I enjoyed George Kuchar's films quite a bit. The two works of his viewed in class, Hold Me While I'm Naked (1966) and The Inmate (1997), were wonderful, entertaining films that I consider to fall in the category of films about the filmmaker himself (or herself, as the case may be).
Both films make use of the intervention technique of "breaking the fourth wall," whereas the narrator addresses the audience directly. In this way, George Kuchar takes on a curious dual role as both the presenter and the presented. Hold Me While I'm Naked seems to me to be an exercise in self deprecation, and it's humor is at once earnest, silly and sad. We see George Kuchar as a film maker struggling to put his vision onto film in spite of the obstacles in his path -- uncooperative actors, an overbearing mother and even the wistful escapism that he engages in vicariously through the film project his character (himself?) struggles to realize.
The Inmate shows an older version of Kuchar -- distant from his younger incarnation in both physical and mental years. Here, Kuchar struggles to make an autobiographical documentary by sharing his stream of consciousness with the audience. As a result, however, the video rambles from topic to topic and even segues completely at one point from his trip to Convict Lake (in the "here and now" of the film) to footage that is a flashback (implicitly at any rate) to the regular trips he takes to Oklahoma to chase storms. This version of Kuchar seems more confident and less afraid to let go and engage his audience in a conversation -- albeit one-sided, perhaps -- to draw them into his world. This attempt to place the audience in the film maker's shoes is a continuation of the same goal in Hold Me While I'm Naked.
Admittedly, I probably have an affinity for Kuchar's work because my videos thus far have had a similar style -- attempts to expose and share aspects of my personal existence with the audience, even when those attempts inspire humor with their awkwardness and pathos.
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Saturday, May 3, 2008
Duck Soup & Der Lauf der Dinge
The Marx Brothers' movie Duck Soup can be considered an intervention on the traditional narrative structure of cinema as it had been established to that point. For one thing, it is difficult to consider any of the characters -- even any of those played by the Marx Brothers -- as protagonists. Each of the characters is presented as a broad caricature with a loose set of motivations that gives them a reason to be part of the plot. These character goals almost invariably put them at odds with every other character. Only two pairs of characters operate with any sort of cooperation, those being the ambassador and the famous singer, as well as the characters played by Chico and Harpo Marx. And in the case of the latter, the cooperation is haphazard and uncoordinated (at least as characters) at best.
But even in these circumstances, the adherence of the various characters to their goals and motivations is tenuous at best; few, if any, opportunities to make a joke or prank at the expense of forwarding the narrative go unused. The narrative itself becomes a mockery of normal continuity. Since none of the characters are really intent on seeing their goals through, the sequence of events that define the plot tend to be either simplistic or outrageous.
To me, it felt much more like the movie was merely a vehicle for carrying the antics of the Marx Brothers to the silver screen. I consider characters and plot progression to be the core of any movie I am prone to enjoy. Since those aspects of this film are specifically abused, I found it very difficult to engage in Duck Soup.
If Duck Soup is an exercise in destroying the normal cause and effect of narrative, then Der Lauf der Dinge ("The Way Things Go") is an exercise in building a narrative where one would never expect to find one. This film was made by Swiss film makers Peter Fischli and David Weiss, and it features a massive linear machine that recreates the same sort of incidental complexity of Rube Goldberg's famous cartoons. The basic nature of narrative -- that is, a series of events in which one follows as a direct consequence of one or more events before it -- is made visible and tangible by a collection of wheels, jugs, pans and levers.
While it is easy to make the superficial assumption that the elements of the machine in the film are simply arranged as a matter of convenience, I got the vague sense that there was a theme to the sequence in which one machine element triggers the next. I would actually liken Der Lauf der Dinge to the visual equivalent of a symphony, with its "notes" (the individual gimmicks for transferring kinetic energy from the previous to the next) that are arranged in sensible patterns. The machine is divided into "movements" (long sections which repeat specific gimmicks in a theme, such as "weighted wheels" or "ignition sources") that experience fast rhythms and slow, crescendos and decrescendos of kinetic energy. The movements are given identifiable transitions, which to me seemed to be the large chemical pans which took several extra moments to foam up and spill over (and also giving the artists a practical place to pause the filming -- I suspect that each "movement" of the machine was assembled and filmed seperately, and assembled via editing to grant the illusion of one long, contiguous assemblage).
