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Bobby Gryzynger
Bobby Gryzynger An artist's statement
AJust Breathe is a short experimental video exploring themes of confusion and alienation. It begins as an unnamed man enters the scene and begins relating a series of fragmented
events. The video uses spoken word, sampled sounds, music and video effects to relate both its narrative and tone. The video has no narrative in the traditional sense and leaves the viewer with many more questions than answers. Rather than relying on a typical narrative, the video makes use of experimental
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techniques to create a foreboding atmosphere and convey a distinct mood.
Wilbur, expanded and developed into a shortform video.
Just Breathe was shot and edited in and around Madison, WI with a cast and crew of students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The project began as a short spoken word piece that I, along with cinematographer Dylan
The video is inspired, in part, by the works of Sadie Benning, Bill Viola and Peter Campus. Just Breathe attempts to expand on their experimental forms while incorporating elements of traditional narrative film.
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An interview with
Bobby Gryzynger In Just Breathe you introduce elements of traditional narrative film: a sort of RobbeGrilletian formula. How did you come up with the idea for this short film? The premise of the film stemmed from a short, lyric story I had written a few months before I began making the film; or even thinking of it as a film for that matter. The story itself came about after some discussions I had with a roommate who had spent a period of his early adulthood traveling abroad. While he left the states with other intentions, he ended up spending much of his time partying and going to nightclubs. He described the experience as a disorienting and alienating blur. Much of what he related was brought about when TelepopMusik’s song “Breathe” came on our stereo at home one evening (I later incorporated the song into the story and the film). The way he talked about his experiences left me with the sense that he was extremely ambivalent about them. He felt as though he had squandered the trip pursuing short-term gratification rather than seeking out experiences that would have allowed him to grow personally. In the story, I incorporated his experiences as well as my own. Not necessarily on a point-bypoint factual basic but rather in such a manner that I could capture the more subjective, emotional side of experience and memory. How did you select the fragmented events you show in the video? There wasn’t necessarily a method or formula to the events I selected. In the story, I started exactly from where the film begins. The main character notices someone he recognizes walking in front of him, really the only familiar face he can pick out. I let this moment propel the narrative aspects of the film. In a structural sense the film oscillates between focus and distraction. Focus appears in the
Bobby Gryzynger
present but each of the fragmented events serves as a distraction that pulls the character out of the present and back into the faintly remembered past. I borrowed the club experiences from my former roommate and I tried to construct a loose trajectory of events that, really, are fairly mundane: a night at a club, driving around a city and a small early morning after party. What keep these events from being mundane are the emotional aspects that surround them. Without the sense of alienation the film conveys and its hermetic subjectivity the story’s progression is unremarkable and quotidian. It’s the main character’s ambivalence and unease that drives the film, rather than the events themselves. We recognize a simple but at the same time masterly work of low key cinematography. Chiaroscuro conveys Just Breathe not only a remarkable filmic touch, but improves the sense of alienation, putting the characters on a surreal stage… This was really essential to what I wanted to convey in the film. It was important that the film was first-person in the extreme, that everything was filtered through the experience of the main character. I doubt the film would have been
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nearly as effective had I taken another approach. The darkness in the film is as much a presence in the film as any character. It would have been impossible to create the same head space had I pursued another approach. It becomes much easier to inhabit the main character’s perspective when the image is distilled to its most essential elements. I really have Dylan Wilbur, the film’s cinematographer, to thank for the success of the approach. He understood from the beginning how integral the austere approach was to creating the subjectivity I was after. He helped pare down every image in the film and controlled the film’s visual focus. From a technical perspective darkness was also essential. The low-key lighting in the monologue shots allowed me to key out the light in postproduction and create the video composites that serve to enhance the film’s extreme subjectivity.
