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      Raven Chacon, Report, 2001/2015, single-channel video, color, sound, and printed score shown on music stand; Component A: 03:48 minutes, Component B: 8 1211 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase through the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment, 2020.61A-C, Video © 2015 Raven Chacon. Composition © 2001 Raven Chacon

      Artwork Details

      Title
      Report
      Artist
      Date
      2001/2015
      Location
      Not on view
      Dimensions
      Component B: 8 1211 in.
      Copyright
      Video © 2015 Raven Chacon. Composition © 2001 Raven Chacon
      Credit Line
      Museum purchase through the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment
      Mediums Description
      single-channel video, color, sound, and printed score shown on music stand; Component A: 03:48 minutes
      Classifications
      Highlights
      Object Number
      2020.61A-C

      Artwork Description

      Trained as a composer, Chacon (Diné) often starts from musically notated scores to create conceptually rich artworks across creative categories. Since scores are inherently fluid, even when they take fixed form in a video or print, the works based on them retain the possibility for further interpretation, collaboration, and reanimation in new contexts.

      A performance of his 2001 composition of the same name, the 2015 video-installation Report recasts guns as musical instruments, rather than solely as instruments of violence. Having no flexibility in tone, pitch, or volume, the firearms used in Chacon's score create a sonic complexity through the rhythmic staggering of different caliber shots. Location, casting, and framing for each performance, however, dramatically shape understandings of the shooters and their actions. In this video, percussionists of various backgrounds and genders resolutely fire across a New Mexican landscape, offering musical resistance to the myth of an uninhabited American West and a reminder that gunfire has long been the soundtrack of this land.

      Musical Thinking: New Video Art and Sonic Strategies, 2023

      Works by this artist (1 item)

      Ed Fries, Halo 2600, 2010, video game for Atari VCS, color, sound, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Mike Mika and Ed Fries, 2013.73, © 2010, Ed Fries
      Halo 2600
      Date2010
      video game for Atari VCS, color, sound
      On view

      Exhibitions

      Media - 2020.54.1 - SAAM-2020.54.1_2 - 139600
      Musical Thinking: New Video Art and Sonic Strategies
      June 23, 2023January 28, 2024
      Musical Thinking explores the powerful resonances between recent video art and popular music.

      More Artworks from the Collection

      George Catlin, Comanche Giving Arrows to the Medicine Rock, 1837-1839, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Mrs. Joseph Harrison, Jr., 1985.66.472
      Comanche Giving Arrows to the Medicine Rock
      Date1837-1839
      oil on canvas
      Not on view
      William Holbrook Beard, The Runaway Match, 1877, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase, 1977.55
      The Runaway Match
      Date1877
      oil on canvas
      Not on view