One of the videos that Chris Clark the curator of the Glucksman mentions in his talk Curating IRL: net.art, new media and post-internet art which was presented as part of the Digital Humanities Research Colloquium, UCC (Nov 2019) is Melanie Bonja’s Night Soil – Fake Paradise (2014).
This is a artist’s video approximately 12 minutes long, which references tropes of the digital world, the way the digital impacts with the real world and the world of beliefs.
“When a man stops believing in God (said GK Chesterton – maybe widely attributed, although not traced in his works) he doesn’t then believe in nothing he believes anything”.
This particular aspect of the modern world is alluded to in this video which employs a woozy, slightly sedated quality along side a hyper- colour saturated palette. It has a sound track of nature, of exotic bird sounds and the ping of video games, the tinkling, brittle sound of our smartphones communicating with us. The films’ title is rendered in Vaporwave cool and we open wit a visual of an indoor swimming pool, which looks to be at a hotel accompanied by a voiceover delivered by a slightly jaded drawling American female voice describing her journey with ayahuasca, a psychedelic brew of various plant extracts “The first ceremony I sat in I had a very powerful experience”. There are number of personal stories related describing experiences with the plant. The swimming pool location is meant to signify ‘luxury’ and pleasure but it is a bit bland, it is failed luxury. Other set pieces in the film are of a photoshoot of women set against a bright green back ground, scantily dressed parodying an ‘ethnic’, styling, feathers, bananas, bindis along with hard hats. Scrolling on phones, and delivering lines in the ironic style which is very popular in a certain kind of ’self’ presentation, which is like an updated version of camp. There is also a scene with a talking, house plant who has been abandoned on the street. I find it difficult to place Bonja’s positioning in relation to what she presents- is she sincerely taking people at face value? Are the ayahuasca takers ‘for real’ or actors? This for me is probably the most interesting aspect of the video, is it parody or dead serious- this is a question that I find myself asking more and more in life! I tend to take it as ironic and parodic but then again the QAnon shaman was in some way real!
Works referenced.
Chris Clark Curating IRL: net.art, new media and post-internet art / Feb 2020
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exO-WQVoU9U
Melanie Bonja’s Night Soil – Fake Paradise (2014).
(https://vimeo.com/150773518 (Links to an external site.)
G. K. Chesterton Quote.
(https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780191826719.001.0001/q-oro-ed4-00002890 )
