Yes Men

Yeah man, the Yes Men are funny. I was a little thrown off at first, I would never claim to be an expert on the happenings of the WTO, but I definitely got the picture, or at least the commentary made by the Yes Men, by the end of the film.

I think its important that there are people out there combating corporate monsters such as the WTO. If it weren’t for like-minded individuals making this king of stand, these big money organizations would spiral even more out of control.

It’s pretty clever that these guys can infiltrate this corrupt system of bureaucratic nonsense by simply acting the part of business men with perverse moral/ethical grounding: they fit right in.
Watching it as a documentary, and in essence being in on the gag, is really an eye-opening experience. You have to ask questions like: Where was security to escort this man (in a gold leisure suit with a phallus) out of this conference? Why didn’t people from a television network catch onto a false representative of the WTO before allowing him to be on air?

It really is a statement of the amount of absurdities corporate interests can get away with.

I took a little pride in the fact that the college students saw past the smooth talk and that they weren’t actually sold on the idea of literally selling shit to third world McDonald patrons. If there was a single agreeable individual in that audience, may he/she burn in hell (in my opinion).
I would have like to have seen how that presentation would have gone at the scheduled conference it was intended for, with a more money-washed audience, but it didn‘t work out that way. Hopefully, for humanity’s sake, the reaction would have remained the same, but we’ll never know.

In the last gag, the Yes Men declared that they, the assumed WTO, were disbanding and reassembling as an organization geared towards the betterment of mankind and not big business. It was pretty cool to see all the positive reactions from the press members present at this conference. It was as if some of the people giving reactions to the camera were slapped by the idea that the World Trade Organization would truly be concerned with the interests of the people. It just goes to show you how accepting a lot of us have become towards these organization’s, such as the WTO, roles as merciless and unbeatable villains. It kind of makes me want to stand up and boycott a local McDonald’s or something, but honestly I’d probably just order a number ten once discouraged.

Film is definitely a strong vessel of awareness and opinion. The Yes Men was a great example of film as action in that it promoted joining or supporting their cause at the end of the movie.

Molotov Man Response

When Joy said “all of my paintings are based on photographs,” I instantly knew what trouble lie ahead. I also paint from photographs, but I’ve never actually done it for anything other than my own enjoyment. I’ve never tried to publish or display any of these paintings, so I’ve never been involved in this kind of conflict. I do agree with Joy, that the distinctions between her painting and the photograph are obvious. Just the change in medium creates a unique, appropriate context. Her choice of framing completely changes the image, as she mentions in the article. Which is also to say that I think the image does work with Garnett’s conceptual riot series. The photographer, Susan Meiselas feels as though her subjects “context is being stripped away.”

The photographer of the original image, Susan Meiselas, seems less interested in the artistic potential of her image as she is the truth and movement beyond the photographs frame. Her portion of the article has a great focus on the circumstantial history behind the Molotov Man. For instance she tells us his name, Pablo Arauz, and that he was, at the time, a Nicaraguan rebel fighting the regime in power. She knows the image has been used in many ways: political, religious, but it has primarily remained an image of Nicaraguan pride. She obviously finds Joy Garnett’s reasons for recreating this image a little less worthy due to its abstractness.

I can take both sides here. I think it would have been smart for Joy to contact Susan and let her know of her intentions for the Molotov man. I’m aware that there would be a fraction of the art in the world if every artist had to seek permission to do what they do, but I do think it should be a common practice from one artist to another when undertaking a translation in or between mediums. I don’t think Joy meant to impose on the images importance to Susan, but you just never know what type of person you might be dealing with. Susan seems very straightforward in her belief that Arauz belongs in his original context.

roughin it

Back in the Community College days, some friends and I discovered the world of pinhole cameras. Its pretty cool because you can build one using anything with a hollow interior. Our designs ranged from shoe boxes to more elaborate wooden models.
The idea was to have your camera light tight and to make the hole as small as possible; its just easier to control exposure that way. Of course light tight isn’t always an exact science and the holes could range in size, but the imperfections they left behind, to me, were all part of the appeal.

The photos these cameras would produce was always a surprise. In simpler models you could skip film completely and just use photo paper. Personally, this made it easier for me to develop the pictures at home since I lacked equipment such as an enlarger.
It was also nice to use paper because each camera, depending on its shape and size, would bend the paper therefore distorting the image. Cans, or other rounded objects, achieved images like a fish-eye lens, while inserting the paper diagonally along a rectangular film plane gave images a certain view camera aesthetic.

I knew one guy that used a pinhole camera to do a documentary on the homeless of Raleigh. That to me is one of those situations where the tools used to produce the art reflect that art that is produced. I have to give him a lot of credit for choosing to do his project that way. It definitely added an appropriate style to his images and their subject matter.

Anyways, it reminded me of the article on the Rough Theater because no one needs a camera with all the bells, whistles, and digital displays to make a photograph. Having to guess your composition, and printing results that are basically a mystery to you, always has a great payoff in the end. Sure an LCD screen is handy, but anyone can point and shoot. Pinholes actually present a bit of a challenge.

I think another way in which I’ve experienced this idea of ‘rough art’ is in intro to production here at UNCW. Each film we made required a good amount of improvisation, just as 6x1 does. Problem solving doesn’t come in the form of a big budget for us college students, so its only natural that we compensate with creativity. Using a rolling chair as a dolly is something that most film students have experienced, and it is just one of many ways that our films look differently, but work the same as big money productions.

I personally like the idea of using ones mind rather than ones wallet.

Rhythmic Editing