Shigeko Kubota and Saltburn
Video art is really cool and sometimes movies aren't
Hey everyone.
Spring is in the air here in Montreal. As the snow melts away to reveal months’ worth of cigarette butts and roadside gravel, the people have returned to Parc Jean Mance and restaurants are cautiously reopening their patios. It's one of the best times of the year.
Shigeko Kubota’s work emerges from a similar state of transition, a moment in the mid-1900s when consumers could suddenly record whatever, whenever. It was a digital spring, blossoming under the threat of a nuclear winter. By often melding the natural and the artificial, the New York-based artist was paramount in legitimizing video art as more peoples’ lives were being captured on videotape instead of silent reels of cellulose acetate.
In another transition this week, I’m not recommending a movie—I’m dunking on one. I know this is supposed to be a newsletter about the art and media I love, but sometimes, I just love being a hater. I watched Saltburn (Emerald Fennel, 2023) a couple of nights ago, and its portrayal of rich teens and unchecked desire makes the Gossip Girl remake look like Succession. I will spoil it if you’re lucky enough to not have seen it.
Shigeko Kubota
I can’t talk about Shigeko Kubota without introducing the Sony Portapak. Released in 1967, it was the first fully portable consumer camera capable of recording both audio and video. As soon as it was unveiled, it became the go-to tool for artists and DIY filmmakers, giving unprecedented freedom in allowing someone to point and shoot as they would a still camera, with playback features and a viewfinder as well. The PortaPak set the precedent for amateur journalism and contemporary video art, with its run-and-gun style making recording the most accessible it had ever been. It was the tool of choice for Kubota, recording much of the video seen in her works with the device. An extension of herself and her senses, Kubota’s avant-garde approach to the Portapak allowed her to dissect video’s place within the art world, her position in post-war Japan, and a rapidly globalizing market.
Born in Maki, Japan, in 1937 to a strongly Buddhist family, Kubota’s upbringing would later form the basis of her work. After receiving a degree in sculpture from the Tokyo University of Education (now the University of Tsukuba) in 1960, Kubota had already developed a reputation for her unorthodox approach to painting and explicitly feminist aesthetics as the second wave gained traction.
The body of work for which Kubota is most renowned came alongside her joining Fluxus, an international cohort of artists working across different mediums. They prioritized the act of creation over the finished product, with many artists taking an anti-corporate and anti-commercial approach through time-based works and noise music. Other notable members include Yoko Ono, Joseph Beuys, John Cage, George Brecht, and Kubota’s eventual husband Nam-June Paik. When she met Marcel Duchamp during her time with Fluxus, Kubota began introducing monitors into her sculptural work.
Marcel Duchamp’s Grave (1972-75) from her Duchampiana series shows twelve monitors housed within a plywood pillar, with two mirrors of identical dimensions protruding from its base and peak. Viewing it from the front, the pillar extends beyond reality. An illusion of infinite screens from one perspective only, the intermedia sculpture dances with notions of memory and perception when looking at the works of a singular artist. Kubota often employs mirrors in her work, multiplying the presence of screens or obscuring them. Works such as Video Haiku (1983) and River (1979-81) have their screens warped by curved mirrors and small pools of water. For Kubota, light is an organic entity that has been harnessed by the artificial. Warping light from technological sources creates a buffer, in which Kubota favors concepts of human (primarily female) consciousness and perception.
In the exhibition catalog for Kubota’s 2021 MOMA exhibition that saw many restored versions of her Fluxus and Duchampiana works, “Liquid Reality,” Gloria Sutton wrote that “By embedding then state-of-the-art CRT (cathode-ray tube) monitors displaying rapidly shifting images produced by electronic acts of recording, rewinding, fast-forwarding, and freeze-framing within sculptural forms that refer to the deep time of geology in works such as Three Mountains (1976–79), Niagara Falls I–III (1985–87), and Rock Video Cherry Blossom (1986), Kubota mitigated video’s association with the futurity of globalization.” Alongside her Fluxus colleagues, Kubota communicated her naturalistic sensibilities through her fascination with emerging technology.
