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Prosaic Portraits, Ironies and Other Intimacies

Susan Mogul

1991 00:46:00 Czechia, Poland, United StatesEnglishColorMono4:38mm video
Tags:
Autobiography, Diary, Documentary, Eastern European, Expedition/Travel, Politics

Description

Susan Mogul's first video diary work, produced two years before Everyday Echo Street: A Summer Diary (1993), follows the artist on a trip though Eastern Europe immediately after the fall of the USSR. Through discussions with various characters about politics, art, and each others personal lives, Mogul creates a video time capsule of social life in Poland, then Czechoslovakia, and former Yugoslavia.

“With wonderful footage, great interviews — she chronicles a changing political and artistic scene in Poland… she titillates, outrages and always knows when to move on.”

— Sally Stein, art historian, 1991

This title is also available with Polish subtitles.

About Susan Mogul

Since 1973 artist and filmmaker Susan Mogul has developed a body of work that is autobiographical, diaristic, and ethnographic. Her work addresses the human dilemma of self in relationship to family, community and the culture at large. Mogul’s videos of the early 1970s, as well as her recent documentaries, are often featured in exhibitions, publications, and college courses that examine the histories of video art, feminist art, and contemporary documentary.

“The conflict in forging one’s own identity in relation to a group — be it family or the culture at large — has been an underlying theme in my work. I was revealing attempts to define my self-image through humorous autobiographical anecdotes. In them I measured myself against influential role models.” 
— Susan Mogul