It was nice to see the Delphi theater full for Jennifer Reeves screening. It was nice to sit in the back, and watch the beautiful abstractions shift and flicker while hundreds of heads looked on, and everyone framed by the luxurious walls and ceiling. I have a friend who paints people watching movies and would love to tell her how great this looked.
Michael Snow called all moving images ghosts earlier in the festival. With a title firmly in the past tense, “When it was Blue” ghosts our planet. But maybe we are so used to vanishings that they are now our commonplace. Vanishings of lands and the creatures that live off them, vanishing of people from disease, from war, from genocide.
I would like to think that we continue to make things, to love, to fight for something, believe in something because of these vanishings and in spite of them. I would like to think we keep doing what makes us good even until the last one of us might stand.
I was reminded of Jarman’s “In the Shadow of the Sun”, while watching Reeve’s work, and this is not as a comparison, because I think that is boring and counterproductive, but it was more the presence of blue to Jarman’s reds, and it got me thinking of when Derek called making films, gardening, doing all the good things people do as practicing a counter magic.
If magic is a trite word, it is not my fault, nor is it Jarman’s. I mean it and he did to. Cinema can be a eulogy for a dying world, but it also is an act of light against what “ghosts” us in an effort to make us even more human. Let the light dance on our eyes.
Saturday, February 14, 2009
Friday, February 13, 2009
Stable Bodies, Unstable Cities Ear and Eye Texty
Stable Bodies, Unstable Cities
Visionary landscape is where geography is transformed into event.
I could tell you about the film.
The ruins around us, in our own landscapes. Visionary space cannot be situated, it is itself, situative. Reality falls into place around what perceives it. All geographies correspond to this subjectivity
They pulsate, flicker.
The totems are mute historians, the symbols function as the signposts to hidden geographies, and the ruins are sacred
In a space of no geographical fact, within I find a landscape of events, where the sky is a mirror that my soul is projected upon, and the space between things is imagination itself.
Jets gracefully move from one corner of the frame to the next.
Enter a plane where symbols have a life of their own, and perhaps we transcend, temporarily and incompletely the limitations of time.
Decoding space of desire, the silence was so moving and the images………..
The magic alphabet, the mysterious hieroglyphic comes to us incomplete and falsified either by time or by those very beings whose interest it is to keep us ignorant. Let us retrieve the lost letter or the obliterated sign,
The films of Ludwig Schonherr
Visionary landscape is where geography is transformed into event.
I could tell you about the film.
The ruins around us, in our own landscapes. Visionary space cannot be situated, it is itself, situative. Reality falls into place around what perceives it. All geographies correspond to this subjectivity
They pulsate, flicker.
The totems are mute historians, the symbols function as the signposts to hidden geographies, and the ruins are sacred
In a space of no geographical fact, within I find a landscape of events, where the sky is a mirror that my soul is projected upon, and the space between things is imagination itself.
Jets gracefully move from one corner of the frame to the next.
Enter a plane where symbols have a life of their own, and perhaps we transcend, temporarily and incompletely the limitations of time.
Decoding space of desire, the silence was so moving and the images………..
The magic alphabet, the mysterious hieroglyphic comes to us incomplete and falsified either by time or by those very beings whose interest it is to keep us ignorant. Let us retrieve the lost letter or the obliterated sign,
The films of Ludwig Schonherr
Thursday, February 12, 2009
ear and eye text seven or eight
Looking at the construction of things.
I went to All Fall Down again, the first time was such an explosion of beauty I could not see the way it was put together clearly. It was so nice the way local stories from time spanning over 100 years wove in and out of fragments of poetry texts, letters. Together it made a lovely and sad song.
Block B. by Chris Chong was really fascinating in how narratives were applied to two single shots, one day and one night, of a concrete stack of apartments. The director spoke of In Betweens. We could not see the protagonists but we could hear their stories. Mostly they were immigrants, displaced, pretty much maligned, and having than negative sort of invisibility, where you do not see what you do not want to. Anyway, a careful composition just under the surface of what we see, meaning hearing these little stories, and tracing your eyes to see who is actually "acting" was a great strategy.
