Additional Thoughts on Marina Abramovic

Much has been written over the semester about Marina Abramovic’s exhibition at the MOMA, and all of the entries have provided us with fascinating perspectives on the experience. I visited the MOMA again recently, and was intrigued by how a shift in the crowd’s energy had a major influence on the exhibit overall. It seemed as though a reverential energy enveloped the space, unlike my initial visit. The first time I visited the exhibit, the room had a strange buzz of energy that did not quite seem to fit the performance properly. This was apparently due to some celebrities that had recently participated in the performance, and many of the people seemed to be there to try and catch a glimpse of someone famous instead of experiencing art. However, my recent visit left me with a vastly different view of the performance.

Before entering the exhibit, I had visited some of Duchamp’s pieces. There was a quote of his that appeared in our discussion of Nicholas Bourriaud’s writings that kept coming to mind. Duchamp states that, “Art is a game between all people of all periods.” This was running through my mind as I watched Abramovic’s performance, and seemed to have an influence on my overall experience. I found the relational aspects of the exhibit to be more powerful than my previous encounter. When I returned home, I read parts of Bourriaud’s Relational Aesthetics again and felt that this passage was a perfect description of my time spent at Abramovic’s exhibit:

The form of an artwork issues from a negotiation with the intelligible, which is bequeathed to us. Through it, the artist embarks upon a dialogue. The artistic practice thus resides in the invention of relations between consciousness. Each particular artwork is a proposal to live in a shared world, and the work of every artist is a bundle of relations with the world, giving rise to other relations and so on and so forth, ad infinitum. (1)

I felt as though this helped to explain why my initial experience was not as interesting as my second visit to the exhibit. I realized that I did not fully allow a dialogue to take place with the art itself. I was too caught up in other things to have a full encounter with the art, and forgot to uphold my part of the relational art experience, thus was not able to fully engage with the work.

I was pleasantly surprised by how much I appreciated the coverage of the exhibit on the MOMA’s website. It definitely serves as an extension of the exhibit itself. I found that I have watched the live stream of the performance from time to time, and am always immersed in footage. I appreciate how we are able to access the website in order to reunite with the relational experiences that we first encountered at the exhibit. It also made me wonder at which point the interactive aspects of the website were incorporated into the exhibit overall (was this first considered by Abramovic during the initial conception of the exhibit, or was it primarily designed by the MOMA?).

- Stephanie Class

(1) Bourriaud, Nicholas. Relational Aesthetics. Pg. 22.

Contemporary Independent Filmmaking

Ever since my time as an undergraduate film student, I have struggled with the idea of independent filmmaking and the state of contemporary independent films. The current state of indie films came to mind again while working on my final paper, which focused on the work John Cassavetes. His status as the pioneer of American independent filmmaking still resonates with filmmakers today.

It seems as though indie filmmaking has become an aesthetic style more so than a way of creating a film. During my presentation, Sam mentioned the cinematography of indie films. The use of the hand held camera has become the ubiquitous amongst indie films these days. This was used for very specific reasons by previous influential indie filmmakers, but it should not characterize a film as independent. Although indies lack major studio funding, they often have the advantage of more creative freedom. This does not only apply to the overall content of the film, but for the crew as well. I often found on professional sets that the people who had a background in film had the most difficult time adjusting to a lack of creativity on set. However, there are instances in which, even as an intern, I was given some creativity freedom on an indie film. These creative allowances were rarely given to anyone except heads of department on studio films.

Although there is more creative freedom, there also seems to be a pre-packaged style that has developed even for indie films. I cannot completely disregard film school since I attended one, but it is obvious that film schools have a tendency to instill a pre-packaged concept of the “perfect” film in its students. This applies to both studio and indie films. Indies have developed their own format for the “perfect” film over the years. However, this format often emulates that of earlier filmmakers without taking into account the best aesthetic choices for each specific film. Just because you are an indie filmmaker, does not mean that you have to make a serious art house film with your friend’s digital camera.

