Redundancy is Redundant

Powitree #1: Paul Bowles' "Three Dances" (1929)

2009-10-02T12:06:00.000+03:00

Photogen(et[h{n}])icism #1: Lee Lozano

2009-10-01T23:41:00.001+03:00

Random Thoughts #3: Auteurs

2009-10-01T23:26:00.000+03:00

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.

Internet's Serious Business #1: Cat and Girl

2009-10-01T17:16:00.003+03:00

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

2009-10-01T15:48:00.000+03:00

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)

2009-10-01T13:00:00.002+03:00

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)

Monthly Features #1: September 2009 - Hollis Frampton, Ephemera Assemblyman and Yayoi Kusama

2009-10-01T11:57:00.000+03:00

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.

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."

Found Photos #2: Two Peculiar Sets

2009-10-01T10:09:00.000+03:00

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?

All-Time Favourites #2: Abigail Reynolds

2009-09-30T20:38:00.001+03:00

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.

Youtube Saves the Day #2: José Val del Omar's "Aguaespejo granadino" (1955) and "Fuego en Castilla" (1960)

2009-09-30T19:54:00.001+03:00

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.)

Random Thoughts #2: Triangles

2009-09-30T18:06:00.000+03:00

This is a trend I don't get. It's like triangles have taken over visual art for two years now. Flickr-based photography/collage/drawing? Triangles everywhere. Any art blog? It has triangles in the title or somewhere in the layout. Even music (usually drone/ambient/space/lo-fi stuff) has started jumping on this bandwagon, with triangles either in titles or on the cover art (or any other general presentation items). Of course, I'm not dissing triangles by default. The sheer amount of work being done right now gives me the ability to discern between the triangle-based art I like and the triangle-based art I dislike, by still approaching every work singularly. Even so, what I want to understand, first and foremost, is - how did this happen? How/why did triangles become hip? (I might add pictures later).

Flickr Finds #4

2009-09-29T12:14:00.000+03:00

Flickr Finds #3

2009-09-29T12:10:00.000+03:00

Viewing Log #4: Jacques Rozier's "Du côté d'Orouët" (1973)

2009-09-28T13:57:00.001+03:00

I guess I've seen Du côté d'Orouët a bit late in the year, because it is obviously a summer film. Of course, it's nostalgia-driven, so it can be seen as a post-summer film just as well. Summer may not be my favourite season but it does have its good things that one can't deny. Anyway, it's intriguing to notice how Jacques Rozier's films all have something to do with the seaside, the sea, the beach... Du côté d'Orouët is an ode to vacation. It's an account of three girls' trip to the seaside. At times, despite the characters and the plot not sharing much in common, it reminded me of Jacques Rivette's Céline et Julie vont en bateau, released one year later. The film I just saw has no traces of surrealism and controlled anarchy, but the three female characters do act in similar mischievous ways and, at the bottom of it all, there is a sense of liberation. Of course, at its 2:30h-length, it does drag down a bit towards the end, but all in all this is an unexpected movie. I try to imagine how it would look like were it made today. It would probably be directed by some commercial filmmaker (I can't think of one serious name who'd tackle such material today) and it would go way overboard (which this never does; there's no unrequited superficiality or eroticism, which is what may be expected of this subject matter), being annoying from beginning to end. This is just one more proof that cinema is not eternally timely.

All-Time Favourites #1: Eric Rondepierre

2009-09-28T12:26:00.001+03:00

I love an artist who works with old images of any sort and with decaying images in particular. Eric Rondepierre focused, during the first phase of his career, on singling out images from old cinema and manipulating them, somehow forcing time to overcome them even more (in fact, I think cinema isn't used enough in other visual arts to its merit).

More works on his website.

Reading Log #1: Elias Canetti's "Auto da Fé" (1935)

2009-09-26T19:42:00.000+03:00

"Knowledge and truth were for him identical terms. You draw closer to truth by shutting yourself off from mankind. Daily life was a superficial clatter of lies. Every passer-by was a liar. For that reason he never looked at them. Who among all these bad actors, who made up the mob, had a face to arrest his attention? They changed their faces with every moment; not for one single day did they stick to the same part. He had always known this, experience was superfluous. His ambition was to persist stubbornly in the same manner of existence. Not for a mere month, not for a year, but for the whole of his life, he would be true to himself."