Can you tell us your biggest influences in art and how they have affected your work? At the time of making the film, I was heavily influenced by Bill Viola. I wore that influence on my sleeve in making Just Breathe. The aesthetic influence of Viola’s work appears most obviously in the composites that appear throughout the film; also in inclusion of water as a purifying substance. These elements appear frequently in Viola’s work. I was interested in how I could incorporate his experimental approach in a narrative context. His videos never delve much into narrative but I felt his experimental approach could be at home within the loose narrative I constructed. In terms of the narrative side of the film, I borrowed a lot from Sadie Benning’s Pixel Vision confessional videos. I was really struck by how raw they were when I first saw them and I tried
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to create the same immediacy by directly addressing the viewer and breaking down the fourth wall. It’s easy to dismiss Benning’s work in the era of YouTube, but seen in their context they’re an important touchstone. The sort of intimate sharing she engages in wasn’t nearly as habitual as it has become in the wake of social media. In Just Breathe I wanted to blend her approach with Viola’s. I wanted to create the subjectivity of a confessional and extrapolate on that visually. What technical aspects do you mainly focus on in your work? On the level of craft, I’m most interested in approaching familiar elements and media in novel ways. In making Just Breathe, I looked for ways to combine familiar tropes of both narrative and experimental cinema in the pursuit of a novel and expressive form.
Beyond that, I always pursue a polished final project. Many artists are comfortable allowing the process to show through and allowing there to be rough edges within their work. Often I’m a fan of this approach because, on an aesthetic level, I find a layer of grit appealing. However, in making my own work, I do everything I can to obscure the process. Perhaps it’s my film background and education that drives me in this approach. If you look at any classic Hollywood film they’re always attempting to achieve seamless continuity. They don’t want you to be distracted by the craft, they want you absorbed in the story. In video and film work as well as in other media, if too much of the process is visible it becomes distracting and draws the viewer’s attention away from the concept driving the work. Concept in my work always comes first; after the concept is there I look for a form to convey it. When process and technique become
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too large a part of the conversation I begin to think there is some failing in the work itself. Much of the experimental film cannon embraces a DIY approach and aesthetic but much of this came out of necessity. It used to be extremely time-consuming (not to mention expensive) to produce audio-visual work with high production values. That’s not so much the case now with how ubiquitous high quality production equipment has become. In comparison to the past, media production is much more accessible. However this is double-edged. It’s easier to produce content and therefore it becomes more difficult to rise above the din and differentiate one’s work. I push my work to stand out by pushing it on the level of craft to the point where the craft begins to recede into the background.
We have been impressed by the balance between absence and presence in your video: we can notice a sort of coexistence between past and present in imagination and perception. Could you introduce our readers to this aspect of your art? I wanted the film to come across as though it were a fever dream or an apparition. I wanted it to flow over the viewer. Because the narrative progression of the video is drawn in such broad strokes it doesn’t throw the viewer much of a lifeline but this is by design. The dichotomy of absence and presence you mention is part of this. I wanted the viewer to question whether the events actually occur and if they do occur what exactly their chronology is. I wanted the film to obey the more fluid rules of memory where different events blend and lay on top of each other and are passed through a subjective filter. It’s easy to see things in recent memory in
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sequence but as time passes this sequence isn’t nearly as clear and orderly. This is the space I wanted to situate the film within; a space where past and present are in contention as each vies for attention and focus but neither becomes completely clear. This lack of clarity serves to enhance the film’s sense of alienation.
Thanks for sharing your time and thoughts with us, Bobby . What's next for Bobby Gryzynger? I recently completed an MFA program at the University at Buffalo (SUNY). For my master’s thesis I created an interactive installation that
conducted Internet surveillance on an unwitting audience. In the coming months I’m looking to refine the project and submit it to festival venues. I also recently relocated to the New York City area for work. Currently I’m working as a web developer and designer in New York City, so any additional personal work will have to wait until
I’ve had more of a chance to settle in. That said I’m really looing forward to all of the opportunities the area affords an artist like myself working in a diverse set of media. Eventually I’d like to seek out some residencies in the area and focus on developing a few long-term projects incorporating digital and interactive media.