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A Curatorial Indulgence
By Sara Krajewski
Kelly Mark's witty, low-tech videos share a point-and-shoot technique with the earliest works of the medium, a similarity I mention in the curatorial text for her exhibition at the Henry Art Gallery.
Though I don't name them, I was thinking specifically of Bruce Nauman and Vito Acconci, whose works in the late sixties and early seventies involved stationary cameras recording their actions—be they inane repetitions, strange rituals or perverse rants—while alone in their studios. The performance was the focus, and video the channel, for their body-oriented conceptual art and commentaries on technology.
Alternatively, for Mark, observation is both the means and the end. Her intent is more diffuse. What is happening around the central protagonist affords us a deeper insight into the odd beauty of the mundane.
A scan of Mark's works shows an offbeat humor that gains the viewer's sympathies with its self-effacement, a quality thrown into sharp relief when put up against work by Nauman and Acconci.
Kristan, DVD
Statue Series: Private Conversations with Public Statuary
© Kelly Mark 2003, Courtesy of the Artist
Nauman's videos do have a dark humor but they are hermetic intellectual exercises, while Acconci, on the other hand, flirted with antagonism.
Taking these comparisons any deeper seems oddly indulgent and quickly gets off track. However, I can't resist putting Acconci's Centers (1971) and Following Piece (1969) up against Mark's 33-minute Stare (1996) and Hiccup #2 (2003), pairings which underscore how humor makes Mark's work approachable. They also show how her relatively simple practice results in generously open-ended statements.
Both Mark's 33-minute Stare and Acconci's Centers begin as challenges to video machinery. Mark has a staring contest with her camera; Acconci points at the center of the closed circuit screen linked to his. Acconci's outstretched arm gives way to a sharply defined finger that seems on the verge of invading our space. It is a gesture of accusation made all the more sinister by obscuring the artist's face. Mark on the other hand appears passive as she fronts the camera (and by proxy, us the viewers) with a bored stubbornness. Both artists obviously fail in the lop-sided contests. Acconci decides to back off his aggressive action while Mark gives in to the physical inevitability that her eyes will refuse to focus.
33 Minute Stare, Video Transferred to DVD
© Kelly Mark 1996, Courtesy of the Artist
Two other complementary works involve unwitting accomplices to the artists' performances in the public sphere. For Following Piece, Acconci selects a random passerby to follow until the individual enters a private space inaccessible to the artist. He does this every day for one month in acts that last minutes to several hours. Though he exercises no control while subjecting himself to the path of another, he ultimately maintains a menacing incursion into the privacy of each blind participant. Mark's Hiccup series of performances also begins as a month-long project. She positions herself at the same spot each day, wearing a walkman that transmits instructions for performing the same actions at precise times. Appearing silently along the daily paths of the anonymous passersby, she becomes part of what the artist terms an "annoying déjà vu experience."
Acconci's near hostile actions speak powerfully of surveillance and the unconscious, whereas Mark's work offers heightened awareness of one's incongruous surroundings. Instead of pointing out fear and alienation, her work offers a furtive wish for social connection.
Mark also explicitly courts Marcel Duchamp's dictum that the viewer complete the work of art, endowing it with meaning based upon his or her own experiences. If a work of art's significance is figured through such circumstance, Mark's humorous view of a refashioned everyday activity welcomes and sustains the attention of viewers. The trick is to make a lasting impression in order to avoid the fate of a one-liner; by encouraging longer engagement, Mark's work welcomes deeper reflection on whatever you want to see, wherever you're game to go with her.
