Clarissa [Sometimes] Explains It All

Death is not an easy topic to cover, but Jay Rosenblatt does so anyway. A master of found footage form, this San Francisco based artist “splices” neglected or discarded educational or industrial films, commercials, news clips, and home movies into a seamless moving collage, with subtly layered soundtracks that range from poetry readings, journal entries and personal memoirs, to music by Benjamin Britten, Arvo Pärt, and other composers. In his hour long exhibition, The Darkness of Day, Rosenblatt’s recent films are premiered in New York. The main film is The Darkness of Day (2009) which is a “stoic yet tender meditation on suicide,” influenced by the death of a friend. Other films share the theme of a grim reality such as the award-winning Phantom Limb (2005), which touches upon loss and grief in a chilling manner, and is influenced by the early death of Rosenblatt’s brother. Afraid So (2006) is loosely based on a poem by Jeanne Marie Beaumont, featuring a series of closed yet paradoxically open questions that share the same answer (hence the title), while I Just Wanted To Be Somebody (2006) is a sardonic depiction of singer and anti-gay rights crusader Anita Bryant and Prayer (2001) focuses on the anxiety and blind faith present in a post-911 America.
Rosenblatt manages to bring out the significance from the mundane in his artwork. His skill is so immense, that I have goosebumps from encountering a snippet of Phantom Limb. In this excerpt, advice is given for grieving parents in the gentle voice of a woman while the eerie violin piece of Arvo Pärt’s Silentium gives the sense of a rocking embrace. The visual aspect shows a man shearing a sheep, who at first struggles to be freed, but later succumbs as more wool is removed. With this scene, Rosenblatt provides the analogy that the death of a child leaves a parent as vulnerable as a sheep that is losing one’s identity with the removal of wool. Both are left exposed and emotionally wounded, but both the parent and the sheep have to accept life’s events despite the hurt it causes. It is a message that tugs on the heart strings of the viewer, accompanied with a haunting sequence, for the truth lies within the sounds and moving images.

Darkness of Day is showing at the Museum of Modern Art from October 13 to October 18.

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