{"id":8868,"date":"2011-09-26T00:03:55","date_gmt":"2011-09-26T05:03:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dvblog.org\/?p=8868"},"modified":"2026-10-03T17:23:18","modified_gmt":"2026-10-03T16:23:18","slug":"andrew-norman-wilson-webinars-flowspot-tests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dvblog.org\/?p=8868","title":{"rendered":"Andrew Norman Wilson – Webinars<\/em> & FlowSpot Tests"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"anxiety_about_relationships_between_friendship_and_business.jpg\"\/<\/a>
\n Anxiety About Relationships Between Friendship and Business (2011, 11MB, 2:41 min)<\/a><\/p>\n

I’m so taken with Andrew Norman Wilson’s<\/a> work I’m going to devote
\nthe whole first week of this DVblog season to it.<\/p>\n

He initially sent us a longish piece, Networking with Andrew Norman Wilson<\/em>
\nmade with Nicholas O\u2019Brien<\/a> of Bad At Sports<\/a>.
\nIt’s wonderful but pretty huge so you should definitely go and
\nlook at the Vimeo version there. <\/p>\n

On Monday, Weds and Friday of this week we’ll post smaller
\npieces extracted from that (but without the commentary or
\n‘interview’ as it is styled elsewhere [-the text on the BAS page linked above]) ,
\nOn Tuesday and Thursday we’ll post two of Wilson’s FlowSpot Tests<\/b>
\nwith some accompanying explanation from him.<\/p>\n

I find this work in general very exciting because it does a lot
\nof interesting, nuanced and often rather funny (and I’m in favour of funny<\/em> –
\nthere are very few great works of art which contain no funny<\/em> at all)
\nand intially apparently contradictory things.<\/p>\n

Let me give you my take on it.
\nThe Webinars<\/em> are all composed entirely of footage sourced from Pond5
\n“the worlds stock media marketplace” . The FlowSpot Tests<\/b> are performative
\npieces involving bizarre consumer items sourced from e-bay and wallmart and
\ndeployed in a 21st Century updating of silent movie Lloyd-Keaton-Chaplin
\ndeadpan involving, too, a certain degree of slapstick
\nand displaying a deliciously calibrated sense of the ridiculous.
\nThe Webinars<\/em> (a least when one takes account of their titles and certainly viewed
\nin the light of the commentary from “networking”) are a kind of consumerist
\nreductio-ad-absurdam.
\nThe intent is celarly in some sense satirical but the pieces take risks in
\nthat they don’t stop and end in critique – there is an understanding of
\nhow toxically compelling some of this imagery is and to some extent they
\ntoy with celebrating this.
\nWilson is clearly a natural movie maker. He doesn’t restrain himself from
\nvisual flourishes and jokes which are by no means integral to any
\nsatirical case but make the pieces more fun to watch.
\n(The distortion effects applied to objects in the periphery of the
\naction in FlowSpot Test #5 are a case in point.)
\nAdditionally, and most impressively, there is a muddying of the
\nwaters in Networking…<\/em> (and by implication the
\nWebinars<\/em> and FlowSpot Tests<\/b>) whereby
\ncogent and apparently straightforward philosophising is allowed
\nto cross pollinate\/contaminate with the satire and vice versa,
\nleaving the viewer with -ahem- work to do.
\nThis work is not glib; it takes risks – in order to maintain its
\nhigh level potency it risks misunderstanding.<\/p>\n

A look at Wilson’s CV shows a spell spent working for a
\nlabour union and I read the impulse behind these pieces
\nas radically anti-commodification and corporate mind rot.
\nAgit-prop, thankfully, it’s not, but “something rich and strange”
\n – radical art for interesting times<\/em> to come.
\nNice to see this when so many younger artists seem to be
\ntempted by a career orientated and somewhat cynical celebration
\nof that same deadend emptiness.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Anxiety About Relationships Between Friendship and Business (2011, 11MB, 2:41 min) I’m so taken with Andrew Norman Wilson’s work I’m going to devote the whole first week of this DVblog season to it. He initially sent us a longish piece, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44,48,1,117,93,36,33,25,14,45,59,29,22,35,18,50,39,20,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8868","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-activism","category-advertising","category-arts","category-bliss","category-collaboration","category-commerce","category-conceptual","category-documentary-odd","category-experimental","category-humor","category-newmediaart","category-performance","category-politics","category-remix","category-satire","category-serial","category-strange","category-tech","category-video"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dvblog.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8868","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dvblog.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dvblog.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dvblog.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dvblog.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8868"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/dvblog.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8868\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11796,"href":"https:\/\/dvblog.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8868\/revisions\/11796"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dvblog.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dvblog.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dvblog.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}