VS.

VS. is a showcase of collaborative video works resulting from tape exchanges between performers and post-producers. Each commissioned performance artist submits a performance video to be edited and revised by a post-producer. The performer acts with the anticipation of losing control over the final cut, while the post-producer is made to work with whatever the performer creates. How does one craft one's own image in a world that is ‘fixed’ in post?

The project aims to highlight the inherent constructs in ‘pure’ performance and the strategies of video post-production. The separation of the activities forces both parties to focus on the features of their respective tasks. Implicit in this exchange are issues of trust, authenticity, authorship, and respect. VS. is as much of an experiment as it is an examination of the rarely acknowledged but oft-occurring problems with collaboration.

The works commissioned for this program will be subject to strict guidelines. The artist(s) will be asked to produce an uninterrupted recording of a performance. The shot must be continuous and fixed, such that the result can be considered “raw” material. The performance should not be edited, as a second (group of) artist(s) will be responsible for taking this footage and creating a final product. The performer can use a minimal amount of props, though the image cannot involve anyone irrelevant to the performance, such as a public audience. The editor will not be using footage or sound from outside sources.

This project will highlight the inherent power shifts when one gives themselves over to someone else. The performer submits to the hand of the producer but the producer will also have to work with whatever the performer creates. The resulting works will illustrate the combating relationship between pure performance as construct and the physical aspects of constructing a series of images. The performer and the editor expose the different strategies implicit to the arenas of performance and video, respectively.

640 480 acknowledges the support of the Toronto Arts Council for the VS. programme.


VS. Trailer: Free Dance Lessons VS. 640 480

Exhibition Details
VS. was screened at PleasureDome in Toronto on December 11, 2004

Press forVS.
Antitoronto.com, December 2004 Artfag #6, December 2004

VS. Rulebook

Performer Rulebook

1. The Performer Must Create A Performance For The Camera Wherein They Are The Subject Of The Video
2. The Performance Should Be Uninterrupted (Must Be Continuous)
3. The Performer Should Use Minimal Props, Eg: Those Necessary To The Performance.
4. The Image Cannot Contain Anyone Irrelevant To The Performance (Such As A Public Audience)
5. The Footage Should Be Shot On Video Not On Film

Post-Producer Rulebook

1. The Editor Has To Show (A Certain Amount Of) Respect Towards The Performer And The Performance. Think More In Terms Of Collaboration Than Obliteration
2. The Editor Will Not Be Using Footage Or Sound From Outside Sources. Any Material Used Outside Of The Original Performance Must Be Created Digitally
By The Artist (Not Captured From Outside Sources)
3. The Editor Can Add Any Kind Of Visual Effect To The Image As Well As Manipulate The Sound. This Includes Motion Effects, Titling, Graphics Layers Etc...


Together At Last Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay VS. Cooper Battersby

Untitled

VS. Essay by Dave Dyment

The idea of placing restrictions on artists conflicts with our deep-rooted romantic notions that art should be an arena for free-play, unbound by limitations and convention. The imposition of constraint, however, has produced countless aesthetic, compositional, literary and cinematic masterpieces. Piet Mondrian often limited himself to straight lines and primary colours. The Danish Dogme95 manifesto demanded its filmmakers adhere to a strict set of guidelines that, amongst other things, forbade all post-production such as music, titles, optical and special effects.1 John Cage employed many compositional restraints in order to free himself from codexed and institutionalized music. Arnold Schoenberg, his instructor, created 12-Tone Seriel Music using the restriction that a note cannot be played again until all other remaining tones of the octave have been employed, ensuring an atonal equilibrium, preventing any one note from becoming a tonal center. For his performance Outside, Tehching Hsieh spent an entire year without entering a building or roofed structure, but rather wandered around lower Manhattan. French author George Perec wrote a three hundred-page novel2 without using the letter 'e'.

In literary circles constraint is practically a sub-genre. The experimental poetry and prose of the OuLiPo group, Kenneth Goldsmith, Raymond Queneau, Walter Abish, Jackson Mac Low and Toronto's Christian Bök all rely on rigorous conceptual limitations. Bök's bestselling Euonia is a five-chapter book with each chapter restricted to a single vowel. The rhyming scheme of traditional poetry represents possibly the most ubiquitous and accepted form of constraint, enforcing that the sound of a word takes precedence over its meaning. It has recently been suggested that with the proliferation of e-books, popular fiction too will make itself available to the remix, bringing the cut-up projects of Brion Gysin and William S Burroughs to their logical conclusion.

