Friday, October 2, 2009
Thursday, October 1, 2009
Random Thoughts #3: Auteurs
I give you "auteur theory"/the concept of the cinema auteur and then I give you Jean-Marie Straub & Danièle Huillet and then I ask: what is an auteur? Is it a concept that's still viable or is it a redundant one?
Okay, I know the auteur theory doesn't clearly say the director has to direct his own stories but, instead, refers to directing their "vision", but this is the general/popular interpretation of the term today: an auteur is an independent director who writes his original scripts and films them personally and exclusively.
It should be noted all of Straub's and Huillet's films are interpretations of previously written material (from German novellas to ancient tragedies) and yet they remain two of the most creative, personal and complex filmmakers in the history of cinema.
Of course, I could bring up New Criticism/Schreiber and various other things that would agree with or contradict the auteur theory, but let's leave it at that.
Read more...
Internet's Serious Business #1: Cat and Girl
Anyone who still doesn't acknowledge comics and, in this case, webcomics are a form of art can go away.
Perhaps my very favourite webcomic is Cat and Girl, described by Dorothy Gambrell, its creator, as "a cat, a girl, and an experimental meta-narrative (sp)". I know that everyone probably knows about it, but I don't care. This is about what I like. From Cat's round frames, turtleneck sweater and cool attitude to the constant mentions of contemporary art (a character is called Zombie Joseph Beuys), everything about this comic pleases me aesthetically.
Genuine fun. With 2168 strips as of October 1st, 2009, and counting, it's a joy to browse through the archive when I'm feeling lazy to do anything else.
The Schizophrenic Artist #2: Yayoi Kusama
Consider this the second in a series of three posts about pretty well-known things. I don't see why not, as redundancy is redundant. Overexposure does not diminish quality (well, that depends on the artist, not on the viewer), it only creates pointless backlash. This backlash is what I want to abolish when it comes to my own perception.
In fact, there is a longer story behind my choice to feature Yayoi Kusama, often called "the second most renowned female Japanese contemporary artist, after Yoko Ono". As part of my portfolio for my University admission exam, I was supposed to produce some sort of autoportrait photograph that cited a previous work. I may not be a polka dot fan but I chose to cite Yayoi because I wanted to conceal my real self in the photo (please, I'm tackling the easiest concept, I wasn't interested in useless and inexistent things like "an organic approach"/"the shapes and the body simultaneously modifying each other").
Finally, in fact, why would I dismiss her now for being famous when I actually found out about her pretty late in my explorations of contemporary art? Anyway, for this entry I tried to research her works that didn't use dots. It proved to be a laborious process with scant results, so I decided to post her works where, even if dots are present (if applicable), they do not represent the primary focus of the visual construction.
Youtube Saves the Day #3: Hollis Frampton's "Critical Mass" (1971)
This short film (is it mid-size for Hollis Frampton?) is downright painful. I would've featured his Nostalgia instead, but it's not on youtube. I'll try to put it up one day.
"Critical Mass shows a young New York couple arguing about their relationship. The film starts on the soundtrack; the screen is blank. Initially the dialogue is cut up in such a way that the couple seems to stutter as they talk (Frampton adds the stutter to such recent perceptual constructs as Warhol stares, Kubelka's flicker and Mekas' glimpse). Lines of dialogue are cut into before they are finished, partially repeated, stopped again, repeated, until the phrase or sentence is finished and a new one begins in the same manner. When the image appears, we see the couple arguing, standing against a white wall. The picture is cut to reflect the stutter, repeating itself and going on, finishing one phrase and starting another. Later the stutter effect disappears and a second structural principle emerges. The sound and image go out of synchronization so that we hear the boy speaking while we see the girl's mouth moving and vice versa. The degree of de-synchronization varies mysteriously, disconcerting us.
There are two kinds of temporal tensions in this film. In the first part, the stutter creates a future-past tension as in Nostalgia, only on a more immediate second-to-second basis. The incomplete phrases gives us a sense of what is to come. The repetition brings us backwards, then carries us forward, stops, and returns. Time does not evolve in a linear way. We are continually moved from future to past and back again, with no true sense of a present. In the second past of the film, the sound-image disjunction brings about the temporal problem. Because of our retarded awareness of the disjunction we are never quite sure whether we are listening to something that has already been spoken in the image or to something about to be spoken. We are simultaneously either listening in the present and seeing the past or listening to the past and seeing the present." (Bill Simon)
(split into 3 parts on youtube) Read more...
