Two Instructional Videos

For some reason I find it interesting that both these videos use the instructional video format. The Art of Bleeding is based on those films it seemed like your science teacher was showing in class to kill time but, unbeknownst to you, had to be shown to meet a school policy requirement. Boy Scouts. I just felt like writing that. And Nagi Noda used your mom's exercise video as its model (yeah, the one you caught your brother masturbating to). You remember how mom was gonna exercise every morning after you left for school? Nagi Noda is a commercial director of music videos and television commercials. In the world of commercial art she makes me think of Michel Gondry (I'm talking specifically of the Palm DVD). But in an art world context she makes me think of Luis Gispert. They seem like they might be examples of what Peter Plagens was talking about in that article when he wrote "The School of Mathew Barney (it's out there, folks, breeding like tree frogs)"? [Plagens, Peter "Contemporary Art, Uncovered", Art In America, February 2007]. The Art of Bleeding, however, is the product of the Los Angeles underground (the wing for which the Amok catalog is no mere catalog but a canon). Actually I think they're the offspring of Wallace Berman -- but filtered through Richard Elfman's Forbidden Zone (1980). The Art of Bleeding is a string of related projects. I suggest you direct your attention to the THE GOREY DETAILS HOTLINE 1-888-467-8535 (Toll Free) , their effort to collect "medical emergency narratives". Might we say that Art of Bleeding, aesthetically speaking, is like Throbbing Gristle but with the frown turned upside down? Well, regardless, I'm an admirer of Al Ridenour, one of our finest guerilla ontologists.