The Difficulty of Artist's Acting
Having established some loose categories of actions, I'd like to critically address the practice of several contemporary video artists.
Artist/Filmmaker William E Jones once suggested to me that artists often use the fact that they are artists to hide that they are engaging in certain activities without the skill required. An example he gave was of an art student shooting a narrative movie and saying that the poor acting was intentional because it was an "art video." Just because something is an artwork doesn't mean it is immune to the critical perspective of the forms it is referencing. If an artist takes on the role of a performer or an art director and does that job poorly then they should be held accountable.
As much as I like the work of Tamy Ben-Tor I see her on camera personality as deeply flawed. Her performances in video (Women Talk About Hitler, Alejandra, The Contractor) and her live performance (Exotica, The Rat and The Liberal) don't involve acting so much as caricature. Ben-Tor is a graduate of The School of Visual Theatre in Israel which is described on its website as "a school meant to develop the art of puppet theater into an interdisciplinary form." I've seen puppets emote with more depth than her. She gets into each of her characters as deeply as a Saturday Night Live cast member might. They are so thinly constructed and acted with such ham-fisted schlockiness that they aren't humorous or serious nor do they really create a compelling gray area between. I would think this is just one intentional aspect of this particular body work if it weren't for the fact that all of her other work is in the exact same tone. If she were to call herself an actress or a comedian instead of an artist she would be considered an amateur at best, but because she is in the fine art world she is given the space to essentially put on a sub-par show. What is it about wigs, fake teeth, and ridiculous voices that I am supposed to find interesting in relationship to Jewish and Israeli culture or is it just that she isn't a particularly skilled actress?
Here is a performance called Exotica:
Here is a particularly obnoxious song displaying her goofy voice skills called Thank You Jesus:
Another artist that I think covers similar ground but has at times (or maybe just one time) performed it correctly is Alex Bag. Her video Untitled '95 uses bad acting so perfectly as part of the larger conceptual function of the work that the intentionality is beyond question. Her subject is the artist and more specifically the art student. Untitled '95 traces Bag's undergrad career in dead-pan parody. Her comedic timing and skilled under-performance show a kind of mastery of both comedy and acting.
Even though both artists use wigs, makeup, costumes, and odd voicing they manage to hit very different notes as performers. Ben-Tor comes across as a hammy goof ball over acting her way through every "sketch" while Bag's performance portraits subtlety and comedic strength. Bag never allows the character to over shadow the subject matter even though she is working with much lighter material than Ben-Tor. Both seem to be hiding behind ridiculous performances, the only difference is that one artist is showing how much is being hidden while the other is simply distracting us for much greater issues.
Artist/Filmmaker William E Jones once suggested to me that artists often use the fact that they are artists to hide that they are engaging in certain activities without the skill required. An example he gave was of an art student shooting a narrative movie and saying that the poor acting was intentional because it was an "art video." Just because something is an artwork doesn't mean it is immune to the critical perspective of the forms it is referencing. If an artist takes on the role of a performer or an art director and does that job poorly then they should be held accountable.
As much as I like the work of Tamy Ben-Tor I see her on camera personality as deeply flawed. Her performances in video (Women Talk About Hitler, Alejandra, The Contractor) and her live performance (Exotica, The Rat and The Liberal) don't involve acting so much as caricature. Ben-Tor is a graduate of The School of Visual Theatre in Israel which is described on its website as "a school meant to develop the art of puppet theater into an interdisciplinary form." I've seen puppets emote with more depth than her. She gets into each of her characters as deeply as a Saturday Night Live cast member might. They are so thinly constructed and acted with such ham-fisted schlockiness that they aren't humorous or serious nor do they really create a compelling gray area between. I would think this is just one intentional aspect of this particular body work if it weren't for the fact that all of her other work is in the exact same tone. If she were to call herself an actress or a comedian instead of an artist she would be considered an amateur at best, but because she is in the fine art world she is given the space to essentially put on a sub-par show. What is it about wigs, fake teeth, and ridiculous voices that I am supposed to find interesting in relationship to Jewish and Israeli culture or is it just that she isn't a particularly skilled actress?
Here is a performance called Exotica:
Here is a particularly obnoxious song displaying her goofy voice skills called Thank You Jesus:
Another artist that I think covers similar ground but has at times (or maybe just one time) performed it correctly is Alex Bag. Her video Untitled '95 uses bad acting so perfectly as part of the larger conceptual function of the work that the intentionality is beyond question. Her subject is the artist and more specifically the art student. Untitled '95 traces Bag's undergrad career in dead-pan parody. Her comedic timing and skilled under-performance show a kind of mastery of both comedy and acting.
Even though both artists use wigs, makeup, costumes, and odd voicing they manage to hit very different notes as performers. Ben-Tor comes across as a hammy goof ball over acting her way through every "sketch" while Bag's performance portraits subtlety and comedic strength. Bag never allows the character to over shadow the subject matter even though she is working with much lighter material than Ben-Tor. Both seem to be hiding behind ridiculous performances, the only difference is that one artist is showing how much is being hidden while the other is simply distracting us for much greater issues.
posted by mores at
11:50 PM
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