You will provide one entry per week commenting on the work we've viewed in class, the artists we've discussed, the readings we've tackled, your thoughts about the process of, or tips for, making videos, in addition to responding to any questions or required topics I've posed for the week. Don't feel limited to only one entry per week (you are constantly brainstorming so you should have plenty of material) and PLEASE comment on each other's posts. For this first week I'd like you all to respond to the work of Ryan Trecartin. It is dense; it is difficult. Give it some thought. Watch the video a couple of times; watch it in its entirety.
Link to the video we watched in class tuesday: http://www.ubu.com/film/trecartin_kcorea.html
Link to the script from Ryan Trecartin: http://www.ubu.com/ubu/unpub/Unpub_046_Trecartin.pdf
The most convincing interpretation of this work will receive a prize. But I want this prize, too, so if no one convinces me then no one wins it. Give it a whirl, guys.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThis confusing, abrasive video deals with many themes at once: global corporations, technology, sexuality, technology and identity. The jarring, confusing state of the video itself seems to reflect the chaos the artist sees in this concepts today.
ReplyDeleteI think the disjointed narrative is saying something about how we are telling stories these days. It's not a passive viewing experience like TV or a movie; it demands your full attention if any sense is to be made out of it. This seems to be some sort of story with characters in it; but the viewer is left to piece it all together (or not). The video works more like the internet; it offers chunks of information in sound, image and text, not a smooth narrative like a book or TV show. It reflects out experiences with a lot of technology today; check facebook here, text there, google that, this; it's all over the place! I also like how the artist incorporates cheesy text as though this where a power point, it reinforces the "corporate" them while revealing the frivolity and ugliness of the whole ordeal (as does the horrid quality and weird video edits).
The characters all have weird names, all of them are "something Korea," like Global Korea, the black women who seems to be in charge, or the disaffected "North America Korea" who calls herself a "hobbyist." This seems to be saying a bit about nationality and race, the underlying factor being that they are all K-CORENS, all under the same umbrella of this huge company.
The vicious, destructive actions and attitudes of these characters is also apparent- is this the underlying atmosphere of these companies? What about all those creepy dog posters- all I can figure is that they are metaphors for the "bitches" around them, eager to be the "alpha" dogs ("corporate ladder") and abuse the "omegas," who come in the form of the masked man who is "fired" and the "driver." Is the artist bemoaning the cruel treatment of people struggling in the corporate world, who are not treated with respect as human beings?
Well the whole video seems to have an issue with the corporate world, I'd say. Sexuality too, seems to play a huge role WHERE IT SHOULDN'T. Does sexual dominance equal corporate power? Also, the fact that most of the actors are men in blonde wigs must be important. If the artist wanted women to play women, that's how it would have been. Is he saying that the business world makes women into men, or men into women, or is he trying to neutralize the importance of gender in this way?
Identity and isolation is a theme here too- these characters have the identity of their company, not their own identity. They communicate with their laptops and blackberries, but remain apart. That image of the world- is it a reference to the global corporation orbited by technology (Pangaea- one continent, one world) or to the individual, aided in their self-absorption by technology?
This video definitely seems to a criticism (or at least a study) of corporate life today, and perhaps the darker side of human nature. But like most art, I don't feel one person can accurately discover and describe the meaning of the work in words. But I hope I thought of something you didn't; this rambling has been brought to you by Katie Green!
I definitely agree with a lot of Katie's comments. This video incorporates a range of issues: sexuality, corporate exploitation, globalization, male/female relations, as well as many other pressing issues.
ReplyDeleteRyan Trecartin displays the characters in a fashion that makes one think of a circus. The characters wear excessive amounts of makeup, wigs and use loud speech, similar to clowns. Their use internet slang is prominent (OMG) and technology is their fascination. They also feel as though they are better than the rest of the population (private jets, breaking rules such as smoking in airplanes, etc.) Named Koreas, these "women" are supposed to represent different international identities but all have a common “work face” which consists of Caucasian skin, work attire, and blonde hair.
Globalization is definitely one of the larger issues being displayed in this video, especially when looking at the Koreas. There is North American Korea, who manages to mess up the flow of the work meeting that is being held, Mexico Korea, Morocco Korea, Armenia Korea, ETC. Only specific countries were featured at this meeting many which have had recent scandals such as Iran and Israel. It is also important to note that North American Korea is the one trying to put fourth her own agenda in the work place. This could be viewed as a similarity to the United States in United Nations Delegation Meetings.
