Simon Tarr

Simon Tarr is both a teacher and an experimental film maker working with many different types of techniques.  He seems to primarily work with 16mm film.  In my opinion many of the films are glitchy, dreamy sequences that, without spoken context, I probably wouldn’t be able to follow.  I wonder somewhat if the context is really important or not to the work.  In relation to one of his newer pieces, "Interrupt  us", which he described as a glitch video, he said, “it may or may not be hardcore pornography.”   The most interesting work to me was his remix of “Nanook of the North” entitled “Tia Mak.”   I was intrigued that he was  VJing or doing a live performance of his version of the story of “Nanook of the North.”   Simon controls the apects of the vido: what to show and when, what effect is on the video and text overlays.  In his version he makes us aware of the fabrication of the original by overlapping different scenes in the movie to show they where filmed in exactly the same place. Personally I wouldn’t have understood this without an explanation. Regarding that, an important question was brought up by a student: “Do you always preface the performance by explaining the original?”, to which he answered that he generally did. I think that knowing the context of the piece certainly helps put it in better perspective.