White Elephants, Termites and Carp Caviar (REVLOG: “Carp Caviar 004 Freeing the Mind”)
Erik Nelson’s weekly Carp Caviar, like the bottom feeder eggs after which it is named, is the procreative result of collaborative scavenging. Episodes arrive at your doorstep in a nice tin, but the work is “a struggle with the materials and tools at hand, and your ability to manipulate these to conform to some vision you’ve conjured in your brain.”
This is what is unique and revolutionary about this moment in cinema – the single vlog post is just part of its value as art. It is the whole project that we are invited to follow- the sense of discovery and anticipation that is built over time. The moving image is way behind other 20th century art forms, because the costs of production make the end product central. Vlogging allows for more breathing room. Its not about a final cut or reaching perfection – it is about moving through ideas, listening and responding to others, questioning, “freeing the mind”, rock ‘n roll.
Erik hardly ever shows his face in his videos, but in the struggle to dissolve boundaries in media and in himself we have the portrait of a serious termite-artist. Now, how to package and sell the work of a termite-artist. Somebody?
“Most of the feckless, listless quality of today’s art can be blamed on its drive to break out of a tradition while, irrationally, hewing to the square, boxed-in shape and gemlike inertia of an old, densely wrought European masterpiece….…A peculiar fact about termite-tapeworm-fungus-moss art is that it goes always forward eating its own boundaries, and, likely as not, leaves nothing in its path other than the signs of eager, industrious, unkempt activity…
…The most inclusive description of the art is that, termite-like, it feels its way through walls of particularization, with no sign that the artist has any object in mind other than eating away the immediate boundaries of his art, and turning these boundaries into conditions of the next achievement. Laurel and Hardy, in fact, in some of thier most dyspeptic and funniest movies, like Hog Wild , contributed some fine parody of men who had read every “How to Succeed” book available; but, when it came to applying thier knowledge, reverted instinctively to termite behavior…
…The best examples of termite art appear in places other than films, where the spotlight of culture is nowhere in evidence, so that the craftsmen can be ornery, wasteful, stubbornly self-involved, doing go-for-broke art and not caring what comes of it….”
-Manny Farber
LINKS:
“White Elephant Art vs. Termite Art” – Manny Farber (1962)
The Gleaners and I
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