On Thursday, September 12 2019, I got the chance to visit Mika Rottenberg’s solo exhibition titled “Easypieces” which was located in the New Museum. It was a new experience that challenged my sensories and critical thinking. She showcased a variety of audiovisuals and moving art pieces that concern the hidden, a bit beautified, labor work that comes along with the creation of mass production. Her videos are limited to sounds created during the labor work such as taking pearls out of oysters, a knife cutting through jelly, and others. She was able to create a narrative through the highly saturated sound and cinematic stills, forcing the audience to not only look at the videos as it is but think more outside of the box. My favorite piece from the exhibition was definitely “Spaghetti Blockchain” that displayed montages of mesmerizing ASMRs on factory objects. I was so drawn into the video that I lost a sense of time, it was as if I was hypnotized especially by the fact that in the video there was an illustration of a hexagonal box and it keeps turning and locking. Rottenberg’s exhibition made me realize that sound plays such an important role in videos, however the visuals are also necessary to construct an anecdote. These two elements complement each other and cannot stand alone.
