The following is from 312 No. 1, January 2005 [Download Publication in .PDF format]:

Moving Below the Surface in Aaron Schmidt’s Untitled

When I watch Aaron Schmidt’s Untitled, two trains of thought arise. The more high-minded part of me, the part that went to University, thinks of the images of Greek wrestlers on pottery. This usually leads me to thinking about Greek myths, and, somewhere along the line, the myth of Sisyphus, in which a wily man is forever condemned to push a large boulder up a hill, only to have it roll back down to the bottom again after he gets it to the hill’s summit. On the other hand, the part of me that grew up with two older brothers thinks of sibling rivalry and of play-fights that devolve into full-out brawls.

What’s unique about Schmidt’s video, though, is that it lacks this kind of context. I think of wrestling, Greek myth, and brotherly dispute, but that’s all coming exclusively from me, not the video. Instead, there’s two white men—who aren’t wrestlers in the sporting or entertainment sense, and don’t appear to be brothers—engaged in some sort of unending struggle. The video loops over and over again—heave, Sisyphus, heave—and offers no outward narrative developments to indicate exactly what is going on. The clothes, the room, even the video’s title—that old modernist stalwart, Untitled—it’s all completely nondescript. I’ve got no baggage to work with, unless I add it in from my own personal experience.

Schmidt says that his focus in the work is western masculinity. Without all the props of sport, or extended narrative, for that matter, the fighting is denied an overt masculine stance. I need to decide all the details for myself. In this case there are no intriguing myths or sports commentators intervening. Without stepping up on a soapbox, Schmidt seems to be pointing out how shallow the usual images of masculinity are—soldier, hunter, wrestler, gangster, brother, whatever—and how one-dimensional they can be when they are paraded about without question. Stereotypes are weak images that don’t hold up when stripped of their supporting props, even if they are widely accepted as truth. They circle and push endlessly, going nowhere and proving nothing in particular.

Schmidt’s video suggests quite a lot without using much more than the most basic of situations, and that’s the beauty of it all. Sisyphus could just be pushing a rock up a hill forever, just like Schmidt’s fighters could just be fighting in a loop, but there seems to be something more beneath the surface, even in a simple fight. Once I move below it, Schmidt’s nondescript surface provokes me to question.
Mark Prier.