P L U N D E R S Q U A D PLUNDER SQUAD is a twenty-minute video program by Charles Woodman and Scott Davenport woodman@tmn.com Date: Mon, 11 Sep 1995 16:59:49 -0400 Postmodern Culture v.6 n.1 (September, 1995) pmc@jefferson.village.virginia.edu Copyright (c) 1995 by Charles Woodman and Scott Davenport, all rights reserved. This text may be used and shared in accordance with the fair-use provisions of U.S. copyright law, and it may be archived and redistributed in electronic form, provided that the editors are notified and no fee is charged for access. Archiving, redistribution, or republication of this text on other terms, in any medium, requires the consent of the author and the notification of the publisher, Oxford University Press. [This is a hypermedia project, containing both images and video clips. Both can be viewed through ftp, through jefferson.village.virginia.edu by ftp, in: /pub/pubs/pmc/issue.995/images or /video. (see Contents for further instructions)] A SELF DEFINING OBJECT "Plunder Squad" is entirely constructed of appropriated elements from TV cop shows in rerun, reality-based police dramas and pulp novels. Within "Plunder Squad," multiple parallel streams of text and image, each containing widely disparate narrative elements, compete for the viewer's attention. These elements, designed to move the viewer/reader through a narrative to its conclusion, provoke in us a desire to resolve these unstable layers into a congruous story . In this case, however, there is no story. Instead the resolution of narrative is replaced by an accumulation of elements deprived of their structure. The impulse to complete a narrative string is thwarted by both the disjunction of those elements and the sheer volume of visual information. The horizontal left to right movement of text across the screen mimics the reading process and the reader's rush to narrative closure while the shifting fields of video image and aural noise mock this attempt at coherence. Accidentally, images and texts combine, inform and comment on each other. Pulled from the stream of mass culture, these reclaimed narrative moments reveal the mechanics of their effect even as they shed the burden of content. As our focus shifts between the moving layers we may chose to drift within the video -- we may overload -- we may find ourselves watching only a glowing object moving across our screens. Thanks to Rick Provine for technical assistance NO STORY NO CONTEXT NO MESSAGE NO RESOLUTION NO MORAL If you would like to see this program in its entirety please contact the artists.