Youtube Commentary Project

Artists Space, a New York-based alternative space, has selected a piece of mine for a webcast project of theirs. They've started a monthly "Youtube Commentary Project," in which artists select a clip on Youtube, and lay some commentary over it, in the manner that a commentary track might be laid over a DVD. Mine, below, tries to link together Marilyn Monroe, Dirty Harry, Richard Brautigan, and the color red within the space of a minute-- over a clip of a gun-owner playing with his .44 Magnum.



And these are the prior Youtube commentaries:

Steve Lambert (who is a friend -- he went the extra mile of getting several people to read aloud the "comments" posted to the original video, a clip of Leonard Bernstein conducting Shostakovich -- he was amused by the fact that even "high culture" material on youtube attracts extravagant vituperation. I have been working on a couple ideas reacting to the "culture" of comments on the web, but Steve cut into it in a very funny and direct way):



Jon Rubin on Milton Friedman:



Nina Katchadourian on a drawing of a freehand circle:



Cesare Pietroiusti on a performance by the Italian diva Mina:



The Artists Space youtube channel is here (and features much more material than the youtube commentaries). I think the notion of Youtube "Commentary Tracks" is a wonderful idea, and an interesting strategy for "curating" the material that's out there on youtube -- I think I'll continue to make ones of my own, outside the auspices of Artists Space's project.