Post Production Process: Manhattan Rhizome

I have never really thought about mood and tone in the editing process and decided that this would be something I would like to start with as a reference point or guide. I started listening to jazz music and became enchanted with the sounds of Miles Davis especially his album titled KIND OF BLUE. I decided to research how the album was created and I discovered that the entire album was an unrehearsed studio session. KIND OF BUE, in my opinion was its own rhizome. I immediately imported the song BLUE AND GREEN and used its rhythm and sound as a map for my editing process.

I decided to group the images in sets of three with the moving HD footage first, the digital still second and the 16 mm footage third. I felt like the photographs in the middle of the HD and 16mm footage anchored the material. All the moving pictures were shot with the camera being handheld and are, at times, insecure. Choosing the groupings of three, in the beginning was a little frustrating. I found the selection maddening when I was focused on the result and didn’t let the material speak for itself. This is going to sound strange but whenever I felt blocked or stuck I made the decision to remind myself that the image was alive and to allow it to tell me who or what it wanted to be grouped with. This made me feel a little crazy at times but it was very fun and the following quote from Bergson inspired me, “Here I am in the presence of images, in the vaguest sense of the word, images perceived when my senses are open to them, unperceived when they are closed.” [1] I opened up my senses to the images and tried to hear what they were articulating.

An example of this is the last and third groping of the HD, digital photo, and 16mm section. I started with the moving HD image of the intersection in Little Italy, which ends on the restaurant UMBERTO’S CLAM HOUSE. I really like the pacing and movement of the CLAM HOUSE image but could not come up with a photograph that somehow connected with it. I sat and looked at my computer and tried many combinations of the material. Nothing looked or felt right, I was stuck! I took food breaks, went back to final cut, I shopped online, went back to final cut, I checked my e-mails but nothing seemed to work. I decided to look at the image and try to hear what it was saying to me and all of a sudden I heard the word blue. Then it came to me, the Yankee boy in the blue hat. I put the two images together and they worked perfectly. Originally I had decided that the Yankee boy photograph was to posed but when I put it next to the moving “blue” HD footage it took on a new meaning and I began to see the mapping of this boy’s brash bravado and my Manhattan Rhizome.

After this experience listening to the footage became much easier. Next I decided that my groups of three were finished and I would start building the climax of the piece. This kind of flew and I had very little trouble putting the material together. I decided on a 2,3,3,1,1, combination. Basically this translates into 2 digital photographs, next (3) 16 mm static shots, (2) more photos and ( 1) 16 mm shot ending with a long take in HD Footage. I was satisfied with the rhythm and movement of the piece and felt good about the work.

In conclusion, taking this class and creating MANHATTAN RHIZOME has been a very enlightening and interesting process. Never before have I created a piece without a huge tracing of work looming and impregnating the process. Also this was the first time that I consciously chose to practice my art infused with film theory and thought. I can honestly say that this piece is truly alive and still is a work in progress. My rhizome of Manhattan still has many more entry and exists points to be discovered.

Deirdre

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[1] Henri Bergson, Matter and Memory, pg 24

Response to Bergson

For me, most of the films that I have made have been extremely personal journeys and infused with much conscious memory and pure memory. Bergson states, “…there is no perception which is not full of memories.” My last film SHADOW BOXING was written specifically for my husband. I also wanted to tell a story with pictures that was beautiful and cinematic. Looking back, I can see that, the lead character was written as a combination of all the important male figures and/or relationships in my life. Honestly this whole piece was an example of me infusing my art with the past, present and future.

The story is a psychological journey about a man struggling with adulthood and intimacy and coming to terms with his life. Honestly, on a conscious level I was not even aware that this was what I was writing about? I just wanted to make a pretty short piece? To quote Bergson…”with the immediate and present data of our senses we mingle a thousand details out of our past experience.” I started writing the script by looking at old photographs of my husband from birth to adulthood. I can remember seeing a picture of him as a child, crying and wearing only one shoe. This image of a shoeless, lost child opens the film. I also had a creepy statue of the three, hear no evil, speak no evil, see no evil monkey’s, which greatly resonated with me at the time and also used this image in the film. The pictures and subject matter of this piece were all signs that recalled me to former images and themes in my life.

Anyhow, I have posted the trailer from my short below. Someone once described this piece to me as a film about memory and loss. One festival sent me a nice rejection letter and said that no matter how many times they watched the film they could not grasp what it was about. For me, it really is a journey about a man coming to terms with his past, present and future. When I was working on the film none of these themes were in the forefront of my mind. Now all of this seems very obvious to me and kind of strange that I was so unconscious to my own inner world. As my children would say, “By accident, but really on purpose.” In any case, the whole film has a dreamlike quality to it, which is fitting, because making it was a process of accessing unconscious memories and stringing together past, present and future.