Camera angles and editing tricks were also used to enhance certain portions of this video. For chaotic scenes in the airplane, camera angles were shaky and sporadic. While calmer scenes clearly had the use of a tripod. For phone conversations faces were given a jaundice tint and purposely over-exposed.
I especially liked the end of the video where the word fire was used rather literally. In essence, when the corporate world "fires" someone it is as if they are actually burning them. I like Ryan Trecartin's metaphorical use of this philosophy.
-Marla Borkson
First & foremost, the title of this post rightfully justifies it. This video is not at all something that you can just breeze through. You definitely have to sit down and watch it contently.
ReplyDeleteI watched it one whole entire time, then found myself going back to certain parts because it had me disoriented. I would even go as far as jotting down a couple notes, just so I wouldn't be like "Huh?" or "What?" later on. Trecartin made a video that definitely requires your undivided attention.
I do "sort of, kind of" see the themes of corporate globalization & sexuality that are continually expressed in the video. I just don't like the way Trecartin goes about exhibiting it. I don't know. Maybe it is just me, but there is way too much going on.
The video is not at all concise or straightforward to the point. There are several digressions in & out the video that I lose track of what's going on, even though I am already slightly confused. The digressions make me even more perplexed. Tackling on subjects such as these, I would think there would be some type of subtlety & realism to it. I see none of that. I see no incorporation of the outside world, any tangible facts, nothing that I could easily grab on to & digest. To me, mostly everything seems really cosmic & unrealistic, almost like a fantasy land.
It seems as if they are speaking their own language at times because it is quite hazy & difficult to understand. There's lots of unnecessary noises in the background, which aids in the difficulty. In terms of the quality of the video, it seems real choppy at times. The camera angles are inconsistent. I know they would be different for different scenes but again it just seemed all over the place. But maybe that's what the artist wanted. I don't know.
I just think there are other ways of showing these things than by mocking women, dressing up in blonde wigs & throwing tons of powder on yourself. It seems kind of immature & childish, not at all clean cut, sensible & fresh, how I would expect a professional to do so. Again, that could be his intent all along.
After watching the video for the umpteenth time, I'm still puzzled about the intent of the video. However, I found that this is a satire on current media, specifically reality television and its exploitation of the "cast" involved. Ryan Trecartin emphasizes the use of video editing and audio to use the power of the exploitation to address the male/female relationship within the workplace, feminism, and even the audience's relationship with television.
ReplyDeleteTrecartin utilizes a bunch of fast-paced cuts and medium-to-close shots in order to replicate the style of reality TV shows and popular YouTube videos. He subtly addresses our generation's "30-second" tendency, where we can only give our full attention to the same thing for 30 seconds before we start to lose interest. He satisfies our need by giving us fast-paced editing, which allows us to tune in to more information, even though it may seem dense overall.
The fast-paced editing combined with the altered sound (higher-pitched voices for the men dressed as women) added to the style of the video. The high pitched voices serve to comment on the voice of feminism to others, which sounds more annoying over the course of time as they are consistently exposed to it; it may even sound humorous at first like chipmunk voices in YouTube videos, before inevitably discarded as a gimmick rather than a serious thought. The constant high-pitched voices may even serve as a contrast to the constantly-changing video, perhaps to indicate our tendency to hold onto own thoughts and ideals within life as we age.
The subject within the video itself is the exploitation and focus of women in the workforce, who are viewed with a certain bias or stereotype. The women are made to look the same, even though they are a different Korea, in order to convey that all women are viewed under the same category within the workforce.
- Percy Batalier
Ohhhh kay. Well, to start off it seems as if the artist is trying to portray that freedom is slavery within this global corporation.
ReplyDeleteThe more you give yourself to the company, the more the company becomes part of you, and the more you are free to "be yourself." (Ex. wearing what you want, etc etc.) However, the more you give yourself to the company, the more you become the company... the more you lose yourself, so the sense of freedom is, in essence, a facade.
( "Every One, Is,‐ What They IS
Saying –IT‐ doesn’t Make ‐You‐ = What IT IS!")
In this quote I believe that everyone, being the people in the corporation, is what "they," or the corporation's global view of everyone, is.
