How Movies are Ruining Your Art 

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Hello fashion man, 'tis I, non-fashion girl. Don't know how I got here but I'm happy every time that I am

As a writer who’s taken writing workshops, I’ve noticed that writers today often write their books as if they were movies- putting a large emphasis on visual description, dialogue, etc. I can attest that as a novelist myself it can be hard to get over the urge to want your book to be “adaptable” if you ever struck it big and got to see it made into a movie. Novels are their own medium and have their own unique advantages and opportunities that movies don’t have, and I’m really thing to learn that!

I agree and disagree with you! While it's true most mainstream films require no mental energy there are a LOT of films that want you to think think think all the time. Just like fashion, films have different levels to it too! I would recommend you to check out films by directors like Andrei Tarkovsky, Pier Pasolini, Park Chan Wook, Shane Carruth, Kryztof Kieslowski and Roy Andersson if you want to enjoy films that ask for you to interpret what's happening on the screen in front of you! Sorry if I messed up the spellings haha these people have insanely unique names! Love u bliss😘😘

I'd argue novels do the same thing that you're arguing film does--they typically have a clear narrative that is immediately obvious to the reader. It seems like this is a question of narrative vs non-narrative art rather than film vs all other art. I totally agree that being able to tolerate ambiguity and appreciate subtlety and less overt forms of meaning-making is valuable, though I still love a good story! I also don't think it's a bad thing to want to understand a work of art on more analytical level (e.g. what does this song's bassline contribute to its meaning)--and being frustrated with our own lack of understanding can still be a generative position through which we can engage with art and understand ourselves through art. Personally I think the only "wrong" way to engage with art is to simply dismiss it ("it's not that deep," "I could have done that," etc.)

Yesterday I sat down to rewatch Miyazaki's Spirited Away, which I hadn't watched since a teen. In the first quarter, I found myself asking all these questions about the film that took away from the "sinking in" experience. In the act of rewatching I feel like there are three intentions: nostalgia, further analyzation and re-expereincing the actual film itself. For myself, I found it hard to simply enjoy the film while analyzing it, at some point i had to quiet my brain and allow space to just watch and sink into Miyazaki's world. In this moment I felt a sort of moving backwards-- not in a negative sense-- more like when you're a young and can really get lost in a movie world. Which I find is so much harder to do now as an adult. I also love that you touched upon the amount of nuance that exists on tik tok, cuz there really is.

as a freelancer illustrator and finearts painter... that "taking it as it is" was somewhat natural to me but frustrated me insanely when my non-artist friends didnt do it and ask 1000 question. Thank you Bliss for giving me words for my vague frustration

Bliss, we all guessed McQueen within 3 seconds

I feel lucky that I haven't felt this before. But I generally agree with this. I would say that the "cure" for this is just to surround yourself with art that makes you think. Recently I saw a play called Father (Otac - in my language) and it was a really emotional experience that left me thinking about it's meaning for days

On the topic of how film-watching ruins our perceptions, I've just been reminded of an interview with Vsauce where he made an observation that many conspiracy theories are inspired by the fact that, in real life, details are often random and don't fit in - for example, you may see kids running around in t-shirts in the middle of winter. In film, you will never see such details, as filmmakers would deem them too distracting to include in the background. That's why many people will zero-in on innocuous details in media footage and try to claim that it's fake or planned because of something unexpected that appears in the background.

I find that ambiguity is already everywhere in modern society. Personally, I love narrative and it is an extremely powerful tool that humans, in essence, are attracted to. Some even say that the advent of narrative is what makes us the human animal and differentiates us from other animals (like the advent of worship which was applying narrative to natural occurrences like the movement of the stars or rainfall). And these were understandings shared by a group of humans. It’s kind of like how we naturally tend to anthropomorphise objects, animals, and even abstract art. There’s also pareidolia where people tend see patterns and faces where there isn’t one. Interestingly enough, there are some who hypothesize that we truly became humans distinct from other animals when our species first made clothing. And even ascribe weaving as the precursor to architecture or even the first architecture humans made. Very fascinating.

