Ed Rankus Videoworks: Volume 1

Rankus’s elegant black and white video takes us into an intensely dark inner world. The visual elements remind us of clues in a mystery story: dark corridors, half-revealed bodies, a man with a gun, a throw of the dice. But Rankus complicates the mystery by adding scientific symbols: a flickering brain, see-through bodies, diagrams of the head, a skeletal hand. Rankus uses quirky props, lights, actors, and computer imaging to create a labyrinthine space reminiscent of di Chirico’s paintings—one that reads as an open metaphor for the subterraneous desires of the human mind.

This title is also available on Ed Rankus Videoworks: Volume 1.

“Mining an ironic vein by turning technology against itself, AlienNATION undercuts the sociological ramifications of modern living. It is an astounding compendium of sci-fi images, textbook diagrams, special effects, and studio props, which together build multiple readings of the alien, the mysterious, and the obscure in American culture. From spaceships to tinker toys, porno pin-ups to modern office furniture, AlienNATION uses expert editing and a wonderfully kitsch soundtrack to examine the dizzying effect of ‘the future’ on mankind, including the pressure toward corporate conformity placed upon the average worker adrift in the workplace of tomorrow. Rats and laboratory mice figure throughout the video, walking on monitors and spinning on turntables, perhaps functioning as stand-ins for humans caught in the Space/rat race. What characterizes this particular video process (or ‘experimental’ total flow) is a ceaseless rotation of elements that change at every moment, with the result that no single element can occupy the position of ‘interpretant’ (or that of primary sign) for any length of time, but must be dislodged in the following instant, where it will be ‘interpreted’ or narrativized by a radically different kind of logo or image altogether.

—Fredric Jameson, “Surrealism Without the Unconscious” in Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1991)

This title is also available on Ed Rankus Videoworks: Volume 1.

Inspired by Max Ernst’s picture book, The Hundred Headless Women, Rankus presents a collage of Surrealist motifs in this “fractured fairy tale” about a heroine threatened by a psychic usurper. The predator is the telephone, empowering disembodied voices and authorizing their faceless demands.

“The ultimate irony of the tape lies in its silence. The viewer becomes a participant in the tele-predation, as the voice without a voice turns out to be the viewer’s subverbalized reading of the captions.”

—Michael Nash, “Video Poetics,” High Performance 10:1 (1987)

This title is also available on Ed Rankus Videoworks: Volume 1.