Hammer Museum: This Is The End Event Blog

Me in front of the exhibit

This Is The End, is a multimedia exhibit at the Hammer Museum featuring three videos each independently made by three international artists. Each of these videos was presented for a certain portion of the exhibit’s running time, and when I attended, Ed Atkin’s Even Pricks was the video being showcased. This 8 minute video loop is among the most interesting art pieces of seen in recent memory. Combining vivid CGI-driven imagery along with a dense, yet highly refined soundscape, the video creates a powerful and unsettling message. The short loop is filled with interruptions and abrupt transitions, yet utilizes the same kinds of images and themes throughout. There is a limited amount of dialogue, and there are a few messages that make an appearance several times in the form of huge 3D movie-trailer style title sequences.

Action trailer-style title sequence

With it’s use of loud explosive sounds and graphics, along with over-the-top CGI visuals, at times Even Pricks looks like an action movie trailer. As Anne Ellegood and her colleagues put it in their essay about the work, “Though it is a completed artwork, Even Pricks is a preview of itself, made in anticipation of itself, which again seems to thwart the seductive promises of such image-making technologies.” Even Pricks uses it’s stylized imagery and sound to provide commentary on physical and psychological depression. I found Atkin’s approach to utilizing action-trailer style sounds and images, along with some recurring gestures and symbols to be particularly effective as a means of commenting on a medical disorder from an artistic perspective. 

Recurring CGI thumb image

One of the most frequently recurring images in the video is a thumb poking up out of a hairy, CGI arm and hand. This arm seems to float in and out of the frame, juxtaposed over a series of different images that seem to reference the repetitive activities of daily life. Yet the thumb doesn’t seem to interact with the scene other than touch certain things. The ‘thumbs-up’ gesture that tends to suggest a positive attitude is warped and played with here. Rather than suggesting a mood or commenting on the visual scene itself, the thumb simply floats around, and becomes subject to a number of unsettling visual distortions and transformations. To me, this comments on the detached aspect of depression, and how those who suffer from it seem only to interact with the surface of what surrounds them without emotionally grappling to anything. To me, this video is a prime example of how art and technology can be used in tandem to portray the effects of a medical disorder.