Do-overs and New Beginnings
This show is about starting over and the exciting, anxious, scary, pit-of-your-stomach feeling that you get when you begin again. New beginnings are the cusp; they are the very thresholds of revelation. They intoxicate with possibility. Whether by choice or necessity, by accident or on purpose, starting over means you get the chance to be better than you were before. Or worse. Or the same. But it’s never exactly the same. It’s more like a second chance, a do-over. A rare, sparkling opportunity to try again, like it all never happened in the first place. A chance to get it right.
The videos selected for Do-overs & New Beginnings explore the mixture of hope and anxiety that come with starting out fresh and the careful optimism that the chance for a do-over brings. All of these videos take loose narrative forms, with a central protagonist’s voice that describes the beginning from a fresh point of view. This sense of the individual is key to these tales because the feeling of new opportunity is intensely personal. Even if this phenomenon is happening to an entire community or nation, these works cope on an intimate and solitary level. All the works have what at first feels like a meditative aspect. The pacing is steady and deliberate, the shots thoughtfully and imaginatively composed. Yet, what seems to be a meditative, inward tone is actually a stately, self-aware presentation. The unhurried stride of these artists reflects their caution and wonder at their new opportunity. These artists have either arrived at a new dawn or thought of a way to re-do something that has already passed, and they are thrilled and intimidated, and they are going to take their time.
Together these works represent what is possible and impossible with a new beginning and what the do-over reveals about our inner desires. They show the potential of breaking free from the past and the frightening possibility that the past can return to ruin your fresh start at any moment. They reveal to us our longings to correct past events, whether historical injustice, or our own petty regrets. All these works acknowledge in different ways that from time to time there is a deep, possibly insatiable, need to start over.
Meredith Monk’s (American b. 1942) arresting mini-epic Ellis Island embodies this stately and guarded narrative tone. A wondrous do-over of the ultimate new beginning, Monk recreates the final step of the journey of immigrants coming across the Atlantic to America. In the ruins of the federal immigration station Monk’s performers undergo examinations, pose for photographs, and learn about America as they try to enter the country that will become their new home. The film is cut with a tour guide taking a group around the same ruins decades later, interpreting the islands legacy. The guide’s dry recitation of amazing and cruel facts is jarringly paired with the whimsical and tender scene of immigrants standing, sitting, and dancing around the ruins. Ellis Island imagines the immigrant’s journey with equal parts of realism, revealed by terrified and stern faces in period clothing, and a witty and bizarre revision that has the early 20th century voyagers learning about microwaves and garden shears. The tension between the stunning images (shot by Jerry Pantzer) and Monk’s haunting and hypnotic score result in curious, sad, and humorous tales of families who are fearful and excited.
Much like Monk, Walid Ra’ad (Lebanese b. 1967) uses the do-over to imagine the unknowable details of history. From 1975 until 1991 Lebanon was inundated in a bloody civil war. The conflict was ignored or not well understood by many in the West and Raad’s The Dead Weight of a Quarrel Hangs uses this gap in knowledge to imagine and present oddities and parables from the conflict. The narrator of the video is assured and official sounding and this educational tone makes the work feel like a documentary. Raad expertly plays on Western audience’s lack of knowledge about this conflict to explore what it means to write a history, creating the details of the conflict in small profound stories that examine the lives of historians, leaders, and a surveillance officer. Raad explores the writing of history as the ultimate do-over. The past is a legend that begins over again through those who recount it. The artist takes on the roles of historian and poet and we, his audience, are caught between belief and doubt, hoping that his stories are true, as if to validate their poignancy.
Three Parts for Today explores the intersection of several nationalities and generations, including peace activists struggling to understand what a new beginning in the Middle East might look like and how to get there. Artist Dani Leventhal (American b. 1972) uses diaristic footage combined with interviews and moments of serene beauty to thoughtfully weave the personal lives of her characters and the larger political environment that has brought them all together. The video bounces between toy landscapes, dying animals, and characters forming a portrait of a time and place that is banal and magnificent. Characters Leventhal calls “The Refusenik,”, “The Zealot,” and “The Father” muse about their experiences, pushing towards some small and elusive revelation. Three Parts for Today is episodic and a self-reflective series of everyday scenes and slightly divine characters that leave you with the feeling of being young and on the cusp of a profound change.
A more direct contemplation of what it means to begin again happens in Miranda July’s (American b. 1974) Getting Stronger Everyday. In it a man recounts two stories he has seen on television about young boys taken from their families and who return to them years later. The first tale is a disturbing and haunting tragedy of a boy who was kidnapped and abused. The second is a fable that becomes, in effect, a do-over of the first. The awful details of the first story are replaced with adventure and wonder. Yet the first story is based in truth, the man tells us, and the later is fiction. Both narratives mesmerize the storyteller. He ponders their significance and attempts to parse their meanings just as we, the audience, do. Low-fi aesthetics and a conversational tone add to the intimacy of this work. The storyteller is cut with a young girl reclining in a bedroom. She gives the sense that she may be waiting for the return of the boys from the stories, adding a sense of anticipation and longing.
Far from the fantastic events of July’s work comes January Jubilee, a rambling sequence of nights where the prolific filmmaker, George Kuchar (American b. 1942), lectures, jokes, dines with friends, plays with a cat, and rings in 2008 in a subdued and ordinary fashion. Kuchar’s camera is taken for granted by the people around him and the everyday moments he captures unfurl with an astonishing and intense realism. The tone is lurid and lovely as the artist and the people around him banter and flirt is the years waning days and hours. Watching this film we are reminded of how sumptuous, bizarre, and exquisite close friends can be. The video is edited with a blunt wit and relaxed pace that make the New Year enter with a daunting and alluring inevitability, reminding us that new beginnings are always glorious, but not always in ways we expect.
David Oresick