And here's my copy:

Two essays on the novel: 1 2

The first act is pretty much flawless; the other two are pretty much incoherent, but then the characters are, too, so I guess that's how it was constructed intentionally. It is said that the story is an allegory for things I really don't want to get into right now but, as long as you ignore that and read it as a human study it will be eternally witty to the point of painstakingness.

Via Venice Biennale 2009 #2: Anya Zholud

2009-09-25T16:33:00.001+03:00

Russian artist Anya Zholud's three-dimensional drawings are fun and to the point, really. They aim to simplify objects, to reduce everything to its essence. No wonder she doesn't do the same thing with people rather than objects...

Her work in the Biennale is something, um, interesting. She exhibited some cables.

Here's the conceptual explanation:

"In the Russian language, the word communications, besides its meaning in English, means utility lines and is used in a context of technical wires, pipes and equipment for the feeding of electricity, water and gas. Utility lines are something that is hidden behind special panels, floor and ceiling. An artist is looking for the links, the links between everything in the world, he turns invisible into visible. Art exhibitions reveal the process of interaction, connection between people. What I devote this work to are parallels, intersections, junctions, points of contact, beginning and continuation of infinity.

This work is about visible and invisible, about special and casual, about real and unreal, about true and fictitious. Two territories for my work indicated by the curator gave me an idea of an approach to the space. Place No. 1 is a point of entrance, Place No. 2 is a point of exit. In the place at the entrance the utility lines emerge. Part of them as images are drawn on the walls, some of them are outlined with metal contour. They start in some points, go into the others, come back into the walls, floor and ceiling. At the exit one can meet them again, as if they have penetrated the Arsenal throughout. They were invisible through the exhibition, but at the exit they appeared again."

More works on her website.

What They Said #1: Theodor Adorno

2009-09-25T10:14:00.000+03:00

"The prologue to Shiller's Wallenstein ends with the line, 'Ernst ist das Leben, heiter ist die Kunst' - life is serious, art is lighthearted. It is modeled on a line from Ovid's Tristia: 'Vita verecunda est, Musa jocosa mihi' (II, 354), or 'My life is modest and sober, my muse is happy.' Perhaps one may impute an intent to Ovid, the charming and artful classical writer. He whose life was so lighthearted that the Augustian Roman establishment could not tolerate it, was winking at his patrons, composing his lightheartedness back into the literary gaiety of the Ars amandi and repentantly letting it be seen that he personally was concerned with the serious conduct of life... The art that moves ahead into the unknown, the only art now possible, is neither lighthearted nor serious; the third possibility, however, is cloaked in obscurity, as though embedded in a void the figures of which are traced by advanced works of art." (Theodor Adorno)

Good thing he doesn't actually claim art is lighthearted.

Flickr Finds #2

2009-09-25T09:50:00.000+03:00

Flickr Finds #1

2009-09-25T09:20:00.000+03:00

Viewing Log #3: Jean Rouch's "Chronique d'un été" (1961)

2009-09-23T12:31:00.002+03:00

In Paris, during the summer of 1960, while wars were being fought in Algeria and Congo, ethnographic/anthropologic filmmaker Jean Rouch, whose previous films had been shot in Africa, and sociologist and film critic Edgar Morin sent two women out into the streets of the city to interview random passersby. They ask the "Are you happy, sir?" question but this is actually a pretext for the filmmakers to make the two women (and subsequent characters) delve deeper into their own lives.

Chronique d'un été is known as a seminal cinema vérité feature. I know it's an often disliked and even dreaded genre, but I am a fan, possibly thanks to John Cassavetes' mutant and striking meta-fictional subjective "documentaries" (his films, actually). While those films attempted to emulate cinema vérité in a fictional plot (rather than emulating real life of screen), Jean Rouch's film attempts to use cinema vérité as the starting point for an analysis of cinema vérité itself.

The characters are diverse, including a Holocaust survivor, a worker in a Renault factory, a student from the Ivory Coast, a depressed Italian immigrant. The film pretty is pretty much about how the characters unfold but, while we observe them, we also acknowledge how the film (and how any film) unfolds. The characters start from asking others if they are happy but end up pondering the question themselves.

From time to time they discuss with the filmmakers. They discuss about their lives, their interviews, their lives, politics and acting. Particularly, the interviewees are seen talking to each other, wondering if (and even accusing one another of) they had been acting while on camera. But then, even these scenes are on camera, so it's a multi-layered dissection and the trick is on us.

