Somewhere between a home-video mixtape and a virtual travelogue, “oops” — a ten-minute experimental video composed entirely of appropriated YouTube videos, seamlessly stitched together via a motif of camera accidents — serves both as transportative adventure and metaphorical elucidation of YouTube itself (i.e. endless related videos), exemplifying the Internet’s infinite repository of “throwaway” social documentation. From suburbia to subterranea, the radically shuffling environs induce a vertiginous yet aesthetically contextual thread — a transcendent, reincarnating POV; our omnipresent Camera — by which, the nature of the ultra-verité videos, eschewing any filmic grounding, plunges the viewer into a relationship of fleeting immediacy w/ its many videographers: a self-portrait at arms length, the digital blur of an obscuring thumb, a disembodied narrating voice. This abstractly voyeuristic portrayal of an ever-filming generation (who won’t let the transcendence of being in A Moment inhibit their document-everything impulse) presages a future where every instant of our existence, from the mundane to the sublime, is preserved and catalogued for all to see.

“oops” || appropriated digital video || 2009 || concept by Billy Rennekamp

Chris Beckman

Posted: Tuesday, August 9th, 2011 @ 10:41 pm
Categories: news.
Tags: 2009, Appropriated, Beckman, Billy, Chris, Oops, Rennekamp, sundance, Video.