Reading Response for 4-7

1. Barney described his work as "sculpture", the category of sculpture has changed from a relatively discrete, bounded, discursive object, into something baggier, which contains a whole range of practices, some with nothing in common. The definition has changed with the artists.
2. Minimalist sculpture was seen as a reaction against the "modernist hymns to the purity and specificity of aesthetic experience" , by the the practices leading to destabilization of sculpture as an object, as both physical and discursive.
3. The role of the body in the work of Acconci and Burden: Acconci, felt he had to find his own voice in the face of his work, he has to find and overcome the flaw in its nature. He used is own body in a minimalist space in his work Seedbed. Acconci masturbated for six hrs a day. Burden performance work of considerable physical intensity, an example is Shoot, where he was shot in the arm.
Walley
1. Two worlds of film art that Walley intends to describe in the article are 'avant-garde cinema and 'artists' film. They are two different modes of film practice in the avant-garde. the artist films are designed for gallery exhibition where avant-garde cinema is experimental film shown in theaters.
2. Modes of film practice is:A mode of film practice is a simultaneously historical, institutional and discursive context constituted by the norms of production, distribution, exhibition and reception of film art. Two examples are Cremaster and Passage. The concept of film practice can help distinguish between the experimental film and gallery art worlds by production, distribution, exhibitions, and aesthetics.

Marc Masters & Michael Zryd Blog

Marc Masters
1. Three similarities between the punk music scene and the punk/no-wave filmmaking scene, in terms of technology, style, and community are: both made their own posters, and played wherever they could, filmmakers screened their films at rock clubs, often between bands; style the musicians were the ones in the films they all like the same kind of music, both wanted to connect with audiences outside the art world; style also “run and gun” it was raw and aggressive as no wave music was; in the community the filmmakers were in was the same community the punk music scene was in; both technology depended on methods that were fast and cheap, the filmmakers of no-wave used super 8 film they could record sound and picture at the same time, so all the filmmaker had to do was “point a camera and push a button.”
2. Punk/no-wave filmmaking was a reaction to the avant-garde film institutionalization of the 1970’s the use of cheap and fast technology, and the community of people who saw and were interested in the films.
3. Filmmakers that influenced Amos Poe, Mitchel and Dick were John Ford and Nicholas Ray; on film they applied their auteur approach to existential plots of Ford and Ray and improvised dialogue.
4. Scott and Beth B took a weekly cable TV program, All Colors News, scenes of “Max Karl” inviting sexual abuse are intercut with news footage, this grew into a short video this venue affected the film’s content and style because some of the footage is shot directly off a TV screen. A rock club setting, The Offenders focused on crime and violence. It was shown in weekly installments at Max’s, by doing weekly installments they made each week a cliff hanger so the audience would want to come back for the next week to see what happens.

Michael Zryd
5. Baldwin means by “Fake right, go left” as a Rhetorical move, rather than using a sincere voice for the voice over, when the film criticizes the U.S. foreign policy, “the film adapts the ironic voice of rabid U.S. patriot, embodying the racist, right-wing, Christian fundamentalist values that for, Baldwin, buttress U.S. foreign policy.” Zryd means by “double voicing” the voice over narration in Tribulation 99’s which clearly marks the ironic intention of the voice over.
6. Paul Arthur’s distinction between the “realist” use of found footage and the “figurative” use of found footage as, the “realist” found footage is used in mainstream documentary, tends to be illustrative or analogical as archival footage as evidence to support the sound track, usually a voice over that articulates the central argument and in effect captions the image. Where figurative or metaphorical use of found footage in experimental film essays. I think the figurative use of found footage is important in Tribulation 99 because it is the use of metaphorical use of the found footage in this experimental film, with out this “figurative” found footage the film would not take on the same meaning.
7. Baldwin means “media jujitsu” as strategy of the symbolic power of the iconic, metonymic image can also be used critically against the official discourse that produces and sanctions it. “With found footage compilation, filmmakers engaged American culture by appropriating its Kino logy and developed strategies and structures for criticizing the culture that provided their material.”
8. Zryd argues the relationship between the use of clips from films such as Chariots of the Gods and Baldwin’s critique of American foreign policy, Baldwin is satirizing this obscure subgenre and its preposterous melding of exploitation and crackpot conspiracy thinking in which UFO fanatics, right-wing militias, and Christian fundamentalists indulge. Baldwin isn’t dismissive of these texts; rather he takes them seriously as distilled manifestations of extreme political positions, and metaphorical narratives that he posits as fundamental to U.S. political culture. Right-wing militarism, motivated by the Christian template of history, isn’t marginal but central-still-t dominant American government and ideology.

