(via)
DARUSHIMO says:
This GIF of “Rest Energy” is a puzzle. the original video by ulay and abramovic (here) has a strong effect on me. This has a vague effect. My response to the original is visceral. This is muted. Looking at this gif is like looking at a photo of a dream.
Movement in this GIF works differently than it does in many others. Unlike the now popular tumblr that uses series of stills from a movie to create repeating events, there is no event in this image nor any real event in the original. In the original piece, the possibility of an event (the arrow being shot) elicits anxiety, even if you know she is never shot. That fear doesn’t exist here. You recognize the same few frames are repeating, and the possibility of future disappears, as well as the reason for anxiety.
Or does it? The longer I look at it the more I am reminded of the original. But would a picture remind me any less? It’s almost an optical illusion, but rather my eyes being fooled, my emotions are. And if it is an illusion, what, then, is the conceit—the movement or the emotion?
Oh and what else? The video is a discrete time period in which Ulay holds back the arrow and marina the bow. But this GIF theoretically repeats forever….
ah that’s all just brain-spew. i can’t think this out right now. But this gif’s knotty relationship to the form of GIF art is insanely dense. This is one of the best works of gif art and the best of its kind of GIF art that I’ve ever seen.