Monthly Features #1: September 2009 - Hollis Frampton, Ephemera Assemblyman and Yayoi Kusama
If you check the bottom panel of my blog, you'll notice three sections called "Monthly artist", "Monthly website" and "Monthly quote". These came up almost randomly while I was re-designing By Chance Upon Waking. I was trying to build up a more permissive approach that would allow me to include more features than a usual music blog. The new template I chose had these three boxes at the bottom, so I thought that actually making use of them would be stimulating, one way or another. Layout-wise, this is probably the only new feature that I've managed to include but, since the posts try to cover everything else, I think it's reasonable. I've implemented this feature over here at Redundancy is Redundant, too.
Obviously, as each month passes by, previous monthly features would get lost, unless I post them here for future reference. So that's why you get this post plus the following two. The current features will still be up for a few more days, since I only started the blog towards the middle of the month, by the way.
Obviously, as each month passes by, previous monthly features would get lost, unless I post them here for future reference. So that's why you get this post plus the following two. The current features will still be up for a few more days, since I only started the blog towards the middle of the month, by the way.
Monthly artist: Hollis Frampton - experimental filmmaker. Official fansite (who made this? It's strikingly similar to the equivalent Peter Greenaway website).
Monthly website: Ephemera Assemblyman - a collection of everything. Already talked about this.
Monthly quote: Yayoi Kusama - famous visual artist.
"One day I was looking at the red flower patterns of the tablecloth on a table, and when I looked up I saw the same pattern covering the ceiling, the windows and the walls, and finally all over the room, my body and the universe. I felt as if I had begun to self-obliterate, to revolve in the infinity of endless time and the absoluteness of space, and be reduced to nothingness. As I realized it was actually happening and not just in my imagination, I was frightened. I knew I had to run away lest I should be deprived of my life by the spell of the red flowers. I ran desperately up the stairs. The steps below me began to fall apart and I fell down the stairs straining my ankle."
Read more...
Found Photos #2: Two Peculiar Sets
Some more of my own found images. I got these two when I intentionally went searching for non-portrait old photos, as these make up most of my finds and I wanted something different.
Click the images for larger versions, of course.
Theatre?
Film? Read more...
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
All-Time Favourites #2: Abigail Reynolds
Folded photographs? Oh yes. And no, this is not about the triangles!
She says, "I collect second hand tourist guides. Within the century of printed photographs that they contain, I search for plates that have been printed at similar scale, taken from a similar view point. When I find a near match between book plates, I cut and fold the pages into a new single surface. The dates written on each work give the publication dates of the books I have used. Whichever has been used as the 'base' image is listed first. The patterns I use to cut the two book pages into one single surface are such that all of both sheets of paper are preserved. If you were to fold all the flaps in or out, the entirety of each image will be seen. The act of folding one image into the other pushes them out into three dimensions in a bulging time ruffle. The Universal Now works operate as a resurrection of the unregarded book plates and forgotten photographers that have stood in the same places at a different times, bringing these moments into a dialogue and into the present. The Universal Now takes its title from debates about time continuum in quantum physics." (note: The Universal Now is a series-within-a-series. Not all the folded photographs adhere to this.)
Other projects (yes, this isn't her only interest) on her website. Read more...
Youtube Saves the Day #2: José Val del Omar's "Aguaespejo granadino" (1955) and "Fuego en Castilla" (1960)
José Val del Omar was a wonderful artist, one of the most amazing "lost" filmmakers ever. I will certainly devote more space to him in the future, but this is it for now.
"With an extraordinary artistic and technological talent, Val del Omar was a 'believer in cinema', inspired by new horizons that he formulated in the term PLAT – representing the totalizing concept of a 'Picto-Luminic-Audio-Tactile' art – apart from being a contemporary and a comrade of Lorca, Cernuda, Renau, Zambrano and other figures of a Silver Age of the Spanish culture, interrupted by the Civil War. In 1928 he anticipated various of his most characteristic techniques, including the 'apanoramic overflow of the image', beyond the limits of the screen, and the concept of 'tactile vision'. These techniques. and those of 'diaphonic sound' and other explorations in the field of electro-acoustics would be applied in his Tríptico Elemental de España, begun in 1953 and only finished after his death. His work and tenacious research activity – quite against any tendency of misunderstanding and forgetfulness – did not begin to be rediscovered until shortly before his death." (from a complex website dedicated to him)
(Check all the parts. The first one has four, the second one has three. The second part of the second film is particularly chilling. I take Peter Greenaway's "I don't think we've seen any cinema yet. I think we've seen 100 years of illustrated text." and raise him Fuego en Castilla.)
Read more...
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