What's your take on....what's your take on... Cassavetes?

I thought it interesting that Sharon Lockhart came and brought with her images of people, ideas, and concepts that drove her work. We saw that among many things she was interested in ethnography, children, and social spaces. I noticed one of her inspirations was John Cassavetes.
We talked a lot about what our interpretation of the piece might be, and one of those questions addressed the idea of performance. Sharron used different techniques to blur the lines of sport and performance. The proscenium theatre, the attention to chanting/singing/dance, and choreography. When I considered basketball and how it began as a western sport I thought about the comparison cultures adopting this sport. Basketball in Japan might be something more of a performance than about strength, points, and winning as it is in western culture.
The stars of Japanese culture were and still are often times their most disciplined and revered actors/actresses in Japanese theatre (No and Kabuki.) Maybe these are their Michael Jordans, and that is what Sharron was asking us to consider? Sport as it is in one culture can look very similar, have some of the same rules, but mean something very different to the people of that culture.

Render them both alive and moving

We are alive and moving in this film. Porterfield has taken restraint and asked us to work a little harder I feel. Hamilton is just as much happening as a drama outside our bodies on the screen as it is inside. It makes sense to hear Porterfield talk about images in relation to each other and that he is interested in seeing our stories as much as this story. I can't describe how emotional I felt at points in this film.
I'll talk about one part that was especially moving. The scene that took place in Joe's bed. The audience is placed behind the television that sits at the end of the single bed that he and his girlfriend/father of her child share for the night. We are only given audio clues from a black room and then the scene opens when the light from the television turns on. It's the middle of the night and Joe wakes up to play video games while his girlfriend sleeps. Tomorrow she will leave for a long trip. I don't know what it was, but I could just feel the disappointment and uncertainty between the two and it was done with no dialogue. The images and actors carried this drama with no dialogue and that I felt did a couple of things: to clue the audience into each of the characters, and to let the audience make up how they felt...to let them imagine how it must have felt in the characters position and situation. The scene showed many struggles in one package (time, love, responsibility, class, age.)
I enjoyed how much I was able to wonder and sit on each character in their life in those two days. I enjoyed the "work," and enjoyed the payoff.

Love at age 25

Jennifer Montgomery describes her editing as chunking and mixing, a sort of moving around of ideas in space that come together serendipitously. She said "I should go to plot camp, " in response to her technique. This kind of collage and almost associative editing really makes sense to me, I appreciate her dedication and belief in her "fuck you" filmaking. The kinds of images as well as concepts I feel collage together and leave the viewer thinking, "wow, I knew there was a connection between gender roles and Wolf pack behavior, but how amazing to experience on screen." She was showing footage and image behavior that I've never seen, and with no apologies. I found myself, and this happens more than most, laughing at some of the material, and I don't know if it was because it was over dramatized or that I was uncomfortable with how brazen some of the images were. I could feel how it must have seemed to someone at the age of 12, I could feel how much at that time in our lives, we're making new connections...some connections are clear, some foggy and some kind of obscure but all very personal. At that age you aren't thinking about how the world might judge what you're doing, you just do what feels good, you do what is you.

Border and Body: We don't discriminate, we'll violate both!

I just wanted to chat about "A Stranger Comes to Town" by Jackie Goss since we didn't really hit on it during discussion. How interesting to see these different forms of media (yes, they were tweaked with) come together to form a sort of visual conversation on the current immigration, naturalization, and debate of borders that seems to be all over the media.
I didn't know that much firsthand experience with customs before this film, so seeing it presented in a non traditional or animated way almost makes it more personal. I thought about why the filmmaker would have chosen to use this kind of format with the topic rather than shooting similar to a documentary you might she on PBS. I then realized that she almost had to do it this way due to the politics surrounding these folks lives. The format needed to almost have that distance from "real" and "animated" to synthesize maybe what these folks were talking about. The interviews were very intense, and at times were hard to believe. A woman interviewed was talking about having to be strip searched and a part of that entailed checking her genitals. What? What is this and why do we think this action is going to make it "safer" in this country. Hearing that just outraged me, I couldn't believe it. I understand Jackie. I thought back to the kitschy DHS video explaining each step of the customs process, all of it seemed so simple, so removed and so unreal that it would make sense that they would think that shoving their hand down someones pants was "going to extreme measures to keep our country safe from terrorism." The story, the images, and everything seemed so fake, but that's it, Jackie is telling us something very real. Didactically of cartoon plus clear abuses of power = better understanding of who controls borders and what it means to cross them (literally and figuratively.)
This piece made me think of how with current technology borders of both land and body can easily be manipulated depending on which side you may be on.