I am interested to see how the future of independent filmmaking evolves in years to come. In recent years, there seems to be an emergence of interest in indie films again thanks to events such as the Sundance Film Festival. Indie films have taken on an aura of being “hip” and “artsy.” Hollywood certainly did not fail to notice this trend in the popularity of indies. Currently, indie filmmakers have more possibilities for having their films seen than ever before. The internet has provided a perfect platform to showcase their work. The plight of the indie filmmaker is as relevant today as it was in the previous decades, except for the ability to have a film seen more easily due to technological advancements. Jonas Mekas created The New American Cinema Group and subsequently the Filmmakers’ Cooperative, which still distributes films today, to help aid the underground filmmakers in the production and distribution of their films during the 1960s (the manifesto for The New American Cinema Group can be found here, and is definitely worth reading). Thanks to the advent of digital film equipment and the internet, filmmakers do not have to rely as heavily on the help of others to have their films seen and distributed, and they may not have to spend money on film stock or processing fees.

Obviously there have been a lot of generalizations made here, and my thoughts are merely my constantly evolving opinions on the subject. Many of these opinions do not apply to every indie film, of course. I think that overall my issue with indie films is that they have taken on an aesthetic style that is not always necessary or relevant for each film. They often try to emulate the stylistic choices of previous independent directors, thus somewhat disregarding the greatness the indie film’s ability to have more creative freedom than studio films.

- Stephanie Class

A Woman Under the Influence

When writing on Deleuze and Cassavetes, I wanted to examine how Cassavetes was able to take Deleuze’s modern elements of cinema and create a highly affective film. Cassavetes has the ability to draw emotional responses from his viewers, and I used Deleuze’s writings to better understand the way in which he is able to accomplish this in his films. The following is a scene that I consider to be a solid representation of Cassavetes’ directing style. In this scene, Mabel is confronted by her husband, Nick, about her deteriorating mental state. Nick’s mother and Dr. Zepp are called to the house to help regulate the situation and enforce her institutionalization. I have a love-hate relationship with this scene each time I view it. I find it unsettling and difficult to endure because of the intensity of the acting and the subject matter. However, I don’t want to look away from the action either. This scene also exemplifies the way in which Cassavetes would force the audience to fully experience an entire situation with the actors on screen. He lingers in the scene and refused to make any unnecessary edits. According to Cassavetes, experiencing the entirety of the scene was imperative the structure of the film. “You can’t edit the film any more than you can direct the film. You’re not able to make the film play any better than it plays…Take the scene of Mabel’s breakdown, for example. We had to prolong it. The sequence was full because unless you actually see them do that, unless you actually see the continuity of that, the actual idea that he would do this and carry it through could have been weakened.” Also, it is easy to detect Cassavetes’ stance on the use of cinematography. The DP was told to follow the action he felt was important in that moment, instead of having distinct set-ups for each shot. Overall, this scene exemplifies many elements of Deleuze’s concepts of modern cinema, along with the emergence of thought and the mental-image in film.

Here are the links to the majority of Mabel's breakdown scene (my apologies for having to navigate away from the page, but uploading was not possible due to the size of the two clips):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zPVpRGlPbo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgUf4VBaRjo

- Stephanie Class

Revisiting Metropolis

Film Forum is currently showing a restored version of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. This version contains 25 additional minutes of footage that had been lost for decades. It is sometimes effortless to visually locate the new footage due to the change in the quality of the images. They are somewhat grainer and the colors seem more muted. However, it is easy to overlook this due to the way this additional footage adds to the overall narrative of the film.

I haven’t seen a projected version of Metropolis since I was approximately eighteen years old. It is definitely a film in which the smaller formats do not give justice to the scale of the film, and its visual impact is lost can be lost to an extent. It was nice to see the intricacies of this masterpiece of German Expressionism enhanced as it was projected once again. I think that I had forgotten about how every shot is perfectly framed and every set is visually stimulating. Lang’s ability to play with light and shadow truly helps to accentuate the impressive set pieces.

