Abstract

This essay offers a close reading of two rarely discussed videos by moving-image artists Omer Fast and Michael Robinson. Fast’s T3–AEON (2000) and Robinson’s Light Is Waiting (2007) stand as representative of home video appropriation. Utilizing home video’s time-shifting properties, Fast and Robinson returned to home video purchases of cinema and television programs—respectively, The Terminator and Full House—as well as to analog technologies at a moment when they were being eclipsed by the digital. While the return to would-be outmoded or obsolescent technologies is typically tinged with the romanticism of nostalgia, their work pushes through the traps of nostalgia and opens into the times of anachronies. Drawing upon the writing of philosopher Jacques Rancière, anachronies simultaneously configure multiple temporal lines, instilling an ever-changing transformation of personal history, cultural memory, and historical thinking in the present. Revealing the connection between their practice and the multiple temporal lines present via home video appropriation, this essay offers a critical rethinking of nostalgia and anachronism—aesthetically, culturally, and theoretically—through the site of two artists’ moving-image practice.

Talk to us

Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have

Schedule a call

Disclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.