Ruti Sela and Maayan Amir, Beyond Guilt, 2003-2005

In this collaborative film, Ruti Sela and Maayan Amir create a 41 minute film split into three numbered bits called Beyond Guilt (2003-2005) that change the perspective of the recorder of the camera to those Sela and Amir want to interview and document. Hailing from Tel Aviv with a strong and broad educational artistic background, both artists strive to portray a new message of disrupting the power of the camera by handing their cameras over to those they want to interview. In the first bit, they go to a bathroom in a bar and give the camera over to those in the bathroom. As their website shows a clip, the people in the bathroom go about their interesting and crude social exchanges all the while knowing that they are recording their interactions. These different bits raise the question of how the knowledge that you are being recorded by someone else versus recording and controlling what are you doing yourself is changed—or does it? Although I didn't watch the other two bits due to the title of sexual content, but I thought this does raise an interesting artistic perspective on the issues of technology and the power we "believe" we have when viewing and recording our lives.