Response 7

4.
A. Sitney calls Warhol anti-Romantic, because Warhol defined his art as anti-romantic. Sitney’s concerns that he associated with the Romantic heritage of the American avant-garde film were the object of Warhol’s fierce indifference.
B. Sitney argues that spiritually the distance between Warhol and structural filmmakers such as Michael Snow or Ernie Gehr can’t be reconciled, because Michael snow utilized the tension of fixed frame and some flexibility of the fixed tripod in Wavelength, help make Snow the dean of structural films. Where as Warhol, came to avant garde cinema like no one else, he was fully developed artist as a painter, and then went to make film, by making his footage the central fact of his films he advertised the indifference of direction, photography, and lighting. Since Sitney argues Warhol is anti-romantic, he wouldn’t be a structural filmmaker since structural film is linked with romanticism.
C. The phrase “conscious ontology of the viewing experience” is the ontological difference between graphic, two-dimension modality and photographic naturalism, which is used as a metaphor for the relation of film itself. Relates to Warhol films from the side of photographic naturalism, which is found in many of Warhol films. On the structural films it realties to two-dimension modality.
D. Sitney argues that structural film is related to the psychodrama, mythopoeia, lyrical tradition because of the film forms used, Warhol stepped out of the different traditions of filming, and made his own tactics like just leaving the camera and walking away from it, and filming what ever happened to be in front of it.

1. This work relates to our discussion in intermedia and expanded cinema in the 60's with the process of performance. There are all different kinds of acting, even if we think it is not acting at all, "it just is" relates to our discussion with previous performance.
2. A close up of a hand cutting of the orange, and unexpected black tiny marbles come out of it. A man is who is one the left and right of the screen is looking at an apple on the screen, when he walks into look closer the man walks through the apple. The illusion of the apple looking that it popped off the screen. The performance of the man slowly walking toward the screen (with the fruit) really got the viewers attention.
3. I think Eddie steals the scene in Vinyl, because first, she is the only woman in the scene, second the viewer tends to notice all the images on the screen, there is a lot going on, and the viewer is looking at her to see if she will interact with the boys. Lastly, her dance moves while she was sitting down pulled her even more apart from her fellow performers.
4. Underground began to crossover into mainstream cinema by the attention it was getting in magazine articles, and with the release of Chelsea Girls.
5. Getz was an important figure in the crossover because he is the one who implemented a new distribution channel, and traveling over twenty cities with his traveling show, and really got the word out about underground cinema.

Thougts about The Chelsea Girls

I thought the Warhol's Cheslea Girls to interesting. The split screen at first was neat the way he did it, with a woman on the left and someone speaking on the right. Then I found myself ignoring the left side of the screen and focusing more on the right. I did that until I did not enjoy what I was watching on the right side, then I would look to the left side. The "pope" sequence was entertaining to me until he started to freak out on the woman. Once he threw the water on her, I starting thinking is this staged or not. Then when he hit her, and her reaction to him looked pretty real to me. Thats when first I thought, if a man ever hit me, I would be the kind of person to hit him back, and then I look to the left of the screen to see what the woman alone was doing. The "pope" was an odd character, and was neat to watch because I kept thinking is this guy for real? I don't know if I would have liked the film for its full duration of time, I thought an hour, fifty minutes was enough to see what the film was about.

