Raphael Montañez Ortiz, USA

Beach Umbrella

USA , 1985-86 Video, 7:30 min Regie/Director, Realisation: Raphael Montañez Ortiz, USA

Ortiz deconstructs a predetermined image structure, intervening with constant repetitions and also – in contrast to many later laserdisk-based works – copying in animated sequences. In this way, a beach scene is slyly dismantled then pieced together again on video. A tape about the depth psychology of US society.

The Critic

USA , 1995 U-matic, 15 min Regie/Director, Realisation: Raphael Montañez Ortiz, USA

„The Critic“ seeks to reveal the tormented soul of the writer, his agony and passion in creation that as it reveals hypocracy dooms him to obscurity. The critic himself is in a tug of war with the writer, seeking to tear from the writers soul his dream, to posses it, to dominate it, to yank it out from under him. Raphael Montañez Ortiz uses the typwriter, the writers instrument of expression to create a mesmerizing stacatto, telling the writer’s tale, a staccato of sounds that in their rhythmic ritualness, voice the agony and ecstacy, the anger and passion of the writer’s creation, revealing the writer’s struggle with the envious critics, his demons that ever haunt his creations, seeking to posses, to control or destroy his dreaming, seeking to awaken him from his forced drunken sleep that he may never dream again.