Mark Allen, who composed and performed "The Hudson Song," has created a new video featuring artist Will McLeod and Hudson's best loved holiday event: "Will McLeod Walks Around Hudson, New York." You can watch it here.
Here is what I posted on the Youtube comment thread: So far the message I am getting from the two videos of Mark Allen's that I have seen is that he is disappointed that Hudson is not as f--ed up and bougie as the marketing of it makes it seem, and that he and his backward-walking friends are confused and disoriented when they find themselves in a place where there are actual residents and actual lives rather than something that looks like a destination city. Residents of cities around the world are moving to try to take back their cities from tourism economies and re-create the community lives they have lost. The people in this video are walking forwards in their lives and the red-jacketed confused young person is a backwards-walking victim of late-stage capitalist alienation and hopefully will be awoken once he/they find a place to live that they feel connected to in a real way that does not rely on optics and shopping and they can begin walking forwards into real life. REBECCA WOLFF
Wow, I didn’t experience it that way at all Rebecca. I found the piece hauntingly beautiful, and the alienation you perceived as, more simply put, a displacement. For me, what makes it profound is that somehow it transcends a mere depiction of the protagonist’s state and is instead felt by the viewer - the audience members as participants via their own experience of the unconscious. In that way, and again for me, it’s spiritual ancestry points to Surrealism more than anything that elicits obvious social commentary. And while it’s true that some of the leading Surrealists were foolishly involved with Marxism, that unrelenting idee fixe rarely undermined the Surrealists’ greater achievements investigating the unconscious. In my opinion, this collaboration is remarkable for all the same reasons.
“I would argue that film music is a visionary mode, like Pindar’s odes to the radiant divinity of victorious Greek athletes. I believe that soundtracks, heard apart from the films themselves, trigger an area of the mind that is otherwise inaccessible except in dreaming - a place where sound and image fuse in a primitive form of communication that preceded the development of language. Movie music has the power to seize and transport us to another dimension, where pictures flash and the movie never ends.”
Here is what I posted on the Youtube comment thread: So far the message I am getting from the two videos of Mark Allen's that I have seen is that he is disappointed that Hudson is not as f--ed up and bougie as the marketing of it makes it seem, and that he and his backward-walking friends are confused and disoriented when they find themselves in a place where there are actual residents and actual lives rather than something that looks like a destination city. Residents of cities around the world are moving to try to take back their cities from tourism economies and re-create the community lives they have lost. The people in this video are walking forwards in their lives and the red-jacketed confused young person is a backwards-walking victim of late-stage capitalist alienation and hopefully will be awoken once he/they find a place to live that they feel connected to in a real way that does not rely on optics and shopping and they can begin walking forwards into real life. REBECCA WOLFF
ReplyDeleteWow, I didn’t experience it that way at all Rebecca. I found the piece hauntingly beautiful, and the alienation you perceived as, more simply put, a displacement. For me, what makes it profound is that somehow it transcends a mere depiction of the protagonist’s state and is instead felt by the viewer - the audience members as participants via their own experience of the unconscious. In that way, and again for me, it’s spiritual ancestry points to Surrealism more than anything that elicits obvious social commentary. And while it’s true that some of the leading Surrealists were foolishly involved with Marxism, that unrelenting idee fixe rarely undermined the Surrealists’ greater achievements investigating the unconscious. In my opinion, this collaboration is remarkable for all the same reasons.
ReplyDeleteI finally watched the video and I thought it was beautiful.
ReplyDeleteFrom Camille Paglia:
ReplyDelete“I would argue that film music is a visionary mode, like Pindar’s odes to the radiant divinity of victorious Greek athletes. I believe that soundtracks, heard apart from the films themselves, trigger an area of the mind that is otherwise inaccessible except in dreaming - a place where sound and image fuse in a primitive form of communication that preceded the development of language. Movie music has the power to seize and transport us to another dimension, where pictures flash and the movie never ends.”