Earlier this year OK GO came out with This Too Shall Pass, a 4 minute music video based on the Rube Goldberg's chain of events machine. Like Here It Goes Again the real-time unedited quality of the short, and the way everyday objects play off each other to obtain unexpected lifelike qualities gives it an undeniable awe factor. And in many ways the same exact awe factor the Swiss artist duo Fischli/Weiss went for when they created their famous The Way Things Go with teacups, tires, explosions and buckets of water in the studio/loft in 1987.
A parallel that yet again brings up the rather banal question of what gives art it's aura (see Gaga vs. Jana).
OK GO's This Too Shall Pass (2010)
The Way Things Go by Fischli/Weiss (1987)
More recently OK GO's latest music video End Love brings up the same question: a mix of time lapse and stop motion, teletubbies, tamed geese and endurance, it's worth some great thought-out video art performances - minus the boredom. In particular:
- Tuner prize recipient Martin Creed's 2008 piece Work 850, a sprint athlete running every 30 seconds between 10am and 6pm the 86-meter dash from one end of the British Tate to the other, for four months;
- Chu Yun's This is xx (2006) shown at the New Museum's Younger Than Jesus Triennial, of a female participant sleeping in the museum/gallery space after having taken sleeping pills;
- of course John Baldessari's iconic 1971 I am Making Art;
- and wonderful Guido van der Werve's The day I didn't turn with the world (2007) a beautiful 9 minute stop motion film of the artist in the North Pole turning in the opposite way of the sun for 24 hours.
OK GO's End Love (2010)
Guido van der Werve The day I didn't turn with the world (2007) (extract)
