Vowels-Response #1

Terry Fox's "The Children's Tapes" seems to mimic and almost idolize the investigative tendencies of children. In focusing on tiny actions between simple household objects, it seems as if the artist is copying the way that children act and play with the objects around them, in a world where everything is new and every experience unique items like spoons and needles provide hours of uninterrupted entertainment. The innocence of children provides an atmosphere where everything has possibility to be interesting, simple experiments with water that others so easily take advantage of become fascinating and mesmerizing. The title "The Children's Tapes" shows that this theme, the childlike inclination to play and experiment in seemingly simple and unproductive ways, is intended. Another thing that is clearly prevalent is the use of dangerous items like needles and fire, and even water can be harmful to a young child, creating tension when all of these items are introduced in a seemingly childlike and unsupervised setting. It would not be unlike a child to wish to experiment with arranging complex balance acts then setting a flaming match inside of it, but it is adult supervision that, hopefully, keeps this from happening. In this video, the "child" is allowed to run free and experiment in many forms that would be considered highly dangerous for a child yet does not come to any harmful end. It is the fascination and interest shown in everyday occurrences that is highlighted here.

In a completely different direction is the collected works of Chris Burden. Through his introduction he made it clear that this was not an all-encompassing view of his work, nor was his work really intended to be viewed on such a medium. I thought that this was an interesting choice because Burden repeatedly emphasized elements of the exhibition that the video could not capture, feelings that could not be sensed, and works of art that it was simply not feasible to film. This film was not made to be a video, some of the excerpts were even taken by chance and unplanned by the artist himself. Most notably visible in his acts is Burden's desire to create tension and fear in the audience by putting himself through pain. Whether it is allowing a friend to shoot him in the arm and making the audience, literally, wait in the dark as the preparations are made, or crawling across a ground strewn with jagged edges and sharp pieces Burden is continuously putting himself in harm's way without concern, allowing the audience to be concerned for him. I found myself actually cringing during some of his acts, as if taking the action upon myself and attempting to empathize with what he was going through, a difficult thing to ask of most people in the everyday world.