In many ways, the two films Duck Soup and Der Lauf der Dinge are complimentary images of one another. One seeks to deconstruct a sequenced narrative into a haphazard collection of gimmicks, while the other seeks to construct a haphazard collection of gimmicks into a sequenced narrative.
But even in these circumstances, the adherence of the various characters to their goals and motivations is tenuous at best; few, if any, opportunities to make a joke or prank at the expense of forwarding the narrative go unused. The narrative itself becomes a mockery of normal continuity. Since none of the characters are really intent on seeing their goals through, the sequence of events that define the plot tend to be either simplistic or outrageous.
To me, it felt much more like the movie was merely a vehicle for carrying the antics of the Marx Brothers to the silver screen. I consider characters and plot progression to be the core of any movie I am prone to enjoy. Since those aspects of this film are specifically abused, I found it very difficult to engage in Duck Soup.
If Duck Soup is an exercise in destroying the normal cause and effect of narrative, then Der Lauf der Dinge ("The Way Things Go") is an exercise in building a narrative where one would never expect to find one. This film was made by Swiss film makers Peter Fischli and David Weiss, and it features a massive linear machine that recreates the same sort of incidental complexity of Rube Goldberg's famous cartoons. The basic nature of narrative -- that is, a series of events in which one follows as a direct consequence of one or more events before it -- is made visible and tangible by a collection of wheels, jugs, pans and levers.
While it is easy to make the superficial assumption that the elements of the machine in the film are simply arranged as a matter of convenience, I got the vague sense that there was a theme to the sequence in which one machine element triggers the next. I would actually liken Der Lauf der Dinge to the visual equivalent of a symphony, with its "notes" (the individual gimmicks for transferring kinetic energy from the previous to the next) that are arranged in sensible patterns. The machine is divided into "movements" (long sections which repeat specific gimmicks in a theme, such as "weighted wheels" or "ignition sources") that experience fast rhythms and slow, crescendos and decrescendos of kinetic energy. The movements are given identifiable transitions, which to me seemed to be the large chemical pans which took several extra moments to foam up and spill over (and also giving the artists a practical place to pause the filming -- I suspect that each "movement" of the machine was assembled and filmed seperately, and assembled via editing to grant the illusion of one long, contiguous assemblage).
In many ways, the two films Duck Soup and Der Lauf der Dinge are complimentary images of one another. One seeks to deconstruct a sequenced narrative into a haphazard collection of gimmicks, while the other seeks to construct a haphazard collection of gimmicks into a sequenced narrative.
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Media Burn
Ant Farm's Media Burn intervention was a successful demonstration of just how modern media is a manufactured phenomenon. Certainly a lot of thought was put into the symbolism and the level of satire that guided almost every aspect fo the performance. I do have some criticisms, however, specifically that it has the feel of an over-elaborate joke that drags on for too long. It is, perhaps, an extension of my reaction to events like pageants, parades, awards ceremonies, or which Media Burn pokes fun at, so perhaps on that level the artists got it right, even where I think they got it wrong.
Saturday, April 26, 2008
Barbie Liberation Front
The Barbie Liberation Front was an organization that caused a significant cultural jamming intervention in 1993. Having purchased many Barbie dolls and GI Joe action figures, the group switched the voice boxes from a pair of dolls (one from either group) and then surreptitiously placed them onto store shelves. Needless to say, customers who purchased the toys were surprised to find gung-ho, combat ready Barbie dolls or effeminate GI Joes that were more interested in shopping than shooting.
