From: Brook Hinton (email suppressed)
Date: Wed Jun 11 2008 - 20:08:34 PDT
For what its worth, my students are feverish downloaders of all things, and
it seems to have increased their desire to see the material in theaters and
to arrange their own screenings. They absolutely do not equate the online
viewing experience with the public screening experience, and if anything the
former has whetted their appetite for the latter.
And it DEFINITELY has not made them content with online versions. They
anxiously await the chance to see, say, Satantango - clips of which are all
over YouTube - or Jeanne Dielman (yes, I know some who have labored through
the barely decipherable bootleg that makes the rounds) on film in a theater
or at least via a good quality digital version, and their credit cards are
at the ready for home-video-priced DVDs of work ranging from the Vasulkas to
Hollis Frampton (who is getting a bit of a new cult following of people who
know nothing else of experimental cinema thanks to online bootlegs) to Sadie
Benning to Michael Snow.
All that said, the idea of the existing abysmal quality clips of some of
these works being one's only exposure makes me ill, as does the idea of
someone profiting at the artist's expense from such things.
I too was once a collector who spent huge amounts of intense energy seeking
out rare music, film, and books, and understand the specialness of seeking
and finding the scarce. Now, maybe due to age, I resent artificial scarcity,
and am suspect of the aura imparted by rarity on a work - I feel it
interferes with my understanding of it and direct experience of it on its
own terms, and that no one should be condemned to never hear of, let alone
experience, something that might enrich their lives just because they grew
up and remained in a place or culture that such things don't penetrate, so
long as getting the news and the work to them doesn't genuinely penalize the
artist.
Or maybe, as far as the collecting thing, its just my increasing hatred of
objects and stuff and their associated consumer culture adding in the long
term to Landfill Earth.
Brook "you can have my limited edition white vinyl residents' lost album
printed with the audio reversed or free, I'm over it" Hinton
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Brook Hinton
film/video/audio art
www.brookhinton.com
studio vlog/blog: www.brookhinton.com/temporalab
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For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.