June 2011 – Evan Lindorff-Ellery

I know this type of YouTube discovery is all the rage these days, but I thought this one was exceptional and strangely immersive. Like exploring a psychedelic diorama ; it is very self-contained. After seeing Oneohtrix Point Never tonight at the Neon Marshmallow Festival (whose performance was a bit disappointing), it seems even more appropriate.

On YouTube, a user claiming by implication to be Denise Gallant—the one who worked on this video with Brian Samuels—commented that the two “manually cut together [the video] without an editing system”. I’m certainly not very knowledgable about video and/or film creation/editing, but I’m pretty sure that statement means they created the video exclusively with physical film cuts and pastes, which is very impressive. It makes me think of an interview with Tod Dockstader in which he said he remembers watching (audio) tape making multiple laps around the perimeter of the studio’s room in order to create some of his tape pieces, and, moreover, being “knee-deep in tape”. From this, I wonder how, these days, lack of physical struggle for creation of art produces compromised pieces. (This thought is far from new—neither for me or, obviously, culture in general—but its many questions arise again and again.)