Valentine’s Day Video 50

Today is Valentine’s Day and I’m feeling like this guy:

Sometimes when I’m feeling like this guy I go walk around in the UMMA. It clears my head. Something about all that marble flooring. The word austere comes to mind.

So I’m in the UMMA. It’s afternoonish and I’m pretty much the only person in there. I feel mildly artsy for being the only person in the UMMA on Valentine’s Day afternoon. And mildy lonely. I feel like an aesthete—“Who needs lousy Hallmark holidays when there’s the cold, austere beauty of the UMMA?”

Loud noises are coming from the back-leftish corner, from the New Media Gallery.

Currently I don’t know that the room in the back-leftish corner is called the “New Media Gallery.” I Google it later.

The noises sound like a film score: orchestral instruments blare and echo off the austere marble flooring.

In general the UMMA’s atmosphere right now seems somewhat funny, because it’s pretty much empty and silent, but then there are all these melodramatic, film-score-y, orchestral instruments playing loudly. It seems ‘surreal,’ not unlike a Robert Wilson avant-garde short-film conglomeration thing.

Which is what the exhibit making loud funny noises and breaking the austere atmosphere of the UMMA turns out to be: Robert Wilson’s Video 50.

I walk over to the New Media Gallery and read this introduction posted at the entrance: “Robert Wilson gained a reputation as a creator of aggressively experimental theater work. Wilson first came to prominence with works from the mid-1970s such as The Life and Times of Joseph Stalin (1973) and Einstein on the Beach (1976).” (My roommate saw Einstein on the Beach a couple weeks ago. Einstein on the Beach was in town a couple weeks ago. In situ I suddenly remember this. And just now ex situ I asked my roommate “if it was sweet” and he said “yeah it was sweet.” He said that it was five hours long and that he thought he wouldn’t be able to sit through the whole thing, but he ended up sitting through the whole thing and not really feeling bored or whatever. I can’t imagine sitting through anything for five hours.) “These lavish, unusually long productions broke and then redefined every convention of theater.” After reading “these lavish, unusually long productions broke and redefined every convention of theater” I feel mildly skeptical. I skim over some more praiseful Robert Wilson bio and get to the part about Video 50 itself. “Video 50 are smaller-scale experiments, but they share with these spectacles the qualities that typify Wilson’s aesthetic: surreal, dreamlike imagery, unlinear narrative, conflation of seemingly unrelated characters and micro-stories, and a mesmerizingly slow pace…Video 50 consists of a random arrangement of 30 second ‘episodes’…The work is immersive and experiential, seductively dissolving the distance between viewer and subject.”

So basically it sounds to me like your SOP for an avant-garde short-film conglomeration thing.

There’s a sign outside the doorway warning about adult content and unsuitability for young viewers, which makes me mildly excited. Eventually I walk through a little L-shaped hall into the NMG itself, passing by yet another warning for adult content on the way  (there turns out to be nothing I would consider adult content in Video 50), and now I’m standing in an empty dark square room. A ceiling-mounted projector projects Video 50 on the front wall. Currently some type of credits are rolling and I’m uncertain whether they’re the end or beginning credits. The only seating in the room are two austere wooden benches, one pushed up against the back wall and the other against a side wall. I sit down on the back-wall bench so I don’t have to painfully twist my neck 90 degrees to see the film(s).

The credits keep rolling—I determine they’re the opening credits, meaning my timing for entering the NMG was perfect—and I take out my trusty Moleskine notebook and begin writing notes about the austerity of the room. I write things like, “The room is empty, except for four Sony speakers placed atop the four corners of a spotless white wall that doesn’t quite reach the ceiling.” Did I mention that today is Valentine’s today?

After the credits, the first “episode” of Video 50 arrives. The first episode is this guy:

I write: 1. Business-dressed man standing by waterfall. Loud waterfall noises. The image sort of flickers.

I write: Screen flickers…shitty projector or intentional part of the film?

Before long the first episode is over and cuts straight into the next episode:

2. A window with white drapes. Wind blows the drapes. Loud whooshing noises.

And before long it cuts to the next episode:

3. A cream-white old, rotary-style phone. It’s ringing loudly.

This is more or less how the entire thing goes: I see a short clip of a pretty random-seeming object or scene or something, and before I can even jot a few notes down describing what it is the episode is over and I’m looking at something new.

I try to write fast enough to make notes for every episode, but I end up missing a few here and there.

4. A door opens. A woman in a pink dress enters the room. Romantic music starts playing.

5. Overhead view of a man smoking and an unlit light bulb. Dripping noises. The man turns on the light bulb. (I.e.,

)

6. Cityscape. On a rooftop a woman is being held at gunpoint by a masked, cliché-looking criminal. Crime-film, noir-ish music plays. The camera zooms in on the woman’s face. She winks and smiles.

