YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT
Millennial commerce isn’t business as usual… corporate messaging has grown to dwarf the products it speaks for, and brand recognition has become the primary determinant not only of visibility but of basic viability in the marketplace. Social networking sites have synced what you like and what you buy with who you’ll like and what else you should buy. The line between interaction and advertising, who you are and what you eat, has become blurred.
This program focuses on bran ding as an ingrained idea, specifically how people have learned to express themselves through identification with a pervasive media culture.
(Tommy-Chat Just E-mailed Me), Ryan Trecartin (USA 2006, 7:00 min)
Relationships develop and disintegrate in Trecartin’s study of life inside and outside an email.
Crazy Girls, Jesper Nordahl (Sweden 2001, 8:25min)
A short documentary about three tenyearold Latvian girls who roam the streets of their small postcommunist town as a group called The Crazy Girls, singing the songs of their favourite pop idols like Britney Spears and Abba.
And We All Shine On, Michael Robinson (USA 2006, 7:00 min)
“An ill wind is transmitting through the lonely night, its signals spreading myth and deception along its murky path. Conjuring a vision of a post apocalyptic paradise, this unworldly broadcast reveals its hidden demons via layered landscapes and karaoke, singing the dangers of mediated spirituality.” M. Robinson
The Wind, Kirsten Stoltmann (USA 2000, 1:45 min)
The artist takes an early morning ride on her motorcycle to the coast, casting herself as a renegade seeking solace. Each shot is carefully constructed to be as cinematic and derivative as possible, and yet it’s weirdly touching.
Rosa Does Joan, Nao Bustamante (USA 1992, 10:00 min)
A document of a famous stunt: the artist’s alter ego, Rosa, appears on the immensely popular and trashy American talk show The Joan Rivers Show.
Secret Horror, Michael Smith (USA 1980, 14:00 min)
This social satire on total, faceless authority begins with Smith bewildered by forces he doesn’t understand. In Smith’s characteristic camp parody, Secret Horror is an allegory for the fate of individuals lost in the social sauce, hopelessly out of touch with the glamorous. Trapped in his pathetic lifestyle, Mike, in the end, consoles himself with Neil Diamond’s anthem “Forever in Blue Jeans”, forever mediocre.
Malibu, Mark Ther (Czech Republic 2004, 3.45)
While studying in New York Mark Ther became fascinated with big American cars. This video is
a piece of worship to the Chevy Malibu, with long, sensuous shots caressing its design details. There also seems to
be a romantic distance between two actors in the car, who only communicate through their relationship to the car.
The Third Body, Peggy Ahwesh (USA 2007, 9:00 min)
“The tropes of the garden, the originary moment of self know ledge and gendered awareness of the body (what is traditionally called sin) is mimicked in the early experiments with virtual reality. The metaphors used in our cutting edge future are restagings of our cultural memory of the garden. Wonderment regarding the self in space, boundaries of the body at the edge of consciousness and the inside and outside skin of perceptual knowledge.” P. Ahwesh.
Every (Text, Image, Sound, Movie) On My Cell Phone, Darrin Martin (USA 2008, 7:40 min)
A surprisingly poetic amalgamation of everything in the title, lingering on connections with other humans, from lovers to sex hookups to tragedies.