Notes;
Farewell, by Stefan Zeyan in the Black Box is a gorgeous trip into film grain that works as a look at the disintegration of memory. We hold a face in our minds with love, slowly the image dissolves, rots
Through. Bejamin Krieg and G. Cailleau.
Water, light and time as a trio i could listen to for hours. Substitute listen and see. interchangeable.
Sensory Spaces
Toads Milena Gierke
Skin of the water/skin of the frog.
pierced by fucking
silence in the cinema for a short film is a sublime way of feeling time pass
Lint lent land Isabell Spengler
sets and props making the visual something tactile
making another skin relationship, the skin of the audience
bringing touch. The stuff of the film. GREAT music!
Triangulum Dullius/Jahn
The punctured skin of Gustavo
paranoia of the tourist.
relationship of the audience to the wound/
wound as a spilling, a wanting to escape.
Material film Performance
the skin of the film, 35mm cinemascope
assault of color, scratches, damage and noise.
Live music moving waves of noise through space.
More Schönherr today!! five thirty
I went to All Fall Down again, the first time was such an explosion of beauty I could not see the way it was put together clearly. It was so nice the way local stories from time spanning over 100 years wove in and out of fragments of poetry texts, letters. Together it made a lovely and sad song.
Block B. by Chris Chong was really fascinating in how narratives were applied to two single shots, one day and one night, of a concrete stack of apartments. The director spoke of In Betweens. We could not see the protagonists but we could hear their stories. Mostly they were immigrants, displaced, pretty much maligned, and having than negative sort of invisibility, where you do not see what you do not want to. Anyway, a careful composition just under the surface of what we see, meaning hearing these little stories, and tracing your eyes to see who is actually "acting" was a great strategy.
Notes;
Farewell, by Stefan Zeyan in the Black Box is a gorgeous trip into film grain that works as a look at the disintegration of memory. We hold a face in our minds with love, slowly the image dissolves, rots
Through. Bejamin Krieg and G. Cailleau.
Water, light and time as a trio i could listen to for hours. Substitute listen and see. interchangeable.
Sensory Spaces
Toads Milena Gierke
Skin of the water/skin of the frog.
pierced by fucking
silence in the cinema for a short film is a sublime way of feeling time pass
Lint lent land Isabell Spengler
sets and props making the visual something tactile
making another skin relationship, the skin of the audience
bringing touch. The stuff of the film. GREAT music!
Triangulum Dullius/Jahn
The punctured skin of Gustavo
paranoia of the tourist.
relationship of the audience to the wound/
wound as a spilling, a wanting to escape.
Material film Performance
the skin of the film, 35mm cinemascope
assault of color, scratches, damage and noise.
Live music moving waves of noise through space.
More Schönherr today!! five thirty
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Eye and Ear Text WE ARE HERE
In 1996 I decided to say yes to everything for a year to see how my life could change. By simply saying yes I managed in one year to be in three bands having never played music before, and making my first attempt at a movie, then finally going to Mexico to shoot a movie that I had co-written with director and dear friend, Paul Rowley. My life had in one year moved into one of intense collaboration and community.
Though my attempt at making my own film seemed to fall short of what I wanted the thing itself to be, I began ten years of performing and composing music with an incredible array of people, and it seemed the terms of both my life and art were altered forever. The making of things was how we socialized and how we spoke to the world outside, and for me it was never about being inside the identity of an artist as much as it was being with those people and doing those things.
I came to Berlin in 2004, leaving behind that incredible community to see what else life could throw my way. One of the negative sides to this was that what once was all about community pretty much for its own sake, had become a hermetic activity. I did make work with friends, an experience that helped me grow in so many ways, but I was alone in making the music for these projects, stripping making music as a communal thing.
