Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Julika Rudelius Questions & Response

I have noticed that in many of your pieces, you decide to not include your own voice.  Is there a specific reason for this?

Many of your subjects are stereotypical characters, and you put a spotlight on them.  Yet, like I noted before, your voice is omitted.  I am almost getting a fish in a fish bowl feeling from this treatment of your characters.  Is this what you were going for? What if your message does not get across because the characters are stereotypical and the viewer does not understand?

RESPONSE
Even after hearing Julika Rudelius speak, I am still unsure about how I feel about her work.  Her methods are very controlled, and the idea of control is actually a huge part of her work.  I was disappointed to hear that she was the director, or the puppeteer as I like to think, of the actions and words of her characters.  She is portraying the stereotype as the stereotype, controlled by her, without allowing the stereotypes to play out themselves.  So what?  I can tell a blonde to act dumb, or an African American to have a threatening presence.  These, of course, are not always true, and that is why they are called stereotypes.  It would be one thing to let them speak for themselves, but everything was so very controlled and the "manipulated truth" is already known.  At the same time, I really do enjoy her obsessiveness with control.  She knows what she wants and she will take five months to get to the level of being able to do what she wants where she wants.  For that, I applaud her.  It takes a lot of guts and passion to be able to wait for so long just to acquire models and locations.  Yet, still, I am a bit puzzled by her visual expression of her ideas, possibly because video is not first nature to me, or maybe we are just really not on the same page.

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