Tripping Through Video Vaults
Ed Note: Boingboing's current guest blogger Gareth Branwyn writes on technology, pop and fringe culture. He is currently a Contributing Editor at Maker Media. Recent projects have included co-creating The Maker's Notebook and editing The Best of MAKE and The Best of Instructables collections.
My friend, DC-area video artist Rob Parrish, posts a weekly video on his site Next to Heaven. Each week, he goes onto Archive.org, sniffs out new raw material, dreams up an idea for a found art video, edits, audio-records, and then on Wednesday, releases a new piece. Some of the resulting videos feel immediate, small, off-the-cuff, others strike much deeper, more resonant chords, and are truly impressive in their impact, given the production timeline. I'm always impressed with Rob's clever use of the found footage. And I love his perverse sense of humor. Given the retro source material, there's a haunting quality to many of these videos, a pervasive sense of loss, faded memories, tragic childhoods, dreams unfulfilled, and dirty secrets unrevealed -- all usually leavened with humor and a healthy helping of the absurd.
Above is Episode 41, about a junkie who replaces his love of smack with drug education films narrated by Paul Newman. Other favorites of mine include the special episode The Tapes of My Father, about a son who discovers that his late Public Access TV producer dad recorded his innermost thoughts over found video footage from the PATV archives, and Episode 49, which has a man reminiscing about his macho childhood of sports and trouble-making while the video shows a young boy timidly putting on his mother's make-up.
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That hurt to watch. Too many buds have gone down that road. I drew a line long ago: if you have to go intravenous, you aren't doing drugs- the drugs are doing you. I've done a lot of stupid crap in my life, but I never crossed that line.
Save your brain- draw lines. Don't cross them.
I have to say, with all due respect for the blogger, that video was trash.
I am not against drugs or anything of the sort.
If you are going to do something, then do it.
But, I felt as if the person talking or the person who made this was stretching a bit too far just to sound cool.
Hey, man. It's cool to be dependent on inanimate objects. Whatever.
three pieces of fine art, thank you.
glad you liked them takuan!
Rob
srsly! I'm going to forward them an artist I know, my ultimate compliment considering how witheringly disdainful this artist is. I actually did enjoy them, maybe The Tapes of My Father the most.