I've had my fare share of experiences similar to what you told. I studied art history for a year, but then decided to drop out, because I felt like being an art historian means to dissect pieces trying to find "true meaning" of it. I remember vividly two different episodes in museums - one when I was still an art history student and another after dropping out. The first one is when I visited Hermitage museum in Saint Petersburg with my classmate. I was showing him pieces I like, and he kept asking me why I liked it, waiting for me to start referencing different specifications about technique or story etc. I couldn't find an answer to his question, because the reason of my liking was somewhat of a gut feeling. The feeling of a deep connection to a piece with no need to explaining it to myself or others. Back then I was ashamed because I didn't know exact cultural background of an artist, as if without me knowing those details I have no right to like the painting. Completely different experience I had when I saw for the first time in my life "Composition VII" by Vasily Kandinsky. I've loved his works ever since I was a child, I've read his diaries and found myself in some moments, had all the background I needed to know about the painter, but when I finally saw the piece, I just stood there. Nothing of this previous knowledge had ever crossed my mind. It felt like the painting is surrounding me and becomes an even bigger and important part of my life - just as important as it was to Kandinsky himself a century ago. It happened a year since I dropped out of art history course and had already enrolled to another university to study textile and costume design. I think right at that moment, in front of the Kandinsky painting I've felt that I'm moving in the right direction - following once again my gut feeling instead of pretending I know something that no one except artists themselves would ever know. I'm not saying that cultural bcacgroung has no value, but I think that modern humanitarian science tends to overinterpritate and overcomplicate pieces that were created to evoke the only thing humans good at - human feelings.

Angel's Egg. Can't explain, just appreciate, it's art.

Wings of Desire, a late 80s German film about telepathic and immortal Angels opened me up to not only a new understanding of the power of the medium (film) but a larger appreciation for life.

I don't think being clear about the narrative is inferior to ambiguous work at all. When I create art, I'm trying to communicate something. I try to meet my audience where they are because I know I'm competing with over one gazillion other things going on. "Be kind; you never know what someone is going through" or whatever. I always have easter eggs and puzzles for my own amusement, but I make the central thrust clear. Making my work accessible is a form of humility.

Today, my art teachers revealed the available themes for our end-year art assignment, they all came with examples and inspirations from other artists and i was disappointed. Because all of those themes and example were pieces i either didn't understand the meaning behind or what the intention of the artist was. And that isn't to say i didn't enjoy those pieces of art, i love getting lost in art (visual, written, music and sounds) and just floating and being in this trance of "oh i like this but idk why", but as i was watching the examples i kept asking myself "if i made art like this how would i explain it to my teachers to get a good grade?" "I don't know what these pieces mean or are about, it wasn't described what this is how can i arrive at a story i can tell with my final piece?" "I need to have a story to tell with my piece but also make it random and out there but also meaningfull and important but also in mediums that don't fit me", this video kind of outlined the problem i had with this whole assignment, that im so focused on the story of my art so that i can exactly define what it means to my teachers and get a good grade and that made it hard for me to make art where i can just lose myself in the piece and let it be authentic and say "i like my piece because it hust feels right and i feel satisfied with it", i love when artists make something that means so much to them and maybe has that deep meaning for them and i dont have to know that meaning and still enjoy that piece because i just like it because i do and nothing else, I don't have to know a story or the meaning because i can just make it up or not even worry about it at all and just be That is to say there's this pressure for me to make people understand my story/art for them to like it and not ask questions i dont have answers to Im sorry for rambling im sure this is too long and maybe doesn't make that much sense but i couldn't express myself better, thank you for this video and insight into all of this

The TV show Twin Peaks! But then you realize how much room there is for analysis and 8 years later you realize your still analyzing 😅

I feel like ambiguity has to be earned in a film. Christopher Nolan is a director who creates ambiguity simply by refusing to tell the story in a straight forward linear way, which sometimes, in my opinion does disservice to the film. Ambiguity for its own sake isn't enough. I agree that the extreme time limitations have been good for art. Constraints are often good for art. A film that leans into it's weaknesses and makes it a strength--Blair Witch Project is a striking example--can completely change the game...the ambiguity in that film (the real actual darkness that overwhelms so many frames of the film) added to the terror. It perfectly captures the uselessness of a flashlight at night in the woods, which leaves you feeling exposed and vulnerable and blind to everything out of a tiny circle of light. They spent so little money and genuinely abused those poor actors but dang if it didn't make for an incredibly effective horror movie.

oh god i turned into one of those people who write about eps of their lives in a comment but will try to be succinct: my bestie died in the early days of covid (hard to get treated for cancer when covid was all people were obsessing over) and like art, a life needs to be loved in the moment, not dissected. love u, bliss. thankyou

I figured out it was McQueen before you got to sentence two and that’s entirely because of what I’ve learned from you in watching you backlog. You’re a great educator.

Bliss- in this vast thing called internet, you are a gem

I think I can understand what you are trying to say with being ok with not understanding but at the same time I am big on understanding why you like what you like & I’m an overall really curious person that questions things; At the same time I do have to say I can relate to not being able to enjoy a piece of art because of not understanding it. I think I just have to find the right balance between analysis to enjoyment ratio

Fashion wise, I think the first time I’ve actually had this awestruck moment was with the Plato’s Atlantis show of McQueen’s. At that time, I was 11 or 12 years old trying to make sense of what I’m seeing. It evoked such deep emotional feeling in me that my younger self thought “so people can actually dress this way” or “there’s no baseline or streamline way of wearing what you wanna wear”. Till this day, I find myself revisiting the show from time to time, taking in what was the thought process or what was the inspiration or how the heck did someone thought of this beautiful art. It’s like my “gay awakening” but in art form if that makes sense.