Rock Cherry Video Blossom (1986) sees a small CRT TV screen housed inside a rough mass of granite, set atop a shattered mirror splayed outwards. It's as if the rock fell from the sky and ushered in a new age of entertainment and information. The digital age has seen a paradigm shift in how we view ourselves, and, in turn, those around us. Our perceived existences are just as curated as Kubota’s “Liquid Reality.” Even more so in the post-social media age. While that reality, as it currently exists, may evaporate as social media loses traction, Kubota’s transitional oeuvre is a cornerstone in understanding our existence in the digital era. Balancing the natural with the unnatural, Kubota’s body of work makes us look at screens as we would ourselves - through a mirror.
Saltburn
The breakout star of Saltburn hasn't been Barry Keoghan in his first leading role or Jacob Elordi’s little eyebrow piercing; it's a song from 2001. A catchy dance track that struts between Posh and Britpop, Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s single closes the film alongside the most overrated dance sequence in recent memory. But Saltburn doesn’t have the same staying power as “Murder on the Dancefloor.” As soon as its opening montage ends, it’s dead on arrival.
Saltburn begins with a vibes-based overture of the supposed debauchery to come, but any assumption that it could be something of an audacious time is destroyed instantly. The blissfully superficial montage is followed up by an incredibly unimpressive long take. As the bookish Oliver Quick (yes that’s his name, and he’s played by Barry Keoghan) walks through Oxford on his first day of university in 2006, other students chime in about their lavish lifestyles and whine about their first-world problems. Enter Felix (Jacob Elordi), a wealthy student who radiates charisma from his eyebrow stud like a 2G cellphone tower. Oliver is immediately obsessed with Felix, becoming friends as he takes him under his wing and brings him into his possibly bisexual, cool-guy way of life. But like the sweat on his back that is so highlighted in its opening montage, the film’s characters and direction are only surface-level. Saltburn’s first ten minutes perfectly indicate what this movie is really about: ‘sexy’ vibes first, and everything else second.
After their bromantic courtship, Oliver joins Felix and his family for a getaway at their estate in Saltburn. There, Keoghan does what he does best: playing a little freak. He manipulates Felix’s sister and cousin, engaging them sexually to establish power and penetrate their lavish existences. Fennel approaches these acts with the eye of a reformed prude. Sex itself is intrinsically salacious and nudity alone is cause for scandal. In Saltburn, these acts are cheap tricks set against an expensive backdrop.
Many of its desperately ‘controversial’ moments are captured in long-ish wide shots, showing the audience exactly what is happening with nowhere to look away. It’s a juvenile move, tailor-made for an audience equally as immature. Fennel’s attempts to be provocative fail, often becoming more trivial than titillating. These culminate in a nude dance sequence, just as dull as Oliver’s fully clothed walk around campus nearly two hours prior. It’s not shocking, but static. And just like Oliver, they suck.
But Saltburn’s most subversive quality is that it somehow omitted Neon Indian’s “Polish Girl” from its soundtrack. The chillwave hit would’ve better captured the vibe of the desperately sexy montage set to MGMT’s “Time to Pretend.” Yes, Alan Palomo didn't hit the scene until 2009, but Superbad didn’t come out in theatres until August 2007, let alone home video the following year. The film repeatedly calls attention to the fact that it takes place in the Fall of 2006 and the Spring of 2007, but makes zero effort to commit to the specificity of the timeframe which it establishes and reemphasizes. Fennel’s laissez-faire style in prioritizing sounds and images with a fleeting sense of being ‘aesthetic’ makes the film feel like it should be experienced between Instagram reels instead of on a dedicated screen. Critic Wesley Morris sums it up better than anyone in his review for the New York Times. It reads, “Oliver has a decent amount of strategic sex and Keoghan does his share of nudity, but the only pornographic thing about the movie is the house.” Yep, Saltburn has nuts but no balls.