Video interviews

Ideas of daily practice are very enticing to me, in video anyway. It's so easy now.

When I watched the Vito Acconci videos this time, I realized that they had so much time on camera, reworking, playing around, being ridiculous, that there was so much to the new medium.
I have little doubt that in amongst the never ending waves of fake porn (which I can't understand why anyone falls for anymore) there are some real gems of self expression on the internet. Aside from the lonelygirl15 videos, I enjoyed most of the pieces at the cogcollective site. Right now though, I still think that internet video is little more than file sharing and the reinvention of an imagined self (not that this is a bad thing). Just as film-making, and early video work, we still imitate what we wish we were more often than showing what we really are. So I made this, out of some footage I've been working on for a DVD to send my parents. Of course, I picked a few parts that my parents are never going to see, and mostly parts that reveal more of me than one would believe on the surface viewing. It's funny when you ask people to be you, and let them go from there. There's something in the act of them being themselves while they are playing you that is connecting.

In making things like this, I almost always stay in agreement with Acconci's note about video being a place to "keep moving." After all , it only takes a second to realize you've got your face 12" from a tiny screen before you realize you're going to ruin your eyes. You must keep the camera or the content moving to maintain the connection with your viewer. You also have to show yourself, or a self that at the very least causes some kind of visceral reaction in your viewer. The remote has noting on the speed of a mouse to spirit you away from what was just on.