So everyone should be part of the corporate global view.
It, I believe, is referring to a more disattached view... meaning that if you take this view, then you will not become part of the process of globalization and thus will not become part of "they" or "everyone."
( "Someone Go write Her a Poem,
Cause, I’m gettin out,
My, , Dictator Boner" )
The male/female relationship seems to mirror this concept. The artist made the outer appearance of the actors women and inner appearance men. My assumption is that the inner is male, which represents the corporation, and the outer appearance women, which represent each person's actual position within the corporation.
The characters who are trying to bring in outsider ideas retain less of a female appearance. For example, during the scene where they are having a "meeting," the person sitting on the bench trying to bring in new ideas is chained and no one is listening to her/him. This person has more of a male appearance, although it seems as if he/she is trying to become more female, or more into his/her relative position, but is still less outwardly more male than the others who have remained throughout the whole video as corporate speakers.
The male/female relationship of each actor may also represent some sort of self love. The video makes comments about having no one but yourself.. your friends being your co-workers, may turn their make on you. Thus, loving yourself is necessary and the only way to survive.
Other comments... Some scenes were confusing, and I am still not too sure what role "Korea" was playing. It seems that throughout the video the employees were trying to merge with Korea and comments were made about Korea getting "her period," which probably makes hints at Korea refusing to merge, or make love to the corporatation, thus refusing to produce (or birth) new employees and in turn getting "her period."
Hm.....
Wow, this video was extremely annoying and difficult to watch for me. After struggling through it I am still unsure what to make of it, but I did notice some of the themes that other posters have mentioned.
ReplyDeleteI think the extreme camera angles, funky transitions and overlapping frames of video gave it a sense of surrealism to me. Throughout most of the video, the script was just made up of lots of corporate jargon thrown together, some parts I could make sense out of and some were really confusing. This along with the Korea girl’s high pitched voices and almost song-like pronunciation of sentences made it even harder to understand at times. I think the point of this was to overwhelm the viewer. Maybe the reference is how overwhelming it is to work in a large corporation?
The background music in the video was sometimes techno party music, which gave me a feeling of anxiety and confusion when paired with the dialogue and many short cuts from scene to scene. At other times the music was sentimental everything seemed to slow down in the video (when the stewardess was getting “fired.”)
I think someone else pointed it out in their post, but all of the Korea girls had on a lot of makeup, blond wigs and the same outfits for the most part. Even though they represented a different country within the company, their sameness I think represented the loss of identity and individualism that can happen in large corporations. They all became one identity and I couldn’t tell the difference at times while I was watching, which is interesting.
There are a lot of questions the video leaves me with. Why the name Korea? Is it because it sounds similar to the word career? Why are the men playing women in the video? Why does one of the girls look totally different?
After beginning to watch this video again the first thing I noticed was the presence of music in the background. When we watched the first bit in class some of the more subtle sounds were lost and I missed out on some of the editing that only heightened the chaotic experience.
ReplyDeleteTechnology seems to have a huge role in the video with just about every "woman" holding a cellphone and talking in abbreviations. The first time we watched the video it reminded me of some people's obsession with marketing themselves on the internet. For example, trying to make themselves look the best on facebook or myspace. Some of the angles of the camera remind me of the famous "myspace pose" where you hold the camera above you in one hand and make a pouty face off into the distance while exposing as much cleavage as possible before achieving nudity.
The camera angle could also be corporate bosses looking down at the "female" employees. Part of the video is not totally taking the women characters seriously because of the high pitched voices, broken dialect, and mass quantities of makeup smeared on their faces. You also get the idea that the characters are portrayed as petty, or that you have to be to make it in the corporate world. How other girls will talk behind their backs or use each other to get a leg up.
As stated by others, the posters convey that the girls are bitchy, but one of the posters stood out to me way more than the cute puppies. The puppies made me thing that the woman could also be immature, like how little girls love puppies, however the poster where the dog is bearing it's teeth and about to kill somebody made me think these are some fierce ladies.
The one "woman" who has the dress suit on seems to portray the women in the workplace who takes everything more seriously. All the other ladies are laughing and acting crazy while she does say how she doesn't 'want to hear about your singles weekend." The things she talks about are more focused on the corporation rather than being jealous, which is the dialogue that follows her.