Gotten into Brakhage’s work recently for a film class and there’s something so new and inherent to his images and rawness that can’t be comprehended with language. I’ve learned to just see what he shows me and it’s kind of a language of its own that can’t be translated to speech.

I got lost in all of the paintings in Brice Marden’s show titled “These paintings are of themselves” They silenced the mechanism of the mind & I just appreciate them on a level beyond the intellect. RIP Brice ❤

the first time i was introduced to thom Browne i was so confused as to who would dress like that (proportion wise) and who layers their clothes this way, and why this color palette. I was attracted to it but it seemed so strange to me. eventually i realized i didn’t need the answer to those questions because it wasn’t really relevant. the story is the bigger picture. the lives lived in the clothes matter more than my interpretation of what Thom is trying to say.

Found myself alone in the Hamburger Bahnhof museum in Berlin and saw Bruce Nauman's 'Room with My Soul Left Out, Room That Does Not Care'. It moved me so much it made me cry. I tried to write down all the emotional stages that I went through but I struggle to make it make sense. I highly recommend seeing it if you're in Berlin (And go see around closing time so you can have a bit of privacy with the work)

Anne Imhof performance „Angst“ . 7 years later I still think of it . Absolutely stunning

Occasionally I get wrapped up in this mindset that any art I make (illustration, painting, etc) has to have meaning or a purpose. I have to *say* something with what I'm doing, because people ask "What's it for? What does it mean?" I found that to be really aggravating and stressful. I started to realize that a lot of the artists I really looked up to were actually advertising artists, especially from the late 1800s to the mid 1950s. They were making pretty things to help sell a product, yes, but that's about it. It was pretty because it was pretty. I found that to be a freeing feeling. Not that I need to sell something mind you, but because I realized you can make something beautiful and it doesn't have to mean anything. It can just be. I found your channel by accident and I've been bingeing it all afternoon. I love hearing people who care very deeply about their "thing" share that knowledge with the world. Mighty fine work!!!

Someone once told me that the way to experience a Rothko is very very close. To let the painting inhabit your entire field of vision. So I stood very close, felt myself getting bored, and let my mind wander only to find every thought I had was deeply informed by the feeling of those colors that were all around me. To be fully immersed in the art and to be free to be yourself inside of another persons art I think is the goal. The issue with movies/short form video isn't the fact that it explains itself to you, but that it allows very little room for you to be yourself within it. The formulaic nature of a blockbuster is doing the same thing as the eye catching fast pacers of TikTok. To get you to turn your self off and consume. A truly beautiful movie asks you to be the hero and sends you on your way feeling like you've actually lived inside of that story. I don't think the medium is flawed, I think its been captured by villains. Thank you for your content !

I watched a video earlier this year that expressed a similar thought but specifically in the context of poetry; when people read a poem they tend to see it as a riddle to be solved rather than an experience to be felt. I listen to a lot of free jazz and free improvisation but I never consciously made the connection between that and this idea. With this style of music you almost literally can't question it because it's all emotion -- there is no riddle and there are no questions to be asked. Thanks for the opportunity to do some introspection, fantastic content as always! :)

I literally wrote an essay about this !! Made me so happy to hear it from someone else and see your perspective on it too :) I really do think we're losing appreciation for '''still'' art and it makes me so sad :(

I can’t quite remember what it was called, but in my hometown, there was a little art museum in my grandma took me there. There was this abstract art that could be interpreted in so many different ways. Either way you never knew the backstory

THIS IS SO TRUE, SOME OF WES ANDERSON’S FILM THROW ME INTO THIS DEEP END WHERE I’M TRYING TO PROCESS ALL THAT’S BEING GIVEN AND WANTING TO UNDERSTAND WHAT’S GOING ON AND WHO IS WHO AND WHY WAS IT SHOT THE WAY IT WAS. BUT THEN I CAN JUST GOOGLE A FILM SUMMARY TO EASE THE TENSION OF NOT KNOWING. I THINK BEING LOST CREATES CURIOSITY ON HIGH LEVEL.

i dont remember the name but it was in this museum, and there was this huge wall upstairs and it was painted red. i never understood why but standing there seeing it made me tear up

I am loving Substack for having more things put in front of me that send me to that ambiguous mental space where I have to mull them over to make sense.

I think any art that I make has this emotional effect on me, because I’m like wait, what’s going on here? And then I’m like oh, nothing. And then I cry.

thank you so much for this video! i love all your content and you inspire me to be curious! forever grateful for this channel 🤝🏻❤️

i once went to the MoMA in Manhattan, and they were projecting this video of flowers and a house, i started looking at it and it was so beautiful i didnt even care what was the name of the flowers or where that house was. I watch the entire video loop like two times!

