Self Improvement | 2010 | DV | 2:54
Synopsis
A self help video that rests somewhere between the realms of code hacking, archaic design and spiritual awakening.
Critical Discourse
Interview with Artists’ Television Access
Liz Wong, “Interview with Clint Enns,” Artist’ Television Access (2011).
Liz Wong: Where did you find your materials (videos and voiceover/sountrack)?
Clint Enns: All of the material for this video was found and manipulated. The source material for the images was an S-Plus VHS. S-Plus is statistical analysis software. I transferred the VHS and re-worked the images with After Effects help from Winnipeg animator Leslie Supnet. The soundtrack was originally from a religious sermon. I manipulated the voice in order to make it deliberately esoteric. Most of the lines in the video are created by blending and fusing two or three separate lines of dialogue from the original source.
LW: Do you have any idea what the excellent-looking graph produced by the laser printer could be plotting?
CE: I can only conjecture. I imagine it to be plotting out data that provides information that “by its very existence – changes every about the world in which we live!”
LW: As you are both a video artist and a credentialed mathematician, I’m curious about your thoughts on the relationship between math and what I can best describe as “pseudospirituality”. What I’m thinking about is evident in both the juxtaposition of old technologies and self-help-guruspeak in Self Improvement and elsewhere in your work, particularly in your musings on glitches.
CE: This video is part of a series of that deal with a spiritual void and what we attempt to fill this void with. Although each of the videos are intentionally convoluted and esoteric, these meta-themes should be easily recognizable. Self Improvement deals with how we interact with technology and with our attempt to feel the void by interacting with this technology. The next film in the series is called Connecting With Nature and it demonstrates an attempt to become one with nature through technology and so on. All of these videos lie somewhere within the realms of infomercial, guide to spiritual enlightenment, cosmic speculation and archaic design.
Screenings/Exhibitions
October 9, 2021. Most films are only worth dismembering to compose other work, Festival des Cinémas Différents et Expérimentaux de Paris, Cinéma Le Studio, Paris, France. Curated by Gloria Moran.
March 16, 2018. Best of HÄXÄN, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado.
December 15, 2017. HÄXÄN Festival, Mosswood Chapel, Oakland, California.
June 4, 2017. Lost Property Office, (S8) Mostra de Cinema Periférico, A Coruña, Spain.
March 28, 2017. Tightly Bound Consciousness, Winter/Spring Flaherty NYC, Anthology Film Archives, New York City, New York. Programmed by Ruth Somalo.
November 1, 2014. Festival Celestial, Parque Cultural de Valparaíso, Valparaíso, Chile.
April 11, 2013. New Prairie Cinema, La Cinémathèque Québécoise, Montréal, Québec. Organized by WNDX and Double Negative Collective.
October 5, 2012. New Ages, VIA Music & New Media Festival, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Curated by Brett Kashmere.
February 22, 2012. New Ages, Wundercloset, Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio. curated by Brett Kashmere.
February 9, 2012. Basement Media Festival, Emerson College, Boston, Massachusetts. Organized by LJ Frezza and Nicholas Tamburo.
November 19, 2011. Basement Media Festival, Spectacle Theatre, Brooklyn, New York. Organized by LJ Frezza and Nicholas Tamburo.
October 21, 2011. Sling-Shots, Artists’ Television Access Film & Video Festival, San Francisco, California.
October 16, 2011. Devil’s Gate, Antimatter Underground Film Festival, Victoria, British Columbia.
May 7, 2011. Milwaukee Underground Film Festival, Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
May 5, 2011. Winnipeg to Saskatoon: A Voyage through Video across Canada’s Great Plain, Prairie Scene, Ottawa, Ontario. Curated by Solomon Nagler.
February 17, 2010. Strange Beauty Film Festival, Durham, North Carolina.
January 27 & 28, 2011. Lost, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
December 8, 2010. The Best Of Sydney Underground, London Underground Film Festival, The Horse Hospital, London, UK.
September 24, 2010. Moving Frames Festival, Mytilene, Lesvos, Greece.
September 19, 2010. Talk Video to Me, LVL3 Gallery, Chicago, Illinois. Curated by Vincent Uribe and Brook Sinkinson Withrow.
September 30, 2010. A Whole New World, WNDX Underground Film Festival, Winnipeg, Manitoba. [Jury Honourable Mention.]
September 23, 2010. Moving Frames Festival, Mytilene, Greece.
September 11, 2010. Recycled Cinema, Sydney Underground Film Festival, Sydney, Australia.