Ryan Trecartin, video visionary

On YouTube, I watched Trecartin’s “A Family Finds Entertainment”, a riveting example of contemporary art. Leave any and all familiar, ordinary frames of reverence in a drawer and then close the drawer. Edges and shapes refuse definition; color and sound defy application.

In Trecartin’s piece, young people, distorted by extremes in costumes and makeup, scream pre-assigned surreal phrases, smash and break anything at hand, as if trying to free themselves from what our so-called civilization establishes as boundaries and definitions, from what we are taught is.  

But, I found coherence, a story about a central character, whose mom asks him to leave home. Shortly after walking out the door, he gets run over by a car, killed, as if punished for defying so-called civilization’s boundaries and concepts.

Watching, I felt assaulted by loud nothingness; afterwards, I came away with a very sad story.