- they have to love it. It's unfortunate, but it's never enough just have someone just like your work, they have to love it. In fact, a volley of rotten tomatoes is preferable to lukewarm applause, but only because it hurts not to be loved, and sometimes it is easier to accept that you are clearly and unambiguously unloved than to come so close to the possibility of love that you become painfully aware of its deficiency. A video artist needs an audience the way a tree falling in the forest needs ears for its demise to have any meaning. You want people to cry at your funeral, don't you?
It's a vulnerable position to be in, needing an audience... so it helps to be a prostitute. Not so much of a prostitute as an entertainer or a stand-up comedian (now there's a profession that must really suck) but a little bit of a prostitute. It's okay. There's no shame in prostitution. You have to keep the customer satisfied and the best you can do is be picky about who you have to please. So I'm keeping grad school open as a possibility. It might mean turning my back on the screaming hordes of pre-teen girls who are my primary fan base for a more mature audience, but the consignment sales of my last video compilation weren't quite up to the numbers I was expecting anyway. Perhaps I am ready to grow up and in need of a make-over.
I am stubbornly sticking to this premise: having an audience is what makes you an artist, and gives your life and work as an artist meaning. It follows that having a good relationship with your audience is a necessary condition of your well-being. You are a slave and worthless when you are bad, and a child star blessed with super powers when you are good. You practically don't exist as an artist without an audience. If you don't have a real audience then sometimes an imaginary one will do, but don't kid yourself: you want to be the goose who lays golden eggs, not the emperor without any clothes. But that said, I would rather have an imaginary audience (who loves me) than an actual audience of people who are presumed to be smarter and more authoritative than me, who may freely punish or occasionally dispense encouraging pats on the back (grad school). I'm easily threatened by people who are smarter than me and as I mentioned earlier, I'm not too fond of authority, except for the type that walks in stiletto heels. See, I am pathetic and sexist. And I am just going to get worse with age. Or maybe I will get less horny and learn to become more forgiving of myself and others as I get older. But in any case, I will probably always remain essentially neurotic. After all, I wouldn't be making videos if I didn't need to compensate for my social, emotional and sexual inadequacy. It should come as no surprise that pornography and smoking dope are my frequent vices. (I find that they go together really well.) Making videos is probably the best way for me to redeem my regressive tendencies. I'd be a complete loser (but not entirely unhappy) if all I did was get high and jack off but the guilt of watching TV for a few hours is worse than a really bad hangover. Making a video is something pleasurably absorbing and productive. It might only be an extension of the desire to watch more TV, but I'm an image addict and I have to watch something. With the magic of computers, images can be manipulated very easily but it's not really about control... it's about the moment you can give up control and retreat back to the comfortable position of being a voyeur again. I sit back and watch my own videos over and over and think each one is a little masterpiece. I love each and every one of them, even the ones that obviously suck. And by extension, I think I am learning to love myself (and that's what my work is really about and why I do it).
It gets kind of lonely in my little bubble, being the president and only member of my own fan club and all, so I really do have to get other people to watch my videos. If they don't like them then I have to find people who will like them, or make better videos, cause I have to live and work and shop for groceries and buy shoes in the real world, which can be a cruel and unforgiving place. So I like being a video artist well enough -- I'm thirty-two years old and I have to be proud of something -- but who wouldn't rather be a great dancer or the director of big budget movies with lots of special effects? I have to admit, it's purely out of self-defense that I make the claim (right here, right now) that VIDEO IS THE MOST EXCITING AND CHALLENGING ART FORM OF OUR TIME. Because as far as I'm concerned, there's only two kinds of art: my stuff and everything else. And my stuff is better. And if I'm wrong, and I'm not so hot after all, then I might really be a loser, now and forever, just as i feared in high school. Oh well... if I have to, I can always teach.
------
* I began writing this piece coming down from E before midnight on New Year's Eve 2002 and finished at approximately 8:30 am on January 1, 2003. I calculate that I must have listened to "Hey Jude" continuously at least 72 times for more than eight and a half hours straight. It's a great song. |
|
|