For years I had kept shooting footage, and made movies with that raw footage in my own head, and my first winter in Berlin found me putting them together as films with a fury. It was solitary yes, but soon giving them away as presents to friends opened up a world of community again. I guess I write this now in the context of a blog for the Forum Expanded because part of a festival is a great deal of coming together as like minded people. As Friends and collaborators, exchanging ideas, growing, loving and fighting (for, with or against).
I spoke in an earlier blog about people falling from the sky. So now folks are here, and the community grows. More is possible. Wilhelm Hein, Annette Frick, Ludwig Schonherr, Trixie and Daniel, C.C
, Paul Rowley and Nikki Gogan are here, Phil Hoffaman, and Jeanine, Scott, Jim, MARIE! Losier And Sebastian, Marc, Susi, Vag and Daniel, My brother John, The folks of bbooks, Vassily, Evi and Isabell, Michel, Gustavo and Melissa, Barbara Hammer, Heinz Emigholz, Rainer Bellenbaum. I mean, FUCK…….how much love and inspiration and potential can one feel in ten days. The Ten Days that Shook the World! So many good folks, and I beg forgiveness for each name who knows you would be here if I was not typing this in five minutes.
I do not want this to seem like it is all about me, but rather give attention to this side of a festival, and to encourage anyone who would read this to talk to these people, they are here, for chrissakes! Go hear them talk, watch their movies, become friends with them. Make movies and music and ask them to help.
In 1996 I was also flooded with love. At the moment it happened I thought I had cancer or something, but it really was the feeling of the speed of takeoff. Now we are here.
Though my attempt at making my own film seemed to fall short of what I wanted the thing itself to be, I began ten years of performing and composing music with an incredible array of people, and it seemed the terms of both my life and art were altered forever. The making of things was how we socialized and how we spoke to the world outside, and for me it was never about being inside the identity of an artist as much as it was being with those people and doing those things.
I came to Berlin in 2004, leaving behind that incredible community to see what else life could throw my way. One of the negative sides to this was that what once was all about community pretty much for its own sake, had become a hermetic activity. I did make work with friends, an experience that helped me grow in so many ways, but I was alone in making the music for these projects, stripping making music as a communal thing.
For years I had kept shooting footage, and made movies with that raw footage in my own head, and my first winter in Berlin found me putting them together as films with a fury. It was solitary yes, but soon giving them away as presents to friends opened up a world of community again. I guess I write this now in the context of a blog for the Forum Expanded because part of a festival is a great deal of coming together as like minded people. As Friends and collaborators, exchanging ideas, growing, loving and fighting (for, with or against).
I spoke in an earlier blog about people falling from the sky. So now folks are here, and the community grows. More is possible. Wilhelm Hein, Annette Frick, Ludwig Schonherr, Trixie and Daniel, C.C
, Paul Rowley and Nikki Gogan are here, Phil Hoffaman, and Jeanine, Scott, Jim, MARIE! Losier And Sebastian, Marc, Susi, Vag and Daniel, My brother John, The folks of bbooks, Vassily, Evi and Isabell, Michel, Gustavo and Melissa, Barbara Hammer, Heinz Emigholz, Rainer Bellenbaum. I mean, FUCK…….how much love and inspiration and potential can one feel in ten days. The Ten Days that Shook the World! So many good folks, and I beg forgiveness for each name who knows you would be here if I was not typing this in five minutes.
I do not want this to seem like it is all about me, but rather give attention to this side of a festival, and to encourage anyone who would read this to talk to these people, they are here, for chrissakes! Go hear them talk, watch their movies, become friends with them. Make movies and music and ask them to help.
In 1996 I was also flooded with love. At the moment it happened I thought I had cancer or something, but it really was the feeling of the speed of takeoff. Now we are here.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Cursed houses eye and ear text 6
music as the settler/melancholy
poetry of collisions, though fatal
bookending colonialism
drifter enters the body of colonialism
a first nation citizen drifts across an ocean
an un-owned land is siezed, occupied, parcelled and sold
in the end her land was her grave
THAT too was violated
foreign bodies as virus to the nation
experimental techniques applied to the telling of histories gives the film full power of poetry
ALL FALL DOWN
there was one shot close to the ground , across a frozen body of water, a barrel enters the frame and is emptied of hot water that flows over the frozen surface towards the sun, as if to extinguish it.
the sadness of lives stolen would have that the sun had never shined.
in another part the hand processed film was pushed to such a contrast that the body seemed burned into the grass with light.
