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Monday, May 19, 2014

A Flower! Yay!


Today Michelle brought me a flower. You might ask, "It's a nice flower but so what?" Well, let me tell you a little story. 

 The Art History class recently visited the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C. to view the exhibit, Damage Control: Art and Destruction. In fact, I recently wrote an article about it for Art of Education. You can read the article here.

By far my favorite work in the exhibit was a video created by Pipilotti Rist titled Ever Is Over. The video piece was created by simultaneously projecting two separate videos onto two different walls with a blurred video overlapping in the middle. The video on the right simply displayed tropical flowers in a field. The main story was displayed by the video projected to the left. In it, a young woman, filmed in slow motion strolls down a car-lined city street. Her summer dress sways as she promenades down the block carrying a long-stemmed tropical flower.


Cheerfully, the girl swings the long stem flower hitting a car window which, to the viewer’s surprise, is instantly smashed to pieces. The flower in the video is actually made of metal. The video is both whimsical and charming, while at the same time violent and tense.



So when Michelle saw this flower growing in her backyard, she picked it and brought it to class. How cool is that!! Thanks Michelle!


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