{"id":13287,"date":"2025-05-26T00:33:04","date_gmt":"2025-05-25T22:33:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/?p=13287"},"modified":"2025-06-18T13:45:40","modified_gmt":"2025-06-18T11:45:40","slug":"classif-and-me-lairds-constraint","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/2025\/05\/classif-and-me-lairds-constraint\/","title":{"rendered":"Classif. &amp; Me (Laird\u2019s Constraint)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-vimeo wp-block-embed-vimeo wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Classif. &amp; Me (Laird&#039;s constraint) [2024]\" src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/998823088?h=bca624f9de&amp;dnt=1&amp;app_id=122963\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"autoplay; fullscreen; picture-in-picture; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; web-share\"><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h5 class=\"wp-block-heading\" style=\"margin-bottom:40px\">Like my \u2018169 Seconds: 2008 \u2013 A Crisis Glossary\u2019, published in this journal, \u2018Classif. &amp; Me (Laird\u2019s Constraint)\u2019 is an outtake, focussing on the 2015 feature <em>The Big Short<\/em> (dir. Adam McKay), from work on films on the 2008 financial crisis (O\u2019Leary 2023). The occasion for making \u2018Classif. &amp; Me\u2019 was a series of exercises designed and shared by Ariel Avissar during the summer of 2024, in which videographic practitioners were invited to create videos according to sets of constraints derived from existing video essays. (Many of the resulting exercises from this \u2018Parametric Summer\u2019 series have been made available in Vimeo showcases linked to in Avissar 2024.) The rationale for these exercises was that certain video essays offer not just an effective analysis of the audiovisual objects or phenomena with which they are concerned, but also provide a form that other videographic practitioners can adopt for their own purposes (O\u2019Leary 2020).<\/h5>\n\n\n\n<p>\u2018Classif. &amp; Me (Laird\u2019s Constraint)\u2019 was made in response to the set of constraints that Avissar extracted from \u2018<a href=\"https:\/\/intransition.openlibhums.org\/article\/id\/11328\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Eye-Camera-Ninagawa<\/a>\u2019 (Laird 2023), a virtuoso video essay by Colleen Laird about Japanese director Ninagawa Mika\u2019s <em>Helter Skelter<\/em> (2012). In its first half, \u2018Eye-Camera-Ninagawa\u2019 performs an intensive analysis of the <em>Helter Skelter<\/em>\u2019s opening montage (fig. 1-2). Laird writes that \u2018the montage of 146 shots familiarizes the audience with the film\u2019s female protagonist, contemporary Japanese cosmetics culture, the Japanese commercial photography industry, the Shinjuku high fashion district of Tokyo, and various gendered consumption practices all tied to the body, the politics of looking, and the construction and representation of one\u2019s outward-facing visual self\u2019 (from the creator statement in Laird 2023). Laird decomposes and visually categorizes the 146 shots using a complex multiscreen dispositif, while, in the second half of the video essay, she juxtaposes images from <em>Helter Skelter<\/em> with the title sequence from <em>Vertigo<\/em> (1958) (fig.3). As Laird writes, \u2018the similarities to Hitchcock\u2019s <em>Vertigo<\/em> highlight the role of the camera in [Ninagawa\u2019s] work and the constant self-assertion of the Ninagawa persona at the fore of it all\u2019 (from the creator statement in Laird 2023).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div><a href=\"http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/399_01.jpg\" class=\"td-modal-image\"><figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1293\" src=\"http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/399_01.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-13292\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/399_01.jpg 2000w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/399_01-300x194.jpg 300w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/399_01-1024x662.jpg 1024w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/399_01-150x97.jpg 150w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/399_01-768x497.jpg 768w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/399_01-1536x993.jpg 1536w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/399_01-696x450.jpg 696w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/399_01-1068x690.jpg 1068w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/399_01-1920x1241.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Fig. 1-3: Three moments from \u2018Eye-Camera-Ninagawa\u2019.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/a><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div><a href=\"http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/399_02.jpg\" class=\"td-modal-image\"><figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1293\" src=\"http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/399_02.