One of the aspects of this film that I find most interesting is how the narrative remains relevant decades after the film’s production. The class struggle between the subterranean workers and the city planners is timeless. We still see different versions of this class struggle in today’s society. Issues of capitalism can span decades of time as well as bridge cultural divides. Also, the film brings into question the state of our possible “future existence.” It forces the audience to imagine what the future will hold and how we will each be effected by it. Deleuze mentions Metropolis and other Fritz Lang films throughout both Cinema 1 and Cinema 2. He concludes some of his thoughts on German Expressionism in Cinema 2, in which he focuses on how this film movement confronts issues of the future.

The man-machine assemblage varies from case to case, but always with the intention of posing the question of the future. And machines can take hold so fully on man that it awakens the most ancient powers, and the moving machine becomes one with the psychological automaton pure and simple, at the service of a frightening new order: this is the procession of somnambulists, the hallucinators, hypnotizers-hypnotized in expressionism, from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari to Testament of Dr. Mabuse via Metropolis and its robot. German cinema summoned up primitive powers, but is was perhaps best placed to announce something new which was to change cinema, horribly to ‘realize’ it and thus to modify its basic themes. (263)

The fact that this film is able to still create a cerebral response in its viewers allows us to see magnitude of this film’s impact overall, and how it will continue to be considered an infinitely important film.

Revisiting Metropolis allowed me to see how my relationship with the cinema has changed since I was younger. I remember the first time I saw a projected version of the film in a small screening room in Chicago (as opposed to the home viewing versions I had previously seen), and being humbled by the production design and visual impact of the film. I was extremely impressed by the style of German Expressionism once I was able to view the film on a larger format. However, my recent viewing of the film left me being affected by the film’s narrative. I found the story to be equally as interesting as the visual style of the film, was completely caught up in the characters’ lives. Overall, viewing the restored version of Metropolis was not only an enjoyable experience, but it also was able to remind me how my relationship with the cinema has shifted over the years.

- Stephanie Class

Why Do People Go to the Cinema?

Earlier in the semester we discussed Tarkovsky’s writings on the cinema in a chapter from his book, Sculpting in Time. The chapter "Imprinted Time" contained a myriad of intriguing concepts regarding the cinema in general. It was his discussion of the cinema experience that I found to be most interesting. Tarkovsky boldly asks, “Why do people go to the cinema?” He briefly examines the way in which, despite the commercialism and entertainment aspects of cinema, a person goes to the cinema to experience time:

He goes there for living experience; for cinema, like no other art, widens, enhances and concentrates a person’s experience – and not only enhances it but makes it longer, which have to do with the human need to master and know the world. I think that what a significantly longer. That is the power of the cinema: ‘stars,’ story-lines, and entertainment have nothing to do with it [i]

Tarkovsky successfully outlines the reasons why a person looks toward the cinema to experience life. Of course, there are people that depend on the cinema for entertainment too, but there are many more that go to the cinema to learn about life and learn about themselves in the process. I’ve always looked to the cinema as a therapeutic place, an educational place, and sometimes a place to be disturbed or shocked. It is a place to go and figure out yourself a little more through the images presented to you. I feel as though Tarkovsky’s description perfectly explains some of the reasons why I find the cinema to be amazing, interesting, and undoubtedly important to the art world.

However, is this experience negatively effected when the movie theater is taken out of the equation? Although Tarkovsky obviously wrote about cinema before the advent of certain new media and technology, which brought new formats to the film viewing experience, it is relevant to cinema today. Going to an actual movie theater is no longer necessary to view a film. It begs the question, are we losing an important aspect of the cinema by losing the movie theater experience? Personally, a movie theater will always be the optimum choice for viewing a movie. The theater separates the audience from outside distractions, thus allowing for a complete encounter with the piece. At home, the viewing experience is riddled with distractions and interruptions. A viewer can stop and start the movie at any point, work on other things while watching, or even skip through parts completely. Seeing a film in a theater creates a vastly different experience for the viewers than when it is seen in the privacy of their own homes.

