Rheum

ISBN-13: 9789080227408 / Angielski / Twarda / 2013

Brad Feuerhelm

Opis

foundfootage. be is an online platform, on which different types of 'found' material are brought together. This material can be provided by artists but also comes from everyday sources. On our website we use subjective selection criteria. 'Rheum' is an experimental vision on this practice. Found footage is commonly associated with a respectful, sometimes even nostalgic attitude towards material; valued because of the particularity of the find or a love for materiality. A box with glass-negatives on the attic for example. We don't reject this mentality, but we tried to leave it out of consideration. This has led to an attitude where the 'found' in found-footage doesn't stand for the excitement of encountering something, but rather for the tension between materiality and authorship or authenticity. By finding something instead of creating it, indeed some of the authors control disappears. In the appreciation of footage, materiality and visual fetishism are of little importance. We select material for what it represents, or because of the way it comments our practice. For instance, images without a noteworthy maker can become documentaries when brought together. Formalism usually associated with found footage, like glitch or the vernacular, are rather avoided than pursued. PS: Robert Urquhart explains in an essay (Rheum pg. 36) why glitch is a difficult phenomenon. In the publication Rheum you will find, in an experimental form, the results of this position as well as the thought process that led to these results. The book's unusual index-structure, in which content never directly refers to an author, is an expression of this attitude.