“The Dreams of
a sentient television.”
I appropriate samples from old TV and film in an attempt to construct a resonant contemporary narrative from them. I re-purpose, re-contextualize, effect, alter, and intuitively weave these constructions into the dreams a sentient TeleVision might have. I think somewhere out there, in a forgotten store in a strip Mall ghost town, sitting on a grey, dusty shelf in the farthest back of all the backrooms, there is an exhausted old analog TV set, dreaming alone as it’s fading light flickers. ~ Donald O’Finn
My process is an alignment between Machine, Material and Moment. I consider my videos more akin to Poetry and Painting than to film, TV or Art Video. I am Informed by my years of Art, but I am influenced by my own blind visceral instincts. I think of myself as something closer to an ‘Outsider Artist’ than to anything ‘Main–Stream.’
I AM A MONKEY FLYING A SPACESHIP
I started making appropriated video stuff back in 1982, and over the years I developed a vocabulary of personal iconography. The source material is common to Old TV, reality TV, monster movies, silent films etc. Each video seems a repository of everything personal, all my knowledge, instincts and intuition. Perhaps my greatest motivation is to surprise myself.
STILLS
QUOTES & LINKS
Donald O’Finn’s “TV Dreams” – a never ending series of VHS tapes featuring the most tripped out and intelligent re-cuts of movie clips, commercials, and various other resources you can imagine.” “His work provides a superb example of the mashup as de-contextualizing the medium from the message in order to re-contextualize a mindful imagination.
Donald O’Finn’s “TV Dreams” – a never ending series of VHS tapes featuring the most tripped out and intelligent re-cuts of movie clips, commercials, and various other resources you can imagine.” “His work provides a superb example of the mashup as de-contextualizing the medium from the message in order to re-contextualize a mindful imagination.
“All his work is developed in the field of creation in video and television, providing a very personal aesthetic, with superimposed images, choppy and dizzying… This American is not a newcomer to the world of video creation since his first experiences date back to the 80s. Since then he has been doing a broad work but with a very defined line over time.
Donald O’Finn is an artist who has television as a permanent visual reference. It is what we could define as a “television native”. In this sense, it is the manipulation of images taken from old series, documentaries or other types of programs, which helps him to create new pieces.”~Collective for the Renewal of Art History Studies.”
“Donald O’Finn is the type of artist who enjoys sifting through the discarded piles of low-end pop culture on which the modern American psyche is founded. O’Finn can identify and excavate the bits that have yet to reach their half-lives. Potentially dangerous moments, sewn together into a patchwork mirror that reflects the past decades of America’s perversions, obsessions, and fears. When the viewer Experiences his “Repurposed Video” work, he finds himself lurking in the American subconscious, guided by O’Finn’s deft editing and sense of humor. It is also worth noting that Mr. O’Finn is the proprietor of Freddys Bar, in Brooklyn, NY.”
“Appropriating media from disparate samples, O’Finn “re-purposes, re-contextualizes, effects, alters, and weaves his constructions” into “the dreams a Television might have.” O’Finn’s poetic power reveals what lurks beneath glib, ridiculous and shoddy media – the same old subconscious terrors and desires which have bedeviled people for centuries. More than 100 years of visual indifference and excess have yet to banish the chthonic forces which previous civilizations sought to engage through myth. And O’Finn is the man to recover such – not as a theoretical psychologist, but as a practicing shaman cutting up media to fashion a/v voodoo dolls. Within B-movies, exploitation, adverts and other cheap thrills O’Finn recovers human suffering, fear, anxiety, malfunctioning, oh, and profound humor – the stuff audiences and producers imagined they didn’t want, didn’t need – we who still dream of shebots partners, shameless indulgences and guilt free spectating. O’Finn knows better….”
“Donald O’Finn’s feverishly edited encyclopedically strange video collages…”
“Donald O’Finn has repurposed video since 1982. He holds a Master’s Degree from the S.F. Art Institute, and has been a prolific, underground NY artist ever since. Mr. O’Finn uses obscure television and film as his palette to create stunning short narratives.”