The group's intention was to call attention to the glaring gender stereotyping with which the American public was indoctrinating our children with. The Barbie doll, for instance, would occassionally say "Math is too hard!" and, of course, the GI Joe action figures were unabashedly aggressive in their speech. Information cards in the refurbished packaging directed the customers to call news desks, thereby spreading knowledge of the event even further.
While the Barbie Liberation Front is effectively defunct, many of its members moved on to conduct other interventions along an activist bent. Mike Bonanno, a member of the BLF, became involved in gatt.org, a web site that parodies the World Trade Organization. (and it's predecessor, the Global Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) The web site was so successful at tricking its target audience -- international business interests -- that its authors were invited to speak at several conferences around the world. Needless to say, the opportunity was used to further the parody by portraying themselves as WTO representatives -- and, ultimately, pranking a number of people at a conference into thinking that the WTO was shutting down because it had finally realized the damage that was being done by it on the rest of the world.
Sources:
Sonic Outlaws, Craig Baldwin, 1995
Pranksters Sink the WTO, Yes! Magazine, 2005
The group's intention was to call attention to the glaring gender stereotyping with which the American public was indoctrinating our children with. The Barbie doll, for instance, would occassionally say "Math is too hard!" and, of course, the GI Joe action figures were unabashedly aggressive in their speech. Information cards in the refurbished packaging directed the customers to call news desks, thereby spreading knowledge of the event even further.
While the Barbie Liberation Front is effectively defunct, many of its members moved on to conduct other interventions along an activist bent. Mike Bonanno, a member of the BLF, became involved in gatt.org, a web site that parodies the World Trade Organization. (and it's predecessor, the Global Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) The web site was so successful at tricking its target audience -- international business interests -- that its authors were invited to speak at several conferences around the world. Needless to say, the opportunity was used to further the parody by portraying themselves as WTO representatives -- and, ultimately, pranking a number of people at a conference into thinking that the WTO was shutting down because it had finally realized the damage that was being done by it on the rest of the world.
Sources:
Sonic Outlaws, Craig Baldwin, 1995
Pranksters Sink the WTO, Yes! Magazine, 2005
Saturday, April 12, 2008
Quantification of "Natural Features"
Hollis Frampton's premise that "a film must be about whatever appears most often in it" is a deceptively simple premise, and I must confess I was skeptical at first as to whether the technique would truly prove insightful. Having applied this method to my evaluation of Gunvor Nelson's Natural Features, it occurred to me that the most prominent element of the film was the repeated image of expanding blotches of dark or light stains.
The way the stains appeared suddenly and spread at accelerated rates reminds me of the sort of visual distortions I'd experienced in migraines I'd suffer. When I was in grade school I suffered a moderate frequency of such migraines. In my case, the migraines consisted of flashing, spreading areas of indistinct light, colors becoming too bright for me to focus squarely on things in my field of vision. I found the imagery of the faces "bleeding" off into areas of expanding shadow over light to remind me very strongly of this.
The other elements of the film seemed to build on that. The audio was jarring and inconsistent, sometimes too quiet and sometimes too loud. With the sort of migraines I suffered, sound was also a problem during the episodes. The strange overlapping of images and outlines seemed to feed my hypothesis; visual disruptions like those caused by migraines to recognize faces where there are only vague, resembling shapes.
The way the stains appeared suddenly and spread at accelerated rates reminds me of the sort of visual distortions I'd experienced in migraines I'd suffer. When I was in grade school I suffered a moderate frequency of such migraines. In my case, the migraines consisted of flashing, spreading areas of indistinct light, colors becoming too bright for me to focus squarely on things in my field of vision. I found the imagery of the faces "bleeding" off into areas of expanding shadow over light to remind me very strongly of this.
The other elements of the film seemed to build on that. The audio was jarring and inconsistent, sometimes too quiet and sometimes too loud. With the sort of migraines I suffered, sound was also a problem during the episodes. The strange overlapping of images and outlines seemed to feed my hypothesis; visual disruptions like those caused by migraines to recognize faces where there are only vague, resembling shapes.
