nba hoops #205
animation
2024
sink it, sink it, shoot for two consists of a triptych of gifs made through single-frame, mixed-media animation. The distinct, colorful, and almost jarring visual language seeks to make connections between varied forms of American passive viewership, primarily through the use of found footage of 90s basketball and media surrounding the Menendez brothers’ case. The form-based qualities of the gif, like pulsing rhythms and repeated sequences, allow the viewer to experience this narrative between violence, sport, and spectatorship.
A lot of my practice revolves around my almost obsessive attention to American pop culture and the many ways it has impacted real people and the way they choose to live. The revival of attention around the Menendez brothers’ case, largely due to streaming media and the rise of “true crime,” has been a point of interest for me lately, particularly because of my curiosity about what viewership means, both in the context of viewing art as well as average “regular’’ media and things found in our normal environments. I f ind a similar phenomenon occurring between the ways in which we as Americans have become desensitized to seeing people as beings with real feelings, physical bodies, and worth within society in the contexts of both true crime and another interest of mine, which is American sports and the media that surrounds it.
What within our specific cultural zeitgeist has allowed us to detach ourselves from the people we see in media so easily? What are the consequences of being passive in the viewership of people, and what are the differences between the stakes in sports games and within “true crime” media? Is assigning “justice” or culpability to real people who’ve experienced crime or perpetrated it similar to the ways in which we root for sports teams?
Jules Biller is a video artist from Cleveland, Ohio, currently pursuing their BA at The Ohio State University. Their work delves into the intersection of digital and physical landscapes, queerness, spectatorship, pop culture, and political activism, largely through the mediums of mixed media animation and found footage.