Aviv Lang is a filmmaker and visual artist who explores influence on perception and perspective. Grappling with topics surrounding social media and the boundaries of physical and digital space. Explore a range of his pieces below and read his full statement here.
SPAM
The name says it all. Created out of email and phone spam that the artist received, SPAM gives life to the casual and crude nature of spam. The almost childlike, blunt approach is given sentience as an omniscient being, the creator of all spam, toying with the viewer. It’s an abusive relationship that the viewer cannot escape without pulling the plug. Strings of spam bombard the viewer with increasing intensity, a brute force looking for any sign of weakness. The strings of spam form patterns reminiscent of barcodes. “Click me” they scream, waiting for you to make a mistake.
Der Kuss
Der Kuss plays with contemporary forms of “viewership” and critique using elements from another time. Signifiers are mixed, user interface and icons show a familiar contemporary environment, Instagram, but within that contemporary framework, another time and world comes to life. Egon Schiele likes the post, a new painting by Gustav Klimt. Potential models for the painting have also liked the post, Emilie Louise Flöge and Red Hilda. Oskar Kokoschka, comments in an imagined interaction, “dope new painting 100”, in an unceremonious clash of time and medium. The viewer sees this entire experience unfold from the perspective of Gustav Ucicky, the disputed son of Klimt and renowned Austrian filmmaker. Other signifiers, the number of likes corresponds with the average visitor ship that The Belvedere, home of The Kiss, garners each year. The date and time indicate when Aviv recorded the footage playing in the background of The Kiss. The casual eroticism of Klimt’s original work, both loved and shunned for its “promiscuity” brings out the most voyeuristic of social media tendencies.
Liminal Dance
Liminal Dance is about the digital in-betweenness. The limbo that we find ourselves too often in, wondering if our digital counterparts will choose to fulfill the task we have requested of them or if they’ll say “screw you” and do whatever computers do for fun. Dance perhaps? It is also the push and pull of the artist’s love-hate relationship with computer technology, the primary subject of his art and process by which he creates art, but also his greatest source of frustration. A normal computer action, opening an application extends, suspended in time for absurdly long, even for the most diabolical machine, turning into a surreal desktop scene in which applications bounce themselves out of their dock, dancing around the screen, growing and shrinking as they rotate around the digital space. The imagined dance of applications is a whimsical depiction of failure of these applications to open and execute their designed function and also a venting of the artist’s frustration at the countless times, including during the creation of this piece, that technology decides to be uncooperative and have a mind of its own.
Content Walk
Walking is inversely related to screen usage. Using footage captured during my travels from May 2019 to March 2020 and TikTok videos that I watched while in isolation from April 2020 to February 2021, Content Walk contrasts two personal worlds. One pre-COVID a world of action, actively seeking out culture through travel and the other during COVID a world of passive cultural consumption made up of layers of appropriation (or references). The number overlays show the number of steps I walked on the specific day. Data was sourced from my iPhone health data. Physical and digital are contrasted, drawing the comparison between the digital distance traveled through scrolling and the physical distance traveled through walking. The chosen clips capture a moment in time, each representing a month in their respective years, providing a glimpse into place and person. It is a time capsule. The feet symbolize movement and the progression of time, but also the personal nature of the experience; the viewer, passive, sees only the ground, leaving the majority of the world a mystery (to the viewer Albania and Vietnam are almost indistinguishable). The viewer is prompted to pause, look up, and see the world around them.
Behind the Looking Glass
In our age of remote work and pandemic-fueled online gatherings, the video chat has taken over our lives. A tool that enables connection, but a shadow of the in-person interactions that they replace, these online meetings among other things, emphasize the self. Our webcam shows us to the world, but is also a mirror to the self. What does it do to gaze at oneself for hours on end, day after day? Behind the Looking Glass examines the social and psychological impact of video chatting, diving into the influence on self appraisal, narcissism, attention, and cognitive processing. Excerpts from psychological research on video chat are interwoven with internal dialogue and layers of video. The use of projection onto the body is meant to create a further separation between the “viewer” within the piece and the “presenter”. The “viewer” acts as a barrier to comprehension of what the “presenter” is saying. Their reflection is a distraction from the moment. We see ourselves in everyone and only see ourselves at the same time.
Slow Boat Diaries
Written and filmed during a two-day boat trip from Laung Prabang, Laos to the border with Thailand, Slow Boat Diaries reflects the slow, methodical introspection of the journey for Aviv. Part fantasy, part observation, the story captures the moment, a time without distractions. Just the Mekong river, boat, passengers, thoughts, the drone of the engine, and the passing landscape.
Pain Anger Hope
In spring 2020 protests erupted across the United States and world. An outcry at the police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and many other victims in a long line of police violence and systemic racism. This film is a collaboration, a work of found art in the sense that it was pieced together based on whatever Aviv’s friends sent him in response to his call for material. After receiving on-the-ground footage from protests around the world as well as audio reflections and original music, Aviv pieced together Pain Anger Hope as all call to action and support for the Black Lives Matter movement.
Meditation on the Mekong
An homage to an important and powerful body of water, Meditation on the Mekong captures the feeling of floating along the back channels around Can Tho, Vietnam. The Mekong was an important focal point in Aviv’s journey through Southeast Asia. Crossing over and intertwining through his travels in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, like the layered and reflected imagery of the film.
Perspective
Perspective is meant to be viewed on a mobile device, playing with interactivity in a static medium. Viewers are encouraged to view the film from different orientations, experiencing the piece through their own lens. Perspective interweaves social media screen recordings with captured footage and animated text in order to play with expectations of space, format, and content.
3630 Miles Here
3,630 Miles Here explores sameness and difference across great distances. While the two places featured, Kotzebue Alaska and New York City, are miles apart, elements of each location parallel each other. The use of overlapping and undulating footage brings the two places together.