Subject: The Metaphors of Vision as Anti-Cinema
NatDubuc@aol.com
Date: Sun Feb 06 2000 - 23:41:19 CST
The Metaphors of Vision as Anti-Cinema
Preface
For now, I am submitting this dissertation topic in the form of a statement
or manifesto proclaiming the intent and concept for a production project that
I hope to fulfill as part of this program. Based on Stan Brakhage’s Metaphors
of Vision and the relationship of painting to film, here is a preview of my
recent observations about the form of art formerly know as Cinema. This is by
no means a campaign against "film-making" but a reflection on how to produce
moving images, if at all possible, in a different way that would surpass the
physical limitations of the format and the confinement of the single channel,
framed storytelling.
Introduction
It’s a sad state of affairs. Maybe I feel sincerely jilted from what I have
recently experienced working on the history of American avant-garde Cinema at
the Whitney Museum but I wonder if experimental cinema as we knew it can
still exist. If Cinema altogether, whatever the genre, can continue as it is,
in its arrested development.
I am beginning to believe Greenaway’s statement: "Cinema is dead". And the
only anti-cinema that truly exists, in my opinion, remains Stan Brakhage’s
Hand Painted Films. Because of its backlash to the older image making
medium, the Hand Painted Films impersonate the absolute end of Cinema taught
by D.W. Griffith, the Lumieres Brothers, Vertov and Eisentstein for dictating
the principles of modern cinema; the close-up, fast cutting, actors and
action, repeated shots, jump cuts, continuity, sculpted lighting, rhythm,
depth in a tri-dimensional space, blocking, powerful moving images that tell
a story in many more ways than its ancestor still photography (that is before
the compulsive use of narration/voice-overs in sound pictures).
Cinema should be in search of a new language to reform its practice and
aesthetics. Even for basic technical reasons such as the introduction of
non-linear tools and digital recording of the media. Because Cinema is no
longer a straightforward mechanical medium, although still too conservative
to admit it, the art and craft of film-making is dying, if not already in a
coma.
The Diagnosis
Film Schools are transformed into multimedia labs, art Galleries only present
moving images if it is of the likes of an art installation (seldom as a
straightforward single channel projection), some Museums assimilate film as
another portfolio and considers it a lesser medium, repertoire and art film
theaters are rare and their struggle greater than ever and funding from
organizations is scarce. The infrastructure and support system is changing
but the adaptation period seems quite long. For the past decade, the Canadian
Film Board ceased to fund projects, non-profit organizations and foundations
that supported film artists are fewer in the United States.
Genres that do not pursue innovation such as studio flicks, independent
narrative movies and made for TV movies for instance, are in no way
threatened because of their own system of operation and specific function
which is that of entertainment. It is the forms of moving image making
attempts to break new ground that is, ironically enough, at a stand still
more critical than the above mentioned. Experimental Cinema reached its peak
in America in the 50s 60s and 70s with the widespread use of home 16mm
cameras among artists. With Hollis Frampton, Jonas Mekas, Maya Deren and Stan
Brakhage, the seeds were sown for a new cinema, as a continuation of its
earlier European ancestors (Vertov, Buennuel et cie.). However, the movement
faced challenge and competition from younger artists with the introduction of
video in the late 70s, early 80s. And since its post-modern phase,
reinstating deja vu in the likes of complete abstraction and smearing motions
of the hand painted film tradition, nothing really special seems to have
happened. There has been charming revelations in the art world where moving
images are part of the confinement of an object (i.e. the work of Gary Hill
and Bill Viola) in terms of a quest to free itself from its framed
parameters, very little has been done as far as I can recall.
Framed like Painting
The only true anti-cinema that exists is the Hand Painted Film. Brakhage and
his followers have tried everything to upset the fragile chemical balance of
the precious celluloid. They’ve scratched it, drew on it, stripped it and
ultimately painted on it, which in itself is the ultimate offense in the face
of Cinema. What would be the point of using a camera if there is nothing more
to photograph! Because everything has been done, the good old way of making
an image, also known as drawing or painting, creating images with a tool so
simple that the use of sophisticated mechanical or electronic equipment is
irrelevant.
By painting directly on clear film, Brakhage illustrates an attempt to
redefine from its primitive root the meaning of moving images. Not only is
there no content or context to speak of, the study of the relationship of
color to light is of the most radical intention. Because there is no legible
images, the hand painted film is the peak of abstraction in the field of
moving images.
What is even more remarkable is that in pursuit of destruction, film
retaliates to a an archaic medium.
The Greenaway-Brakhage Connection
(or, "How I have the Nerve to Squeeze Two Guys Who Can’t Stand Each Other in
the Same Chapter")
To Greenaway’s great dismay, I have noticed some relation to the work of
Brakhage. In the fascination for calligraphy in Greenaway (the Pillow Book
and Prospero’s Book) and Brakhage’s interpretation of Persian calligraphy
(the hand painted Persian Series). The question of interpretation in the use
of calligraphy should also be questioned in Greenaway’s narratives, as
according to a native Japanese speaker (Hiroshi’s comment on the debatable
accuracy of the language), the calligraphy in Pillow Book is often not
accurate and its meaning detached from the initial narration to the extent
that one can speculate that Greenaway opts to use calligraphy as an
"ornament", an aesthetic decision, a visual pleasure leaning towards
abstraction in the eye of the foreigner that can somewhat be related to
Brakhage’s interpretation of Persian calligraphy. In both cases, the language
is not primary but rather an aesthetic approach and its meaning not as
dominant as the search for images. In light of this, there is no dominant
intention to script a narration but a place for the fortuitous accident that
creates the emergence of images inspired from the patterns of Persian or
Asian calligraphy. According to Stan Brakhage: "when the calligraphic
manifestations, the systems of patterns stop, there is no longer a film".