Response 5

2. Smith incorporated in his films found materials to keep the budget down, and had homosexuals, transvestites his friends were in his films. In NY at the time you could rent a seven-bedroom apartment for fewer than twenty dollars. The cheap budget, gave the underground film its own feel and presence, they went through dumpsters to find manicans and anything else a filmmaker would need to make a film. The artistic community was a cohesive group, not that many people in it, and now that it was okay to be friends with homosexuals, Smith used that in his film, and pushed that ‘okay’ relationship in his films.
3. Problems that emerged after obscenity charges against Flaming Creatures in the relationship between Smith and Mekas were they were both arrested. Jack thought Jonas advanced his own career by traveling with the film, and making as much money as he could and giving none back to him. Jonas Mekas was called “Uncle Fish Hook”, the metaphor taking anything you wanted-exploiting, and giving nothing back in return.
4. Johns Zorn argument on about Normal Love was the real show was filming not the film it was the actual filming of it. His argument relates to the NY art world in the 60’s by filmmakers wanted the viewers to pay attention to the process of the film being made as well as the actual finished product of the film. Jack Smith influenced other filmmakers such as Fellini.
5. Some arguments that were made about the relationship between Jack Smith’s artistic practice and Andy Warhol’s were: Warhols Factory was based on Jack’s work, Jack introduced the super star aspect, an example would be Montez.
7. Important friends/relationships for Barbara Rubin in the 1960’s were: Allen Ginsberg, Bob Dylan, Jonas Mekas, and Andy Warhol.
8. Rubin’s production and exhibition practices for Christmas on Earth, the key formal innovation of Christmas on Earth is its superimposed projection in unequal sizes, a format that she originated. Rubin projected on reel normally and the projected the second reel over it, about one third smaller, using a longer focal length lens. Belasco argues Christmas on Earth can’t be reproduced electronically or in other forms because it can’t be copied mechanically, run thought an editing deck or captured of a still due to its place as a work of filmic alchemy. The only way to record it is at a live screening, making it a production of a single event, not a copy of the work itself.

Response to Flux Films:

04 Chieko Shiomi-Disappearing Music for Face: This film is black and white, the title that came up in the beginning of the film was in the center of the frame and slowly decreased in size until it faded away completely. Flashes of credits were shown, then a close up of a woman’s mouth that showed her teeth and was gapped tooth, it was a static shot and it was framed to left side of the frame not in the middle. It was up on screen for what felt like a very long time, then the image switched to a static shot of her mouth more slightly closed, not showing her teeth but her lips were still separated, the final shot showed the woman’s mouth closed. I kept waiting for other images to appear but there weren’t any. I find it interesting that the lips were framed slightly to the left of the center of the frame. However, I don’t really understand if the image of the lips were supposed to have a deeper meaning.

07 George Maciunas- 10 Feet: This film was black and white and showed very fast flashes of numbers. The numbers started from regular numbers, to minutes, then the credits were flashed followed by more numbers, to numbers in feet; the flashes of the numbers were in different sized font. I am unaware why the numbers started flashing and then the credits were shown, and then back to the numbers.

14 Yoko Ono- One: Flashes of the title in black and white there was a close up of a males hand holding a match, then the hand lite the match, I thought it was neat that you could see the smoke from the match as it was burning. I think it was a male’s hand by the size of it, and the fingernails were dirty. I am not sure why the fingernails were not clean, it made me think of what kind of work he did in his life, which is probably not what you are supposed to think about while watching this film. The shot of the match is on screen until it burns out.

28 Paul Sharits-Wrist Trick: Images were juxtaposed together in this film. It was black and white; it however looked like an x-ray. Flashes of an open hand, a close hand, animals, I think a goat and rabbit were shown. I did notice repetition of these images which I felt was interesting, and it made me wonder if the images some how could be related to one another.