One that jumps to mind is a film i saw in theaters during this ongoing decline of enthusiasm for film, whereas film is what fist defined art for me. Swiss Army Man... You get nowhere by asking questions, resist its charm and its a waste. The moment i let go, the narrative intersected with my own story at the time in so many ways i wouldve missed. The music video montage style of storytelling made it feel like pure nostalgia for a non-lucid dream (basically a movie) that was so SO good. Swiss Army Man is wildly subjective but i was able to get really close to the writer/director that i understood him and he i. So it was no surprise that his next film, everything everywhere aao, was going to fire up neurons that connected to my subsconscious, so i knew to keave my critic-mind alone and i felt like i absorbed energy from this movie because there was no filter. Thats high art

I’ve actually thought about this- sometimes ambiguity is so so sooooo important because it allows the viewer to take what no one else was able to from that piece of art. FKA twigs said once that “once I release a piece of music- it is no longer belongs to me”.

I think this is really well timed for me personally, I've been thinking about this a lot over the last two months. I have been confused by ambiguous art many many times and it's resulted in a frustrating or what I'd even consider distressing feeling, but only until recently did it click that I should be feeling emotion and living in the moment of the work itself, and not pulling apart the work itself logically, and that perspective has made so many things even outside of art, more enjoyable.

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It sounds like what you’re actually saying is “not all art needs to tell a story.” Because there are paintings that tell stories (biblical or historical) and there are movies that don’t have clear narratives like David Lynch. Our brains want to categorize information into context, so it’s natural to want explanations for everything. But purely aesthetic experiences can be immersive, emotional, or healing on their own. I think the best example is music without out lyrics.

Frantisek Kupka paintings always make me feel this way

Marc Chagall. Rene Magritte. Nina Simone. Ingmar Bergman’s Persona. Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera. Samuel Beckett’s Endgame. A spiky choker with pearls by Shaun Leane and Alexander McQueen.

Omg. Yes. Bliss you literally put my mind at ease with stuff I’ve been grappling with for months on a constant basis. Thanks!

Hi Bliss as a art/director/film watching enthusiast id like to chime on some points in this video. Mostly it’s that the films that lazily just show you the film by telling you the film, by using story as it’s function rather than the feeling of images is simply because in Hollywood if you go back in their history. Their films derive from theatre. It’s basically filmed stage plays where the medium is not being utilised. Shot reverse shot really limits what can be done with a camera and how cinematic language can be used to convey emotion. The early American filmmakers were mostly theatre or stage directors first and just saw cinema as a way to capture more audience $ because you could have several screenings without getting the actors tired. This influence of cinematic storytelling from Hollywood has infected many other films today. Which is why that feeling you describing exists. The overwhelming nature of it all is also because more and more the profit driven industry have turned movies into content and simply have numbed their audience. NOW HOWEVER. There’s a seperate lineage of film from europe starting from the Soviet Era of classic films to German Expressionism etc. Where all the filmmakers where painters first, mostly from europe and they pushed the boundaries of working within the medium of cinema and blew up due to many new waves from Italian Neorealist films-French New Wave-New German Cinema etc. This films i would say function more on the “show don’t tell ethos.” There is cinematic language breathing in these films. They often do function as moving paintings and use image and sound without conventional storytelling techniques. Robert Bresson (my favorite filmmaker) has written philosophy books about this. About how too many films are influenced by theatre which limits what cinema can do because it’s 1. Artificial 2. Not utilising the medium with what cameras can do 3. Doesn’t let the medium exists as it’s own Which is why he didn’t use actors, hated words like mis-en-scene and hated the Hollywood system. He was a French filmmaker btw. Anyway, people like Andrei Tarkovsky have found ways to elevate cinema and use the image in mysterious ways. The unfortunate thing today is these philosophies have been forgotten and the average person doesn’t know and cinema as an art film is either content or the more popular view of them as “movies” (just moving images nothing more) The only remnants of artists actually using cinema in todays contemporary world as a medium to create GENUINE ART you could say is the slow cinema movement. Where people hold on cuts when editing and let the image speak for itself without dialogue. You mention Leviathan in this video. People like Andrey are one of the last artists left genuinely making film as Art with a capital A. That’s all I have to say. Good points though.

Leviathan (ironically a movie) A documentary featuring a ship. I'll leave it at that to not spoil anything. I wish anyone trying it out a great time.

