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A parable of the Hollywood image-making industry told through a pastiche of narrative cliches.
Deconstructing the myth of Oedipus within the framework of an ancient Japanese folk story, the Yonemotos craft a highly charged discourse of loss and desire. Quoting from Bunuel, Freud, pop media and art, they place the symbology of Western psychosexual analytical theory into a cross-cultural context, juxtaposing the Oedipal and Kappa myths in a delirious collusion of form and content. The Kappa, a malevolent Japanese water imp, is played with eerie intensity by artist Mike Kelley; actress Mary Woronov plays Jocasta as a vamp from a Hollywood exploitation film. Steeped in perversions and violent longings, both the Kappa and Oedipus legends are presented in highly stylized, purposefully "degraded" forms, reflecting their media-exploitative cultural contexts. In this ironic yet oddly poignant essay of psychosexual compulsion and catharsis, the Yonemotos demonstrate that even in debased forms, cultural archetypes hold the power to move and manipulate.
A couple's violent argument is repeated three times in this video, first in long shot, then in medium shot, and finally in close shot. As the camera moves in, the sound moves in the opposite direction; from a close perspective to silence. The subject of the argument satirically underscores the role electronic media plays in undermining the basic tenets of romantic relationships.
Europe’s enchantment with American consumer culture is depicted, as well-known European architectural landmarks – the Eiffel Tower, the Acropolis, London Bridge – are reflected in the glossy surface of a 1960s Cadillac convertible, the ultimate symbol of the “golden age” of American consumerism.
Featuring performances by artists Tony Oursler and Mike Kelley, Garage Sale II moves between a couple’s sexually dysfunctional relationship and a series of vignettes in which characters attempt to fulfil their desires through prosthetics, masturbation, manipulation and S&M.
The sky looms in the background of all human activity. It is elementary then that artists should be preoccupied with a phenomenon whose ageless nature remains elusive and opaque. Bruce and Norman Yonemoto's A History of Clouds (33:46 mins, Color) investigates the representation of clouds as they appear in art, first as amorphic elements in early oil painting, then as photographically reproduced elements of 20th-century works. This premiere videowork ends in the advertising studio where clouds provide a "natural" backdrop for commodified dreams. The journey from representation to sales presentation is complete.
Spalding Gray comes to LA to perform a set of monologues.
Japan in Paris in L.A. centres on Saeki Yuzo, an early twentieth-century Japanese artist who makes a pilgrimage to Paris to seek his artistic fortunes, only to find that ethnic and cultural differences stand in his way. Around this narrative, the Yonemotos construct a multi-layered and self-reflexive work in which strategies of disjunction and contradiction are key. Employing heightened theatricality, experimental narrative strategies and archival footage, the film proposes a complex meditation on issues of modernity, representation, ethnocentrism and identity.
While still a student at UCLA, Norman Yonemoto arrived in Berkeley with a 16mm camera and discovered People’s Park in turmoil. His compelling short has remarkable interviews with bystanders and an especially poignant moment when a young folksinger serenades the gathered National Guard.
Using the syntax of daytime soap operas, Green Card tells the story of Sumie, a Japanese artist who marries an American surfer/filmmaker to enable her to remain in the United States. When the couple’s views towards the agreement move in opposite directions, cultural differences and expectations become pronounced. Casting an ironic eye on the Los Angeles lifestyle and art scene of the early 1980s, this stylised narrative asserts that the delirium of Hollywood ‘reality’ has a manipulative impact on personal relationships.