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-13293\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/399_02.jpg 2000w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/399_02-300x194.jpg 300w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/399_02-1024x662.jpg 1024w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/399_02-150x97.jpg 150w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/399_02-768x497.jpg 768w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/399_02-1536x993.jpg 1536w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/399_02-696x450.jpg 696w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/399_02-1068x690.jpg 1068w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/399_02-1920x1241.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Fig. 2.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/a><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div><a href=\"http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/399_03.jpg\" class=\"td-modal-image\"><figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1293\" src=\"http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/399_03.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-13294\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/399_03.jpg 2000w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/399_03-300x194.jpg 300w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/399_03-1024x662.jpg 1024w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/399_03-150x97.jpg 150w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/399_03-768x497.jpg 768w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/399_03-1536x993.jpg 1536w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/399_03-696x450.jpg 696w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/399_03-1068x690.jpg 1068w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/399_03-1920x1241.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Fig. 3.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/a><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>Avissar extracted a detailed set of parameters from \u2018Eye-Camera-Ninagawa\u2019 for the Laird\u2019s Constraint exercise. I won\u2019t repeat these lengthy instructions here (they can be found in Avissar 2024), but the constraint involved mimicking the techniques used by Laird (fast motion, still frames, dynamic multiscreen grids, etc.) to introduce and analyse a montage sequence of one\u2019s own choosing, and to categorise the individual shots in the chosen sequence. Audio could be derived from any source, but the instructions capriciously stipulated that the film containing the montage sequence had to be put into \u2018some sort of dialogue\u2019 with another audiovisual object from \u2018precisely fifty-four years before or after the media object from which your montage sequence is taken\u2019 (fifty-four years being the gap between the releases of <em>Vertigo<\/em> and <em>Helter Skelter<\/em>).&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It was both technically and conceptually challenging to imitate the virtuoso performance of \u2018Eye-Camera-Ninagawa\u2019 in my own analysis of the opening montage (or is it <em>two<\/em> montages?) from <em>The Big Short<\/em>. As can be inferred from the description above, Colleen Laird\u2019s videographic apparatus in \u2018Eye-Camera-Ninagawa\u2019 was developed for a particular analytical purpose, and in response to a unique film and its distinctive director. I felt I couldn\u2019t claim the same sympathetic investment or analytical confidence that \u2018Eye-Camera-Ninagawa\u2019 displays vis-\u00e0-vis its source material. But riffing on \u2018Eye-Camera-Ninagawa\u2019 in \u2018Classif. &amp; Me\u2019<em> <\/em>allowed me to express, in a playful and ambivalent way that ironizes my own scholarly persona, a set of ongoing concerns about the nature of videographic enquiry in what might be dubbed the age of the attainable text.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I wanted, that is, to refuse a certain sort of \u2018scientific\u2019 authority. I did follow Avissar\u2019s instructions for Laird\u2019s Constraint more or less scrupulously \u2014 for example, by using music from films released in 1961, fifty-four years before <em>The Big Short<\/em>. But rather than aiming to mimic Laird\u2019s analytic precision in \u2018Eye-Camera-Ninagawa\u2019, I tried in \u2018Classif. &amp; Me\u2019 to make subjectivity and error into structuring principles. The file card visual motif used in the centre of the video essay, for example, was improvised after I realised I had miscalculated the number of individual shots from <em>The Big Short<\/em> montage to be included on each horizontal of the multiscreen grid. Rather than redoing the grid, I introduced a visual \u2018tab\u2019 to occupy the space on the top horizontal where the missing thumbnails should be, and then shifted the tab (and some of the thumbnails) for each subsequent \u2018file card\u2019 and whimsical classification (fig.4). Other errors have been allowed to stand in the video essay even when not especially structural. One example is the image of an older man with the invitation \u2018How may I help you?