I want to love the Walker Center’s Walker Channel video streams even more than I do.
There was a chat between Rirkrit Tiravanija and writer Bruce Sterling, for example [here’s the Walker’s blog post about it]
And Philippe Vergne talking with Dan Graham and his collaborators on his punk puppet opera Don’t trust anyone over 30.
And of course, Tyler was on the edge of his seat, waiting to watch the knives fly in realtime during the Whitney Biennial recap with Philippe and Chrissie Iles.
But unfortunately, the videos just aren’t doing it for me. They’re polite and non-confrontational to the extreme; they capture all of the tedium of a public event–including too-long intros and fawning, populist comments [Philippe actually asked Dan Graham, in his French accent, “Wat de heck am I looking at ‘ere?”]–with none of the excitement of being in the room.
And while the Rirkrit/Bruce dialogue mashup probably seemed great on paper, it didn’t work out. It was obvious that, by personality or arrangement, Bruce was “supposed” to be the “host,” asking questions, but he couldn’t help but launch into his own set pieces about how many laptops he has and how he powers them. Rirkrit, bless his heart, managed to come off as deeply incurious, even though he was presumably there to be asked about his work.
Finally, I don’t know if it’s my NYC-impaired hearing or some self-effacing Minnesota Nice thing about forcing people to listen harder by talking really quietly, but it’s nigh-impossible to hear what these kids are saying. Turn up the volume, people!
So I’ll just wait politely here until these bumps get ironed out. Which might happen sooner if even one other museum in the country had as ambitious an online program…
Walker Channel [channel.walkerart.org]
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the making of, by greg allen