Alix Pearlstein Lecture

Alix Pearlstein uses her background in sculpture and installation as well as dance and choreography to create performance based videos.  During the lecture she showed a range of her work, from videos dating from 2000 all the way up to 2008.  Although the themes and narratives of her performance videos vary greatly, they all speak to the immediacy of live performance, and the importance of gesture.  Pearlstein also mentioned how she tends to always shoot her videos in blank white studios, thereby removing any context from the work.  Instead, she relies on the gesture of the actors in the video to provide the context to the viewer.  After watching several of her videos, especially the ones that have multiple and simultaneous channels, I began to get a sense for the choreography and rhythm that were inherent in them.  The first video she showed was titled “Two Women” and had a cut out of a naked woman interacting with a real man.  The camera angle distorts the scale, so that at first glance the magazine cut out seems just as big as the person, and it is not until the end that the true size of the object is revealed.  I found this piece awkward and hard to relate to, although I could definitely see how it fits into performance based art.  The last videos she showed were more recent and both filmed with multiple channels, which I found to be more interesting.  The overall quality of the film seemed better, and with a larger ensemble of actors and a distinct wardrobe, I began to see the cinematic and theatrical overtones apparent in her work.  However, since these videos were meant to be seen as an installation, I think perhaps something got lost in translation, and that I could appreciate them more if I saw them as Pearlstein intended.