I think Girl Walk // All Day might be the quintessential representation of modern independent artistry. Yeah, that sounds like a string of BS buzzwords, but I mean every one of them. Think about it – a musician takes hits from across a plethora of genres and mashes them together into a fantastic and fun musical album, which he then releases online for free. A filmmaker hears that album and decides he wants to use it as the sountrack and basis for a short film/music video filmed geurilla-style in Manhattan, all shot, edited, produced, and released online for free. It stars a dancer who mashes together dance styles from every conceivable genre. A musician who cares more about making entertaining music than adhering to the archaic conventions of the pop music industry; a filmmaker who cares more about making an amazing viewing experience than adhering to the archaic conventions of the blockbuster film industry; and a dancer who cares more about expressing herself through motion and using her body to its limits than adhering to the conventions of any one style of dance.

There is something beautiful about all of those layers mashing together…and something magical in the realization that ten years ago the whole thing would sound insane, but in our modern age when we are starting to perceive of art and its distribution so differently, it is practically unsurprising.

Here is the Kickstarter video for Girl Walk // All Day:

This short film won best video in the Experimental category at the Vimeo Festival + Awards. Though the concept might sound boring, or at best amusing, I believe the execution of this amateur hour remix is phenomenal and compelling. Chris Beckman (using a concept by Billy Rennekamp) took 37 reclaimed YouTube videos and seamlessly edited them together at the points in which the cameramen/women lose control of their camcorder/smart phone/etc., and the result feels like one camera being tumbled through time and space, moving from one haphazard situation to another. From the camera’s POV we are struck by fireworks and a train, sent plummeting down mountain paths and snow-covered hills, tossed into the air and strapped to a remote control helicopter, dropped down a well and into a pool, go crowd surfing in a club and take a roller coaster ride.

While I tend to find most artist statements about their work to be pompous and excessively full of conceptual buzz words, Beckman’s description of his work seems to hit the nail right on the head:

Somewhere between a home-video mixtape and a postmodern travelogue, “oops”—a ten-minute art video composed entirely of appropriated YouTube videos, seamlessly stitched together via a motif of camera drops—serves both as transportative adventure and metaphorical elucidation of YouTube itself (i.e. endless related videos), exemplifying the Internet’s infinite repository of “throwaway” social documentation. From suburbia to subterranea, the radically shuffling environs induce a vertiginous yet aesthetically contextual thread—a transcendent, reincarnating POV; our omnipresent Camera—by which, the nature of the ultra-verité videos, eschewing any filmic grounding, plunges the viewer into a relationship of fleeting immediacy w/ its many videographers: a self-portrait at arms length, the digital blur of an obscuring thumb, a disembodied narrating voice. This abstractly voyeuristic portrayal of an ever-filming generation (who won’t let the transcendence of being in A Moment inhibit their document-everything impulse) presages a future where every instant of our existence, from the mundane to the sublime, is preserved and catalogued for all to see.

Her final words are incredibly inspiring – they speak to me on a very deep level. Well, perhaps you should just watch:

In other news, I have no idea what to do with this website. I don’t feel like a blogging type of girl…and yes, I understand the irony after my other post re: microblogging versus blogging. I still think blogging has a place in this world, I’m just not sure if I’m one of those people meant to occupy that place. It’s still hard for me to believe that anyone would be interested in hearing what I have to say…not that what I say has no value, but people in general care more about what it is they want to say.

I wish I could turn this into something productive, maybe even cathartic. But I also have a problem with catharsis appearing in public…I think it should be a private process. Speaking of catharsis, maybe I’ll go out and take more pictures of this winter wonderland…maybe.