Vault

“We are hoping that in presenting this story in such a minimal way it would become evident that this Freudian logic is a conceptual and visual cliché. We want our audience to have an emotional response to the work, but at the same time realize that they’re being manipulated.” —Bruce and Norman Yonemoto

“In Vault, the Yonemotos reconstruct a traditional narrative of desire—boy meets girl, boy loses girl—that knowingly employs the melodramatic syntax of Hollywood movies and commercial television. They illustrate the psychoanalytic subtext of advertising, film, and TV language through the recurrent use of Freudian symbols and flashbacks to the characters’ childhood traumas, humourously underscoring the power of these devices in creating personal fiction.” —Bruce and Norman Yonemoto, “Made in Hollywood: A Treatment for a Video Feature and Discussion of Aesthetic Strategies,” in Resolution: A Critique of Video Art, ed. Patti Podesta (Los Angeles: Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, 1986)