Friday, April 4, 2008
James Benning
James Benning proved himself to be a man of many talents with his math presentation. In general, there tends to be a sizable divide between the worlds of math, science and engineering, and the worlds of art, literature and philosophy -- it's unsurprising that the Art and EMS buildings are at opposite ends of our own campus, after all.
In my experience at both ends of the campus, most math instructors treat their area of expertise as something sterile... a large, artificial construct that hangs over the rest of the world like a suspension bridge over a river. Benning doesn't treat math as something purely abstract and didactic; rather, he finds ways to tie it to human insight and reality. For example, his discussion on the history of the number zero in Western mathematics was definitely intriguing and insightful in illustrating how our society has been (and still remains, perhaps) in tension between it's newer scientific traditions and its older religious ones.
I have to admit that, while I had a hard time focusing throughout the whole demonstration (for me personally, none of the math Benning presented were new concepts), I was impressed at how well he grabbed the attention of the audience at large. The feedback I've been party too has been overwhelmingly positive. I suspect that Benning managed to introduce our class to a world most of them never thought would carry any interest or insight for them. This is no small feat, and it is a credit to Benning as an artist that he was able to reveal an aspect of the greater world to us.
In my experience at both ends of the campus, most math instructors treat their area of expertise as something sterile... a large, artificial construct that hangs over the rest of the world like a suspension bridge over a river. Benning doesn't treat math as something purely abstract and didactic; rather, he finds ways to tie it to human insight and reality. For example, his discussion on the history of the number zero in Western mathematics was definitely intriguing and insightful in illustrating how our society has been (and still remains, perhaps) in tension between it's newer scientific traditions and its older religious ones.
I have to admit that, while I had a hard time focusing throughout the whole demonstration (for me personally, none of the math Benning presented were new concepts), I was impressed at how well he grabbed the attention of the audience at large. The feedback I've been party too has been overwhelmingly positive. I suspect that Benning managed to introduce our class to a world most of them never thought would carry any interest or insight for them. This is no small feat, and it is a credit to Benning as an artist that he was able to reveal an aspect of the greater world to us.
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
The Spiral Jetty
The one aspect of the film that really grabbed my attention, as an element seemingly out of place or with indeterminate meaning, was the "mud, salt crystals, rocks, water" refrain. The narration walks the whole compass, cardinal and interposing directions, twenty times in all, associating each direction with the same refrain.
My first impressions of the refrain and its exhausting repetition were that it was prolonged, superfluous and somewhat tedious. Having read Smithson's essay explaining the process by which he envisioned the Spiral Jetty, I've come to suspect that this was an example of him constructing a resonance. The spiral is very carefully constructed and appears virtually flawless, both when viewed in its entirety and and when its paths are traced at personal range. Walking the jetty means tracing a pattern that spirals inwards on a circular path, forming layers of still water and rocky pathway. By the time one reaches the center, one is completely surrounded by the layers -- looking out in any direction means that one's eyes must cross the layers of the spiral.
In many ways, the refrain seems to be an attempt to echo this notion that the jetty is a demonstration of layered repetition. Smithson equates the layered rings of the jetty -- which one spies in 360 degrees from the center point -- with the layers material that suffuse the the jetty and its larger environment. Mud, salt crystals, rocks, water... these can be considered both elementary substances of the jetty and of the lake and its shore. While the jetty is an artificial construct, it still belongs to its environment because it was made from its environment, and Smithson envisioned it from thin boundaries that permeate the vista of the Salt Lake -- sky and earth, lake and shore, mud and water, cracks and solid ground. These boundaries are viewed through the thin boundary that separates one's self from the environment -- perception itself as a permeable boundary. This is perhaps one of the realizations that Smithson was hoping his audience would discover in exploring and contemplating the Spiral Jetty.
