As I was working on an installation concept I came across Laura Cumming’s article in the Guardian. I was thinking about the way we are currently describing “lean back” vs “lean forward” experiences as approaches to content consumption. Should the installations be “lean back” or “lean forward”?
What is the difference between an art film and an art-house film? You might say it all depends on the work. But a film critic of my acquaintance insists that it has nothing to do with art forms and everything to do with audiences and what they are prepared to endure. What the gallery-goer will watch with credulous reverence, he says, is precisely what no cinema audience would ever accept.
His definition stands to some extent. Not many cinema-goers would tolerate the poor lighting, inaudible soundtracks or low production standards of the art film, leaving aside issues of narrative or plot. Not many would accept the abysmal viewing conditions: no seats, no popcorn, incessant interruptions from other viewers wandering in and out, discussing what’s going on, blocking the projector or letting in the light as they exit through the blackout curtains.
And from the article’s comments:
Often the idea with film or video in the gallery is that the gallery itself acts as some kind of farming device through which ‘cinema’ is viewed and so you are as if one step removed, in a kind of state of detachment rather than the immersion one might experience in a proper cinema… however this quasi conceptual stance is really often a pretext for a load of very uninteresting bollocks.
Interesting how past exponents of this school of bad filmmaking such as Sam Taylor Wood and Steven Mcqueen have subsequently dumped it when given the opportunity to make a ‘proper’ film. Don’t get me wrong there is a place for the moving image in the gallery but self consciously bad cinema masquerading as art does nobody any favours.
and
“video art is to film what installation art is to fine art” with different levels of ideas, artistry and aesthetics. Unlike an art-house film watched in a cinema, I suggest that video art has not yet found its place within the current architectural areas of display and this has muddied the waters of appreciation. The same might be said for installation art.
It seems we are left with a catch 22 scenario… that, display environments will only become more adequate for video art, when video art becomes appreciated to a much greater degree.
