Talking with Students about Christian Marclay’s “Video Quartet”

Christian Marclay, still from "Video Quartet," 2002

With the opening of Christian Marclay’s Video Quartet at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University (on view through July 26, 2009), I have been thinking about how to share this 14-minute video work of art with students.

For educators, I think there is often a reluctance to discuss video art on tours. Sometimes there are logistical issues in terms of time and sequencing, while at other times, the narrative of the video poses challenges. However, works like Video Quartet—videos that can be watched for a portion of time and then discussed—offer possibilities for meaningful exchanges with students and exposure to this medium.

I developed some strategies to discuss Video Quartet after hearing a talk from educator Denise Gray. In regards to looking at video art with students, she emphasized a structured interaction, such that it includes time to experience the work, as well as the conditions in which to discuss it. The discussion portion sometimes requires you to step away from the work, or even outside of the gallery where it is being shown. These comments might be helpful for talking about video art by Art21 artists Matthew Barney, Pierre Huyghe, Mike Kelley, and Paul Pfeiffer.

Before entering the gallery showing Video Quartet, I introduce students briefly to what they will see: a collage of over 700 film clips of sounds edited together by the artist Christian Marclay to create a musical composition—a quartet. I mention that they will watch about five minutes of this 15-minute work. I also ask students to look for something specific: the various ways in which sounds are made, as well as how the image of the sound fits with the recorded sound.

A recent group of eighth graders, upon viewing part of Video Quartet, discussed “traditional music,” and how combined sounds—such as those made by car horns, feet tapping, and glasses filled with water—also create a type of music. The musical possibilities of car horns caused many of them to view the sound in new ways.

Marclay’s process to create Video Quartet was also something they wanted to discuss. While they were familiar with collage, seeing a collage made with video allowed them to think about repetition and arrangement in new ways. One student said how she thought the four screens was a really engaging choice, and another commented on how the clips on different screens competed for his attention. Through this work, Marclay also demonstrates an interest in the memory that viewers may have with some of these movies—which is something else that the students picked up on, recognizing films including Back to the Future and The Addams Family.

In addition to talking with students about this work, we plan to facilitate a drawing activity for summer K-12 tours where students draw the pattern of a sound or sounds they choose to focus on, creating an alternate image to accompany the sound and image pairing that Marclay produced. At our May Family Day, we also had stations where students could experiment with the mixing and editing process, creating their own song using an application called Super Duper Music Looper.

In our media-saturated lives, Christian Marclay reminds us to question the relationships that we are presented with—the sounds and images edited together for films. I also feel he encourages viewers to think creatively about ways in which they can change their role from being a consumer to being a producer.

Julie Thomson is the Associate Curator of Education at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University where she develops materials for docents and teachers to use with K-12 audiences.

Reality or Fiction at the Hirshhorn?

Another exhibition of contemporary art to see this summer in Washington D.C. is The Cinema Effect Part II: Realisms through September 7, 2008 at the Hirshhorn. A two-part exhibition, the second installation focuses on realisms, exploring notions of fiction and reality and sometimes, the overlaps between the two (the first installation explored dreams). In Realisms, artists use video and film in a multitude of ways including combining existing footage, re-staging events or films, and using actors to create new works. The works also range from single monitors to wall-size projections, such as Matthew Buckingham’s projection through a two-way mirror and Paul Chan’s projection on the floor.

I was most interested in works by Candice Breitz and Mungo Thomson. Candice Breitz’s Mothers and Fathers edits excerpts from popular films of mothers in one room and fathers in a second room. Presented on multiple monitors, the characters’ dialogues and actions overlap in interesting and sometimes revealing ways while also exploring constructions of mothers and fathers in movies.

Mungo Thomson’s New York, New York, New York, New York seemingly presents video on four screens of New York streets. Close observation (or reading the label) allows one to learn these are not New York City streets but instead Hollywood sets of New York City. This difference between reality and fiction is one that some visitors will discover while others will miss.

Realisms also includes screenings of Jeremy Deller’s The Battle of Orgreave, a re-enactment of a 1984 miner’s strike whose participants included some of the miners, families, and townspeople who originally participated in the conflict. Kota Ezawa’s The Simpson Verdict, uses paper-cut animation of the OJ Simpson trial to present an alternate perspective of this heavily documented media event. Projected on the floor, Paul Chan’s 1st Light loops to present a sometimes empty sky that, as time passes, fills with falling debris from daily life.

While many museums have blogs, the Hirshhorn’s Ask the Artist Blog offers week-long opportunities to ask individual artists in The Cinema Effect questions about their work and practice. The Hirshhorn also offers a video preview of the exhibition and podcasts of related talks.

Video-based artwork offers challenges to visitors as well as museums in its display, but The Cinema Effect offers a successful reflection on this medium. As educators (logistical issues aside), some video and film works are easier to share with students than others. This past spring, we had many successful discussions about a video-based VOOM portrait by Robert Wilson on display at the museum where I work.

As an educator, have you discussed any video-based works of art by artists like Catherine Sullivan (Season 4), Mike Kelley (Season 3), Matthew Barney (Season 1) or others? What do you find challenging about discussing video art with your students?

Positively Puryear

There is no substitute for seeing Martin Puryear’s sculptures firsthand. Martin Puryear at the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., spanning the museum’s two buildings, offers such an opportunity through September 28, 2008. In Art:21’s Martin Puryear episode (Season 2) I first learned about his working methods and interest in materials, both important elements in the 50 plus sculptures on view.

The contrast of the stone of the East Building with the wood of Puryear’s sculptures on view in the East Building is breathtaking. The East Building’s spacious court also gives Puryear’s sculptures room to breathe (a sense of life Puryear has talked about his sculptures having).

In the West Building’s Rotunda, Ladder for Booker T. Washington (featured prominently in Art:21) is installed. From certain angles the sculpture is dwarfed by the rotunda’s scale and the sculpture’s placement may even go unnoticed by some visitors. The time-lapse photographs of the installation and seeing the work installed offer possibilities for thinking about and discussing how installation and the choice of site affects the perception of (and potentially the interpretation) of a work of art.

Puryear’s sculptures are also shown in multiple galleries in the West Building. A gallery with five circular sculptures from 1978 to 1980 caught my attention. All wood (though different varieties), some are painted while the natural is manipulated in others. The ends of some connect, while others overlap and a few stop short of the ends meeting. While all circular, Puryear here offers the many possibilities of the circle. Each sculpture reflects the considerations he made his choices.

If you are not able to see Puryear’s sculptures firsthand, or if you want to share them with your students, the National Gallery has some useful online resources including images (with details of the surfaces) and a Family Guide with interesting, thoughtful questions to consider while looking at Puryear’s work.

This exhibition left me thinking about choices: Puryear’s choices of materials, choice in terms of the ways he works with materials, choices in repeating forms, choice of titles, as well as the choice of site. The choices artists make is one of my favorite themes to talk about with students visiting a museum. While formal analysis is often used to discuss choices, as an educator how have you discussed with your students the choices an artist has made in a work of art?