The Burning Blue

Jesse McLean

2009 | 00:09:15 | United States | English | Color | Stereo | 4:3 | DV video

Collection: Single Titles

Tags: Found Footage, Media Analysis, Television

A video that observes the thrill, terror, and boredom found in watching mass spectacles, and the unexpected loneliness when you miss them. This video speaks of both the power and the failure of the televised experience to bind us to one another.

Part three of Bearing Witness Trilogy. Bearing Witness is a trilogy concerned with how we as a culture watch ourselves, especially in moments of great emotional significance. With footage culled from mainstream media and television, the single-channel videos (The Eternal Quarter Inch, Somewhere only we know, The Burning Blue) distill moments of sincerity from perhaps insincere sources (televangelists, reality show contestants, screensavers, B-movies). This trilogy puts pressure on the infrastructure of distributing images, particularly those that represent what might have normally been private experiences made public for the sake of entertainment. Located in interstitial spaces, these videos continually shift the role of the viewer between voyeur and participant.

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Exhibitions + Festivals

Anthology Film Archives, Show & Tell, New York, NY, 2013

SAW Media Art Center, Red/White/Blue: New American Fringe Film and Video - 'Emotional Rescue: The Videos of Jesse McLean,' July 14, 2012

Ann Arbor Film Festival, 2010

Chicago Underground Film Festival, 2010

Impakt Festival, Utrecht, 2010