My first impressions of the refrain and its exhausting repetition were that it was prolonged, superfluous and somewhat tedious. Having read Smithson's essay explaining the process by which he envisioned the Spiral Jetty, I've come to suspect that this was an example of him constructing a resonance. The spiral is very carefully constructed and appears virtually flawless, both when viewed in its entirety and and when its paths are traced at personal range. Walking the jetty means tracing a pattern that spirals inwards on a circular path, forming layers of still water and rocky pathway. By the time one reaches the center, one is completely surrounded by the layers -- looking out in any direction means that one's eyes must cross the layers of the spiral.
In many ways, the refrain seems to be an attempt to echo this notion that the jetty is a demonstration of layered repetition. Smithson equates the layered rings of the jetty -- which one spies in 360 degrees from the center point -- with the layers material that suffuse the the jetty and its larger environment. Mud, salt crystals, rocks, water... these can be considered both elementary substances of the jetty and of the lake and its shore. While the jetty is an artificial construct, it still belongs to its environment because it was made from its environment, and Smithson envisioned it from thin boundaries that permeate the vista of the Salt Lake -- sky and earth, lake and shore, mud and water, cracks and solid ground. These boundaries are viewed through the thin boundary that separates one's self from the environment -- perception itself as a permeable boundary. This is perhaps one of the realizations that Smithson was hoping his audience would discover in exploring and contemplating the Spiral Jetty.
Sunday, February 17, 2008
Mirror & Lemon
What one normally thinks of in film, in the mainstream certainly, tends to adhere to a strict definition of narrative, often with specifically defined genre conventions. However, mainstream Hollywood tends to overlook the full creative potential of film -- a rich and diverse playground that, arguably, remains the domain of the artist, rather than the production studio.
Even everyday objects can be transformed by in the window of that the camera provides -- and sometimes, that window itself can be transformed. Mirror (Robert Morris, 1969) is a perfect example of this. The film was created with a technique no more complicated than moving a large mirror in front of a stationary camera. However, a strange sort of motion is created by the changing scene in the mirror as it is moved back and forth, and farther away from the camera. The "real" scenery becomes a sort of matte to the bouncing image in the mirror. The mirror becomes something reminiscent of a magic portal onto a parallel world, where things move left when one's sensibilities insist they should be moving right.
Lemon (Hollis Frampton, 1969) uses the motion of the film medium in an altogether more subtle way. The camera and its subject (and namesake) remain stationary while a light source is moved very slowly around the environment. It takes a minute or so to realize what is happening, because the visible shape and texture of the lemon changes very slowly as the light strikes it from an evolving series of angles. The overall effect is akin to watching a still life painting that actually does change, albeit ponderously.
Even everyday objects can be transformed by in the window of that the camera provides -- and sometimes, that window itself can be transformed. Mirror (Robert Morris, 1969) is a perfect example of this. The film was created with a technique no more complicated than moving a large mirror in front of a stationary camera. However, a strange sort of motion is created by the changing scene in the mirror as it is moved back and forth, and farther away from the camera. The "real" scenery becomes a sort of matte to the bouncing image in the mirror. The mirror becomes something reminiscent of a magic portal onto a parallel world, where things move left when one's sensibilities insist they should be moving right.
Lemon (Hollis Frampton, 1969) uses the motion of the film medium in an altogether more subtle way. The camera and its subject (and namesake) remain stationary while a light source is moved very slowly around the environment. It takes a minute or so to realize what is happening, because the visible shape and texture of the lemon changes very slowly as the light strikes it from an evolving series of angles. The overall effect is akin to watching a still life painting that actually does change, albeit ponderously.
Sunday, February 10, 2008
At Land
As the technology for film became increasingly accessible to a wider pool of talent, we start to see more experimentation in the sort of images that can be created -- a wider range of expression and an increased ability to captivate the audience and provoke their imagination. Early works, such as Buster Keaton's silent films, certainly pushed the boundaries of what is possible with film as a medium but tended to focus effort on simply providing amusement -- in other words, they were really only ever intended to be taken at face value.
