Video Nasties

Video Nasties

A video installation is contemporary art in the form of video. It doesn't necessarily follow the conventions of a short film or have a narrative but it can portray a certain emotion for example, or it's about a concept. Video installations don't always stay on screen, sometimes they're projected onto certain objects or on a wall or anywhere the artist may feel is appropriate. 

Sam Taylor Wood is visual artist who follows the theme of death and decay. In the video "A Little Death" the first frame is set up like a middle ages still life painting, showing a dead rabbit and an apple, but it then turns into a time lapse of the rabbit decaying. 

Death is always a controversial subject especially when it comes to animals, as some people believe animals should have the same rights as humans. In the video a rabbit obviously had to die for this piece which may have upset some people. Rabbits can be eaten and whether you believe in eating animals or not some may say it's a waste as someone out there could've eaten it. 

The video is also very gruesome, it shows the rabbit decaying and other life feeding off it's flesh, which is something we're not usually exposed to, we see a dead rabbit with all of it's fur or the skeleton of a rabbit, but never in between. Also the fact the rabbit is pinned up against the wall seems very cruel, and even though it's dead it's not something most people want to see.

This video is similar to Tony Oursler's style of work because of the controversy. Tony Oursler is another artist who does video installations. His work seems to focus on distorting faces.

In this piece of work, "Bound Interrupter", it shows lots of different faces, all moving and some of them speaking, but they don't look like "normal faces". They're bright colours and the face on the far right, which is purple, seems to have a reflection but that face is green.

Looking at the art as a whole, there's a lot of movement and a lot of colour, which "A Little Death" certainly lacks, possibly to further reflect the decaying of the rabbit, but in this video it's full of life which is the opposite of Taylor Wood's video.

I think "Bound Interrupter" is controversial because of the nudity it shows. In the first face there's an actual naked person in the face, cutting off their eye. Which first of could be seen as disturbing because of the lack of eye and second of all because of the nudity, I think people don't mind nudity when it's in a painting because they know it's not real, and artists tend to make the subject look flattering, but here the naked women isn't even posing, she's moving around and is crouching which I think would make a lot of people uncomfortable.

Again in the video we see yet another naked woman, and this time it looks like she's mining. I think it could be saying something about women and slavery but because of those themes and the obvious nudity it would make people uncomfortable, and when a piece of artwork makes people think about certain political issues some may not like that as they'd prefer not to think about it.

This video can be referred back to "A Little Death" because there is the presence of a rabbit in this video, however the rabbit in this installation is very much alive and even has a human eye. The rabbit in "A Little Death" is seen as an object, it's dead, decaying and is quite cruelly pinned up against the wall. But in this installation the rabbit is alive, and because it has a human eye you could say it has a conscience. 

The two installations are also very different in how they're presented, the first is a video and it's linear, it has a clear beginning, middle and end and you know what is happening. Whereas in the second video the installation is projected onto objects, there's no storyline or tale to tell it's just there, and you can interpret what it means.

In conclusion both video installations have their own controversies, both to do with distortion, there's the distortion of a rabbit and then the distortion of a face, which people find hard to deal with. Even though both videos have that theme they are very different.