Bert and Ernie Play the Drums

by Diego Chamy

This work consists of a classic Sesame Street video and its script, which I transcribed as literally as I could. The instructions for the piece are:

1) Watch the video and 2) Read the script

Why this video?

By showing how Bert and Ernie deal with their differences, this sketch promotes a singular way of being in the world. We see that Bert and Ernie never turn their differences into personal interests and therefore don’t feel the need to defend an assumed position. They don’t need to go through a negotiation in order to reach an agreement. Neither believes his thoughts are better than the other’s, and therefore neither imposes his thoughts on the other, either by force or by reason. The point is that Bert and Ernie never cancel, avoid, or even resolve their differences. They allow their differences to coexist. Even so, their way of being in the world is not based on mere coexistence - in other words, it is not based on a respect for or toleration of differences. Bert and Ernie take their differences as something that should be maintained as such, or even celebrated. They then manage to produce something from their differences by thinking of them as something positive that can, when dealt with in a creative way, empower them both by allowing them to fully embody a relational plane.

What's the purpose of the script?

For a long time, I wanted to do something with some Sesame Street videos that I found especially inspiring. My first idea was to find a way to reenact the skits, but I soon realized that it would be very difficult to do something that didn’t look ridiculous compared to the original. Although I don't discard the possibility of working on a remake in the future, I wanted to do something in the short term without falling into the kind of remixes you can find online. I thought one option would be to keep the original but reinforce it, and that this could be done by transcribing the video in the form of a script. In this way, the experience of watching the video might be enriched.

When I finished the transcription, I sent it to my friend David, who often checks my English. After correcting the transcript, David brought to my attention that the video could have been transcribed in many different ways depending on the intentions or interpretation of the transcriber. I thought this was interesting, because I actually wanted to avoid creating an “accurate” or definitive representation of the skit that might lend itself to an authoritative analysis of the video. On the other hand, I didn't want to favor any specific point of view (even though my transcription inevitably contains some interpretive biases). In the end, I aimed to achieve a certain dryness of tone, so that when the script is read alongside the video it creates a contrast that allows the video to shine more fully.

The work was first presented as an installation at the “Withholding Meaning” exhibit at SWG3 Gallery in Glasgow, April 2012, which was in turn part of the Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art. The installation consisted of the video accompanied by a printout of its script and the instructions.