Response 8, Exchange

In many ways, Morris’ Exchange reminds me of Benglis’ Now, both of which were made in the same year, 1973. Both videos made use of temporal layering, placing one video over another, and thus confusing the visual experience. This sort of distortion plays well into the video as a whole, as, as I believe many people have commented, the video is very confusing. I think this has to do more with the fact that the video, as we have seen it, stands alone, it is in a way, out of context. We do not have the experience of the other videos, or even the one which we see being played on the screen sans narration, and thus we have little with which to understand the video. Nevertheless, I think that, even given this context, the video would be difficult to understand, the narration is too fast and unrelenting, it doesn’t give time to process.

Some of the concepts raised in the video itself were very interesting, especially the nature of the collaboration between Morris and Benglis. Using each other’s work as raw material for their own creative process and creating new work. Naturally, this happens all the time but s drawn out and commented upon very explicitly in the first part of the video. Also interesting was his reference to Benglis’ “weaving” together of the elements of her videos, likening her work to a great tapestry, the visual and audio layers being weaved together to create a more complicated whole.