Le fruit vert Ephemerides LDE043

Radio reverie for Bachelard

Audio Flag
CRT monitors, field recordings, digital video players, acrylic sheet
20m21s
2020

A reinterpretation of Nam June Paik’s Video Flag (1996), the first piece of video art acquired or commissioned by the Smithsonian Hirschhorn Museum, Washington, DC. Audio Flag is composed of an audio recording of the electronic equipment and fans that control Video Flag and the ambiance in the gallery where it is shown collaged with audio recordings of the May and June, 2020 protests in Louisville, Kentucky in response to the extrajudicial state murders of Breonna Taylor and David McAtee. The audio is combined with a video recording of the reflection of Video Flag in the surface of the Hirschhorn’s waxed floor. 

With Audio Flag, Paik’s frantic, jittering American flag is inverted (usually a sign of distress or protest) and washed out, the effects of reflecting off an imperfect surface. The specific, fleeting patriotic images and TV stills of the Paik’s original are lost in the blur. Attention is refocused on the audio inadvertently created by the piece, now intentionally reintroduced and amplified and accompanied by the urgent sounds of today’s ongoing racial justice movement. Reflective materials are added to the gallery floor, offering yet another inversion. The flag is once again right-side-up, though rendered even less distinct by yet another refraction but accompanied by a clear-voiced intention breaking through the drone and re-establishing (or just establishing) a vivid, inclusive, and just America.

Audio Flag (2020)

Hank the Herald Angel Recordings, Aaron Rosenblum, Kentuckiana Sounds, Radio Presque Rien, SONICBernheim, etc.

Audio Flag (2020)

Aaron Rosenblum

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