Answers to Questions
1. The films Jonas Meka’s associated with “Baudelairean Cinema” were Twice a Man, Scorpio Rising, Heaven and Earth Magic, and Dog Star Man. Meka called it Baudelairean cinema because Charles Pierre Baudelaire who was a French poet, critic and translator in the 19th century was known for being a controversial figure. Meka felt the films he would range in the Baudelairean Cinema were controversial or it could have been that the filmmaker themselves were controversial.
2. Jonas Meka’s views on experimental cinema change between 1955 and 1961 dramatically. When Meka originally began his magazine, Film Culture in the third issue there was a sneaky attack on American film poem, disguised by a survey. In the attack Meka's wrote “experiments should be directed not so much towards new techniques but toward a deeper theme” he also stated, “for more attention to these film-makers as a way encouraging their improvement.” In 1957 Meka's let the film-makers of the ‘Experimental Scene’ contribute to articles in the magazine, from that point on there were no more attacks. In 1959, the magazine even gave more credit to avant-garde filmmakers. Meka's began to see films he previously rejected in 1959 through 1961 his thought process shifted with the impression nouvelle vague in France. Meka’s was named film critic for Village Voice, and was one of the most powerful critics in America. When he took time off to shoot one of his films, Meka left Maya Deren as his substitute critic, this step for Meka’s was a huge change from his first impression of experimental cinema.
3. Meka’s interest in performance and improvisation shaped his views of the New American Cinema in the 1960’s, Meka’s stated, “Improvisation is the highest form of condensation; it points to the very essence of thought, an emotion, a movement.” Meka enjoyed the break down of the difference between the performer and his role. Performance helped Meka’s position in his criticism; an example of this is when he announced the death of “the symbolist-surrealist cinema of intellectual meanings.” After that statement Meka made the symbolist-surrealist cinema was shown publicly for the first time in that same year the statement was made.
4. Even thought Jack Smith did not use found footage in Flaming Creatures, the film was a transformation on an ironical recreation of the pseudo-Arabian world of Maria Montez films. The similarity of Joseph Cornell’s Rose Hobart, and Jack Smith’s Flaming Creatures is they both took images; one by found footage, the other by recreating footage and used it to make their own films.
5. Some visual influences on Flaming Creatures are visual texture, androgynous sexual presence, and exotic locations. According to Sitney the scenes are organized by rhythm and dramatic effect rather than narrative. The style of photography is different in each scene; Smith pairs the photography like they were ‘movements of a musical work.’
6. Angell characterized the first major period of Warhol’s filmmaking career as a ‘primitive’ approach, the films were a group of minimalist films, which were long and static some of the films included from this period were Sleep, Kiss, Haircut, Blow Job, Eat, Empire, and Henry Geidzahier.
7. The screen tests played an enormous role in Warhol’s filmmaking; they were a central development of Warhol’s Cinema in the attraction and the selection of people to star in his movies, and also the expansion of his film practice into continuous, cumulative mode of serial production. The role the Screen tests played in the routines at the Factory was: the Factory became a functioning film studio because of the tests, with camera, lights, etc. Also, celebrities, potential actors, technicians, and assistants would come to the Factory for these Screen Tests, making more elaborate productions a reality for the Factory.
8. Angell characterizes the first period of sound films in Warhol’s filmmaking career as ‘early narratives.’ Some of the films in this period are: Harlot, Vinyl, and the film series, The Poor Little Rich Girl Saga.

Reading Response 3 cont.

1. Brakhage’s views on vision according to his revival of the Romantic dialectics of sight and imagination are you should used stylistic choices that attempt to replicate the untutored eye, eliminate linear perspective, and flatten space.
2. Brackhage first embraced the formal directives and verbal aesthetics of Abstract Expressionism; Sitney feels this because his action painting interpretive schemata, action filmmaking interpretative schemata, and he interpret camera manipulations of the film stock.
3. Synecdoche plays a major role in The End, by having six varying degrees of narrative coherence, with MacLaine’s possessed characters. The film anticipates later achievements by Brakhage and the mythopoeic form by the combination of color and black and white, the proleptic use of metaphor, the dialectic of doom and redemption in The End can be found in Brakhage’s, Dog Star Man.
4. Some similarities between the apocalyptic visions of Christopher Maclaine and Bruce Connor, all three of Conner’s film discussed aspire to an apocalyptic vision by engendering in the viewer a state of extreme ambivalence, by alternative gestures of attraction, and repulsion. Unlike Maclaine, Connor liked the vision of doom, and he was not naïve in it. Both filmmakers extended the technical discoveries of their early works in films that were less ambitious and prophetic but no less exquisite.
5. Ron Rice and Robert Nelson continued in the line of extended technical discoveries in the sixties, they simplified and elongated MacLaine’s form the picaresque. Nelson, incorporated strategic elements from Connors work. Ron Rice’s film contained mythic elements.
6. Many fluxfilms were comedies and they share with their more mainstream predecessors both an outward parodic focus and an inward reflexive gaze. The target of this humor was directed less medium in general or the social order to the contemporary art world, especially the deadly film culture represented by the leading avant filmmaking of the day, the personal and poetic cinemas of artists such as Kenneth Anger, and Stan Brakhage.
7. Jenkins means by the democratization of production in the Fluxfilms, the representation of a transgression of the highly individualistic, personal, and handcrafted “style” of then-current avant-garde practice.
8. Jenkin’s argues that Nam June fixed the material and aesthetic terms for the production of subsequent Fluxfilms because it focused on the presentations of basic film materials clear leader, black leader, sound, and silence. Fluxfilms maintained an immaculate conception of the cinema that was at once childlike and cunning.