\u2019 emblazoned on the back of his vest. I had assumed he was a government employee and \u2018classified\u2019 him as such, but an American colleague pointed out that, actually, he was likely working for the retail chain Walmart, which had scooped up a surplus of newly-needy seniors suffering after the 2008 crash to perform menial roles for minimum wage. I have left the mistake intact precisely to point to the absurdity that the act of classification may often perform or disavow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div><a href=\"http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/399_04.jpg\" class=\"td-modal-image\"><figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1080\" src=\"http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/399_04.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-13295\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/399_04.jpg 1920w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/399_04-300x169.jpg 300w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/399_04-1024x576.jpg 1024w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/399_04-150x84.jpg 150w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/399_04-768x432.jpg 768w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/399_04-1536x864.jpg 1536w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/399_04-696x392.jpg 696w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/399_04-1068x601.jpg 1068w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Fig. 4: File card motif from \u2018Classif. &amp; Me\u2019.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/a><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>Absurdism is the register of \u2018Classif. &amp; Me\u2019, which adduces Borges and Foucault to acknowledge the cultural specificity of the ordering of things, an acknowledgement which does not exempt videographic criticism. Now that, with the advent of digital files and consumer editing software, we have realised Bellour\u2019s dream of the attainable text, videographic film scholars could succumb to a positivistic conviction of the exhaustive knowability of the film object. \u2018Classif. &amp; Me\u2019, in its facetious way, is a protest against that conviction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\"><strong>* * *<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Facts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Films<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><em>The Big Short<\/em> (dir. Adam McKay, 2015)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>Helter Skelter <\/em>(dir. Ninagawa Mika, 2012)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>Vertigo<\/em> (dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Literature<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>Avissar, Ariel (2024), \u20182024 Parametric Summer Series \u2013 Exercise Prompts\u2019. Available <a href=\"https:\/\/drive.google.com\/file\/d\/1NhD7hh8-41lZ-MMhYeMBNGti0_8t635B\/view?usp=sharing\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">here<\/a>.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Bellour, Raymond (1975), \u2018The Unattainable Text\u2019, <em>Screen<\/em> 16:3, 19-28.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Borges, Jorge Luis (1952), \u2018El idioma anal\u00edtico de John Wilkins\u2019, in Borges, <em>Otras Inquisiciones (1937\u20131952)<\/em> (Sur), 139-144.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Foucault, Michel (1966). <em>Les Mots et Les Choses<\/em> (\u00c9ditions Gallimard)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Laird, Colleen (2023), \u2018<a href=\"https:\/\/intransition.openlibhums.org\/article\/id\/11328\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Eye-Camera-Ninagawa<\/a>\u2019, <em>[in]Transition<\/em> 10: 2.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>O\u2019Leary, Alan (2020), \u2018<a href=\"https:\/\/thevideoessay.com\/paynes-constraint\">Payne\u2019s Constraint: On Matt Payne\u2019s \u201cWho Ever Heard&#8230;?<\/a>\u201d\u2019, <em>Notes on Videographic Criticism<\/em>, 11 July.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>_______(2023), \u2018<a href=\"https:\/\/intransition.openlibhums.org\/article\/id\/11389\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Men Shouting: A History in 7 Episodes<\/a>\u2019, <em>[in]Transition<\/em> 10: 2.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>VIDEO-ESSAY. &lsquo;Classif. &amp; Me&rsquo; analyses the opening montage from <em>The Big Short<\/em> (Adam McKay, 2015) and is modelled on the analysis performed by Colleen Laird of <em>Helter Skelter<\/em> (Ninagawa Mika, 2012) in her virtuoso 2023 video essay &lsquo;Eye-Camera-Ninagawa&rsquo;. Riffing on Laird&rsquo;s work allows Alan O&rsquo;Leary to protest and playfully satirize certain scientific aspirations in videographic criticism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":76,"featured_media":13296,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,227],"tags":[577],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13287"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/76"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13287"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13287\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13339,"href":"http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13287\/revisions\/13339"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13296"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}