I don't know why I like it so much. It could be the obvious 60s Paris love. The lovely faces. The continuous debate on the nature of truth plus reality vs. fiction, which is rendered from the characters (they even appear as three entities each: real person, actor and character) to the filmmakers (three entities: real person, filmmaker, character) and then to the viewer (an infinity of entities). It's labyrinthine without even seeming so. It's a sociological study done by the means of a feature film disguised as a documentary about making a cinema vérité film about reality...

Crossing Over #1: Kenneth Patchen's Picture Poems

2009-09-22T13:52:00.003+03:00

This is the first joint-post with By Chance Upon Waking, where I've posted the entire catalog of Kenneth Patchen's known contributions to recorded audio, in the form of his poem recitations with jazz, without jazz and with John Cage, respectively.

Here are some of his picture poems that the poet started to make when he couldn't typewrite anymore. I'm sorry for the horrible quality of the images. I don't know who made these scans but they don't look like the originals at all, upon the little evidence there is around.

Random Thoughts #1: Revealing

2009-09-21T19:48:00.002+03:00

I was wondering which of these two is the correct approach when first seeing a new exhibition in a gallery/museum/whatever: should the viewer read the informative labels/conceptual texts/artist details + title + etc cards before or after first studying the work (fractions of seconds-long first glances do not count).

I know I tend to do the first in real life, and I keep thinking it's wrong, while I do the second one on the internet (possibly because my eyes can't move on the screen as freely as I can move through real-size space and the images just pop out easily against the small text and a usually white/black background on a screen).

Does this influence my perception? Does it count if any external details come between the work and myself? I don't know (not that artists haven't wondered about this and even addressed it in their art for centuries). And if I keep feeling guilty for first reading about something (or at least knowing who made it) and only then actually seeing it, I only have to remember that for 99% of the time I know who wrote/directed/composed a work before I actually start to read/watch/listen to it anyway.

Saying this, I'm keeping in mind that there's never a right approach or a wrong one. It's just about what suits each of us better.

One by One #3: Mateo Tannatt

2009-09-21T18:20:00.000+03:00

Table(ble) Poses Demand a Silent Speaker-Moustache, 2008

More works.

"Mateo Tannatt's sculptures seem to capture the moment when art comes alive and its maker disappears. They often convey a half-comical, half-mournful anthropomorphism, as in Night Box–Figure Model (2007), a plywood box fitted with a blue glass window, containing a mop and a gesturing rubber glove attached to a rickety, stained chair. In Humpty Dumpty: Monument Substitution (2005), Tannatt arranged a vintage sweater on a wooden cross, its arms outstretched like a scarecrow's above a mound of plastered-over eggshells. He also frequently collaborates on projects with Justin Beal. In 2007, the artists videotaped themselves dismantling a sofa to clear space for their exhibition 'Alteration Demonstration: Tasteful Guidance': in one version of the tape, their faces are obscured by coloured dots; in another, dots alone dance on the screen." (from Frieze Art Fair)

One by One #2: Anya Kielar

2009-09-21T16:45:00.006+03:00

Mostly Ghostly, 2007

More works (not exclusively).

"Anya Kielar's first solo show at this gallery was mostly histrionic paint-it-black graduate school art. Her second has traction; it updates aspects of early Dadaist and Surrealist photomontage, collage and assemblage with ad-agency sharpness and feminist, table-turning wit. The works combine flat and dimensional cutout images and found objects in varying ratios.

All depict women, the best with crisp, tangible vehemence that brings to mind Hannah Höch crossed with Kembra Phaler, the performance artist known for her high black boots and fluorescent body paint. Surrealism is expertly rendered if a bit familiar in four free-form mannequins made of cutouts, bits of furniture and other objects and sometimes lights. Automaton is neo-Arcimboldo: a life-size figure pieced together from images of butterflies. Martha is a woman on all fours, whose torso is a three-drawer sewing cabinet that provides a rebellious uprightness." (from The New York Times)

One by One #1: Ree Morton

2009-09-21T10:57:00.003+03:00

More works.

"Ree Morton (1936-1977), American conceptual artist. In her work she explored an inter-disciplinary approach in installations. She acknowledged the influences of Robert Morris, Bruce Nauman, Eva Hesse, Louise Bourgeois, Claes Oldenberg and Richard Artschwager. Her formal concerns centered on spaces, enclosures and boundaries and included pictures, found objects and sculptures." (from answers.com)

"Morton's influential body of work is remarkably all produced in a single decade between her decision to turn to art full-time in the late 1960s (after being a nurse) and her tragic death in an automobile accident in 1977, shortly before her 41st birthday. While reflecting many of the currents of post-minimal art of the 1970s, Morton's work also looked to a pioneering use of personal narrative, intimacy, humor and poetic imagination. Yet the scope of her artistic production remains largely unrecognized, as does her vital contribution to feminist art practice and the importance of drawing to her development as an artist." (from The Drawing Center)

Found Photos #1: Nice Ladies

2009-09-20T19:32:00.001+03:00

I always love found photos. Here's the first batch of my own.

