{"id":829,"date":"2020-04-16T15:32:24","date_gmt":"2020-04-16T15:32:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/westonlyonsite.com\/?page_id=829"},"modified":"2022-04-20T20:57:45","modified_gmt":"2022-04-20T20:57:45","slug":"failure-machines","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/westonlyonsite.com\/?page_id=829","title":{"rendered":"Failure Machines"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/351048167?color=28c924&amp;title=0&amp;byline=0&amp;portrait=0\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><span data-mce-type=\"bookmark\" style=\"display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;\" class=\"mce_SELRES_start\">\ufeff<\/span><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/vimeo.com\/351048167\">FAILURE MACHINES<\/a> from <a href=\"https:\/\/vimeo.com\/nowinstantimagehall\">NOW INSTANT IMAGE HALL<\/a> on <a href=\"https:\/\/vimeo.com\">Vimeo<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Failure Machines<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u200b \u200bis five films by five artists: Nick Flessa, Karissa Hahn, Ilana Harris-Babou, Ren Ebel, and Weston Lyon.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Screenings:<\/p>\n<p>8.8.19 Now Instant Image Hall &#8211; Los Angeles, CA<\/p>\n<p>12.12.19 Spectacle Theater &#8211; New York, NY<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-841\" src=\"http:\/\/westonlyonsite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/FMCover.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1536\" height=\"1910\" srcset=\"https:\/\/westonlyonsite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/FMCover.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/westonlyonsite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/FMCover-241x300.jpg 241w, https:\/\/westonlyonsite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/FMCover-768x955.jpg 768w, https:\/\/westonlyonsite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/FMCover-823x1024.jpg 823w, https:\/\/westonlyonsite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/FMCover-1029x1280.jpg 1029w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1536px) 100vw, 1536px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/westonlyonsite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/FMBookOnline.pdf\">Failure Machines &#8211; Full Program *Click*<\/a><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The first thought that came to me while watching Nick Flessa\u2019s <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If I Forget You, Jerusalem<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> was whether he made the film using a video camera from his childhood, possibly one belonging to his deceased <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">mother. The pallid, low-res video image floats above a Flessa burial plaque just before we\u2019re shown the film\u2019s main title card. Most of us g<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">rew up with these consumer-grade cameras sitting around at home in black nylon bags with unruly straps, dead batteries, miniature tapes full of youth gymnastics footage. They are inextricably tied to <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Al Bundy\u2019s <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">America, channel surfing itself into the next century. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">To pick one up nowadays and go filming is to reawaken a cultural desire which welcomed the reproducibility of \u201cmagic moments, forever\u201d, to quote a JVC ad.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Through the film\u2019s intro&#8211;a nightscape of housing construction, so dark that the video image nearly collapses on screen&#8211;I became fixated on this concept of adopting a bygone camera if for no other reason than to raise the dead. If you\u2019re an artist returning to the neighborhood of your teenage years to shoot a film, it would make a lot of sense to use the technology of that time. Moreover, the very idea of shooting the burbs in Hi8 was a way for Nick to get closer to his characters and maybe even synchronize with some kind of memory he holds of the place. A generational vision built upon the technology of the 90s and baby boomer ideals&#8211;which would manifest themselves in sprawling subdivisions, four-sided dining room tables, 10pm bedtimes to the sound of Peter Jennings\u2019 voice. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Raising the dead, in this case, could then mean something much more than a seance for fallen<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> parents.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Note the date on Janna Flessa\u2019s inscription: 2010. Peculiar, given this outlives nearly any indication of the Obama, nay Bush years in the film. As apparent as Flessa\u2019s travels in time create an artifact of beginnings, the foregrounding of his mother amidst an older suburban Cincinnati points to our shared, slippery present.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Tonight\u2019s program developed from this idea of the \u2018home movie\u2019. That is, those images which frame together family and documentation, youth and boredom, amateur cameramen and driveway entertainers. It extends its focus to include the bordering line between America\u2019s middle-class and nature. The threshold of wooded land at the edge of vast housing communities marks both the beginning and end of the nuclear family, where shingle roofs become leafy canopy and the smell of microwaved steak and <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">potatoes disappears, allowing something new to take control. Life is in a state of near suspension at these sites&#8211;a <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">relationship between old and young sharing time across the humid redolence of cut lawns, carpeted living rooms and under-lit basements.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\ufeff FAILURE MACHINES from NOW INSTANT IMAGE HALL on Vimeo. Failure Machines\u200b \u200bis five films by five artists: Nick Flessa, Karissa Hahn, Ilana Harris-Babou, Ren Ebel, and Weston Lyon. Screenings: 8.8.19 Now Instant Image Hall &#8211; Los Angeles, CA 12.12.19 Spectacle Theater &#8211; New York, NY &nbsp; Failure Machines &#8211; Full Program *Click* The first [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":4,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/westonlyonsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/829"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/westonlyonsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/westonlyonsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/westonlyonsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/westonlyonsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=829"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/westonlyonsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/829\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":907,"href":"https:\/\/westonlyonsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/829\/revisions\/907"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/westonlyonsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=829"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}