Big impressions.

The stop.look.listen exhibition of video works at the Haggerty Museum was not only inspiring to me as an art student, but interesting to me on every other level outside of academia and art. This was because most of the pieces effectively made comments on our society as a whole. A lot of artist attempt to spread messages about society through their art, and most of the time, at least for me, it falls on deaf ears. This is because they is because they try to hard, they go to the extreme. I'm a huge fan of subtlety, it's the little reminders that make the biggest imprint on mind. Just give me an inch, don't worry, I'll take the mile. That's why my favorite works from the exhibition were Predator and Prey, by Janet Biggs, and Untitled (The Michael Jackson Project), by Rodney McMillian.


Untitled (The Michael Jackson Project) features an African American man in white clown make-up lip singing to a song by Gladys Knight titled “Try to Remember”. The title of the piece, as well as the image, almost says it all. It's really a very simple, yet impeccably layered. He's an African American, however he's in a simple t-shirt and painted in a weird version of “white face”. He's a man, but he's passionately mouthing the words of a song sang by a famous female singer. It's an exercise in contradictions, much like are society, which is also an exercise in contradictions. The music adds another layer. It's a very good, and amazingly written and performed song. Watching the video performance and listening to the song invokes an emotional response that I don't think either would be able to achieve alone. Predator and Prey is another powerful piece, that shows it's true content in simplicity. We watch beautifully captured images of polar bears, a horse, a eagle, and a swimmer. At first the imagery alone captured me, but then I realized what all of these things had in common, they were all in captivity. That's when I really started to pay attention, and I noticed the intensity of the sound, the pounding of the horse's hooves pounding against the ground, the sound of the eagle, and the music. The music, along with the realization of captivity, gave me the feeling of being trapped and wanting to escape the confines I was in at all circumstances. This is what the piece was trying to convey.


Overall I learned a lot at the exhibition, it was an unforgettable experience that has made huge impression on me.