Alix Pearlstein

I believe could possibly have been biased against this artist before I even stepped into the lecture. I am not personally a fan of most video art, and it takes some really intriguing videos to really make me focus on the message. Pearlstein's videos didn't do it for me.

That being said, some of her concepts and notions did stick with me. Although her adaptation of the No Manifesto didn't make much sense to me at the time, the idea behind the Manifesto as a set of rules to not abide by makes me want to attempt interjecting a similar set of rules into my work.

I also like the fact that her work seemed to rely heavily on gesture. With vacant white backgrounds, the viewer can no longer look to it for details. There is no time and place, and the sound doesn't match up with people's mouths, so you're forced to draw conclusions from a singular source, which is discomforting in a society that relies on multi-sensory understanding and continuous stimulation.

Another thing that intrigued me was her use of the real versus the unreal. Her "unreal" seemed to be in actuality a distorted representation of her reality. I also enjoy playing with these two elements, but hadn't thought of the unreal in that way until her lecture.