The constraint imposed on the Vs performers by the 640 480 collective is designed to facilitate collaboration, to leave room for the participation of the other. When you plan to take a double exposure photograph, for example, you must be careful to under-expose the first frame. By limiting the source material of these forced collaborations 640 480 has created problems over which both parties must triumph. The originator must create a video work without the flourishes of improved technology, harkening back to early video art of the monologist variety. The challenger then has complete control over the finished product, and has the freedom to employ all and every post-production possibility but cannot add any new footage.
The commercial remixing of pop music, presumably the inspiration for the project, must abide by considerable restraints of its own. When a record company commissions a DJ or producer to remix a song, the stipulation generally exists that it cannot stray too far from the original record it is designed to promote. More renegade remixing is threatened by constantly strengthening copyright laws where the restraint of ownership looms large.

Remixing originated in the 1960s when Jamaican sound system producers such as King Tubby, Ruddy Redwood and Lee "Scratch" Perry stripped reggae songs down to their instrumental skeletons and called them "dub" versions. The rise of the 1970's discotheques called for extended versions of popular hits that could emphasize, or increase, a song’s danceability. In the 1980's marketing ploys required alternate takes as bonus tracks to drive singles up the charts and by the 90's cross-marketing campaigns sought to buy credibility in other genres by employing name DJs to rework pop songs. Recently the mash-up, the bastard cousin sub-genre, has received mainstream attention after Danger Mouse's The Grey Album, which combined tracks from the Beatles' White Album with Jay-Z's The Black Album.3 Beatles lawyers soon shut the project down, forcing it back underground, but artists like Bjork and David Bowie, ever keen to appear cutting-edge, encouraged fan mash-ups of their material. Bowie went so far as to offer a free car to the winning entry.

This connection to pop music is not superficial. From its inception in 2001, the 640 480 collective have explored hybrids from pop culture including etch-a-sketches, video prints, flipbooks and video embroidery. While artists only a generation prior had to fight for the acceptance of video as a high-art form, 640 480 now struggle with the problem of how to maintain the medium’s relevancy.

Part exquisite corpse, part head-to-head combat, the Vs project also raises issues of authorship, control and trust. The editor has final cut, but ultimately both artists must relinquish a degree of control in support of a work that combines both efforts.

Historically, artists have used strategic constraint as a way to overcome their own tastes and aesthetics. The Dogme95 manifesto, for instance, denounces artistry in favour of truth. John Cage sought to liberate himself from “from individual taste and memory (psychology) and also of the literature and traditions of art.”

The Vs collaborations work best when the participants employ a self-imposed restraint. Alissa Firth-Eagland conceived of her performance as an open “letter to the editor” and Jeremy Drummond responded with a loophole in the rulebook; he added text. A timely tract on using humiliation as a torture technique accompanies and completes Firth-Eagland’s deliberately ambiguous performances about sexuality and power. Will Munro and Jeremy Laing’s physical exercise in form and colour is enhanced by Aleesa Cohene’s subtle manipulation of outline and shape. Kika Thorne’s simple and disciplined Memento style edit inverts the narrative and best articulates the intentions of Steve Kado.

Years ago I was collaborating with a friend of mine who noted that the term 'constraint' was one that she could never reconcile with the idea of art making, but when she thought of it in terms of 'bondage' it became appropriately sexy.4

1. Lars Von Trier's The Idiots is perhaps my favorite film of the last decade. Thomas Vinterberg’s Celebration rightly earned accolades and numerous festival prizes.
2. La Disparition, written in 1969, and translated into English (maintaining the conceit) in 1995 as A Void.
3. The first mash-up is generally credited to Evolution Control Committee, who added a Public Enemy vocal over a Herb Albert instrumental track in 1994.
4. Fittingly, the Dogme95 manifesto was also known as the "vow of chastity".

Thanks to Nikola Julien, Roula Partheniou, Christian Bok, and Grant McCracken.


Bad Infinity Steve Kado VS. Kika Thorne


MAKE ME Will Munro & Jeremy Laing VS. Aleesa Cohene


Hoobastank / Trampoleenin Steve Reinke VS. Jubal Brown


Test Doob Vollrath VS. Daniel Borins


Master of the Universe Tom Sherman VS. Tasman Richardson

Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained

VS. Essay by Scott Sørli

VS, versus, implies an oppositional, competitive relationship: this artist against that one, one work against another. And while instances of this can be seen from our ringside seats among the dozen-or-so video artists who have agreed to participate in 640 480’s curatorial match-up, there is much more. In throwing open the relationship between the artist who performs a work and the artist who post-produces that work, natures of working practices and constructions of meaning are thrown into light. Indeed, performing and post-production are labels inadequate to describing the roles of the participants: all are video artists whose labour has spanned the spectrum of acting, taping, editing, publicity – and now as volunteer guinea pigs for 640 480’s versus thesis.

