Notes from Underground: Experimental Documentary’s Unsung Heroes
Words: Adam Hart
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Film Buff: the work of Matt Mccormick
by Emilia Scofield
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“In the last few years, 29 year old Matt McCormick of Portland Oregon has emerged as one of our strongest independent filmmakers, doing work that’s both ingenuous and humorously absurd. His latest, Going to the Ocean (2001) is as simple as a haiku: it begins with a long take of ships gliding through an urban waterway at night while superimposed highway lights sail by, creating a strangely menacing mood; then it cuts to old home-movie footage of adults playing in the surf. Both elements literalize the title, though one deals with industry and the other with nature, contrasted in a way that transcends irony. The Subconscious Art of Graffiti Removal (2001), another of his films, is at once a delightful parody of overheated art-history hermeneutics and an authentic plea for the appreciation of disregarded urban patterns. A dead-serious voice-over praises the rectangular and other patterns left by city employees who remove graffiti as an “unconscious and collaborative” art. Patterns on walls, train cars, and shipping containers are compared to paintings by Rothko and Malevich and cataloged as “symmetrical,” “radical,” and “ghosting,” in style. In Sincerely, Joe P. Bear (1999) McCormick uses hilarious old found footage of someone in a polar bear suit cavorting with a pretty female model who’s seated on a block of ice. In a distorted voice over, the bear expresses his love for the model in sentiments both ridiculous and achingly believable.”
Chicago Reader
March 2002
Fred Camper
“They may not realize it, but council workers employed to paint over the endless walls of graffiti tags are actually latter-day Rothkos. This is the argument that American filmmaker Matt McCormick puts forward in his short film, The Subconscious Art of Graffiti Removal, which presents a slideshow-style succession of images of grey and white rectangles of freshly slapped-on paint where tags once held sway. With tongue lodged firmly in cheek, the film’s narrator talks of the collaborative process between taggers and local authorities that lead to this distinctive but subliminal form of public art, which, if recognized by critics, could see a huge hike in council-tax bills. McCormick is touring The Subconscious Art of Graffiti Removal with his latest film, American Nutria, which looks at potential solutions to the problem of the nutria, a strange beaver-like critter originally bred for fur which is now munching its way across the US. For animal lovers, there is also Sincerely, Joe P. Bear, the tale of the broken-hearted polar bear created from found footage. “
The Guardian
May 14, 2004
Iain Aitch
“Portland filmmaker Matt McCormick’s mock-doc The Subconscious Art of Graffiti Removal, narrated by fellow Portland artist Miranda July, is one of the finest shorts of any kind I’ve seen in a long time. Much of the film presents 16mm and digital shots of gray color-field like paintings done by city workers to cover tagging. Mixing documentation of real graffiti removal practices by the city of Portland with theories that the removers are “collaborating” with graffiti artists to create unconsciously-motivated “collaborative works of art,” McCormick crafts an argument so elegant, with achingly beautiful cold-color visuals floating in a warm bath electronic score, that it’s hard not to be seduced.”
The New York Press
July 10, 2001
Ed Halter
“McCormick’s The Subconscious Art of Graffiti Removal, a send-up of art criticism and urban planning, is a seemingly off-handed but exceptionally intelligent foray into American vernacular art.”
The Village Voice
July 11, 2001
Amy Taubin
“The Subconscious Art of Graffiti Removal by Matt McCormick finds art that inadvertently comes into being in the daily flux of urban life and might be described (though only by a critic) as a subconscious homage to famed art critic Clement Greenberg, since it discovers the aesthetics of abstraction – which Greenberg believed were the essence of modern painting – in the efforts of the City of Portland Oregon to paint over graffiti.”
The New York Times
July 13, 2001
A.O. Scott
“...Matt McCormick’s very amusing The Subconscious Art of Graffiti Removal views the bland, beige blocks of paint left behind by graffiti removers as a form of art itself, one that leaks through the repression of a social system based on money. The narrator describes three painters/removers according to their stylistic quirks, cleverly creating a system of codification for a form of public art that’s generally ignored. The piece’s wry humor is nicely offset by graceful pacing and careful compositions, many of which resemble paintings by Mark Rothko.”
The L.A. Weekly
March 30, 2001
Holly Willis
“...last but no least, the revelation of the festival for me was the remarkable work being done in the visual essay mode, work which effectively engaged political issues without cant or didacticism. Matt McCormick’s the Subconscious Art of Graffiti Removal tied Guy Maddin’s ‘Heart of the World” for the festival grand prize. A masterfully ironic faux art lecture on how the city of Portland campaign to paint over graffiti recreates “unconscious, artistic achievements,” McCormick’s film functions as a remarkable mediation on American urban policy, bourgeois aesthetics, and the nature of art itself.”
Senses of Cinema
Michael Zryd
“Billed as a disaster epic constructed from 1970’s television commercials, matt McCormick’s The Vyrotonin Decision won the Best Experimental film prize at the 2000 New York Underground film festival. The end of everything begins with Jack LaLane teaching me to work out for $5, and then quickly descends into instructional film madness. Some hardcore splicing and editing later and you’re on a fun trip of advertising conspiracy.”
Cinemad Magazine
Issue 5
Mike Plant