Both experience an undeniable fascination for painting in their instinct for
wanting to recreate "Painting" on celluloid; Greenaway by staging "Tableaux
Vivants" quoting Flemish painters (in The Cook, The Thief, Her Wife and Her
Lover, and also Prospero’s Books) or the act of painting (for example the
body, in the Pillow Book) versus Brakhage for literally painting directly on
the film (his greatest body of work in the 80s and 90s). They are
nevertheless divided in their approach; Greenaway intellectualizes the
process whereas Brakhage physically tackles the undertaking.
Please Don’t Hurt…
Brakhage’s approach may be radical but it is not half as aggressive as what
Tony Conrad puts his celluloid through. In an attempt to dissect the anatomy
of film, Conrad puts the physical limits of the medium to the test.
With Deep Fried in 1973, Conrad bakes a roll of film, then smashes it to
pieces with a hammer before hand processing it (even though no image was ever
captured on the film and all that is left is a variety of gray tones) and
finally spending three consecutive weeks piecing it back together. This
kamikaze determination knows no limits. The celluloid itself is at stake. Can
the discontent with this medium go any further?
It just isn’t good enough anymore to paint it, bake it or put it in another
object.
I can’t get no,
Satisfaction…
And The Quest Continues…
Brakhage wrote a manifesto titled The Metaphors of Vision in 1964 at a time
when he was experimenting with a lyrical but still somewhat figurative
cinema. It is not until he perfected the hand painted film technique, which
is the greater part of his work in the 80s and 90s, that he came closest to
fulfilling this prophecy.
I intend to develop the concept of Brakahge’s "brain movies", "closed eye
visions" and the "eye’s mind" from the Metaphors of Vision to a more
technical extent while pursuing the deconstruction of the framed narration in
moving images as we know it.
To support my theory of a seamless, timeless and seemingly content-less
visual environment, I will study in my final dissertation the notions of
fantasy as rapprochement to simulacrum in the writings of Deleuze and
Baudrillard, Derrida’s approach to language, and the concept of anti-cinema
according to Greenaway, Youngblood and of course, Brakhage. At this time, I
can only hope that I will discover the technical means that may be required
to effectively produce this concept on moving images. Until then, here is my
"vision".
"Language constricts vision". Non-narrative cinema denies the necessity for
language as a cinematic structure." The only true anti-cinema can completely
part from narration and omit storytelling, text, script and therefore
language as structure. "If vision is the highest value of moving images, then
the camera and viewer must allow visions to occur rather than force them by
way of narration (or script) upon the subject (the viewer) and maker".
The Metaphor of Vision is essentially a perceptual experience for its own
sake. The absence of language and narrative structure is to "break the chain,
the mind-eye partnership, the traditional association game to give the eye’s
mind a chance for a change."
This perceptual venture is to promote the intense experience of "seeing" for
its own sake. The camera is to record, as much as it can at a given time, the
intense act of seeing to enhance the viewer’s experience. The sensuous camera
to eye relation is the orchestration of sight (and maybe sound) to render
moving images like patterns of rhythm, motif in a blurred and diaphanous
environment. The perceptual experience becomes a meditative journey like
"brain movies" or "closed eye visions" if you will. The Metaphors of Vision
is to transcend and transgress the notion of reality. The departure from
objective reality aiming towards creating a place abstraction where
impression and subjectivity thrives.
"Within this aura of non-shape, as long as the eye breathes naturally, the
unconscious can respond to abstraction, distorted shapes and continue
subjectively its course in the process and transformation of vision."
In place of lack of language and of omnipresence of abstraction, the
will-full attention may be forced beyond the mental capacity of absorption to
produce a fantasmatic state. "It" becomes a milieu of duality where
deconstruction as destruction of reality --in search of that fantastmatic
state of abstraction-- is faced with the viewer’s realm of compulsive
construction and reconstruction by way of personal association. This duality
promotes more creative potential than in a traditional narrative motion
picture as the viewer must recreate meaning from his/her impressions.
"Not being restricted to a predetermined logic but rather communicating on an
emotional level." The Metaphor of Vision is a fantasmatic state, the essence
of the moving image. In the absence of language and storytelling, the moving
images at this level of abstraction depart from the authoritative stance. The
authority and dictatorship of the traditional single channel presentation and
use of montage is left behind. Instead, The Metaphor of Vision opts for the
absence of container. There is no power relationship that directs the
viewer’s attention by means of a single projected image on a screen or
monitor and defies the notion of focal point, also dictated by montage. The
absence of focal point, the absence of container: the quest for a seamless
environment in a continuous image begins.
The seamless environment enables the viewer to reach the coveted fantasmatic
state, a dream-like experience, a projection but perhaps from the "inside" or
center of the environment as he/she stands among the actual moving images.
The moving images envelop the viewer like a cocoon; from ceiling to floor and
all around. It enables the development of a new sense of continuity and
therefore, an evolution of the image per say. The seamless environment of
moving images is also a place of spatial and temporal suspension. A timeless
loop of abstract moving images encourages the viewer to enter the realm of
transgression of reality, to part from narrative structure and experience a
personal journey where the perceptual event remains first and foremost.
The Metaphors of Vision as Anti-Cinema is a purely personal, visceral and
visionary undertaking to get beyond the medium and away from its physical
restrictions and language structures.
(quotes from The Metaphors of Vision, Stan Brakhage, 1964)
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