Been wondering for years what a contemporary update of Susan Sontag's essay "Against Interpretation" would have to say and this is more or less it I think.

i feel like most of the arthouse films leave you with the feeling you described. so in my opinion cinema can also be ambiguous in a lot of ways, not necessarily telling a story

After discovering a collection of prints of the paintings of Anna Ancher recently, though they are simple and quite straightforward in a sense, they really gave me a moment of pause which I took special note of since I haven't really had anything air me stop and just think about it for a while. There was also an exhibition in Tainan recently that was just drawings, photos and paintings by people currently in elderly care facilities and they all simply had names, dates and materials used and honestly i spent most of my time in the museum in that room just looking back and forth at them, though I will note that I have also started thinking "I'd love a copy of that" every time I see something interesting or that captures me

The latest piece of art that I felt myself truly immersed into, where I let myself feel instead of observe and solve, was actually a movie. It was Ingmar Bergmans Persona.

how do you know if something is a brilliant and intentional work of art if it is entirely impossible to be deciphered or understood? How can we know that it’s not just a mockery of art or a random selection of items or ideas? Does it matter if something is intentional or if it is just a random selection of items or ideas? i’ve always been so stuck on this but I still have always been drawn to admiring art and attempting to analyze or observe it.

I had some thoughts that were going in a similar direction, but weren't that concrete and well formulated as these here. And you are right.

I like this video essay style, I’m interested in more like this & maybe even longer :)

Mad God was a movie that felt like I didn't NEED to understand it, I could just melt away in the horror of it all

I've never thought about this honestly. Many of my favourite movies I have no idea what is going on, like Eraserhead

If you're looking for experimental cinema I recommend filmmakers like Stan Brakhage, Maya Deren, James Benning, Jonas Mekas, Hollis Frampton, Chris Marker, Derek Jarman (Blue), and my personal favourite - Chantal Akerman. Slow cinema also challenges many aspects of spectatorship and the medium in general. Many of them intersect with the experimentalists and those of the so-called 'art cinema'. For this I'd look to people like Tarkovsky, Bela Tar, Theo Angelopoulos and Lav Diaz. This doesn't even begin to scratch the surface. There's no shortage of challenging and confrontational cinema. The history is rich. Just have to seek it out.

Popular stuff isn't that hard to understand. However most of it has a deep meaning that most people aren't gonna look at either. This true for books., tv. movies, music, dance and fastion.

honestly anything by Berlinde de Bruyckere. There's a layer in her work where you can sympathise with any of her sculptures because of how much pain they seem to be in.

This is the most interesting comment section that actually discusses thoughtful ideas and personal perspectives. I love it.

In video format? My two cents: All of Matthew Barney for starters, then Bill Viola does it incredibly well too. But the very latest one that captivated me was Hicham Barrada - Présage (2018), a very wide projection (about 10-15m long x 2m high) showed the slow and rapid chemical reactions and matter build-up, of different elements in what seems to be a water tank. Mesmerising

Celine and Julie Go Boating, bonkers French movie from the late 60s. All the ambiguity! I still think about it years later, haven’t worked it out at all.

Love that Julie Mehretu painting you showed!!

I agree with your take and have been trying to express it for years. I think a lot of people have become hyper analytical and “logical” and don’t have the skill to let things wash over them. People don’t seem to trust their own feelings about things is something I see less and less. And I think it has to do with instant gratification and the way images pass by our eyes SO QUICKLY all the time these days. I think that a lot of people even watch TV while looking at their phones so there seems to be a lot of things that people don’t even SEE as their eyes flick back and forth. I think the wealth of video analyses on RU-vid about films really are a way for people to get “answers”-like people are obsessed with answers, not questions, like you said. That feeling of letting go and letting it make an impression on your feelings, your subconscious, etc. I’ve been rewatching all of Twin Peaks recently and I love how it sets up a murder mystery: something audiences know the structure of but it fills that loose structure with image and word mysteries as it goes along, breeding more questions than answers, leaving a viewer with more feelings than conclusions. The end of Twin Peaks: The Return feels harrowing in my heart and guts, like a strange tragedy. And I can’t “explain” it and I don’t necessarily even care to analyze it. I feel like it’s so interesting amongst film bros how Lynch is deified because people want to unpick it and the film bros want to create theory and “solve” rather than ever talk about how they feel or what it brought up in them on a physical/emotional/spiritual level. I love that Lynch very famously doesn’t answer questions about “what does it mean?” Or “what is it about” regarding his work, he basically just says “you decide”. And I think that’s the essential step, the part where YOU as the viewer, as the eyes and ears on the thing, are a valid part of the process. I think because we are sold so many things that are supposed to solve our lives or given spoon-feed things that are “satisfying” and that “make sense”, our skill of sitting in mystery/image is just very atrophied. And I also think it is the result of the sheer volume of media and options. I was recently lucky enough to go out for fine dining as a wedding gift from my in-laws and the bread made me cry. The timing of when they brought it out, the craft of the bread itself, every flavor and texture and all of the years the baker and chef had put into it-I just bit down and felt pure feeling. That has been my deepest experience with art lately. That kind of craftsmanship that just reaches in and does something to me physically and moves me emotionally and SURE I can get stimulation from “how did they make it? What were the ingredients?” Or even “how can I replicate it? Can I ever get this feeling again?”but I can’t get the feeling again because the present circumstances-of my body, of the weather, of where my own feelings were in baseline-were part of the experience. And that’s something I think observers of the art can understand: that their own psycho-physical makeups are part of the art. That they’re not separate observers. It is a skill to experience immersion without judgement, without the habit of “solving”. I think a lot of us are more anxious, a state where the future is thought about a lot, ie: how do I get more of the bread? Can I get this feeling again? Which takes away from the present space the bread can occupy.

