Guerilla
(2010)
makers: Aysha Zaulariya, Joshua Wellington, Alicia Byrnes and Diane Vu.
No credits. Never good is it? Who made this, how would you know if you found the work by itself, just via its URL? And no title. The problem becomes profound for the work because a title works like an external frame that is internal to the work. It is part of the work, but outside, yet reverberates and echoes all through the work so that some context, some hook, is provided by which to try and interpret and judge what is found. But not here. As I click thumbnails I realise that each sequence has direct, demanding, statements. "You must be innovative." "You must be incognito." "You must have a journey." Orders, not statements or observations. Perhaps this is a riposte to the teaching, to an experience of the subject not as a series of invitations but order words, demands? Of course perhaps experienced, quite reasonably, as invitations that are, at base, only order words?
The work, in a sort of naive way, is in your face. And the title, which I only know from the submitted documentation, does suggest a deliberate desire to contest via engagement. It's a DIY no aesthetic aesthetic, low fi punk vid. Except every now and then a return to the polite or at least the coy appears, suggesting it is half realised, half of a strong idea. Another work where another iteration, a round of crtique and thought, could have made a lot of difference so that what feels and appears nascent here can be drawn out to be worked with. Finally, video thumbnails, hard to do well, for instance when a clip begins with a fade up from black how do I know it exists?