Artist Project: Jack + Leigh Ruby’s Car Wash Incident
Today from our friends at Art Practical, we bring you an essay by Simon Lee and Eve Sussman about “the intersection of and differences between entertainment and art.” This article was originally published on July 9, 2014.
Jack + Leigh Ruby. Matt’s Convenience Store Robbery, evidentiary photo 21; 1975. Courtesy of the Artists. Photo: Leigh Ruby.
I’ve been a fan of Eve Sussman’s work from the first moment I watched her film Rape of the Sabine Women (2007) during a screening at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. I loved its cinematic texture—the way in which plot was secondary to the visual elements—and how Jonathan Bepler’s original score kept insisting on being present as a diegetic element. Since then, I’ve had the pleasure of viewing several of her collaborations with the Rufus Corporation and with Simon Lee. The thing that I love about her work, and the work of her collaborators, is how they use the vernacular of classic Hollywood and foreign film to propose poetic responses to the central and deceptively simple question, “What makes a movie?”
I think almost immediately of her 2011 video installation whiteonwhite:algorithmicnoir, which offers a full reveal of the structure of entertainment. Shot primarily in Central Asia, the video feels like the fevered dream collaboration of Jean-Luc Godard and Franz Kafka. An algorithm generates the sequence of shots on a moment-by-moment basis, with the upcoming selections queued on a monitor at the side of the room. Each viewing presents an entirely new film. While the editing structure is an essential element of whiteonwhite, the settings, production design, camera work, and acting are all clearly in dialogue with the conventions of American film noir, which makes the piece feel only more like an endless labyrinth to get lost in.
SOURCE: DAILY SERVING – Read entire story here.