Hi
My name is Sam Kaplan. I’m interning for Harrell Fletcher, along with Duncan Cooper.
This video has been on my mind the past day or two, for a variety of reasons:
[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/746cC5C-eqg" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]
First of all, great song. But more importantly, I’m intrigued by its use of photographs, especially with regard to the title of this blog/symposium/thing: “among friends.” At first, I wondered just who the people in the photographs were. Are they really David Archuleta’s friends? Were the photographs just a bunch of pictures of friends that he had lying around? Or, were his friends asked to pose for the pictures specifically for the video? Or again, were the “friends” not friends at all but just actors appearing in a music video?
Then I realized that there was another possibility, a possibility that was more relevant to the kinds of issues that artists like Harrell and Jen care about. Even if David’s “friends” were really just actors at first, it’s certainly possible—and in fact likely—that after shooting a music video with him, they weren’t just acting as friends anymore; they were probably all pretty friendly with each other. (Watch some of David’s video blogs on his YouTube channel—he’s always talking about all the new friends he’s made at photo shoots, concerts, recording studios, etc.)
From this perspective, I think it makes sense to look at this video as a kind of art event like one that Jen or Harrell would do. A bunch of people come together to do something, creating new relationships with each other along the way. The photographs—and even the video itself—might be viewed as mere documentation of the event, evidence that those relationships were created and exist.
Possible future event, somewhat “Learning To Love You More”-style: get a bunch of random students together and shoot a music video for a song they all like. Photograph the production of the video. Insert the photographs into the video as part of the narrative. Make new friends.
I just assumed that all of these people were actors,
Frank | December 22, 2008I just assumed that all of these people were actors, mainly because, as in the “Crush” video, they are clearly all way too attractive to coincidentally be David’s friends. Although I suppose it’s possible. One thing that really got me curious though was the kind of relationship especially that formed between David and these girls who are supposed to be his “romantic interests” in the video. Are the connections that you are supposed to believe that they make in the videos real or fictional? Is the flirtation in the “Crush” video only scripted on paper, and in reality becomes an actual connection that is that much more believable because you are watching it truthfully form in real time? I often wonder how often this happens in movies also, where clearly there must be real sexual tension between two actors who play lovers and have to create a certain believability about the nature of their relationship.
I also have those questions, Frank. I think people assume
Sam Kaplan | December 22, 2008I also have those questions, Frank. I think people assume that relationships formed under “artificial” circumstances—pretending to be friends/lovers in a music video or film, for example—can’t possibly be meaningful. However, it seems to me that such situations only highlight the “artificiality” of all relationships; that is not to say that relationships are not meaningful, only that there is always a certain pretense in “becoming friends” in which people act a certain way. I think artists like Jen and Harrell seek to harness that pretense: if this is how people make friends, why not use it to create new relationships between people who otherwise might not interact?
For additional thought: how does this picture, from the video http://img183.imageshack.us/img183/2027/picture1pi6.jpg differ
Sam Kaplan | December 23, 2008For additional thought: how does this picture, from the video
img183.imageshack.us/img183/2027/picture1pi6.jpg
differ from this picture, from Harrell’s website?
harrellfletcher.com/images/sweden_summerhill/1.jpg
Both are self-conscious acts of documentation. In both, the documentation is part of the work. In Harrell’s case, the photograph is from a 2003 project called “In Sweden, As In The Rest Of The World, It Is Time To Reread Summerhill” in which he and a group of kids “created posters … , shot videos, wrote life stories etc.” relating to the book “Summerhill” by A.S. Neill. (See harrellfletcher.com/2003/signal_summerhill/set.html for more information.)
There is something so blatantly (and perhaps deliberately) perverse about
Conall | December 26, 2008There is something so blatantly (and perhaps deliberately) perverse about the comparison you draw in your last comment, Sam, that I think it would make sense to begin there. I don’t know anything about the project of Harrell Fletcher’s you mention above beyond what is given on his website, but I know a little about Neill, enough to get a sense that this project of Harrell’s (including the process of documentation which is, as you say, “part of the work”) has a certain political intent, in terms of getting children and adults alike to radically rethink the way in which they understand education and the experience of childhood. Getting the children involved in this work, it seems, is about providing them with an opportunity to express their creativity in a way the educational system typically denies them.
The David Archuleta video and the process of ‘making friends’ that it performs and/or documents, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to me to offer any such avenue for participation or creativity. The construction of narrative through these photographs is interesting, yes, but there is such a rigid distinction between the ‘photo-world’ (the past, when ‘David’ was happy, prior to this emotional break-up – all of which is ‘documented’ through these photographs) and the ‘filmic world’ (the present, with ‘David’ alone and in mourning, addressing the viewer in standard music video mode – all of which is presented on film) that it seems very much to be denying the opportunity of harnessing the process of documentation for any creative end. The documents and the act of documentation are ascribed to the past, this inevitable, unchangeable past that can only be relived through the ultimately unsatisfactory (“Delete all pictures?”) act of re-viewing.
I think this gets us to a very important difference between the act of “rereading Summerhill” called for by Harrell, and the act of re-viewing performed here (I could here quote the infamous passage on rereading from Barthes’ S/Z in support of this, but I will restrain myself). Just as ‘David’s’ act of re-viewing these photographs only serves as a reminder of the distance between (‘mediated’) past and (‘real’) present, I think the video relates to its viewer in much the same way – all we can do is (re)watch it, maybe perform the ventriloquistic act of ‘singing along’ that gives us the fantasy of creative participation without actually allowing us either to create or to participate. This seems to me quite antithetical to the attempt Harrell’s project appears to be making: to radically refigure the relationship between the user and his tools, or the child and his toys, if you like (again Barthes comes to mind, the essay on ‘Toys’), so that these children may be creatively involved in their own ‘work’ and their own ‘play,’ an important part of which is the documentation itself. Here there seems a possibility that documentation may be creative, may be ‘present’ – a possibility I don’t see in the Archuleta video.
I had some other thoughts, but this is long enough for now at least.