The This Is The End exhibit features 3 videos created separately by 3 different international artists: Loretta Fahrenholz, Tommy Hartung and Ed Atkins. When I visited the Hammer museum, “Even Pricks” by Ed Atkins was playing. The three videos do not share the same content or even the same storyline, but they do cover a wide array of themes such as surrealism, mental health, disaster and supernatural powers.
“Even Pricks” was extremely disturbing and bizarre. The 8 minute video is said to portray depression. However, I personally did not understand or see the implementation of depression as a mental illness in the video at all. Although this may have been the intention of Atkins. He uses a plethora of sounds and images to confuse the conscious and unconscious mind. I often heard clapping, snapping, gunshots and a person yelling “fu-”. The sounds play at inconsistent times; there is no rhythm or sense to when they are played. The same goes for the images. Atkins uses computer-generated images to create a sense of pure insanity. You see frequent shots of a monkey and a thumb, which appear to act as a precursor to a new image. In one clip, it seems as though there is a movie trailer playing. Several phrases are shot across the screen but then the clip suddenly ends. All images often start and stop in a manner that frustrates the viewer. The combination of the sounds and images lead the viewer to believe there is no significant storyline or meaning to the video.
Ed Atkins created a video that is unlike anything I have ever seen. Despite the unusual computer-generated images, I do not recommend the This Is The End exhibit. I did not come away with any type of fulfilling experience. In fact, I was distributed by the erotic insanity.
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