Negotiating Documentary Space
Daniel Rudin, M.F.A. The University of Texas at Austin, 2012
Supervisor: Bogdan Perzynski
This essay attempts to propose an art practice based on an ethical and aesthetic relation of author, subject, and viewer. This relationship is productive of results that are seen as critical to a precise, useful, and ethical representation of social problems.
Daniel Rudin, M.F.A. The University of Texas at Austin, 2012
Supervisor: Bogdan Perzynski
This essay attempts to propose an art practice based on an ethical and aesthetic relation of author, subject, and viewer. This relationship is productive of results that are seen as critical to a precise, useful, and ethical representation of social problems.
| Negotiating Documentary Space |
Day Labor
“Day Labor” represent its subjects waiting in their respective day-labor sites – individuals, in competition with one another, laboring by waiting. One worker commented to me that it was harder work to wait without finding a job than it was to be physically at work. In “Day Labor,” each worker is paid to wait for the author – and the viewer. We see a series of movements from total alienation and spatial disconnect to more specific, factual statements by the subjects. The viewer, in turn, must share this agonizing waiting with the workers without work...
“Day Labor” represent its subjects waiting in their respective day-labor sites – individuals, in competition with one another, laboring by waiting. One worker commented to me that it was harder work to wait without finding a job than it was to be physically at work. In “Day Labor,” each worker is paid to wait for the author – and the viewer. We see a series of movements from total alienation and spatial disconnect to more specific, factual statements by the subjects. The viewer, in turn, must share this agonizing waiting with the workers without work...
Day Labor: St. John's
Three parties vie for ownership of one site - a gas station on St. John's. The police, day laborers, and the proprietor of the business alternatively vie for access to the viewer, who acts as a sort of "adjudicator" for this "case."
Three parties vie for ownership of one site - a gas station on St. John's. The police, day laborers, and the proprietor of the business alternatively vie for access to the viewer, who acts as a sort of "adjudicator" for this "case."
The Working Homeless
The Working Homeless is a six-channel video installation, a panel discussion, and a media intervention. It consists of interviews with panhandlers who "fly signs" on the I-35 ramps. The project considers panhandling as a form of labor, with wages approximating the minimum wage. It in turn investigates the social, psychological, and economic facets of homelessness. Formally, the video installation consists of six channels set in two rows, as though the space in between were a road. Projectors set on milk crates project video interviews, and sounds of traffic can periodically drown out these interviews. In order that the viewer might catch the entire message, a transcription of each interview is projected onto cardboard signs beneath the project image.
The Working Homeless is a six-channel video installation, a panel discussion, and a media intervention. It consists of interviews with panhandlers who "fly signs" on the I-35 ramps. The project considers panhandling as a form of labor, with wages approximating the minimum wage. It in turn investigates the social, psychological, and economic facets of homelessness. Formally, the video installation consists of six channels set in two rows, as though the space in between were a road. Projectors set on milk crates project video interviews, and sounds of traffic can periodically drown out these interviews. In order that the viewer might catch the entire message, a transcription of each interview is projected onto cardboard signs beneath the project image.
