MARCO!..........GREEN!

One of my favorite mediums used in art is film. When I visited the Whitney Biennial I recall spending a substantial amount of time viewing both Ari Marcopoulos' and Jesse Aron Green's video performance installations. Ari emigrated to the United States in the late 70s and has centered his work around the theme of American youth subcultures. This is apparent in his 7 minute, 32 second 2009 video Detroit. This installation also encompasses his other art

interests such as underground music and extreme rebellious behavior toward athletics. Two boys are seen in a child's bedroom creating a sense of "noise rock" using various amplifier pedals unattached to instruments. They throw a small mediocre concert of gritty, loud music by strategically combining the sounds of distorted sound waves. The video uses vibrant color and energy to assimilate with the feeling of youthfulness and freedom of expression.

Jesse Aron Green's video installation shows a large amount of contrast to Ari's dynamic performance. The 2008 80 minute loop Arztliche Zimmergymnastik which literally translates to "Medical room gymnastics" is based off of an 1858 book by the German physician Daniel Gottlob Moritz Schreber which describes a set of gymnastic exercises. Green uses this text as a choreography for sixteen male performers demonstrating forty-five

exercises to the manual's exact instructions. The setting of the film is in a neutral room with sixteen square platforms where grown men sporadically appear and demonstrate awkward or foreign movements. There is little to no sound aside from the noise of footsteps or bodies hitting the wood. Arztliche Zimmergymnastik also differs from Detroit in terms of performance because Detroit exhibited a less controlled execution whereas Arztliche Zimmergymnastik demonstrates a specific ritual.

I found that I continued to watch Ari's piece because it was continuously entertaining, but after a while you get the gist of children making noise. Green's video leaves the viewer with such a perplexed feeling that they proceed with watching as much as they can in order to grasp some sort of concept with what is being shown throughout the loop.