How to talk of a revelation, of a film? what is a film?
I do not want to speak of film but what it does.
this document traces the effects of a long gone genocide, and now the buildings crumble
Monday, February 9, 2009
A Murder and a Dream unit 5a ear and eye texts
I talked with Barbara Hammer about these generations of artists finding each other written about in the last blog. She mentioned that we search for the people who came before us in their works and we cannot see them, only traces of them. This was before her performance in the cafe of the Hamburger Bahnhof.
The performance started with Barbara pushing a projector around the room through the audience, casting the image of her younger self against the walls, in two corners of a wall, along the ceiling, and on pillars. The image showed a young Barbara in many activities which seemed to want to push the frame that held her; running to its edges, sitting in a window, pushing the walls with her hands, and while these images were fighting the frame itself, the projection seemed to help her along, extending the frame, thus her body far along the wall, split into several areas of the room. Finally, the projector held its position, and the image of the young film maker showed her attacking the screen, the frame with a knife. Meanwhile the older Barbara was actually behind the screen and began slicing into it, into herself with a real knife. The young Barbara began hanging in shreds, her torn body moving on the falling pieces of the screen, while the older Barbara emerged from behind the screen, having done some kind of cinecide, leaving as she said earlier in the cafe, only traces behind.
When the New Barbara emerged, she walked towards the projector until she eclipsed its light. At this point two projectors began casting images onto a huge balloon hung from the ceiling. It seemed some dream travel of various cities and landscapes, and because they were slightly out of synch with each other it seemed like a dream struggling to remember itself. As the curved images danced on the surface, the audience sat on the floor all around the balloon, and it appeared to me that we all collectively held this dream in space above us in wonder.
The performance started with Barbara pushing a projector around the room through the audience, casting the image of her younger self against the walls, in two corners of a wall, along the ceiling, and on pillars. The image showed a young Barbara in many activities which seemed to want to push the frame that held her; running to its edges, sitting in a window, pushing the walls with her hands, and while these images were fighting the frame itself, the projection seemed to help her along, extending the frame, thus her body far along the wall, split into several areas of the room. Finally, the projector held its position, and the image of the young film maker showed her attacking the screen, the frame with a knife. Meanwhile the older Barbara was actually behind the screen and began slicing into it, into herself with a real knife. The young Barbara began hanging in shreds, her torn body moving on the falling pieces of the screen, while the older Barbara emerged from behind the screen, having done some kind of cinecide, leaving as she said earlier in the cafe, only traces behind.
When the New Barbara emerged, she walked towards the projector until she eclipsed its light. At this point two projectors began casting images onto a huge balloon hung from the ceiling. It seemed some dream travel of various cities and landscapes, and because they were slightly out of synch with each other it seemed like a dream struggling to remember itself. As the curved images danced on the surface, the audience sat on the floor all around the balloon, and it appeared to me that we all collectively held this dream in space above us in wonder.
Family Affairs Eye and Ear Text Unit 5
Looking at the window of the filmhaus at Sony Center you can see on the left hand corner an installation by Ludwig Schönherr where he filmed in 16mm off the television. You see Speed matching its times. The speed of the edit or exposure shows us girls, fashion, automobiles and freeways, politicians and celebrities. All shot from 69-70. The speed of those times meets the speed of structural films, where theory is somehow in synch with art and technology. I am speaking here of the events of 68 and the texts of the situationists in there theories of Spectacle. Television, Internet seem to be a little late in the game for pure speed.
But if Schönherr’s films record the spectacle with a pace equal to Debord’s theory of lived experience replaced by spectacular representation, unlike Debord, Schönherr seems to look at that fevered time without separating into judgments. Fashion sits on par with John and yoko’s peace bed, freeways are given the same exposure as speeches, and his critique seems to be in the form. The nervous, frantic, fearful and beautiful pace of the films records what he sees. All of the above.