My own little show

Vladimir! How amazing of an experience!
What I found most interesting about this showing, presentation, group project, was the manipulation of a medium to tell a story in a new way minus a lot of technology. Vladimir opened up a door to storytelling using this simple 3D image made by our eyes....no wires, no fancy editing...just us and our eyes and hands doing most of the work. I can't imagine what it's like for her as an artist to get these ideas for stories or situations, draw up how she might photograph them, write the script and arrange to have it recorded, and then on top of it all, make the disks and cases...etc. It's just a lot of work for a 10 minute show per 4 disks. I can really appreciate the kind of dedication that she had to this idea, the time and energy, and to have it come to life must be awesome. I don't know if I could have that kind of devotion, or still be interested in pushing the boundaries of my medium if it took this kind of time. Maybe.
I enjoyed the artistry of scenes in I think it was called "fear and trembling." We were in the place of the viewer, our body was this machine. This POV was different than that of the other films. I really liked how she was able to build anxiety and fear with both using different shot angles (at chest level, from below, up in the sky) and symbolism of images to evoke feeling and how yes, they did make me fearful and anxious. When I took a step back I could kind of take apart why I felt anxious and why certain images made me feel more or less anxious.
Vladimir not only is an amazing storyteller and ingenious craftswoman, she is asking important questions of the viewer like:
"Where am I when I look into this and why am I here?"
"What does it mean when I can understand and relate to characters in a simple 3D image made by my eyes as much as I can in a technologically pumped up medium on a big screen."
"How do I relate to the person having their own show next to me?"

Dark Room

"I wanted to have it make me dumber."
-Ethan Jackson

Such an interesting quote from Ethan Jackson about his relationship to building temporary camera obscuras. I wonder what it is about the process, maybe it's because of the simplistic qualities. Jackson's installation was about experience, temporal space, and kind of a naive play. He spoke about his interests in "turning the outside in," or being able to project in a way that disorients the viewer. This concept or research question is similar to what we've been grappling with as far as the films we've seen this semester. I'm kind of a performance artist geek, so I couldn't help but think of this as an element of performance, maybe a setting in which one can play. In real time. I think he showed us pictures of a room in which he set up three "walls" (I can't remember if they were sheets....anywho, it doesn't matter) where the images were projected. The most interesting thing about this setting, kind of lens, light play, was that he included a stool. A symbol or a point in the lanscape that connected us to reality. I asked whether or not that the placement of a stool in this setting was intentional, and he elaborated on its main purpose; to convey proportion and scale...something to gauge the size of the projection. The stool to me sparked ideas of performance and play, how could the projection of real time be played with, and how would we, like he said "viscerally react" to its movements. What kind of world do we want to see play out against our real time screen?

Intimate Filter

Seeing the intimate projection of the super 8 flicker out "The Lace of Summer" by Storm De Hirsch, I couldn't help but think of home movies. There's something about the sound of the projector mixed with the creamy tones of the images that makes this kind of film/projection style transport the mind to memory. Why did De Hirsch choose to have this type of projection? The film was mostly comprised of shots from a balcony out over a low contrast overcast day at the beach (?). Repetitious pans back and forth, some shots seemed to rest on a zoomed in shot, and then zoomed back to include the foreground. The style of shot kind of reminded me of Akerman's shots where she let the camera sit as the world came into the frame and then back out. It's an interesting look at the idea of "home movie." When the camera would zoom back in to include shots from the foreground, De Hirsch captured a woman standing on the balcony. The woman was sometimes shot through the lace, and sometimes spared its fog. These techniques made me think of why the woman was shot like this, in relation to these "waves" of beach tents and low lighting. Was this representative, these shots through the lace, of the sometimes foggy image we think of when we see relatives on film? How does an image change with filter? Maybe De Hirsch was trying to capture the feeling of her memory of this woman, of anyone...and what better way to do that than through the filter of fabric.
I wonder what techniques I might choose if I were to represent my relation to my family through memory. Through urine? Through a dirty casserole dish? Ok, I'm getting weird, but really, it's interesting to think of representative filters through which we might capture our world.

