Program notes for George Kuchar screening at Carnegie Museum of Art
(3/20/1980)
CARNEGIE INSTITUTE MOA THEATRE , 3:00 PM
SERPENT (1971) 15 min. by Scott Bartlett
FLICKER (1966) 30 min. by Tony Conrad
OUR LADY OF THE SPHERES (1969) 10 min. by Larry Jordan
I AN ACTRESS (1976) 10 min, by George Kuchar
RIVER OF STARS (1975) 10 min. by Bruce Mood
Scott Bartlett came to prominence in filmmaking by way of television, or rather, video imagery, and this fact has had an important impact on the kinds of films he has made. The technology of videograpnics is such that the artist must have considerable understanding of the tools he is working with, and one of the virtues of the medium is that through the use of tape the imagery that is created can be immediately examined in playback and improved if the artist wishes. The effect of both of these factors is to encourage precision in image-making, to encourage the refinement of imagery to a fine point. Bartlett's films exhibit such a refinement of imagery to a high degree, whether video-generated or, as. in his later work, camera-generated.
This is the source of the extreme clarity that makes such films as SERPENT and 1970 so powerful. One gets the sense that Bartlett is always in total control of the film, that he never finds the camera obstructing his vision.
--R.A. Haller
"The serpent embodies the primal:chaotic life force in mythic symbology. SERPENT' uses natural and electronic imagery to particularize this creative force The
visceral impact of this marriage of metaphors brings about a union of irreconcilables, fire and water, nature and civilization, extremes of hot and cold."
--Scott Bartlett
"THE FLICKER reduces film to its ultimate primitive materials, frames of black and white. As a result of extensive experimentation with the preception. of alternating series of black and white frames, without images, it was found possible to create a film of unexpected power and intensity.
"At the beginning, a warning appears. Because rapid fluctuations of light at certain frequencies can in a small percentage of people cause profound physiological effects, and in fact induces an abnormal psychological condition in most viewers, it is necessary to make the audience aware of the potential power of the experience. In most viewers, the manifestations include the perception of nonexistant colors and moving forms, or even the appearance of complete scenes, and a mild hypnotic condition.
"The growth of the intensity of the film is slow, allowing the viewer ample time to study his own reactions and psychological state. The different patterns of frames of black and white follow a program which consistently develops the medium of modulated light as a context for harmonic composition. Thus many of the patterns seen embody an ambiguity of frequency, or the complex combination of more than one flicker frequency.
"Since THE FLICKER is the first film to effectively compose in a totally new medium, which lies between continuous light and light rhythms at lower frequencies, it is consistent with the total experience that the sound is similarly composed in frequencies lying below the range of hearing but above the range of rhythm.
"Toward the end of the film, the effective intensity is slowly decreased, so that the viewer is eased back into his normal reality. Except in extreme cases, there are no aftereffects." --notes for a showing at Oesterreichisches
Filmmuseum.
"Perhaps flicker-compositions will only be appreciated properly when people appear who talk by flashing their lightbulbs at each other." -- Tony Conrad, August 1967
Larry Jordan began makinf films...in the early
iculation is graphic animation. OUR LADY OF THE SPHERE (and several of his other films) was constructed from cut-outs of Victorian engravings,a procedure which almost inevitably generates radical juxtapositions of scale, spatial context, and the associative qualities of objects (Jordan has studied the collages of Max Ernst as a source for his technique). In an interview from 1970, Jordan speaks of trying to create a 'limbo world...it's not Paradiso and it's not Purgatorio' - in HAMFAT ASAR and this idea could pertain to OUR LADY OF THE SPHERE as well. Jordan constructs a consistent spatio-temporal context in which backgrounds, objects, and human figures float in and out, interact with each other, undergo transformations, and disappear. Sitney has commented on the fragility and evanescent quality of Jordan's images. They contain, as well, vague threads of narrative continuity and half-understood associative connections. While in no way put together by a psychoanalytic formula, the flow of images suggest explorations of a subconscious state subject to interpretative analysis.
"...Despite the fact that most of the image condensations remain hermetic and opaque, Jordan maintains conventions such as matching screen direction and velocity as he develops motifs and thematic patterns. The spherical forms - clocks, compasses, balloons, planets - relate to the themes of suspension (both temporal and spatial) and submersion. Recurrent image-fragments such as a flower, a suitcase, the figure of Atlas, suggest at different times transiency and the task of the search. These elements are reinforced by rapid changes in color tinting (the dominant colors are red, yellow, light blue, and jade green) and by the soundtrack - which juxtaposes harp music, and electronic buzz, animal sounds, running water, etc. There are superimpositions, and several varieties of camera movement which, in combination, produce a strong feeling of layered, amorphously mobile depth. In one sense, the strategies employed here would seem to conform with the illusion-producing/illusion-denying aesthetic of other films....Jordan's vision, however, is more directed at the metaphysical than the concrete. It is true that OUR LADY OF THE SPHERE grants an awareness of the single frame as a unit of filmic structure and that.the disjunction between static backgrounds and animated figures calls attention to the flatness of the screen surface*, it is to the transcendence fo these limitations that the film is addressed." --Paul S. Arthur, in A History of the Amer-
ican Avant-Garde Cinema.
"I, AN ACTRESS easily stands up to George's other two major 16mm films, HOLD ME WHILE I'M NAKED and THE DEVIL'S CLEAVAGE. Formally, it is the tightest, most spare film yet. Taking place within one room, with only two actors, Kuchar himself plays a director coaching a young actress in a love scene with a precariously constructed dummy. Actually, there is a third performer, That is the camera itself which weaves in and out of focus throughout the scene while gradually widening and pulling back its angle of vision. These days, Kuchar is involved in a complex exploration of lighting and in I, AN ACTRESS he extends the soft-focused, scrimmed effects used by Hollywood on female stars of the 30's and 40's to plain out-of-focus, thus raising the question of camera presence in a more sustained v/ay than he has previously.
"The film is probably as profound a study of appearance and performance as is Genet's
The Maids-----It goes without saying that the film is hysterically and painfully
funny." --Amy Taubin, Soho Weekly Mews, 5/12/77
RIVER OF STARS reflects my close involvement with the work of the abstract expressionists, and with oriental landscape and calligraphic line. For several years, I have been concerned with translating 'still' compositional elements into the realm of time and motion. RIVER OF STARS is the creative result of that concern.
--Bruce Wood
Projected, Bruce Wood's films generate a fluid stream of organic images in a carefully controlled post-cubist space comparable to the work of painters like Jackson Pollock. Viewed one frame at a time (which is the way much of the footage is shot), they recall the rich lines and textures of such master etchers as Rembrant. Wood's use of camera movement during the exposure of each individual frame - like drawing -together with the illusion of movement in projection make his films both beautiful and unique. --Bill Judson
