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Elegy

Joe Gibbons

1991 00:11:00 United StatesEnglishB&WMono4:3Pixelvision video

Description

It’s the first day of autumn, and Gibbons can already smell death in the air. Leading us and his dog Woody on a walk through a cemetery, Gibbons voices his obsessive thoughts of death and destruction saying, “I want to be a leaf; I want to fall from a great height and crush whatever I land on.” Waxing weirdly philosophical, Gibbons satirically tries to impress the concept of mortality on his dog; the video, shot in Pixelvision, approximates his dog’s black-and-white vision.

This title is also available on Joe Gibbons Videoworks: Volume 1.

Joe Gibbons conveys his dry humor through obsessive monologues that scrape the bottom of a monomaniacal mind—spilling forth with fantasies of power, destruction, and death. In his videos, the hand-held camera allows Gibbons's alter-ego to surface as he gives vent to tyrannical rants that comically invert social values.

Also see: 

Joe Gibbons: An Interview