Video Descriptions #4: a Bit With Wigs
Read the introduction to this set of texts and video description #1 here.
a Bit With Wigs, 2 minutes 22 seconds.
A title appears on a black screen. It reads ‘A BIT WITH WIGS’ in a font that resembles a glowing neon sign. Behind the title, a shot of a green curtain fades in, filling the screen. The title fades as instrumental folk music begins to play.
A character appears at the right side of the screen wearing a full green screen suit, with a green hood covering his head. It is the demon. We can see his head, arms and body, but his legs are cut off by the bottom of the shot. He is crouching, strafing across the screen right to left holding what looks like a wig. He gazes off camera as he goes, occasionally looking down as though he thinks he might trip over his own feet. The wig is bright white.
If the green curtain and the demon’s green screen suit had been chroma-keyed out in post production, then we would be watching the wig float across the screen. It wouldn’t have been that impressive because it would have been bad green screen as in many of the other videos. However, the green has not been chroma keyed out, so we’re still able to see the demon holding the wig, and the curtain of the green screen studio.
The hair of the wig looks plasticky and shiny. It is styled into a short bob. The demon moves the wig up and down to make it look like it is swimming across the screen. He exits the left hand side of the screen.
The next phrase of music begins and the demon comes into shot, moving from left to right, holding a huge Georgian ladies wig. It’s blond with curls. The sort of thing a pantomime dame might wear. The demon moves the wig with the same swimming/flying motion as before.
The demon comes back in from the right, with another blond wig. This one is more of a mop head style. (It might actually be a mop head that looks like a wig.) Now there is text on screen reading, ‘What’s this bit about?’. The text tracks the movement of the wig so that it wiggles across the screen, though its movement is a little jerky - the post production effect has been applied without much finesse.
The demon appears again from the right - the same side as before. This tells us that the footage of the performance has been edited, or perhaps the demon ran around the back of the camera to start again on the right hand side. He shuffles past the camera, making a black bobbed wig swim with his hands. More text tracking the wig reading, ‘Hmmm, not sure.’
Is the text the thrown voice of an unseen viewer? At first they ask themselves a fundamental question - one we might all ask ourselves when we’re trying to get to grips with a piece of contemporary art - ‘What is this about?’. But immediately they decide that they probably don’t know or they aren’t interested enough to find out.
Again, the demon comes in from the right with another wig, blonde this time. More text: ‘The music is nice’. The unseen viewer seems to be determined to enjoy some element of the video and has settled on the music as a possible locus of straightforward pleasure.
The demon comes in from the right, again with the Georgian wig (there must only be a limited supply of hairpieces). ‘That suit bunches up around the crotch’, reads the text.
The demon appears again from the right with the mop wig. The text reads, ‘Not very flattering’, presumably referring to the demon’s ‘camel tail’ caused by the bunched suit. Of course, it wouldn’t normally matter if a green screen suit was unflattering, as it is designed to be made invisible in post production. The fact that the unflattering costume is noticed implies a mild disgust on the part of the unseen viewer, but it also highlights the unsightliness of the costume for us actual viewers, and reinforces the fact that we’re seeing a set and a costume that are not designed to be looked at.
The demon comes back on from the left holding the dark bobbed wig. He’s a little closer to camera, and the wig is held low down in shot. The text reads, ‘I suppose the wigs are meant to be flying’. The unseen viewer gets what is being performed - they understand that if the green was keyed out then the wigs would look like they were floating through the air - but they aren’t impressed.
Back again with the blonde bob. The text: ‘It’s just going to be this isn’t it’. The unseen viewer has resigned themselves to the fact that there won’t be a payoff, the video might not be ‘about’ anything more than what is visible on screen. Of course for us, the actual viewers, the extra element that makes it more than just wiggling wigs, is the text that carries their resignation and disappointment. But does this dispel our own disappointment at performance art, or contemporary art in general? How sometimes it doesn’t transcend, or perhaps refuses to transcend, the raw materials of which it is composed.
‘Ahh well’, reads the next text, tracking the Georgian wig. And finally, more text tracking the mop wig, ‘The music is really very nice’. The unseen viewer tries to maintain a polite interest right to the end of the video, straining to say something positive like a kind relative of an unsuccessful artist.