Deirdre

Relational Aesthetics

I took my children, Luca age seven and Jackson age 11 to the MOMA for my field report. We had a wonderful day and it was interesting to see and feel the museum from a child’s point of view. When we arrived there was a long line and both of my children started to complain. We jumped on line, and because of the ten-minute wait we started to socialize with the people all around us. Just waiting on line was a relational experience for us; it appears people enjoy seeing children at museums! This was a good omen, I have never taken my kids to any museum other than The Museum of Natural History and aquariums and zoo’s. I was not sure if my boys and the MOMA were ready to meet each other?

We walked around, looked at many beautiful paintings and finally stumbled upon the Marina Abramovic installation, “The Artist is Present”. Bourriaud states that what the artists produces, “first and foremost, is relations between people and the world, by way of aesthetic objects." This installation was a little world of its own and for me and my children experiencing this piece of art was definitely a “state of encounter.”

The whole atmosphere felt like a cross between a movie set and a church. There were big lights shining on the artist and her partner and cameras were placed at each end of the exhibit. There also was a hushed silence, and a feeling of reverence or group prayer hovering in the air. My children were immediately captivated and my younger son said, “Mom let’s sit down, it’s weird but I am not getting that bored feeling in my stomach."

So we sat down and experienced Marina Abramovic in a beautiful flowing red dress sitting across from a young woman in a jean skirt and white sneakers. Abramovic and the woman intently looked into each other’s faces and the experience was silent and beautiful. Most of the people watching in the audience quietly chatted with each other and it was so invigorating to sit and watch the artist and her subject interact. The intimacy between the two women was spellbinding and it felt refreshing to witness this true human connection without any filters. I felt like I had a social bond with the artist and her subject and I also felt like I was sharing what it means to be human with my children and the other spectators.

Afterwards, I had a conversation with my children about what the work meant. For me, it was like a metaphor for how an artist works and what it means to “put yourself into your work”. Also, it was a truly relational experience, something akin to a collective group worship, where every spectator is fiercely engaged in the process of learning about themselves and their experience in the world. Thank you Marina Abramovic!

Kiki Smith

For me what make life and art interesting are the smooth and the striated. The inherent tensions, conflicts, opposites, pain, pleasure, pristine beauty and savage ugliness are what create the life force in the world and in art. Deleuze states, “ what interests us in operations of striation and smoothing are precisely the passages or combinations: how forces at work within space continually striate it, and how in the course of its striation it develops other forces and emits new smooth spaces.” Life and art cannot have the smooth without the striated; both experiences are born out of each other.

The work of the artist Kiki Smith greatly interests me and engages this contradictory process of smooth and striated. KiKi Smith is an American Feminist artist. Her work is imbued with political significance and embodies the conflicting images and metaphors of women living in today’s world. Kiki transports the female experience in her work by playing with a disturbing sense of integrity within the human body while revealing all of the awe and mystery of what it means to be a woman. An example of this is her depiction of the human body in her art: she will use handmade-paper or paper mache juxtaposed with truly visceral representations of flowing menstrual blood, dangling fetuses or placentas. Kiki Smith creates tension within the mind of the observer by engaging the smooth, (the delicate paper) with the striated (menstrual blood and placentas).

I think that what makes any work of art interesting is the engagement of the cognitive responses: combining the charged visceral aspects of a piece with the contemplative, overall theme or through line. To me this concept embodies the smooth and the striated.

Deirdre

Art as Commodity?

Commodity is defined as some good for which there is a demand, but which is supplied without qualitative differentiation across a market. Can Art be a commodity? Can artists and their chosen practices be bought and sold? How do artists balance creating, pure, meaningful work with paying the bills and living in a free, capitalistic society?

Herbert Berghof, an Austrian-American theatre performer, director and writer stated the following: “If we truly want a theatre, which is more than a commodity, we must omit the buying and selling and function as free artists. And, if we agree that freedom can’t be bought, we must face that it is based on responsibility to our fellow man.” Mr. Berghof was also a socialist, born in Vienna who was accustomed to the theatre system in Europe, where actors are continually employed. He immigrated to the United States in 1939 and also enjoyed great success in the Hollywood movie industry. He made a lucrative living practicing his art in the United States.

What made me think about Mr. Berghof was the following Deleuze quote, “…this minor practice is produced through a manipulation of the elements of the major.” Deleuze further states, “ What defines majority is a model you have to confirm to…” Mr. Berghof is an example of an artist who participated in mainstream Hollywood in order to fund and create his “minor art”. Herbert Berghof created H.B. Play Writes Foundation with the money he earned from working as an actor in the film Cleopatra with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. From this one Hollywood acting job he was able to purchase an old garage on bank Street and turn it into a theatre; he created “minor art” in this space.

Deleuze states, “ A minor art is involved in the invention and imagining of new subjectivities as well as turning away from those already in place […] It is once inside and outside the major, in the ‘world’ but not quite of it.” Mr. Berghof in spite of his bitterness at the mismanagement of Broadway Theater and mainstream Hollywood, was able to practice and create art on his terms. Would this have been possible to achieve without his financial success in the great Hollywood machine? Mr. Berghof was a man who was in the “world” but not quite of it.

Deirdre