Sunday 2 January 2011

Robert Longo 2: The Golden Palominos - Boy (Go)

The Golden Palominos - Boy (Go), Featuring Michael Stipe. Video directed by Robert Longo.





Longo music video combine live and found footage "mixtures of black-and-white and color and, particular in the case of 'Boy (Go)' .... (a) sophisticated image construction that adheres to and riffs away from musical rhythmns" (Diekmann, K., 1990 p.130).

The experimental nature is informed by his knowledge of the cinematic avant-garde: "Longo was greatly influenced by experimental filmmaking, and his first music video, "Boy (Go)" is in some ways an homage to that visionary tradition, with its emphasis on the evocative power of the single shot. Exercising the 'Kino-Eye'that Dziga Vertov developed in Man with a Movie Camera (1928), Longo creates an oppositional montage by blending found and live imagery to present a diffuse (and occasionally nostalgic) picture of natural and machine life- a horse galloping, a jet plane ascending, a ferris wheel spinning, a tree slowly falling, junkyards, and verdant fields, all caught in a swirl of circular movement" (Diekmann, K., 1990 p.130). These swirling motifs bring to mind Berlin: Symphony of a city (1928) by Walter Ruttman or Man Ray's Return to Reason (1923)

Diekmann, K, (1990) "Small-Screen Stimulus: The Film and Video Work" in Fox, H., Robert Longo New York: Rizzoli pp.129-141.

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