Hollywood and capitalism have always been linked to one another. It is difficult not to look at that decline of the movie theater experience as a result of capitalistic ventures. However, one also must not completely put blame on capitalism for these issues. A movie ticket generally costs around $12.50 today. As much as I would always prefer to go to a theater, it isn’t always the most financially sound decision to makes. I can rent movies On-Demand for 24 or 48 hours for $4.99 or less. I can see more movies for the price I would be paying to go to a theater. Also, there are the online renting options, such as Netflix, which allow us to pay a monthly fee that is often times cheaper than one single movie ticket. Overall, the theaters aren’t giving the casual viewer much motivation to go to their venues.

It will be interesting to see how the new media outlets influence the production of film overall. Amateur filmmakers can easily have their work seen thanks to digital technology, which is certainly a positive aspect of the expansion of the cinema. However, many major filmmakers now must take into consideration how their film will be perceived on smaller formats (computers, home television screens, I-pods, etc.). A movie no longer must be viewed on a projected screen, thus possibly changing many of the aesthetic elements of the work.

Overall, the content remains the same no matter where a film is viewed. It is the audience’s response that can be influenced according to venue. The theater allows us to be completely immersed in the images and stories being projected for us. At home, we can allow our own lives to take precedence over the viewing experience. The actual film has not change, but our reading of it has altered according to the attention we give to it.

- Stephanie Class

[i] Tarkovsky, Andrei. Sculpting in Time. (Austin: University of Texas Press. 1989), 63.

Warhol and the Art of Framing

Recently, we discussed framing in terms of architecture. Framing allows us to see the relationship between architecture and cinema because it allows for the spectator to reconnect with the world in new way. The early film work of Andy Warhol can give us an insight into the power that framing can have on a film.

The aesthetic qualities of Warhol’s early films are seemingly rudimentary. His films were created using static, unedited, one-take shots on black and white film stock with a 16mm Bolex. Warhol reverts back to the techniques of early cinema while others were taking a more modern aesthetic approach to their work. Bergson’s commentary on cinema would apply to much of Warhol’s work since its technicality would have been similar to that of the films of Bergson’s time. However, this is not to downplay the aesthetics of Warhol’s films. His stylistic choices are part of what bring intensity to his work. His films have a minimalist aesthetic, but the subject matter is undoubtedly modern.

Warhol frames his shots in order for the viewer to experience the subject in a new way. He often removes the subject from the world that typically surrounds it in order for the audience to have an unsuspecting encounter with it. This is clearly seen in Empire. Warhol has a shot consisting solely of the Empire State Building. We are used to seeing the building towering above other Manhattan buildings, which make up the whole of the skyline. By seeing the Empire State Building as a singular object instead of a part to a whole, a new relationship with the building is formed.

Warhol’s ability to frame objects in a way to showcase them solely can also be seen in the 500 “living portraits” he shot between 1964 and 1966 know as Screen Tests. The Screen Tests consist of three-minute static shots of individual people. These films were all shot at the Factory, and it is clear that what was happening off camera was often times more exciting than what was happening on camera. Warhol took people out of the world around them in the Factory, away from the whole, to create an entirely new view of that individual. He has the ability to frame shots in way that restricts the viewer from what the human eye would see if they were present at the scene. Ann Buchanan’s emotional response to stimuli off camera would not have been as powerful if we had been allowed insight into what was happening in the world around her. Instead, removing her from the whole and focusing solely on her expression is what makes her particular Screen Test intriguing.

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Additionally, Blow Job serves as a perfect example of how Warhol masters the art of framing. This thirty-five minute film consists of a close up of DeVeren Bookwalter as he supposedly receives a blow job from someone off camera. Whether Bookwalter is actually receiving a blow job or not is left for the viewer to decide. Warhol allows the audience to have just enough information to gain insight into what is happening on screen, without completely giving everything away. He wants you to draw your own conclusions and think differently about what is being presented to you as a viewer.

The beauty of Warhol’s work often lies in its ability to create an attentive response within the zone of indetermination. The combination of his use of long shots and restrictive framing creates a captivating and sometimes unsettling cinematic experience. What is left out of frame is often what creates an enthralling event for the audience. You are confronted with images in which you are forced to encounter for the duration of the entire film, whether you want to or not.

- Stephanie Class