Click the images for larger versions.

Despite how much I love images on which time has left its mark, I actually love how clean this one is. It makes it dreamier.

She looks like she was forced to do this.

I adore this one. What's that thing in the back? A counter in a bar?

Viewing Log #2: Alan Arkin's "Little Murders" (1971)

2009-09-20T16:53:00.006+03:00

This is one of those movies that break out of their leagues in so many unexpected ways. I was pretty baffled myself, as my expectations were low, by how it manages to be so seriously uncanny and so jestingly right at the same time. Indeed, it's directed by actor Alan Arkin, but it's not merely his movie. The film's strength lies in the script, which originated as a rather unsuccessful play written by cartoonist Jules Feiffer.

The play lasted only seven performances in 1967 in New York, but then found success with British audiences at the Royal Shakespeare Company, which is weird because this is a New York script/story/film with New York situations/euphoria/alienation/humor all around. Descriptions of the film that are floating around usually depict is as being a black comedy and a satire, but I don't think the film was ever thought of as the former. Nevertheless, it was completely hilarious to me. For the latter, yes, it is indeed a satire, though that doesn't seem to be its final purpose.

The plot? There's lots of it, even though nothing coherent happens. This random New York woman meets some apathetic guy absolutely by chance and tries to change him (random details, he enjoys nothing except for taking pictures of shit). The first act is touching, with excellently observed relationship quirks that we rarely see in movies. She brings him home to meet her parents, which is where the chaos ensues. There's a hysterical smaller brother, the parents jump and run and babble and rattle and fight while they try to get into Alfred's (the protagonist) mind, floors start shaking and lights go out intermittently without any reasonable explanation.

Everything is magnified and hyperbolic and, by this point, every line is entirely quotable. Examining the satire aspect of the movie, the third act starts from the random shootings, garbage strikes and electrical outages that are taking over New York (and which really were, at the time, presumably). Metaphors of dysfunctional family or not, they do nothing but push the plot forward into mayhem. The are no explanations, the characters (and not only Alfred, the apathetic guy) never feel sympathy for anything, yet they all are somehow sympathetic. It's an entirely inconsiderate film and that's why it works.

Somehow, Little Murders is exactly like me - seemingly random, seemingly fickle, always contradictory, very dispirited, yet at peace with its status. Perhaps others won't be as touched by it as I was, and that may be why, but this is how I relate to it. I just love the scene with Alfred's parents, when he tries to get something useful about his childhood out of them, but they just end up quoting philosophers and being snobs because they knew that they were recorded and were just interested in leaving a good impression on whoever was to hear the recording.

All in all, I wish more films did one of the things this one does: even though it sometimes uses over-the-top ideas and wannabe-surreal elements and everything seems very far fetched, it's full of character quirks and little random personal behaviour details that I don't interpret, not for one second, as being silly or sketchy but are, in fact, what makes it seem more realistic, similar to life, closer to myself and down to earth than most of the movies that have tried achieving this.

I'm just really sad that this idea didn't take shape in Woody Allen's mind. I would have loved to see what he would've made out of it; this piece could work really well with his 1985-1994 aesthetic, although his films never reach the same levels of craziness.

Favourite Words #1: Misodoctakleidist

2009-09-20T07:45:00.002+03:00

Who says this blog has to be only about art? Or who says language is not an art?

"misodoctakleidist (noun)
- Someone who hates practicing the piano."

It's weird that there are 591 search results for this on google, yet it fails to show up in any official dictionaries (online, at least). A definitely random word of unknown origin.

"Miso-" means "hater of", okay, but what is a doctakle?

Viewing Log #1: Philippe Garrel's "Le révélateur" (1968)

2009-09-18T21:19:00.000+03:00

Le révélateur is Philippe Garrel's second feature-length film and the first one that is available in a decent DVD transfer. Now if only more people would take notice. It's an experimental narrative film, which places it in the middle of things when it comes to cinematic intentions.