I think the underlying misconception here is to assume that "everything is given to you by the filmmaker" and that watching a film does not require any form of investment by the viewer other than "leaning back and watching". it may be true to some, or even the majority of movies, but I'd argue that movies are by far outperformed by most fashion out there when the claim was "there is nothing to discover but the surface". as with any other forms of artistic expression, the great examples of such are concerned with much more complex agendas and obviously require you to invest yourself. at the end of the day it is a personal decision and applies to essentially everything that can be considered a human experience. there are also different modes of perception. not all art wants you to ask all these questions you list, some art should essentially just be experienced. the experience is the thing itself. whilst this sounds very easy in theory, in my personal experience can be actually quite difficult and most people have to learn or unlearn in order to engage with such an experience. it's kind of dull to try to make this whole point and call the whole piece "how movies are ruining your art". I would want to respond that not movies are the problem but that video comments with such titles and such little effort are much more problematic. it's an easy fix for someone who unlearned to engage with the world in an easy-to-digest 13 minute video. I'd recommend watching a movie 4 times as you might want to look at a painting 4 times or at a video documentation of a fashion presentartion - I'd be surprised if your thoughts would not go beyond that first experience. one last thing I wanted to mention is that you can look at films in such a way as they reflect the world in which they are created and funded. analysing hollywood movies through a particular lense might tell you something about the state of the world we are living in, eventhough this might not be the intention of the filmmaker or studio. x

Very good, video Bliss ! Finally found the mental bandwidth to catch up on your videos and hearing you talk so eloquently makes me miss you dude!! Tangentially related to this topic is the dawn of A.I. content. Contrary to what some people think, companies like Midjourney aren't trying to displace the film industry. Or at least, not directly. No, many Generative A.I. companies aim to create new "mediums of thought" where consuming content will be just as easy as creating it. And while I'm super excited about these new forms of expression, I also wonder what the impact of this will be on the nature of culture. The founder of Midjourney, who hosts the biggest Discord community in the world, predicts we're heading towards an "aesthetical singularity" where more styles will be created in a few months than has ever existed in the history of mankind. I'm amazed by AI's ability to combine so many disparate styles and forge connections between references we can't even imagine. Moreover, the fact that AI allows anyone to create anything is democratizing by any measure. At the same time, I'm also worried AI will deteriorate the meaning of beauty and even storytelling. Some people argue the storytelling behind the art piece is just as important as the art piece itself, while others believe the art piece should speak for itself. So how are we going to judge "beauty" if everything will look beautiful? Even if AI isn't capable of 3D-printing clothes (yet), its ability to create "beautiful" designs, patterns and even references should give every designer pause. I have no clue what the world will look like in a year, but I believe designers who express their humanity and vulnerability through their designs will be the ones to succeed. Interesting times!

You articulate it well. A lot of film is incredibly servile towards the viewer by giving them all they need to know. It doesn't leave room for effective engagement in a work. It can challenge, but not through the way most art does, where it forces active thought on the side of the viewer

most work by Ryan Trecartin gives me that feeling of all desire to know the answer melting away, but a specific work he did A Family Finds Entertainment I saw at an exhibition in London called Electronic Superhighway, and it was an extremely over stimulating exhibition that was packed to the brim wall to wall art that was all 'post-internet' and I found his video piece tucked away in a small dark room and there was this little sofa and I was hypnotised for the 45 minute runtime. I never realised art could be like that before it was just this soup of noises and colours and despite not knowing anything about it (at least at the time) I was immensely satisfied. His work is my comfort viewing really because as you say I can just float in the weird noise and not have to justify it. It also inspired me to pursue video art as an art form and much of what I do incidentally relies on ambiguity - mainly because we can’t get answers to anything these days so I like to explore a guilt free space where there is no goal to find answers at all and to ‘wallow’ in the ambiguity

An early piece of avant-garde film brilliance- "Meshes in the Afternoon" by Maya Deren

Bravo Bliss 👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾 I agree… I can’t quite say that I’ve reached the point where I have to know because I’m typically drawn to art for other reasons. But when I don’t understand, I enjoy slowing down to process what I’m consuming, to experience the art for what it is offering

this video is so enriching, it raises more questions than answers and encourages more ambiguous thinking/pondering, the video itself is art hahaha

This talk makes me appreciate ig accounts who only share bizarre videos with zero context. It forces you to stop the mindless scrolling for a minutes and observe to try and figure what is going on. Then it simply cuts so you get nothing, but with time you stop caring about the answer and just appreciate the experience.

