I love movies and TV. I love the movies that get called “film” or “cinema” and the television shows that get awards, but I also love fluff. Sometimes what I love best are shows about shows and movies about movies. I am thinking about the ways in which this self-reference, appropriation and collage can exist for both a lover of moving pictures and for those who prefer their art with a capital A.
Hacked/ Sweded is the current name for an exhibition proposal I have been working on. The principal of “Sweded” film, as set out in Michel Gondry’s Collage-Com “Be Kind Rewind”, is the reimagining of a film using what is at hand. In music terms, it is a “cover”. Hacked film follows a path in which an appropriated source is lifted and reconfigured. In modern music terms, the remix or mashup would be the hacked work.
For those of you who read Atlas, and thank you if that is the case, it should come as no surprise that I love Christian Marclay’s The Clock, an epic project which is emblematic of the Hacked film. I have been working to identify works of art that elaborate these categorization.
Examples of Hacked film: Marclay’s Telephones and The Clock, John Houck’s “Portrait Landscape” and Dara Birnbaum’s “Wonder Woman”.
Examples of Sweded film: Ragnar Kjartansson:“Take me here by the Dishwasher”, Walid Raad’s “The Bachar Tapes” and the collaborative work 9 Scripts from a Nation at War created by Andrea Geyer, Sharon Hayes, Ashley Hunt, Katya Sander, and David Thorne.
I would very much like your help finding more work that fits these categories. Though I have some lists, I want to see what is in people’s minds now and which examples might carry the most weight. All help will be noted and credited by name online and in an exhibition when it comes into being.
-Jeff Bergman
September 2016