Firstly, it's entirely silent, meaning that it doesn't only lack dialogue, it lacks any kind of audiotrack (background sounds, etc) or musical soundtrack. This is coming from a director whose Le lit de la vierge would include Nico songs only a year later. Unsurprisingly, Garrel engaged in a ten-year long relationship with Nico after filming that movie, and she would go on to star in some of his films including La cicatrice intérieure in 1972. Desertshore's cover art is a still from that film.

Révélateur is French for "developer" (the substance used to develop or "reveal" film negatives), and that beautifully makes sense in the context of the film. It has been said that the plot is a parable about family relationships or simply about child abuse, but I more likely see it as an intentionally primitive (to be read as abstractly grounded) depiction of self-awakening, maturation and transformation of childhood memory (interesting and unintentional parallel with the previously blogged-about My Name is Oona here).

The film features only three characters: the two parents and their child. Identities are unnecessary, as is any coherent and contextual detail (thankfully, there is no such thing in the plot). The mother is played by Bernadette Lafont, whom you might recognize from Jean Eustache's La maman et le putain or from various Claude Chabrol films. They constantly run from an unseen threat but, by doing this, they only manage to intensify the imminent menace. Light swirls around the characters and morphs them into discrepant and confusing contours, while spotlights follow them, making justice to the title.

As an experimental narrative picture, lines are blurred, of course, but verging on any side of the spectrum would have been a terrible mistake. This is why the formal aspects of the film are important, but never gratifying or self-sufficient. It is not a mood piece; it's a depiction of alienation rather than an inducer of such.

The Schizophrenic Artist #1: Richard Brautigan

2009-09-18T12:14:00.003+03:00

I like to observe unexpected influences on artists, and there's a whole bunch of them who suffered from one form of schizophrenia or an other; one can't deny that's an influence!

There's something hilarious to me about Richard Brautigan, from his looks to his writings.

You all know his two most famous novels, Trout Fishing in America and In Watermelon Sugar, I guess. I've only read the latter, as I could not find the former anywhere around here. It's mostly useless if taken as a dystopian novel, but it does a pretty good job of wrapping a sort of satire in a interesting imagery-driven work.

"On December 14, 1955, Brautigan was arrested for throwing a rock through a police-station window, supposedly in order to be sent to prison and fed. He was arrested for disorderly conduct and had to pay a $25 fine; however, he was instead committed to the Oregon State Hospital on December 24, 1955, after police noticed patterns of erratic behavior. At the Oregon State Hospital Brautigan was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and clinical depression, and was treated with electro-convulsive therapy twelve times.

In 1984, at age 49, Richard Brautigan had recently moved to Bolinas, California, where he was living alone in a large, old house. He died of a self-inflicted .44 Magnum gunshot wound to the head. The exact date of his death is unknown, but his decomposed body was found on October 25, 1984, on the living room floor, in front of a large window that looked out over the Pacific Ocean. It is speculated that Brautigan may have ended his life over a month earlier, on September 14, 1984, after talking to former girlfriend Marcia Clay on the telephone.

'All of us have a place in history. Mine is clouds.', Brautigan once wrote." (from his wiki page)

You see, he wasn't THAT sick.

Artists With Blogs #1: Carla Rippey

2009-09-17T09:32:00.000+03:00

I love an artist who keeps a blog, no matter if it's about their works or about other works that they love.

The first one that I want to present is Carla Rippey's bilingual blog (in Spanish and English) in which she extensively talks about her own creations and often finds time to digress on others'. It's called "The Use of Memory", title which seems to perfectly describe her ethos.

"The artist and printmaker Carla Rippey is a native of Kansas City who has lived and worked principally in Mexico since the 1970s, long enough that she has probably come to be more generally regarded as a Mexican artist rather than as an American one, though in fact she is both.

Rippey works in a range of media and with a variety of found materials, especially photographs. In some cases she creates drawings or paintings based on individual photos or assemblages of photos she has found at flea markets or in popular periodicals; at other times she subjects the photos themselves, or reproductions of them, to a variety of overlays and modifications, staining them or sewing thread through their surfaces, for instance. There is a political or feminist edge to many of her images, but the overriding theme is how people are remembered or forgotten or altered over the course of time. The sense of impermanence her work produces echoes her own history as a migrant, one who remembers, moreover, that her ancestors too were immigrants from elsewhere, and who knows that possession of place as of life is illusory and fleeting. Her use of photographs serves to underline the ways in which what we see before us, apparently solid, is subject to being transformed into an image, a two-dimensional ghost that has lost its original vital presence but which, as a memory trace, acquires its own afterlife.