Reading Response 3

Compare and Contrast
I choose to contrast Entr’ace and Life and Death of 9413 A Hollywood Extra. A similarity both film have is a woman that is reoccurring in each film. In Entr’ace the woman is a dancer, which the camera angle is at first underneath of her showing her feet to her tutu. Then the camera angle moves to a more traditional one showing her whole figure. The woman in Life and Death of 9413 stands up and sits down repetitively. Both films have the woman in each film as repetitive images. Both films have coffins in them, but in Entr’ace the coffin opens up and someone gets out of it in a grass field, where as in Life and Death of 9413 in the coffin is the man who is current through out the film. Cities were used in both films, however in Entr’ace the city is filmed at all different angles, most untraditional angles, in Life and Death the city that is shown is a more traditional angle, but the city itself looks unrealistic. In Life and Death of 9413 A Hollywood Extra, there are intertitle cards whereas Entr’ace does not have intertitle cards. Close ups were used in both films, in Entr’ace there was close ups of the canon, and in Life and Death, there were close ups of the man’s hand. Lastly both films used an overlapping technique of two different images.

Reading Response Two

1. The conditions in Europe that made the avant-garde film movement possible after WWI was: It was a period of readjustment to the new sets of standards, which came as a consequence of the war. People were looking for new ideas, so the new ideas of the avant-garde were easily accepted.
2. The goals of abstract art include creating its own plastic expression, abstract art sought out for its “plastic value” for the very elements responsible for its creation.
3. The grounds that Fischinger argue that “there is nothing of an absolute artistic creative sense” in conventional cinematography are: copies only nature with realistic conceptions, destroying the deep and abstract creative force with substitutes, and surface realisms; mass product of factory proportions-cut down the creative purity of work; creative artist can’t have their final say with so many co-workers, who will change and kill their ideas, prevent ideas from being born, and substitute absolute creative motives for cheap ones; lastly creative artist works at their best alone, so the artist Creative Spirit is not unobstructed.
4. Brakhage’s Reflection on Black is a trance film Sitney argues that it anticipates the lyrical film, “Reflections on Black is a trance film striving for a new form that has not yet been born.” Sitney also states, Brakhage began to transcend the distinction between fantasy and actuality moving into the cinema of triumphant imagination. It also anticipates the lyrical film by the identity of erotic and aesthetic quests, the physicality of the film material within the context of the blind man’s “vision”; metaphors of vision; scratched film stock itself; Brakhage begins to formulate an equation between the process of making film and the search for consciousness; a clear line was drawn between hallucination and actuality; he used plastic cutting with collision montage; the repetition of shots; slow panning camera movement; rippling distortions from an imperfect window in the car; continual flow of movements. Brakhage’s Reflection on Black postulates the filmmaker behind the camera as the first person protagonist of the film, just like a lyrical film would.
5. The key characteristics of the lyrical film are: the film-maker behind the camera as the first-person protagonist of the film; there is no hero; the screen is filled with movement which of the camera and the editing, reverberates with the idea of a person looking; flattened space; superimposition, several perspectives can occupy space at the same time; lastly, the film-maker affirms the actual flatness and whiteness of the screen, rejecting for the most part its traditional use as a window illusion.
6. The filmmaker that was highly influential on Brakhage’s move to lyrical film in terms of style was Marie Menken. Brakhage enjoyed the delicate mesh of observation and imposition that appears in almost all of Marie’s films, Brakhage radicalized it and systemically explored its potential for the invention of new forms.
7. Sitney meant Brakhage achieved a dialectical fusion of the image represented on the screen and the filmmaker/subject’s reaction to it.
8. The characteristics of vision according to Brakhage’s revival of the Romantic dialectics of sight and imagination are: seeing includes what the open eyes view, including the essential movements and dilations involved in that primary mode of seeing, shifts in focus, what the mind’s eye sees in visual memory and in dreams; play of shapes and colors on the closed eyelid, and occasionally on the eye surface; Brakhage feels that the imagination includes the simultaneous functioning of all these modes.