I actually guessed it was McQueen :D The description was quite on point. I think written text has a different influence on perception. As for movies, I think they can have the same effect as some other art forms, but it has to be quite masterfully done and is rare.

I don't think it's all movies in general, I think this is a relatively recent phenomenon that's been primarily caused by the rise of RU-vid channels like cinema sins where any action in the film that's not immediately explained is something wrong with the film and most film discussion is boiled down to plot holes and how things fit into their cinematic universes which in turn has caused film makers of these blockbusters to spend too much time spoon feeding their audiences all these answers. There was someone I used to watch on RU-vid who made a great video essay on this topic, I'll see if i can find it again.

I feel like that idea of getting lost in the art and just consumed into the experience also goes for those of us who create. If you design something and don't worry about how you're going to make it work, or any of the physical constraints and just get sucked into your own creation, it's a fun experience. I recently decided to take on a challenge of making a costume of a character that only exists as a 16 bit sprite from a game. I don't know exactly what the team was going for in terms of the details of the outfit and features, but I had so much fun taking that idea of the character, their experiences and comments, and turning that into a design that I realized it was going to be harder to sew than I thought. But it was that creative experience of bringing this idea with very little to go from into the real world, that provides a good motivation and drive to create for the sake of creating. I'm still not totally done, I need to buy more interfacing, but it's been an experience I didn't allow myself to have in a while, and so important as a creative person.

Thank you for bringing awareness to this Bliss Foster! It probably goes way back when the elite who were the ones who could buy Art somewhat created this line of thinking of understanding the message behind a piece and all of the sudden we all wanted to be on the know.

reminds me of the movie “Idiocracy” where Luke Wilson’s character becomes president gives a speech about art and he spoke in regards to a popular movie in the story called “Ass”. and he was like “I believe art can be better and stories can be complex SO YOU CARED WHOSE ASS IT IS AND WHY IT’S FART and I believe those days are upon us.”

I guessed the fashion show correctly!!!! Bliss you're awesome. I need to join your community.

This is why I love listening to foreign language music! I can just enjoy the sound of it and think about the feelings and images that spontaneously pop into my head. If I’m listening to a track on RU-vid and the captions show up with translations for the lyrics I turn the captions off so quick

I've been thinking about this same excat thing for a while now, I'm a video artist myself so this preocupation is very real. For me it was Francis Alys' Haram football, really beautiful piece, I mean, the context of the action kinda makes a lot of sense of what you are seeing, but it is different than being told what it is about.

It's been a very long time since I've been immersed in any form of art. Maybe "The Dragon Dentist?" It's a weird anime. And my favorite film was "The Fall," from director Tarsem Singh. Both of which, don't get great reviews... I have been really enjoying learning about landscape paintings. A lot of which, tell the story of the society that the artist was witnessing; which is also why I like historical clothing and modern fashion. It tells a story about the lives people are living. What moments they are witnessing.

“They’re beautiful aren’t they” “What?” “The stars. We never just look any more” ✨

This is really fascinating. In addition to our reduced acceptance of vagueness our shorter attention spans reduce the amount of information we can take in and process fully. Concerning across multiple aspects of life, I feel like there is so much extreme reactions including in the fashion sphere leading to more intensity. That being said I truly believe that when you’re through changing, you’re through so how do we as a species evolve to ensure optimal benefit based on our current systems. What is next for fashion and art?

to answer your final question: almost every single painting by Hilma af Klimt is a completely emotional and overwhelming experience for me. I was so lucky to see her work at the Tate earlier this year and I have never gotten so lost in a work of art than seeing her temple series in person and just being able to sit and stare at these massive floor to ceiling works just ugh so incredible- I hesitate to say I get out of an 'analytic' mindset, maybe it would be better phrased as "I'm not thinking like a book report, those aren't the questions I'm asking"

A form of art that's very close to my heart and absolutely revels in ambiguity is drone music. Natural Snow Buildings in particular have this way of hypnotizing the listener without telling you a god damn thing. Beautiful stuff. Edit: They also have a song called Santa Sangre, which is a neat coincidence.