Then when they're having a party in the bus and then move outside and have a "meeting" it gets super sexual with the black "lady" pole dancing the putting her legs up and exposing herself. This probably all has to do with women being sexualized in the workplace.
Mrehh...
For me to analyze this video first and foremost I would have to consider classic past videos that I have seen and compare it to them. This video is at the most extreme spectrum away from classic movies or tv. I think that the only thing in common with regular video is that there is someone filming other people carrying out events. The characters are not idealized at all like regular tv shows and there doesn’t seem to be much of a story line running. There are just a bunch of random events happening sporadically with very little understandable dialogue. The use of strange dialogue is probably on purpose to cause the viewer to go back over the video again and again to explore its content deeper than just merely watching it one time and understanding the surface. Ryan wants us to dig into his message and he has R boggled my mind for many days now. I seriously did not think that I would be watching this video so many times and spending so long analyzing the themes that he creates with his “Koreas” or characters. The settings of which these characters are in are so bazar, yet hold relevant to the themes that Trecartin is portraying. The lime green room for example is shockingly vibrant and a sensory overload with cute puppy posters all over the walls. The color alone represents sensory overload to the eyes, which I think is what Ryan is definitely conveying with strong colors and video windows popping up and fading in and out of the other videos. Sensory overload is occurring because of the amount of information that we obtain through our ever-advancing technologies and Ryan also portrays this through the manic use of cellphones in the video. This technology topic also leads to the theme of globalization in the video. One character points to a poster and starts talking about compassionate capitalism and recreate Pangaea which in a way would be like having one solid mass of people that live the same way. The part where Lets have a meeting reminded me of globalism too because all the characters were dressed in the same way and were following the one darker skinned cross dresser around doing whatever she wanted. When the character said Contemporary slut everyone has the agenda was one of my favorite parts of this entire video. To me it relates to when people change the plans on someone yet the other person knew what was supposed to happen the whole time, kind of like an undermining game. The end of the video is so trippy that is just is annoying to watch for me. Trying to make sense out of this is ridiculous. I see the themes but Trecartin makes his video so chopped up with weird music and jumpy film that I get the point that he is frustrated with these themes and wants to jolt people around to see things his way.
ReplyDeleteThis video is very dense and as the title says, it has to be watched twice to begin to understand some of the things that happen and digest their meanings. It definitely deals with many themes, the most important ones being technology, sexuality, and the business world with an emphasis on international competition.
ReplyDeleteTechnology is present everywhere in the video and it plays an important role in the competition of the Koreas. They consider technology to be the main tool to do their job right and they all work with technology and even speak in slang, which shows how important they think technology is in the world.
Sexuality also is important in this video. We can see that all of the actors are women. This exemplifies what the world expects of women and now that women have more powerful jobs and are included more in everything, they are expected to act a certain way. That is why when they "fire" the girl, they say that they "had to" let her go because it's "nature". I am guessing they are referring to the modern world and how it's nature when the weak or the people that don't act the way they are expected to get bad treatment.
And finally the theme of the competition between the Koreas. In many occasions they insult each other when one of them takes too many breaks from work, they talk about jealousy, they talk about how such girl is "a powerful woman" and basically all their conversations include companies, technology and work.
In conclusion, all these themes are present throughout the video but I think the reason why they are all displayed in such a complicated way and why the video is so chaotic and overwhelming is because Trecartin also wants to make the viewer think of media overload. We are constantly bombarded by the media concerning how we should dress, how we should act, what things are important, so all the themes represented in this video collide and it creates the chaos and confusion that we live in, which is exaggerated by Trecartin in this video.
This video is very strange. During the credits they list the cast with their characters being different countries. So obviously each person represented a different country. But was puzzling about that, was how all the 'countries' all had the same kind of appearance, as well as personalities. One would like to think that every country, or even every person is different--but in reality everyone is basically the same. Everyone has the goal to get ahead. Everyone is out of control. At one point it is mentioned that one of 'we' bombed one of our cities, implying that 'we' is the human race, the global corporation is the earth.
ReplyDeleteI'm guessing the reason why all the characters were portrayed as women, is because women are becoming more powerful in the work force in today's society. Or if you look at it as men dressed as women, it could be because there is more understanding and acceptance of transsexuals and transgenders in today's society.