Video installation reviews

The first video installation I will review is ‘Nixon’ by Nam June Paik. This was an interesting installation because it was a video piece and a sculpture at the same time, he had two televisions showing two separate speeches by President Richard Nixon, one at the beginning of his presidency and one at the end. There were two electromagnetic coils attached to both screens so that they distorted the video at given intervals, and the audio would switch from which speech was being said too.

The installation was just one of many that were done by this artist, in where he merged science, or rather technology with art. But this was the one that was mostly ignored because I think of the fact that you had to spend a good five minutes looking at it to figure its message out, and the audio being really low didn’t help.

I think the message; the one I got at least was about a corruption of state and also of Nixon himself. I don’t know much about him but I know the president was quite widely hated at the time, but also well like amongst other communities, and I think that was demonstrated by only one image being corrupted at a time.

 

The second video installation I will review is ‘Oil and Sugar’ by Kader Attia. This was just a video being screened in a little show room, and it shows in real time crude oil being poured onto a structure made of sugar cubes and it slowly collapsing.

The video keeps looping and I think it takes a few times through to finally get the meaning, as lot of people didn’t leave showroom straight away but stayed and watched again.
I found it a little confusing at first as well with the meaning seeming unclear, but after watching it a few times and giving it some thought. Then I realized that maybe the oil given its stronghold over the economy and combined with the environment effects and what it did to the sugar turning it all back and gloopy, was meant to represent the corruption of money and abuse of power on our society. And that we were pure before it came along.