Review of Palladio: IS IT ART? IS IT ADVERTISING?

Review of Palladio:

IS IT ART? IS IT ADVERTISING?
By Holly Daggers, The Forward Motion Theatre
http://www.forwardmotiontheater.org/VJ/Palladio/index.html

Bill Jones and Ben Neill premiere
PALLADIO: a playable film
http://www.PalladioMovie.com

"In the future there will be no photographs. In the future there will
be no objects at all…. In the future there will only be Art," says
the bombastic unseen narrator of Palladio, a new film by Bill Jones
with live music by Ben Neill and live video remixing by Jones. That's
Art as Lifestyle apparently: The kind of Art which is experienced
through portable media players…, Art as Style…, Art in the age of
Steve Jobs where iPods are as cool as the commercials that sell
them….

Johnnie is an Artist. We know this because he is seen brooding around
NYC in stylish black jackets standing against shop windows and posing
like a model in Central Park – pretty, young, and moody. Though we
never actually see him create anything he is by turns a VJ, a painter,
and eventually a rock guitarist. Picture Morissey as a VJ, but squint
until he becomes a shameless label-whore. In his first scene he plays
a concert at downtown's a/v cabaret Remote Lounge, and his
self-centered melancholia is compromised by his video accompaniment: a
VJ remix of sampled television commercials – but not the pretty
parts, just the advertising…, the parts where the corporate logo
fades in and an announcer reads the market-researched ad-slogan. A
tongue-in-cheek bite at sampler-culture.

Mal is a disillusioned advertising executive (coincidentally the same
ad exec responsible for all those sampled ads) who loves seeing his
corporate soap-selling transformed into a profound new artform. In
fact, he is inspired to dump the trappings of his Madison Avenue
office and reinvent his company in the image of Johnnie's art. He
assembles a colony of media stylists at his palatial Hudson Valley
estate Palladio, then releases a large coffee table book (also called
Palladio) and sets out on an international book tour to herald his
edgy new discovery to the world. With the intent of ending the trend
of irony in advertising, he hopes to convince corporations to throw
their advertising dollars behind the sincerity of Art.

Molly is "the girlfriend", the woman who inspires creativity by virtue
of her inability to commit in a relationship. She was Johnnie's
girlfriend back in art school, but dumped him when he got too serious.
She becomes Mal's girlfriend briefly only to be stolen away by Johnnie
again while Mal is abroad on his publicity tour. "Sometimes I feel
like just a body" she confesses to the camera, and that about sums up
her character. Molly talks endlessly into her cellphone about drifting
through life and unsatisfying sexual encounters to an unseen friend,
therapist, or possibly one of those 1-900 confession hotlines.

These characters are well-acted but superficial sketches,
intentionally so as Palladio the Movie constantly breaks into
commercial interruption. A drive up to Mal's estate in a yellow hummer
segues laughingly into a series of Hummer ads including the slogan
"Nothing feels like a Hummer", and a sentimental reunion between
Johnnie and Molly breaks into a sacherine MasterCard ad with almost
identical characters and staging. As Mal's dreamteam of young
creatives is assembled, Jones cuts away to the steamy opener of a
daytime soapopera and the analogy is immediately obvious. Who has time
for character development in the age of fast downloads and screensaver
art? We know what these actors represent, no need to bore us with the
details. Is it surprising that an audience can dispose of the
backstory trappings that make characters three-dimensional, when we
don't need any overworked effort to recognize romance in a 10-second
diamond commercial, or the jungle-thrill of driving a Hummer to the
supermarket…? In the age of laptop music and iMovie masterpieces,
time and effort are of the past. Quality is now measured in megapixels
and value is directly related to the price of plug-ins.

The logo saturated televisionworld that baby boomers have created –
the very same instant-gourmet existance Mal wants to defeat – is the
only world Johnnie and Molly have ever known. They are nothing but
labels, commercials, product placement. Reputation is replaced with
brandname recognition. They don't know who they are or why they're
here, and they certainly don't extend any effort in finding out, but
they know they want to be stars. Their lives are measured in page hits
and blogger-like confessions; their audience is anonymous downloads,
and Johnnie's final concert-by-cellphone is cut tragicly short when he
implodes from a network overload of wireless callers…. Mal is the
real hero here, trying desperately to bring sincerity to advertising,
and find friendship in a generation that does nothing but sell him
out. Ultimately he makes the mistake of trusting Johnnie, who
selfishly steals his girlfriend as quickly as he pirated Mal's
commercials. Don't trust anyone under 30!