I think one of the best ways of speaking about art, any art - painting, movies, fashion, music, whatever - is by speaking in terms of the context and technique involved, rather than "what does this mean?" When I read a recent biography of Warhol, it went into great depth about his artistic antecedents, how others were working in similar subjects, and what technique was used in various works, and what effect they have on the viewer. This, by the way, is why I watch this channel, which may well point out a message or theme in one piece or a collection (such as "Prada: Fashion and fascism"), but will more often focus on details of technique - why a collection was so revolutionary, how it was an accumulation of other influences, and what contemporaries were working on. Arguably, because fashion, like painting, is a non-verbal, non-narrative art, any intelligent discussion of the subject requires such an approach, whereas talk of movies or novels can eschew this in favor of "Why did it end that way? What does that final shot mean? Was I supposed to like or dislike that character?", with lighting, composition, set design, word choice, or sentence structure all incidental. This channel has been a vital and essential experience in my on-going fashion education.

Rei kawakubo is the lovecraftian unknowable. That tingle in the back of your spine that makes you try and understand. Her work gives the viewer a feeling of being confused and searching.

funnily enough, the art that kinda fits the "ambiguous" description for me was a Chinese movie called "Deep Sea". the majority of the movie seems kinda pointless and the plot didn't really go anywhere but is was visually stunning so i persisted in watching it until the end. but when it resolved in the last 20 mins or so, the entire movie was put into perspective, as if to say "this is what you were waiting for" doesn't really meet the description of ambiguous you provide now that i think abt it but it's a great movie and deserves a bit of a plug (:

Definitely recommend the movie “8 1/2” by Federico Fellini. Or really any Jean luc Godard film from the French New Wave!

I think the Bigger problem is that we are so used to consume video content that movies are the only piece of media/art that our brains can accept. I ve recently had these feeling while I was at the Nicolas de Stael exposition in Paris, it is so different to look at a painting now, it needs you to slow your brain down so much !! And some pieces are just impossible to understand without you taking a lot of time diving in or doing some research, and when people just said what it was out loud, a prt of me was relieved, but at the same time I was kinda disappointed, because to me, painting is one of these last piece of media where you can just stop, take a very long look and dive in like if you were diving in a dream. Dunno if that's fully releavant but this is what I was thinking about during the whole video, when you showed Rei Kawakubo's work it feeled the same, you just stare at it wondering why, what is going on and trying to use all the clues you can get to understand, and eventually you just accept that you cannot understand evrything and the mystery is a part of it.

Unfortunately I'm a massive mcqueen fan so I guessed voss as soon as you said the words trauma and insanity 😭

Saw other comments pointing this out but I think movies are multilayered art form combining visual art and storytelling, and its the storytelling part you're referring where it NEEDS to explain all the stuff to do its job; tell a story, so do novels and any literature works. And some "films" lean towards more visual artsy style like short films at those prestigious film fes that no one really understands what's going on and snobs still hype them up(jk there's a beauty in some of them too) Ofc you're from a fashion field, the visual art part plays a huge role in films, but good films for me, are in balance of these two, ambiguous visual art and concise storytelling.

Just last night i watched “La Casa Lobo” (The Wolf House) and i think it’s absolutely incredible. It took five years for the 2 directors/producers to hand assemble/paint/chalk-draw the movie into reality and i think everyone should give it a try. It’ll leave mubi in about a week (at least where i’m from, at the time i’m writing this)

Recently got to see the Documentary Shorts at the Columbus Film Festival. Althought I was moved by so many of the films. (Look Up "Ampe : Leap into the Sky, Black Girl" and "Born of the Earth") "The Foundry" was sureal, gave use no context but just dropped us in. I personally love stuff like that.

yes ambiguity really is ruling many forms if media now but it is unbearably common. Like a music video The Weeknd release called "The Knowing" millions dived into the video and came back up not knowing a thing. It's like one if those things where only after you've matured in understanding symbolism will be the time it takes for the information to be revealed to yourself.

This feeling of Ambiguity is something which I actually felt while watching Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas for the first time. Granted, my hearing is not the best so I understood very little of the Dialogue because I watched it without subtitles, but It still felt odd in comparison to other movies I had seen before. I am used to not understanding the whole Dialogue and yet with most movies I can understand fairly well what is going on, but with Fear and Loathing I had to google afterwards what the movie actually was about.

One Visual Art Video that really gave me this feeling was „Nummer acht“ from Guido van der Werve. The Environment and Situation envoke a Special anxiety in me while watching, contrasted by the calmness ans steadieness of the protagonists actions

It’s very funny you should say this because it’s the polar opposite case for me. Watching films, particularly art films, taught me to become very comfortable with ambiguity. Being young, I didn’t understand what was going on a lot of the time, but that feeling thrilled me. One of the most exciting examples of experiencing this ambiguity was watching the 1981 film Possession for the first time. The non-stop, high-pitched insanity of it left me stunned. I loved what I had seen, but couldn't tell you what it meant. I understand the movie a bit more now, but even so, I still don’t have a neat theory that explains everything in the film. I don’t think I want one either.