Bonus Ups! w/ Colin Ward
Two weeks ago I was sitting in relatively the same place, having coffee, and watching Mark Gonzales videos. I'm always watching these fucking videos. They're entertaining on a handful of levels, both skateboarding and non-skateboarding related. They are performance-based, in a sense. I had done this, however, for the better part of a two-hour span. I read threads and picked out newer videos to sift through, but it was getting me nowhere. Finally a friend of mine told me to look up his friend Colin's videos. I was familiar with Colin to some degree already. I had seen his band Phonebooks play in the past and actually knew one of the other members from my brief stint of living in Santa Fe, NM. Based on the familiarity I gave it a shot and watched his newest video Nextlevel Ibeeprofey. First thought, it's a youtube video. That's that. Second thought, this is done unscripted and quickly. Third thought, I'm using phrases from this video in my day to day conversations now. That's when I had realized that everything about these videos (from likedudefuckinhellyeah to Facial Hair) was brilliantly laid out and indicative of new movements in video art. The solitude and brevity of most of the videos is similar to the early work of William Wegman, who had only himself, some milk, stones, and his dog to create entire narratives. Similiarly I thought of Tony Oursler, video artist nutjob and close colleague to Paul Reubens. Like Oursler, Colin Ward creates a sort of one-man, trashpuppet prop Pee-Wee's Playhouse of over-stimulation, and for a handful of minutes everything is happening at once. The videos are funny, yes, much like any number of youtube videos making their way through message board threads and Facebook embeddings. But these singularly draw together video elements that speak to a tradition in performance and video art that much of the internet does not have to offer. I'll say it outright, these videos are 2011. 2012 maybe. Next level. And they are and will continuously be infectious forms of video art.
filed under: art
tags: Colin Ward William Wegman Tony Oursler Video Youtube Paul Reubens PeeWee Herman
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