6 makes me chuckle. I like 6. In my notebook I write “my fav” next to 6.

7. Man holding ice pack on head, sitting on bed. Monkey/animal noises. Then a close-up of a woman in curlers making loud scary monkey/animal noises.

I’m legitimately frightened by the woman in curlers.

8. Woman in bed w/ black phone on bedside table. Slow sad music. Then there’s a naked man sitting by a fire. (Is this supposed to be the adult content? No…parts…are being shown.)

At this point I’ve missed an episode or two and my episode-numbering in my notes is basically arbitrary. My wrist is hurting from trying to make notes as fast as the episodes change. It occurs to me that I’m still alone in the room, and I wonder when/if other museum patrons will enter.

9. Chair floating in an orange-pink sky. Classical piano music. Chair rotates back and forth slightly.

10. White door slowly closing by itself. A second after it closes, a hand juts into the frame, as if it just closed the door.

10 makes me laugh. I don’t know why. I guess the hand’s jutting into the frame was unexpected and funny.

In general I don’t know how Video 50 is supposed to make me feel. I feel it’s entertaining because I never know what the next episode will be, so it’s sort of suspenseful. But I don’t feel too much else about it.

I never really know how to take avant-garde art. But I guess it’s sort of the point of avant-garde art to make the audience feel uncertain about how to take it?

In any case I deicide I more or less like this Video 50 thing, even if only because it’s ‘different’ and I’ve never really sat through anything like it.

11. A man sleeping during a thunderstorm. He snores in a cartoony, ZZZZzzzzZZZ manner.

12. Close-up of a glasses-, mustache-faced man rhythmically touching his temple and grimacing and groaning ad nauseam.

13. A back view of a man wearing a safari hat and looking out at a still seascape. The man makes noises like “hruumph hruumph hruumph” metronomically ad nasuseam.

Even though the episodes are only like 30 sec. long, their repetitiveness and “mesmerizingly slow pace” induce me to write notes like “ad nauseam.”

14. Floating chair in an orange-pink sky (again). Classical piano music.

For some reason I like the floating chair. The floating chair calms me down, especially after having been made antsy by the men making groaning noises ad nauseam in the immediately preceding episodes. I wonder if a lot of thought was put into arranging the episodes in a specific way for effects such as the floating chair’s calming me down after I’ve been emotionally primed by the groaning men, or something.

I decide it’s true what the description posted at the entrance said, that Video 50 “is immersive and experiential, seductively dissolving the distance between viewer and subject.” While being sucked into the experience, I’ve even almost forgotten that it’s Valentine’s Day.

Upon realizing that I’ve almost forgotten that it’s Valentine’s Day, I remember that it’s Valentine’s Day. I take out my phone to see if a certain girl has texted me.

She hasn’t.

15. Red hammer silently hammering a blue back ground. Then the blue background shatters like glass.

16. Close-up of a large-foreheaded baby crying.

The close-up of the big-headed baby startles me, especially after the preceding shattering.

I write “encephalitic” in my notebook.

For about 10 episodes I sort of lose myself. I get “sucked in” or “immersed” or “mesmerized” or whatever you want to call it. In any case, it’s basically the effect I was looking for when I decided to come to the UMMA.

I come to the UMMA when I’m thinking too much about something, like Valentine’s Day, so I can try to ‘lose myself’ in pieces of art.

What Video 50 seems to want to do is make you ‘lose yourself.’ It short-circuits your brain—you can’t really actually make sense of the conglomeration of floating chairs and encephalitic babies and business men standing near waterfalls, but your brain nevertheless tries to and in trying gets confused and before long you’re entranced and don’t even remember that you’re worried about a certain girl texting you or something.

Unfortunately, my Video 50 dream is broken when an old couple walks into the room and sits down next to me. I wonder if they’re on some sort of Valentine’s Day  date. Maybe that’s what older couples do on Valentine’s Day: watch avant-garde film in museums.

Now because I’m not alone, I’m immediately aware of myself, my surroundings—Video 50 is no longer able to suck me in. I shoot sideways glances at the old couple. I start writing notes about them instead of the artwork taking place in front of me.

I write things like, “The husband is ‘paunchy.’”

I consider leaving. I wanted to watch Video 50 all the way through, but the experience basically seems over for me now. My wrist hurts carpal-tunnelishly from writing frantically. The edge of my right hand is completely covered in ink. I’ve made it to 30 in my notebook.

A lot of the episodes repeat themselves. For example right now the safari-hatted man staring at a seascape and going “hruumph hruumph hruumph” has returned.

It suddenly seems unbearable.

I leave.

—

Images of Video 50 were taken from the University of Michigan Museum of Art website: http://www.umma.umich.edu/view/exhibitions/2011-wilson.php