dichotemy of desire

When I sat down to Chakar and Marks' readings, I really didn't know what to expect when I came in on Monday. Chakar's readings seemed to be a vague fairy tale or a story of a people, of any people and what happened to them over time and in relation to what happened in the world around them. Events in the fable seemed to mirror our own human collective history on earth. I tried to find within the writings, metaphors for existence. I tried to make sense of what was happening to and with the people in the stories, but sometimes I could only make sense of their desires and motives.
I'm going to try my best to map out how Chakar's and Mark's readings relate to one or two of the films we watched. I will start maybe with the word dichotomy. This word implies a split of energy into two, or a yin and yang (I hate how that was so amazingly appropriated in the mid 90's....all I think of is Claire's Boutique...gross.)
A duality. I saw this duality both in Fatmi's film "Les Egares (The Outsiders)," by its formal qualities. I feel Fatmi engaged our expectations of the region as sometimes being a godless or war torn region and challenged us to see (by long meditative shots of people on top of temples and beautiful serene landscapes and farms) that there are many, many kinds of stories to be told, and this being just as important as the one on television. Fatmi superimposed and clashed these images for I feel a dialectic reason...to bring us to a better and more deep look at the region and its layout.
I related Marks' readings to "In this House," up to the point that I could even see how she maybe could have written those entries from within the house Zaatari filmed. There were so many references, so many historical and modern allegiances within the writing that I almost forgot to see what was happening...lives were being lost, killing was happening. At times in the film I was so swept up in the historical references to parties, places, and situations that I knew barely anything about, that I don't know if I caught more than a feeling of being stuck, of confusion.
Both of the films are rich with information, it's exposed me and engaged me to want more. I can't help but notice all the dichotomies and assumptions that creep up from day to day.

Out of Sync

"There are obvious historical, social, and political reasons, reasons that underlie so many documentaries and news reports-and that rarely indulge a calm and attentive gaze," Chantal Akerman said in response to the question, "Why make this trip to Eastern Europe?"

I find this quote very true to how I interpreted the film. This film was calm, this film was attentive, something so many of us have a hard time doing. Akerman has something to say and if we sit still, if we listen and look both at her work onscreen and then internally, I think we might have a little box that holds a set of words unlike any that exist within either of us. This abstraction of image, and sound, is complex. The funny thing is that I wouldn't have felt the same if those abstractions weren't there. We (she and I) were communicating on a level that crosses language and sight, into emotion.
I didn't notice at first, but as the film directed our gaze more and more back at us, the more I started to feel intrusive, I started to wonder "why am I walking so slow, why am I feeling I'm there, but not really, a feeling that I couldn't hide from the stares?" I still think about this, about Akerman's build up of "the gaze." I would like to read more about her history, and why I might be feeling this way.
I thought the film pretty intense and amazing. Something I don't think I'll ever forget.

Here is a little sound treat.

dash for the past

Today is one of the, I think, 2nd most beautiful days in the last 3 weeks. The sun is out, the ice is kind of melting, and everything is covered in a film of crusty white. I asked Megan if she knew of a place in the area to wash your car yourself, you know, the kind where you pull into a bay, pump the machine full of quarters and it starts. The next ten minutes are what could only be described as a thrifty Midwestern rush to get the most out of 6 cycles of car wash (pre wash, wash, scrub brush, rinse, power rinse, and wax) where someone from any other region of the country would have only gotten 3. Who cares that most of the car is still dirty and the dirt is now waxed into the finish, you got a damn good deal. You aren't thinking thorough, you're thinking VALUE. There's something satisfying about being able to wash one's care oneself, and evidently three are no places like that left in the city of Milwaukee. I guess they've all been either defunct, or that folks just aren't interested in washing their car themselves and would rather have it done for them, either by machine, or by a group of people assumably making wages on the lower end of the pay scale. I don't want to sound righteous because there are jobs that are created through this later process, but at least in my experience, this was sometimes a place that folks would congregate and build community. So, hearing that there were none to be found kind of told me a little about this city's sense of community, or cohesion. It might be interesting to document the car wash scene from place to place, as a metaphor or a microscopic social study on relationships.

