Film UbuWeb

Aïda Ruilova (b. 1974) 7 Things of Mollino, 1 (2006) 7 Things of Mollino, 2 (2006) Goner (2010) Prop House (trailer) (2011) Compilation (1999-2002) Female video artist (and musician), Aïda Ruilova, creates short, spastic, repetitive, and chaotic videos. Her videos contain the element of confusion as do many disturbing surrealist artists and their work—the images are just recognizable, yet completely unfamiliar and unsettling. As a fast-paced American artist, Ruilova uses the brevity of her videos to comment on the oddities of what it means to “keep time.” The “erotic and frenetic” nature of her films contains a unique abstraction, with the camera angles and colors formulated together in odd ways (Elena Filipovic 208). Having received her MFA from the School of Visual Arts New York, Ruilova’s spheres of influence are great having been reviewed in Artforum, Artmonthly and Flash Art. Though Ruilova does not directly claim to respond to the art historical past, her new media work cannot escape the connections it makes. Her obsession with the unconscious, the nightmarish state and the unknown are represented in her “frenetic” videos, which are definite characteristics to surrealism and fantasy.