Week 4 Burris/Suarez

I think the most interesting point about modernism that Burris points out is that it would have inevitably led to postmodernism. The idea of continually foward-minded thinking seems to have a cap on it, until we run out of ways to expand our minds about a certain form and have to move on, either to new teachnology/mediums or right back onto itself and start making fun of everything. So it makes perfect sense how video, a medium developed around this time of artistic thought, was such a suitable medium for postmodern art.
I think it's great that there was so much modifiable elements of video that could not be achieved with film, such as with the idea of the visual synthesizer. I think that the video synthesizer actually supersedes Berman's idea that "new works are not triumphs but repetitions," in that a "moving" visual tapestry created by the device is a completely new form of art.
Suarez' explanation of political postmodernism seems like it relies heavier on utilizing preexisting norms to create new meaning, or possibly "spin." This is pretty excellently conveyed in Kenneth Anger's videos in which he gays up, through editing and suggestive music and mise en scene, a heterosexual, masculine activity such as maintenance of a hot rod. As a medium, this is pretty different from the use of a video synthesizer. The video synthesizer is rooted in progression of the medium, while Anger's video is rooted in reusing old social form into something new. You can still see that the artistic goals of both these pieces do have the modernist, progressive thinking at the very core of them, though the directions go elsewhere. This shows that modernism might always be a part of postmodernism.