contemporary composition

20181113: 3rd Floor | 2nd Floor

After editing all day for OSF, Vera invited Zihua and I to show each other our work in the Gemeinshaftraum. The proposition reminded me of graduate school critiques, of which I was not and still am not very fond. Vera began by showing us her abstract videos, the first, “Panoramic Panic Body” (2014, 10 minutes), was comprised of several botanical elements, some macro and some at recognizable scale, trading places in the center of the screen, woven between negative shots of trees. An unpredictable looping pattern of the elements brought the attention to the mid and background texture elements, while asynchronous sound stitched the video together.

I watched Vera's work from the perspective of the celluloid film art work that was popular in the Bay Area scene. I asked her outright where the inspiration and historical relationship to that style of film making had come from and she said that Freiburg had had a strong experimental film period in the 1970s, those film makers were now professor where she had studied. In relation to the Bay Area movement (of which still held some parts of SF in a experimental stranglehold), experimental cinema's materiality, fascination with Eastern ideology, e.g. Youngblood's attempt at framing video art as a transcendental tool:

"When we say expanded cinema we actually mean expanded consciousness." [1]

I was a little confused and surprised of how or why German film makers would propagate abstract film art. Why would German experimental film makers be theoretically inclined to scratch celluloid if they weren't reading Marshall McLuhan or permafried hippies? What use are hypnotic moving images if mental numbing toward escaping one’s consciousness isn’t the point?

Practically, I wondered how these artists in Germany got their hands on film equipment and whether there were industries there that sold off old gear to locals, in the way the television industry in NYC inadvertently equipped the art filmmakers who founded Anthology Film Archives, the Film-makers Cooperative and influenced upstate New York areas like Binghamton and later Alfred, NY. [2][3]

Getting at the genealogy of thought, with the discursive distinction of German theory on moving images, e.g. the Frankfurt School, more preoccupied with representation and social construction through images, i.e. Cultural Studies, than focusing on the medium of film, light and visual perception, i.e. what would become Media Studies, why would there be a Brakhage-esqe scene in Freiburg? The most logical answer is that art, art styles, art practices and artists travel, even if the theory that shaped it is left in its country of origin. Prior to the globalized world, or the networked world of the Internet, art existed in the routes of transit and it's for this reason that one encounters local artists in remote regions who are working in a style that may have never had any roots in that place.

Zihua showed us a video of a performance of his composition "remnants present," performed by the percussionist Noam Bierstone. [4][5] During the 13 minute piece, three objects–a large gong, a pan and a wooden board–hang in front of Bierstone, who is making scratching and tapping sounds using a metal wire whisk, and scratching a magnetic across the metal, which is attracting a magnetic on the other side, which could be seen moving while the scratching sound was being made. The percussionist and scenery were darkly lit by a side light. I looked at Zihua during this video and he had his eyes closed. My first thought was the composition could be perfect for a film score.

I attempted to show my SGT STAR work, but the wifi didn’t work in the Gemeinshaftraum, so it was assigned as homework. [5]


[1] "Expanded Cinema," Gene Youngblood, P. Dutton & Co., Inc., New York 1970
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expanded_Cinema
[2] Film-makers' Cooperative
http://film-makerscoop.com/
[3] "Binghamton Babylon: Voices from the Cinema Department, 1967-1977," Scott M. MacDonald, SUNY Press, 2015
http://www.sunypress.edu/p-6144-binghamton-babylon.aspx
[4] Zihua Tan, remnants present / Noam Bierstone
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRVO5dOCtBQ
http://www.noambierstone.com/index.php/en/
[5] SGT STAR

http:///qoarmy.com