Crawford, Horvath and Video Narrative

Crawford’s stop motion project was really interesting both visually and conceptually. It’s strange that he mentions narrative and his investment in narrative in his artist’s statement. I’m curious how narrative is formed in these frames; we have motion and subways that are being propelled forward but at the same time the motion is constantly being pulled back, restrained, and possibly negated. The stifled feeling this creates is sometimes stressful but at other times comes across as fluid and quite beautiful. I think narrative also comes from different reactions—the smiling, the snarling, etc. There seems to be narrative hiding behind the smile in particular. I’m thinking of Certeau here and possibly Auge; internalized conceptualizing systems, micro-histories, body discipline, and other meaning making activities. There’s language and labeling everywhere in these frames—newspapers, ads, books, signs, etc are constantly influencing the subjectivity of the passengers and their response to the camera.

I couldn’t get all of the Horvath videos to work on my computer, but as I progressed and watched more I found his body of work to be quite dynamic and versatile—I really liked “Album” in particular, I thought the pace of the piece was one of the more natural and relaxed ones that I found. I loved the cuts and the work with the music which is so hard to match up with motion in general. Album also had a different more collaged sense of narrative than works like “Boulevard” or “Tenderly Yours.” We get a fairly clear domestic space/experience occasionally interrupted by obscured bodies, faces, clocks, white noise, etc. It suggests an evolution of the family unit—the simplicity, safety of it seems to be threatened by post-modernity, chaos, war. Horvath also seems quite invested in bodies and faces as the measure for expression and selfhood in general. I think “Boulevard” in particular did some interesting things in that respect.

“Boulevard” collages and juxtaposes two to three frames of video on the screen giving us glimpses of the city, the countryside, the highway, etc. The images are almost always moving, advancing forward. What the collage does and what some of Horvath’s shots do is play with (in this case a female) body and the way film and bodies simultaneously reveal and conceal. We get these moments of vulnerability—the woman is at the city overlook without a coat looking cold and the voiceover is saying something to the effect of “she had big dreams but look at her now.” Other times I think the body and face act as mask—we have mannequins (although since they’re retro and very much sex-objects I think Barbie, patriarchy, misogyny more than mask), we fly by a King Lear marquee which fits with the tragedy and monologue style of the film, but the reference to theatre is also self-reflexive in a way; she’s putting on a show, her body is acted. The film has an almost noir feel to it but it might be more along the lines of the “college art film,” the unsatisfied woman, the horrible men—some of the dialogue like “I want to fall in love with him after he puts his dick in me” made me cringe a bit too.

“Tenderly Yours” reminded me of some European modernist love story—a Good Morning Midnight of sorts (maybe it’s because she’s so French). It was also very similar to “Boulevard” in terms of the narrative, the pacing, the melancholy tone and isolation of the woman. The narrative itself and the way it’s told from a distance really emphasizes this and further removes the woman from the memories, actions, etc. Again the body is obscured but I think in a different way with different effect—it seems obscured by memory, especially in the initial love-making scene. It makes me think of the body as so physical, hyper-physical in a sense that memory, language, narrative can’t touch or get at. One can never reproduce the body.