July 10th, 2009 / 11:37 am
 Technology

Ryeberg!

Q: How cool is it that this exists? A: Pretty cool.

Ryeberg.com invites smart, distinguished people to select and write about YouTube videos (or videos from any other video-hosting site). Each of these individual pieces becomes a “curated video.”

curated video = video clip/s + written text

Ryeberg curated videos are short personal essays or stories, but with an important difference: They always include video clips, either as a starting point, or as lyrical counterpoint to the text.

One of those distinguished people is none other than Mary Gaitskill, who has written on four clips so far, one of which is Lady Gaga’s “Poker Face” video, which was the essay that inspired my friend Meehan to alert me to this site’s existence in the first place. Another one is “Sarah Palin at the Republican Convention,” wherein Gaitskill discerns an analog between Palin and the “false Maria” of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. Other, non-Gaitskill contributors to Ryeberg include –

Alana Wilcox – “Knuckles and Narrative” (an essay on boxing, with a video of a guy teaching a little kid to box)

Peter Lynch – “The Nobody in All of Us” (on Warhol and Scorceses’s The King of Comedy)

Alexandra Shimo – “What Nazis Watched Over Dinner” (exactly what it says)

Catherine Bush – “Not Ghost but Trance” (about the limits of what’s writable; also, Merce Cunningham)

7 Comments

  1. July 10th, 2009 / 6:41 pm Drew—

      This is awesome.

  2. July 10th, 2009 / 2:41 pm Drew—

      This is awesome.

  3. July 10th, 2009 / 6:51 pm Ryan Call—

      yeah great find justin. the nazi propaganda film/essay was interesting.

  4. July 10th, 2009 / 2:51 pm Ryan Call—

      yeah great find justin. the nazi propaganda film/essay was interesting.

  5. July 10th, 2009 / 7:33 pm Meehan—
  6. July 10th, 2009 / 3:33 pm Meehan—
  7. April 1st, 2010 / 5:37 pm Ryeberg Update: New Year’s Day 2010 – Ryeberg Curated Video—

      […] Giant, “the internet literature magazine blog of the future,” run by Blake Butler, asked an insightful question about Ryeberg: “How cool is it that this exists?” The answer: “Pretty cool.” The pretty […]