Akerman and Godard look back

I don't know where I saw this, but I think somewhere in either our readings for Monday or while I was doing a little research on Akerman, but she's been compared to Godard. I enjoyed seeing Breathless in 114 last semester and I'm excited to see what all the rage is about!

In that class we talked extensively about the act of looking in cinema and I thought this image connection (Godard and Akerman) interesting. What are these filmmakers (Akerman) doing when they look at us? There's something about having an object like a mirror or some reflective device that reminds us where we are in relation to the story. I kind of geek out about studying the relationship of object/subject, so this may be boring. So much of what we do in our lives is dependent on that relationship, even down to the stories we tell ourselves. How much of our identity is based on others perception?

The concept of viewing is pretty amazing, when is it objectification and when is it not? The lines are sometimes blurry and that's what's so interesting I guess.

You're not so ferocious stuck in the cement like that

This picture of a ferocious beast was taken in Boston some time ago. I was on a walk with my buddy Karey when it was taken. She said to me, something like, "wanna see the most amazing thing I see everyday when I walk to the T?" (Karey-sorry if I slaughtered your quote)
The connection that this image has to her sense of place and routine is what makes it so special for me to experience. I wonder who else might see this every day?

Are there "frames" in my life/routine that I relate to my sense of place like I see this having for her life/routine?
Leighton Pierce's "Thursday" gave us a key to his everyday dinosaurs, what he thinks of when he thinks of place. The meditative qualities of his shots such as the light play with the blinds on the side of the wall were beautiful in their own right. Even though he was somewhat confined to the time and space of his house and when his son slept, I feel that he used that to his advantage, almost as an exercise. It's inspiring and I might try it out myself. Lock myself in a dingy basement for weeks with a camera and see what happens?

Double Dare Day Two

In the spirit of daily transformations and performances, here are some shots of my "family" this most recent Thanksgiving. We were making our own transformations, we had our own series of performances, not unlike everyday. Is this what thanksgiving looks like today? Take a look at the original.
I enjoyed the images that Robert Breer included in his "ru-ru" laden piece Fist Fight, the ones that specifically spoke to me were the upside down wedding and family portraits. I think he specifically made those choices for a reason, maybe asking us what would happen if it all turned upside down. What would happen if our animations were more in line with personal truth than what comes through on photo paper? Why are the formal elements in this piece playing with our sense of identification (why are we more able to comprehend the drawn elements than that of the photographs and images of "real" people?")
He chose to specifically include images with a certain meaning and value attached to them, that if they were "tweaked," might start a fist fight. A wedding photograph, even though it's supposed to carry the feeling of the moment, it can be as much a performance as "bobo and rocky do the tango." I think he chose to show these images upside down as a poke to see what we would do with our preconceptions of images...and what value we place on such preconceptions.

Day one of the 5 day "physical challenge"

This isn't Double Dare and I'm not that "cooky guy" who hosts it, but hopefully this will be a cool little look at daily rituals. It may be kind of interesting and lead to some discoveries about myself in relation to my day. I'm just starting to learn about how to post video and sound on these, so please be patient. I've just came out from under the rock to master image sharing. I know right?
What an amazing bunch of work on Monday. I can't really hold a candle up to Jonas Mekas' daily film journal, but I will try and describe what I feel the daily ritual of work means to me and maybe what it could be. I really enjoyed this exercise that Carl gave us. I hadn't thought about making films or video and sound documentation practice as a form of "practice," and something that might be akin to drawing or painting. That may sound silly, but I guess I never thought of a time based medium as having movement over time. Mekas' use of the medium over time is inspiring. The film shown, "from Benn," was a tribute to the daily ritual of our lives and for some reason, the way in which this came to me: on a big screen, made me want to engage with it on a daily basis. The formal qualities of shaky camera work, letter type speech, and reflection of long shots of a morning horizon gave, I feel, the audience a chance to feel what Benn wanted them to feel at that moment in his life. I couldn't help but wonder where I was at that time, why I wasn't sending Benn a letter.
Here is my attempt at posting a link to an image that I made in my digital art class last semester. The image has built in links, so scroll on over and see where it takes you.