Among her recent projects is a treatment of an old black and white photograph of an ornate building, either in ruins or in the process of construction. Rippey has printed the image onto the cover of what appears to be a handmade paper box. When the box is opened it reveals another copy of the image, printed on a much larger sheet of either cloth or paper and folded or bunched up inside the box. The effect is both striking and disconcerting; the building, once so monumental, has become a mere wisp, a thin tissue that could be folded into a pocket or blown away by the wind." (from Dreamers Rise)

Youtube Saves the Day #1: Gunvor Nelson's "My Name is Oona"

2009-09-16T13:31:00.010+03:00

Gunvor Nelson, Swedish-born female proponent of New American Cinema. Amos Vogel called her "the true poetess of visual cinema".

The short considered to be her masterpiece, My Name is Oona, from 1969 -

"My Name is Oona captures in haunting, intensely lyrical images fragments of the coming to consciousness of a child girl. A series of extremely brief flashes of her moving through night-lit space or woods in sensuous negative, separated by rapid fades into blackness, burst upon us like a fairy-tale princess, with a late sun only partially outlining her and the animal in silvery filigree against the encroaching darkness; one of the most perfect recent examples of poetic cinema. Throughout the entire film, the girl, compulsively and as if in awe, repeats her name, until it becomes a magic incantation of self-realization." (Amos Vogel, The Village Voice)

Via Venice Biennale 2009 #1: Simone Berti

2009-09-15T15:02:00.004+03:00

I haven't been to the Venice Biennale this year or any other year and there's little chance that I'll be attending any kind of Biennale except for those in Romania in the near future. Even so, I want to explore it online in a loose fashion, but not because it is the Venice Biennale; just because it's a source of art, and a big one at that. However, what I'm interested in is looking for those artists that were featured there and finding their previous works, giving them a little bit of exposure. There's so much to be documented everywhere that finding relevant material is often a nuisance, even when it comes to someone who has had a decent presence at the VB.

First stop, Italian artist Simone Berti.

I like how he accompanies his videos, installations and performances with paintings (though I'm much more a fan of the former three than of the latter). More info, with pdfs and reviews, on his website.

Technical Posts #1: About Redundancy is Redundant

2009-09-14T23:30:00.000+03:00

As a newbie art student, this blog seems to be the result of only one thing: my desire to have some sort of outlet for my thoughts regarding art, something that would keep my interest alive, a new form of seeing things I've seen before and a way of browsing the new things that I'm being exposed to.

But it's more than that. Coinciding with troubled times for By Chance Upon Waking, the music blog I run, I think this is the right opportunity to try and do things in a manner I've always been prone to - erratically - but, this time, in a different way. Art is contradictory, and ruling out certain aspects leads to the ruling out of others and so on, until not much is left. This is why this blog, even if obviously disjointed, will try to be concise or random when needed and elaborate or dense when possible.

Aside from what I said in the first paragraph, there was another thing that prompted it: my discovery of blogs like Ephemera Assemblyman (to whom I dedicate this little thing; that place was my real inspiration for this). Sure, there are countless art blogs around the web, but what we have here is a little breed of its own (check the other links there). There's a small league of people who seem exceptionally egalitarian in their approach to art blogging - they are more interested in discovering rather than uncovering, in presenting rather than promoting, and I resonate with this approach.

You shouldn't be surprised to find a string of posts like this on these blogs: a mention of the obscurest film, followed by some random photo from flickr, then occult iconography, book cover graphic design, found photography, 2009 art, 1500 art, the single audio recording of some blues musician etc. These bloggers are curators in their own way, and what I'll be trying to do is somewhat similar. The difference is that most curators usually select their works, give a conference at the opening of the exhibition and then dissapear. Of course, you do think of the curator's intentions when you visualize the exhibition, but how often is he there to make the most out of it?

I know that is even a pretty discouraged practice among curators, but we're talking about blogging - I certainly won't be ruining the art with my comments, reading about it on a blog isn't quite a first-hand experience anyway, is it? In any case, I'll be trying to squeeze in viewing and reading logs between whatever else I find interesting, as I've described this blog as trying to be about "everything except music". Of course, I have BCUW for that, and now that that place can feature random snippets of its own, I don't have to feel guilty about it.

Now, things might be a bit slow for the first few days, while I try to figure out how exactly this is going to operate, while I set up the link sections and so on, but I'm hoping everything is going to work out fine. There's not much more to say right now, so... Hello.