Maya Deren's film At Land makes a good study in the fantastic sort of images and impressions one can create by simply experimenting with the sequence in which the filmed images are presented to the audience. Even from the very beginning, the film demonstrates this capacity to take a raw filmed sequence and make a simple change to paint an entirely new image of what is happening on screen -- in this case, to give the impression that the film's mysterious protagonist has been deposited on the shore by the receding ocean, simply by playing the sequence in reverse with respect to how it was filmed.
The prevailing technique Deren uses in the film is the splicing of images from entirely different scenes to create the impression that the two are connected, in spite of the obvious dissonance between the two. Take, for instance, the sequence of the character climbing up a cliffside, only to appear at the edge of a table at a dinner party. For a few seconds, the character is seemingly halfway between the two places, an impression created by jumping back and forth from an "under" perspective with the character's feet on the cliff as she disappears out the top of the frame, and an "over" perspective of her pulling herself up and onto the table. This technique is then used several moments later to equate the dinner party to a wilderness by flipping between images of the character crawling between the party guests and crawling among the wild greenery.
Another interesting facet of the Deren's film is the ambiguous presence of the main character in relationship to other characters in the film. Much of the time, the character goes completely unnoticed as she explores an environment that is apparently alien to her. At times she is only noticed partially, or in a transitory fashion. This gives the character an ethereal quality that dares the audience to speculate on who (or what) the main character is supposed to be.
Like any good film, At Land ends with a memorable, spectacular finish by creating a strange, asynchronous sequence. The character manages to steal (rescue?) a piece from the chess board and runs off, apparantly past herself as a sequence of images show her "past" selves (her at the chessboard by the sea, her in the room full of drop cloths, her on the cliffs and her at the dinner party) as she retreats to the shore from whence she came. Although the sequence is, in a technical sense from a modern perspective, fairly simple, it manages to challenge very elegantly the audience's sensibilities about experiencing time in the usual, strictly forward fashion.
Maya Deren's film At Land makes a good study in the fantastic sort of images and impressions one can create by simply experimenting with the sequence in which the filmed images are presented to the audience. Even from the very beginning, the film demonstrates this capacity to take a raw filmed sequence and make a simple change to paint an entirely new image of what is happening on screen -- in this case, to give the impression that the film's mysterious protagonist has been deposited on the shore by the receding ocean, simply by playing the sequence in reverse with respect to how it was filmed.
The prevailing technique Deren uses in the film is the splicing of images from entirely different scenes to create the impression that the two are connected, in spite of the obvious dissonance between the two. Take, for instance, the sequence of the character climbing up a cliffside, only to appear at the edge of a table at a dinner party. For a few seconds, the character is seemingly halfway between the two places, an impression created by jumping back and forth from an "under" perspective with the character's feet on the cliff as she disappears out the top of the frame, and an "over" perspective of her pulling herself up and onto the table. This technique is then used several moments later to equate the dinner party to a wilderness by flipping between images of the character crawling between the party guests and crawling among the wild greenery.
Another interesting facet of the Deren's film is the ambiguous presence of the main character in relationship to other characters in the film. Much of the time, the character goes completely unnoticed as she explores an environment that is apparently alien to her. At times she is only noticed partially, or in a transitory fashion. This gives the character an ethereal quality that dares the audience to speculate on who (or what) the main character is supposed to be.
Like any good film, At Land ends with a memorable, spectacular finish by creating a strange, asynchronous sequence. The character manages to steal (rescue?) a piece from the chess board and runs off, apparantly past herself as a sequence of images show her "past" selves (her at the chessboard by the sea, her in the room full of drop cloths, her on the cliffs and her at the dinner party) as she retreats to the shore from whence she came. Although the sequence is, in a technical sense from a modern perspective, fairly simple, it manages to challenge very elegantly the audience's sensibilities about experiencing time in the usual, strictly forward fashion.
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