Media Analysis

Workers Leaving the Factory - such was the title of the first cinema film ever shown in public. For 45 seconds, this still-existent sequence depicts workers at the photographic products factory in Lyon, owned by the brothers Louis and Auguste Lumière, hurrying, closely packed, out of the shadows of the factory gates and into the afternoon sun. Only here, in departing, are the workers visible as a social group. But where are they going? To a meeting? To the barricades? Or simply home?

Antonio Muntadas

Watching the Press, Reading the Media

“Reading various popular magazines through the camera, the dominance of advertising over content becomes apparent as the same cigarette ads are consistently legible, while the various articles become a blur. A quick scan with no pause for reflection is the only reading possible of the rapidly turning pages. Muntadas asks whether magazines might be manufactured to be read as passively as television, questioning the consequences of active, or critical, viewing.” —Mark Mendel, Muntadas: Media Landscapes (Andover, MA: Addison Gallery of American Art, 1982)

Antonio Muntadas

Video is Television?

Playing back "visual quotations" of everything from Poltergeist to Blade Runner, Muntadas rescans the surface of the monitor, questioning the "nature" of media—film, television, video, and image. Television emerges as the medium to eat all mediums, raising the question: Is it possible,within the context of television, to tell art from life or fact from fiction? An endless row of generic TV monitors visually evokes a hall of mirrors as the expression of the cultural homogeneity and bland abundance achieved through the dominant medium of the late 20th century.

Martha Rosler

A Simple Case for Torture, or How to Sleep at Night

Rosler identifies the totalitarian implications of an argument for torture, under certain circumstances, as it appears as a guest editorial in Newsweek magazine in 1982. Her critique is presented as a voiceover and a dizzying assemblage of radio and print media--articles on subjects ranging from human rights to unemployment and global economics. Implicating the U.S.

Paul Chan

RE:THE_OPERATION

Based on a set of drawings that depict George W. Bush's administration as wounded soldiers in the war against terrorism, RE:THE_OPERATION explores the sexual and philosophical dynamics of war through the lives of the members as they physically engage each other and the "enemy". Letters, notes, and digital snapshots "produced" by the members on their tour of duty become the basis of video portraits that articulate the neuroses and obsessions compelling them toward an infinite war.

Paul Chan

Now promise now threat

“Now too late, he understood her. The heart that pumped out love, the mouth that spoke the Word, didn’t count.”

--Toni Morrison, “Beloved”

Art Jones

#FFFFFF

The third in a series of interactive CD-ROMs, #FFFFFF is a collage/essay, in several parts, about the reception aesthetics of pixels, and some other things. Included is a photo essay on the male body as used in advertising, an instructional guide on how to gain success as an artist, computer karaoke, and a video interview with DJ Spooky.

Antonio Muntadas

Between the Lines

"Between the Lines is an exploration of what Muntadas terms the 'informational limits' of television—the selections, programs, decisions, edits, time schedules, image fabrications and so on—specifically addressing the means by which 'facts' in the network news are transmitted on television. Muntadas slows and examines the process, observing a newscaster’s exercise in assembling events, locating images, and constructing the news."

—Bob Riley, Currents: Mediated Narratives (Boston: Institute of Contemporary Art, 1984)

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