Response to “Introduction” by Elwes

I was most captivated by the passage “The Time Frame.” In this passage, Elwes says “In the context of live relay, video is as ephemeral as performance. But a pre-recorded tape aspires to the condition of permanence.” This reminds me of the John Keats poem, “Ode on a Grecian Urn” in which Keats makes an allusion to the function of art. By discussing different scenes on an imagined urn as if he were contemplating a real urn, Keats suggests that art gives immortality to reality. While Elwes discusses video instead of Greek pottery, he maintains the same point that an image represents a moment of history frozen in time. This concept really speaks to me because I find it to be an eternal truth. Whether a video or decorated urn decays and is eventually destroyed, the image of the art will live on forever in our minds.

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