Knitting and Video Art

Here is Arwen, blocking the migratory path hundreds of Lara Cameron geese. I'm more than halfway through the sleeve now, which feels nice. I've cast off the shoulder bit (the part of the front that becomes the hood is still live, then the shoulder is cast off, then the sleeve is still being knit. Weird, eh?) I think I'm going to put together a tute on fixing complex cables, as I've done nine in total now, and feel quite the expert. Contrary to what other tutes say, you don't need to drop both cables down to where they cross. Dropping one works plenty fine.

Now, for an aside. See, thing is, a bunch of units on postmodernism down and I still have trouble with video art. I just don't like it. There is an awful lot of bad video art around, and bad video art is worse than bad still art, because bad video art makes you keep watching in the hope that it will somehow turn good. The Histrionics (or here) wrote a painfully apt satire called 'Video Art', to the tune of Horror Movie. The chorus ran 'Video art, right there on the TV... and it's boring me right out of my brain.'

The worst piece of art I ever saw in a gallery was an array of of broken pallets scattered on the floor, with two TVs on top of two pallets. One TV played a loop of a shot of an empty road in the desert, the other played a loop of the artist dressed as a scarecrow dancing awkwardly in front of a bluescreen to the tune of 'If Only I Had A Brain', from the The Wizard of Oz. Short of unkind remarks about the aptness of the song, I honestly have no idea what the artist was exploring, or trying to communicate to me.

Anyway, my point is that this video (beware! movie with sound load automatically!) is what makes video art worthwhile. I don't particularly care for the song (should I know the band? Blonde Redhead?), but the clip. It's beautiful. I think it's about limitations and possibilities. It works with the limitations and possibilities of film to create the work. Just when you think you can predict the next pose, the director snatches away to something else. It explores the limitations and possibilities of the human body. It's both static and dynamic. It's aesthetically interesting and attractive. It's imperfect - the artist shakes - just like us. I adore it.