372 "Meshes" Part Two

7. What were some general tendencies on the programming at Cinema 16, and how were films arranged within the individual programs?
Some general tendencies on the programming at Cinema 16 were: All the films in both programs can be seen as supplying evidence about what is usually termed individual expression; Vogel demonstrated alternative to industry-made cinema; economic dimension to the selections; worshipping physical beauty or the dramatic ability of the stars; and16mm – represented of individuals and social life, and for expressing the problematic realties of class. Films were arranged with in the individual programs by Vogel would view the films and decided what films would be viewed each year. “While some programs or parts of programs revealed particular political positions on specific issues, individual programs and seasonal series were usually structured as if each ere a meta-film meant to confront the audience in manner reminiscent of Sergei Eisenstein’s dialectic editing”; Vogel would show films together to have maximum thought from the viewer; and screenings were accompanied by program notes.
8. What were some of Cinema 16 other activities?
Cinema 16 other activities included: editing, production of musical tracks, microphotography, took bus loads of members to Rochester for weekend visits to watch classical films Vogel could not get, Vogel and Peretz Jones created a film series for children, several courses were developed in collaboration with Cinema 16, and Cinema 16 gave out two awards-avant-garde film, and documentary.
9. What impact did Cinema 16 have on NY City film culture?
The impact Cinema 16 had on NY City film culture was big. Vogel’s rough calculations stated 188,000 individuals came to Cinema 16; two million people had seen films distributed by Cinema 16; influential figures in the arts and entertainment were members; Jonas Mekas and P. Adams Sitney who became spokespeople for North American Avant-garde cinema were members.

372 "Meshes" Part One

1. According to Sitney, what are some of the important differences between Meshes of the Afternoon and Un Chien Andalou?
Some important differences between Meshes of the Afternoon and Un Chien Andalou are: the early American avant-garde “trance film” and surrealistic cinema; Un Chien Andalou “attempts to provide us with a broken, violent, spatially and temporally unstable world, without final reference to a more conventional actuality, Meshes of the Afternoon, offers an extended view of in which there is a terrible ambivalence between stable actuality and subconscious violence”; instructive-Un Chien Andalou has many metaphors, and Meshes has no metaphors; the space in both films are different, Un Chien Andalou has deep space where Meshes has a rounded space.
2. What are some characteristics of the American psychodrama in the 1940s?
Psychodramas have central themes, the quest for sexual identity; protagonist who passes invisibly among the people; dramatic landscapes; climactic confrontation with one’s self and one’s past; the camera is generally static; and the principle of editing.
3. What does Sitney mean by an “imagist” structure replacing narrative structure in Choreography for the Camera?
Choreography for the Camera moves from the most common narrative to the imagist structure, by isolating a single gesture as a complete film form. The term Imagist comes from the poetry Imagism, and Sidney coined this word, focusing on “pure examples, describing the inevitable inflation of the simple gesture to contain more and more aesthetic matter.”
4. According to Sitney, Ritual in Transfigured Time represents a transition between the psychodrama and what kind of film?
“Ritual in Transfigured Time is a radical extension of the trance film in the direction of a more complex form, architectonic film.”
5. Respond briefly to Sitney’s reading of Ritual in Transfigured Time, is his interpretation compatible with your experience of the film?
His interpretation is compatible with my experience of the film, except where he states, “It is this middle passage that makes one think that Maya Deren was openly trying to deal with the problem of the prestylization of dance in film, although she never acknowledged the problem as such in her writings.” I would think if she had a problem with this aspect of her film, which would be interesting since dance was incorporated even with elements outside the dance, she would have mentioned it in her writings. I haven’t read many of her writings; I am going off of Sitney’s knowledge of Maya Deren writings.
6. According to Sitney, what is the ultimate result at the end of Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome?
The ultimate result at the end of Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome is “what divinity the others obtain comes through the Magus.”