Him and Her, 1968-2008 (2008), Video Installation, Candice Breitz
This work is divided into two parts. The “Her” is played by Meryl Streep, and the “Him” is played by Jack Nicholson. Each part is divided into 7 small screens, playing the scenes of different characters played by the two veteran actors in different movies, and there are dialogues between them.
In terms of the form of installation art, Him and Her is played in two connected rooms. Videos in both rooms are edited very smoothly. The characters do not only correspond with their dialogues, but also with plot connections, even with their eye expressions and moving directions. For example, when Nicholson on the above screen says something, the lunatic he played in The Shining below would laugh, and the other Nicholson would applaud. The artist Breitz searched for the materials she needed in many films that these two old veteran actors participated in, and then conducted re-creation and re-editing. In her re-creation, the audience can piece together the information from these crossover screens to a new plot, a new story, and a new theme.
At the same time, the clips of the male and female protagonists are removed from their original movie plots. The artist removes all the background behind them and turns them into a unified black, so the audience can only focus on their looks and talks, postures and dressing, and then give a reasonable explanation based on this information.
In addition, the special perspective on the two actors and visual effects make people feel that Streep and Nicholson in the scenes are not themselves, but many ordinary people, some of them look like teachers, lawyers, underworlds, or madmen, some of them are laughing, some are crying; they look like people with mental illness who come to the counselor for help, and every audience is a psychiatrist who listens to their stories. Therefore, through this form, Breitz’s installation can be regarded as a humanity observation room magnified by screens. The materials are selected from the film material library, allowing the audience to see different types of emotions including anxiety, happiness, and disappointment, grievance, anger, confusion, etc. As a result, the content of such a work gradually deviates from the superficial meaning of Hollywood stars, and gradually touches the content of the emotional expression of ordinary people.
This method of drawing materials based on big data, looking for new creative materials in the ready-made products of culture and art, and secondly assembling and creating art also implies our current era and the time we live in. Now, when we watch movies on the Internet, we can pause, take screenshots, play backwards, repeat, and fast forward without following the movie screening rules. This is the change in watching movies brought to us by our modern lifestyle. So, what is time, what is content, and what is narrative is no longer fixed in the lifestyle of modern people, nor is it completely determined by the film director, but depends on the audience in front of the computer screen. Him and Her embodies a kind of challenge and rebellion from the audience against the status of the sole creator, as well as the subjective manipulation of the traditional narrative approach.