{"id":24,"date":"2013-03-15T17:38:04","date_gmt":"2013-03-15T17:38:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/tkttran\/?page_id=24"},"modified":"2015-03-11T16:52:38","modified_gmt":"2015-03-11T23:52:38","slug":"the-blindness-series","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/tkttran\/work\/the-blindness-series\/","title":{"rendered":"The Blindness Series"},"content":{"rendered":"

Epilogue: The Palpable Invisibility of Life<\/em> (DV; 14m; 2006)<\/a><\/p>\n

\"EpilogueFINALstill2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Producer, Director, Writer, Camera, Sound, Editor<\/p>\n

This is the final tape in the Blindness Series, a body of eight videos on blindness and its metaphors that was begun in 1992.\u00a0 The inspiration for the series came from a 1990 exhibition Jacques Derrida curated for the Louvre Museum, titled Memoirs of the Blind<\/em>.\u00a0 When Derrida died in 2004, Epilogue<\/em> shifted focus from his work on mourning to ruminate on 1) the visible and invisible traces one leaves behind: a font made from Derrida\u2019s infamous handwriting, my mother\u2019s dying words, etc.; 2) the cycle of life and death: my son\u2019s birth on the same day, date, and time as my mother\u2019s death six years prior; and 3) imaging technologies that allowed me to see my unborn son, leading to fantasies about what technologies it would take to \u201cimage\u201d my incorporeal mother, and discovering that ancient medicine brings me closer to my dead mother.<\/p>\n

amaurosis<\/em>\u00a0 <\/em>(DV; 28m; 2002)<\/a><\/p>\n

\"DATweb\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Producer, Director, Writer, Camera, Sound, Editor<\/p>\n

A portrait of Nguyen Duc Dat, a blind guitarist who is a \u201ctriple outcast\u201d:\u00a0 disabled, Amerasian, and an orphan.\u00a0 Dat went from a life on the streets of Saigon selling lottery tickets to winning guitar championships in the state of California, where he now resides.\u00a0 The video unfolds in layers of conversation with Dat about his experiences as a new immigrant and young adult in America.<\/p>\n

alexia<\/em>\u00a0 <\/em>(DV; 10m; 2000)<\/a><\/p>\n

\"alexiaWeb\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Producer, Director, Writer, Camera, Sound, Editor, Voice<\/p>\n

An experimental video about word-blindness and metaphor.\u00a0 Word-blindness (alexia) is a condition that usually afflicts people who have suffered a stroke, causing them to lose the visual recognition of individual letters but perceive the entire word, or vice versa.\u00a0 Metaphors are here discussed in their function to reveal and obscure perception.\u00a0 Divided into five short sections, the tape draws a pattern with several motifs\u2014the finger (pointing as one of the earliest forms of language), the moon (contrasting Buddhist and Wittgensteinian philosophies about metaphors and the visible)\u2014to ruminate on language and blindness.\u00a0 Giambattista Vico’s theory on the origin of language is also addressed.<\/p>\n

ekleipsis<\/em>\u00a0 <\/em>(Betacam; 22m; 1998)<\/a><\/p>\n

\"5.ekleipsisWeb\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Producer, Director, Writer, Camera, Sound, Editor, Voice<\/p>\n

An experimental documentary about a group of Cambodian women in Long Beach, California, known as the largest group of hysterically blind people in the world.\u00a0 Hysterical blindness is a psychological condition where one is not able to see despite the absence of physical problems.\u00a0 ekleipsis<\/em> traces two histories:\u00a0 the Cambodian Civil War and hysteria, to speak about pathology and agency.\u00a0 To transcend what has been described as the \u2018eye-searing\u2019 horrors of war, these women cried themselves into blindness.<\/p>\n

ocularis<\/em>\u00a0 (Betacam; 21m; 1997)<\/a><\/p>\n

\"4.ocularisWeb\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Producer, Director, Writer, Camera, Sound, Editor, Talent<\/p>\n

An experimental video addressing issues of surveillance and technology that allow us to see where we normally can not.\u00a0 Through a 1-800 (toll free) phone number publicized nationally, recorded messages of fears and fantasies about video surveillance were collected from callers:\u00a0 If you were caught on videotape, what would be the worst thing you could be caught doing?\u00a0 If you could watch someone, what would you want to see?\u00a0 The video highlights several narratives to raise issues of surveillance:\u00a0 the construction of our society\u2019s desire to watch surveillance materials and its insatiable voyeurism, as well as what it would mean to have an alter-electronic ego or to be biologically tagged without the recourse to \u2018pass\u2019 for survival\u2019s sake.<\/p>\n

kore<\/em>\u00a0 (Betacam; 17m; 1994)<\/a><\/p>\n

\"3.koreWeb\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Producer, Director, Writer, Camera, Sound, Editor, Voice<\/p>\n

kore<\/em> is a project which investigates the conjunction of sexuality with 1) the eye as purveyor of desire; 2) the sexual fear and fantasy of blindness and the blindfold; and 3) women and AIDS.\u00a0 Can the blindfold embody a touch-based pleasure associated with female sexuality, in contrast with a vision-based pleasure assigned to male sexuality?\u00a0 Could the choice to not-see facilitate ecstasy for the subject?\u00a0 How does fear and fantasy contrast with the reality of vision loss in advance stages of AIDS?<\/p>\n

operculum<\/em>\u00a0 (3\/4″; 14m; 1993)<\/a><\/p>\n

\"2.operculumWeb\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Producer, Director, Writer, Sound, Editor, Talent<\/p>\n

This experimental documentary juxtaposes footage from visits with seven cosmetic surgeons specializing in blepharoplasty (eyelid surgery) within the Beverly Hills\/West Hollywood area with text describing a 1950’s lobotomy procedure to treat psychological patients.\u00a0 This juxtaposition comments on cosmetic surgery as a \u2018desperate cure\u2019.\u00a0 Cosmetic surgery of the eyelids on Asian women is regarded as a self-effacing fantasy of attaining the standard of beauty, a standard which demands conformity to the norm of being average.\u00a0\u00a0 The artist poses as a potential patient while consulting with the seven cosmetic surgeons.<\/p>\n

aletheia<\/em>\u00a0 (3\/4″; 16m; 1992)<\/a><\/p>\n

\"1.aletheia1Web\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Producer, Director, Writer, Camera, Sound, Editor, Voice<\/p>\n

As the introduction to the series, this video provides an index of topics on different aspects of physical blindness and its metaphors.\u00a0 Multiple modes of discourse are employed:\u00a0 journalistic, anecdotal, fictive, and theoretical to bring out various perspectives on the issues addressed. aletheia<\/em> experiments with non-linear structure to spur associative viewing amongst the seemingly disparate ideas; this structure is also a formal reflection of our perceptual process.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Epilogue: The Palpable Invisibility of Life (DV; 14m; 2006) Producer, Director, Writer, Camera, Sound, Editor This is the final tape in the Blindness Series, a body of eight videos on blindness and its metaphors that was begun in 1992.\u00a0 The inspiration for the series came from a 1990 exhibition Jacques Derrida curated for the Louvre […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"parent":14,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-24","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/tkttran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/24","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/tkttran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/tkttran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/tkttran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/tkttran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/tkttran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/24\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/tkttran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/14"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/tkttran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}