This is not a time for metaphors
Shortfilm – Multi-Channel – Work in Progress
The artist Andrea Fraser said that in these times of exaggerated and distorted political spectacle, art should not be poetical and metaphorical, but factual and understated.
In one of the short-films of this multi-part work I collage contradictory layers of meaning to ask what should be done with art in these times. What form should social commentary take? Another short-film is a theatrical introduction to the first short-film. The author of the movie (as an imperfect stand-in for any author of social commentary) is himself disclosed and opened to further scrutiny.
Over a general mood of imminent danger texts from (mostly) psychoanalytically inclined social theorists, literary writers, art-historians and journalists from the past hundert and twenty years are spoken. Their ideas are slightly distorted, so that they mean that metaphorical language and imagery is one of the main ills of our times, opening society up for manipulation and exploitation. My drawings in acrylic ink after woodprints by Kuniyoshi refer to suggestive and symbolic use of imagery. The contradiction between message and form expresses my own ambivalent attitude towards the question of metaphor.
| media: |
1 video with sound (HD, 9:45); animation with acrylic ink drawings; 1 video with sound (HD, 9:05) |
| project start: | april 2018 |
| public presentations (all versions, old and new): |
jun 2020: “For” group show, milieu, bern |
| links: |
short-film nr. 1 on vimeo (link to excerpt – non-final version): https://vimeo.com/292597816 short film nr.2 on vimeo (link to full version — excerpt is visible on this page) “Introduction” as a performance before a film screening: |
| credits: | nairs zentrum für gegenwartskunst, sattelkammer bern, moritz sommet (japanology background on kuniyoshi) |