The titling convention of VS, /performance artist/ versus /post-producer/, might be structurally misleading in that it implies a back-and-forth relationship, or if not, at least first against the second (artist against the producer). In truth the mechanism is reversed: the producer acts, in a clean break, on the performance piece, without the artist’s participation. In two of the pieces, Bad Infinity (Steve Kato vs. Kika Thorne) and Untitled (Emily Vey Duke vs. Daniel Cockburn), the post producer eventually gives back to the artist their own original work. In each piece there is a moment when the performer’s intention is revealed, generously and powerfully, by the producer.

Together at Last, Cooper Battersby vs. Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay – or should I say, together at last, Cooper Battersby and Benny Ramsay. It has to be a leap of faith for a performing artist to finally hand over their time-based self-portrait to a post producer to do with what they will. Benny’s gamble in giving Cooper a clumsy love poem (which is sincere clearly because it fumbles) has been rewarded by Cooper’s gentle treatment of it. A kaleidoscope of desire surpasses itself briefly when Benny’s swaddled visage, reflected and multiplied, suddenly becomes angelic putti floating above our heads.

This post-production transcendence is not necessarily sympathetic to the original material, if it occurs at all. The prophylactic significance of Will Monroe’s and Jeremy Laing’s performance – a sewing away of Will’s clothes onto Jeremy, a kind of slow-motion strip poker with all the risks entailed – has been made into something else by Aleesa Coheene in MAKE ME. It seems that the relaxation of austere gender roles still remains dangerous, strangely, and the result instead is a charming, colourful video.
At the other end of the spectrum is the very powerful and difficult piece, PLOT, what Jeremy Drummond has done to Alissa Firth-Eagland. Her performance of a modern, dependant housewife in dress and high heels carrying out suburban, domestic chores has been underscored by his continuous chosen text running beneath. Excerpted from Richard Krousher’s manual Physical Interrogation Techniques, simple and practical advice follows on methods of torture, along with warnings on how not to “lose him.” Him. As I write this, President George Bush is in Ottawa on a state visit, thanking Canadians who came out to watch him from the side of the road as his motorcade drove by, waving (and this is where he begins to laugh at his own joke) “with all five fingers.” This is on the same day that the International Committee of the Red Cross announces their findings that US authorities in the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba have devised and refined a system to break the will of prisoners, using humiliation, solitary confinement, temperature extremes and force positions “tantamount to torture.” I looked the word tantamount up in the dictionary, an American dictionary, and it means as much, the same thing, the same amount, equivalent. Torture.

It seems that, in the six minute video Hoobastank / Trampoleenin, Jubal Brown has taken an antagonistic position, however slight, toward Steve Reinke’s forty-five minute performance wandering the streets and laneways of downtown Toronto singing along to Patti Smith’s recent anti-war album Trampin’. It’s the power of the editor (and curator, for that matter) to manufacture new meaning out of existing work. There always is a concern with the possible loss of original meaning, of deleted context, even of the integrity of the performance. Is Reinke’s sarcasm understood when he says (or is made to say), “I’m pretty much pro-war. Um, not politically, of course, but aesthetically.”? Is it too subtle for anyone to catch the import when he hits the “th” in aesthetic hard? I’m reminded of Walter Benjamin’s conclusion that mankind’s “self-alienation has reached such a degree that it can experience its own destruction as an aesthetic pleasure of the first order. This is the system of politics which Fascism is rendering aesthetic.”1 And I wonder about those hoods that are tied tightly over “enemy combatant’s” heads. Where are they made? Are they sewn together with care? How many have been sold? Are they profitable?

Of course, consent can be withheld. Daniel Borins is entitled to largely ignore Vollrath’s (Conan Romanyk) contribution in Test Doob, although the strongest moments occur when the performance is on screen. And Tom Sherman is entitled to pull Heman & the Master of the Universe from the screening altogether because he is unwilling to cede to Tasman Richardson’s post-production.† Perhaps in their own way, and in terms of 640 480’s curatorial premise, these two pieces, one weak and the other absent, are the most successful in the show.

1. Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” in Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt (New York: Shocken Books, 1969), 242.
†. At the time this essay was written, Tom Sherman had asked that Master of the Universe be pulled from the Vs. project, and that it not be considered for inclusion in the essays. Less than two weeks before Vs. was set to premiere, Sherman allowed his collaboration with Tasman Richardson to be included.


Plot Alissa Firth-Eagland VS. Jeremy Drummond


Figure vs. Ground Emily Vey Duke VS. Daniel Cockburn

VS.

Exhibition Details