I was putzing round in the snow near my house.

Cog Collective

How cool is this?! Just to preface, I'm often criticized for "living under a rock." I can see now why Carl had us looking at these pages. I looked at a few, and yes, they reminded me of the films we saw in class. I thought of Nishikaka when I saw #25 from this site. I may be able to upload it onto this blog, but I haven't figured that out yet. I will describe: This film took the viewer through 6 years of a mans life. Noah took one photo of himself each day for 6 years. It was really amazing because he had to kind of control (I think) where he was in the shot and what kind of face he was displaying. The background moved so fast behind him, his hair moved and changed....but his eyes and expression were almost haunting. How could 6 years go by, and nothing change? The similarities between this and Kishikaka were in the editing and sequential placing of elements in the shot. I don't know if Noah would have used an animation helper, but the fact that he was able to play with the suspension and rapid movement of time in one way or another really plays with I feel his emotional intention of the piece. The music was pretty amazing too, it seemed to go along with the changing of the background, almost like a soundtrack to his life that ebbed and flowed depending on the place or situation he was in when the pictures were taken.
Anyway, I feel this was weighed heavily on its nonverbal and formal declarations of self. I know we talked about formal qualities and whether or not they trump outright declarations, I still can't say one outweighs the other in accurately conveying truth, but both are important in their own right. I think having Noah's face, his presence over time, gave the piece a very personal feel more than if he would have just photographed an element of his life over time and in different places. So yeah, there is something to be said for having your physical self on the line.

Simple Format, Resonate Voice

I noticed that some of the video's in today's lecture were from the Video Data Bank. I read the article highlighting the history of discoursive media of the time, the one by Ed Halter. In this article Horsfield hits the nail on the head when she explains how imperative it was to have this "alternative history" be archived and accessed by anyone and for anyone. She speaks of a time when "women weren't exactly encouraged to fiddle with electronics," and I can't help but see images of Sadie Benning's work If Every Girl Had a Diary. Benning's work was done in 1990, and Horsfield speaks of work from the 1970's. How long will it be? How long will it take? How long do you think Joan Jonas will stomp? These are some questions I have, something that I know I have already tucked away for future reference. As evidence.
I was chilled to be able to experience this space and engage with a work like Benning's. When we study these format's I feel I'm realizing more fully why each artist might work in that format. With Benning's work, the format was so simple "a child could use it." By capturing grainy, simple, and sometimes overexposed images I feel I was able to relate to how simple the connection between people and issues can be, as long as we engage. Benning was opening up a relationship with (I think she said) "thousands of other people" in that moment. The important part was to show, I feel, how simple the boundaries of "user" and "usee?" can overlap even beyond the video monitor.

Dorky on Dorsky

My thoughts after viewing Nathaniel Dorsky's Variations were a series of words. I will share them: reflections, shadows, dual images, relationships. These words aren't at all what I wish to convey, but they're a good start.
Dorsky's "sacred speed" is exactly it, the speed of reflection, meditation, and intentional almost adoration of subject. Dorsky gave us a chance to see the building blocks under a microscope. I felt that I really had a chance, being that the film was slowed, to sit on the image and take in what he (Nathaniel) was feeling at that moment AND what the subject gave to the experience. I thought it interesting when Carl went into Dorsky's examination and reflection into balance. I could feel that balance come through in both the formal elements (lens play, pattern and sometimes image overlap, and conscious choice in framing) and in how the film conceptually came through. Even though I sometimes couldn't make out what was going on, or what an object was, I was captured and very sympathetic and empathetic to the subject due to the intense examination. I can't describe it other than visceral. I was emotionally worn out after.
One of my favorite shots was when I saw the image of what I think might be the effect of a squint, where your eye can see it's own reflection...a sort of spotty microscope like visual that sometimes includes your eyelashes if you squint and focus right. Having this sort of image reminded me, and I'm guessing other viewers of viewing, of seeing. We have such an amazing sense like sight and seeing this on screen really captures how we might take it for granted. I might sound cheesy, but this film really conveyed to me how sacred it is to see.