Also in a historical context is the installation, Factory of Gestures on the first floor of the filmhaus. 7 monitors sit side by side organized by themes that examine how film has used the human body from 1910 to the contemporary, examining categories of beauty or physical gestures such as an upraised palm in an attempt to see what those gestures and acts have meant and have changed over time.
Birgit Hein’s photos from the late 60s to early 70s show a community contemporary to Schönherr’s. In these photos we do not see artists working but simply living. A naked child, friends socializing and informal snapshot photos. The faded and touching photos are touching in the way that I can trace MY history and lineage from one generation to the next. The theme of the Material of things like television and film inevitably exposed my own history, my personal vision of a Big Bang.
At times I have made flicker films, to begin with having never heard of them or seen them. I also have been accused of being a structuralist without knowing what such a creature was. I always have believed in disorientation, speed and saturation as artistic and political principals. But in making works that have sometimes been similar to those who have made them before me, I could care less for originality. I have always felt like a fractured mirror or broken disco ball, whose reflective surfaces are actually eyes in search for kindred spirits, and maybe all our works over time are like bonfires wanting to be found. I want to be next to the heat.
So to come back to my generation in this weird family tree I would like to mention that in works we can speak to each other from one generation to the next and close the gap in real time. The works of Marie Losier in the lobby of the Arsenal do this with form and content. Genesis P. Orridge, for example was a huge influence on me and what I make. I saw her face either trying to get out of the little house Marie had made for her, or taunting me to get inside.
Hmmm….. in this poetic lineage I have found generations of gangs, clans, groups of artists who made things before me and now adorn my own imagination like some incredible palace of perversity. Did all this happen because my first memory is watching on television the assassination of Robert Kennedy?
But if Schönherr’s films record the spectacle with a pace equal to Debord’s theory of lived experience replaced by spectacular representation, unlike Debord, Schönherr seems to look at that fevered time without separating into judgments. Fashion sits on par with John and yoko’s peace bed, freeways are given the same exposure as speeches, and his critique seems to be in the form. The nervous, frantic, fearful and beautiful pace of the films records what he sees. All of the above.
Also in a historical context is the installation, Factory of Gestures on the first floor of the filmhaus. 7 monitors sit side by side organized by themes that examine how film has used the human body from 1910 to the contemporary, examining categories of beauty or physical gestures such as an upraised palm in an attempt to see what those gestures and acts have meant and have changed over time.
Birgit Hein’s photos from the late 60s to early 70s show a community contemporary to Schönherr’s. In these photos we do not see artists working but simply living. A naked child, friends socializing and informal snapshot photos. The faded and touching photos are touching in the way that I can trace MY history and lineage from one generation to the next. The theme of the Material of things like television and film inevitably exposed my own history, my personal vision of a Big Bang.
At times I have made flicker films, to begin with having never heard of them or seen them. I also have been accused of being a structuralist without knowing what such a creature was. I always have believed in disorientation, speed and saturation as artistic and political principals. But in making works that have sometimes been similar to those who have made them before me, I could care less for originality. I have always felt like a fractured mirror or broken disco ball, whose reflective surfaces are actually eyes in search for kindred spirits, and maybe all our works over time are like bonfires wanting to be found. I want to be next to the heat.
So to come back to my generation in this weird family tree I would like to mention that in works we can speak to each other from one generation to the next and close the gap in real time. The works of Marie Losier in the lobby of the Arsenal do this with form and content. Genesis P. Orridge, for example was a huge influence on me and what I make. I saw her face either trying to get out of the little house Marie had made for her, or taunting me to get inside.
Hmmm….. in this poetic lineage I have found generations of gangs, clans, groups of artists who made things before me and now adorn my own imagination like some incredible palace of perversity. Did all this happen because my first memory is watching on television the assassination of Robert Kennedy?
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