“(Donald O’Finn) A brilliant artist, who’s surreal video montages illuminate the inner space of the bar and the brain…”~ Mike Cobb.”
“Average art viewers would be completely lost on Donald O’Finn’s videos. It’s a lot easier for a culture embedded in glamour to fall in love with a relatively complex cinematic experience filled with icons rather than to be seduced by the lone single channel image of a guy selling a Flowbie…O’Finn gives an image of seduction as easily as he retracts it with a fat reduction infomercial or a cheeseburger.
O’Finn, living like a post apocalyptic caveman…is like a madman watching and cheering at the collapse of the media machine.“ Madeleine Gallagher – Curator and professor, Mass College of Art.”
“Of the many televisions screens… one in the front and back room showing the mesmerizing “TV Dreams,” a never-ending project of co-owner Donald O’Finn’s genius repurposing of found footage, a projection screen in the back that shows the same, and, of course, the infamous Freddy the Cat—of No One Outdrinks The Cat fame, on a permanent loop behind the bar, in an eternal bid to empty his water bowl. There’s an air of curation—done with the unseeable hand of a magician—about everything at Freddy’s, from the decor right down to the regulars, proving that great bars, unlike great bartenders, don’t just happen by chance.”
“O’Finn, who curates a rotating series of artists in the side room/performance space, drew the bar’s brilliant Heimlich maneuver poster, which depicts Bluto inexplicably saving Popeye from choking. He also created the impressive dragon that keeps watch over the bar, and made damn sure the original bathroom graffiti was preserved. Behind the bar, a video of a cat drinking milk plays on an endless loop. “Nobody out-drinks the cat,” says O’Finn with a sly grin.”
“a brilliant artist whose surreal video montages illuminate the inner space of the bar and the brain. Donald’s work is comprised of found footage spliced into bizarre mashups…”
“After watching these videos a number of times, I began to notice a some thematic patterns for these collages. They were not meaningless montages (is there such a thing?) but rather narrative sequences that tell a series of compelling stories. In short, brilliantly imaginative stuff!”
“I am most familiar with Stan Brakhage. I am in a media performance band where we mix and mash video and audio live, called rev.99. A couple years back we created a piece on Brakhage that we performed live at New York’s Anthology Film Archive, as well as the Hirshhorn Museum of Art in DC.”
“…the 25-foot-wide flickering image, which is beamed nightly onto a wall…” “O’Finn takes snippets harvested from old TV shows, ads, movies, and other sources and edits them together… He describes the pieces as the dreams an old TV would have…”
“Donald O’Finn is a Jedi. There is nothing slick about O’Finn’s videos. He started out making them using two VHS recorders. He has upgraded since then, but his stuff all looks very DIY. He combines old commercials, porn, black and white musical numbers, crap monster movies, on and on.”
“Donald O’Finn’s “TV Dreams” – a never ending series of VHS tapes featuring the most tripped out and intelligent re-cuts of movie clips, commercials, and various other resources you can imagine.” “His work provides a superb example of the mashup as de-contextualizing the medium from the message in order to re-contextualize a mindful imagination.”
“Freddy’s Bar co-owner Donald O’Finn being a badass.”
“Donald discusses the repurposed video constructions he has been making and screening at his bar since the days of Betamax.”
“The bearded, leonine O’Finn, a video artist, is filmed imaginatively, with an overlay of some of his quirky videos, repurposing old television.”
“…the hilarious and often macabre video art of Donald O’Finn, the bar’s manager and principal owner. These hypnotic videos are culled after countless hours, sifting through ancient film footage – campy and bizarre – and then juxtaposed by his wickedly brilliant editing.”
“I’ve always been a hardcore bar guy,” O’Finn said. He found his calling at a San Francisco bar that played Frank Sinatra jukebox tunes. There, he understood the essence of serving the artist community in a saloon.”