Experimental Film and Video ‘Nothing that has ever happened should be regarded as lost for history … To articulate the past historically … means to seize hold of a memory as it flashes up at a moment of danger Only that historian will have the gift of fanning the spark of hope in the past who is firmly convinced that even the dead will not be safe from the enemy if he wins.’ Walter Benjamin ‘Theses on the Philosophy of History’, page 247 Illuminations, (London: Pimlico, 1999) Experimental Film and Video An Anthology Edited by Jackie Hatfield Picture Editor: Stephen Littman British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Experimental Film and Video: An Anthology A catalogue entry for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 9780 86196 664 (Paperback edition) Published by John Libbey Publishing, Box 276, Eastleigh SO50 5YS, UK e-mail: libbeyj@asianet.co.th; web site: www.johnlibbey.com Orders: Book Representation & Distribution Ltd info@bookreps.com Ebook edition published by Distributed in Publishing North America by 3Indiana University Press, 601 North St, Bloomington, John Libbey Ltd, Leicester Road, New Barnet, Herts Morton EN5 5EW, IN 47404, USA www.iupress.indiana.edu United Kingdom Distributed in Australasia by Elsevier 30–52 Smidmore Street, Marrickville NSW 2204, e-mail: john.libbey@orange.fr; web Australia, site: www.johnlibbey.com Australia www.elsevier.com.au Distributed Japan by book United Publishers Services Indiana Ltd, 1-32-5 Higashi-shinagawa, Printed andinelectronic orders (Worldwide): University Press, Shinagawa-ku, Tokyo 140-0002, info@ups.co.jp Herman B Wells Library – 350, Japan 1320E 10th St., Bloomington, IN 47405, USA Ebook edition ISBN: 9780-86196-906-7 www.iupress.indiana.edu © 2006 Copyright John Libbey Publishing All rights reserved Unauthorised duplication contravenes applicable laws © 2015 Copyright John Libbey Publishing Ltd All rights reserved Unauthorised duplication applicable laws.Rawang, Selangor Darul Ehsan Printed in Malaysia by Vivarcontravenes Printing Sdn Bhd., 48000 Contents Contents Foreword by Sean Cubitt Foreword by A.L Rees Introduction Jackie Hatfield Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter viii x xii SECTION I Philosophies and Critical Histories of Avant-Garde Film and Current Practice Post Future Past Perfect Grahame Weinbren Matter’s Time Time For Material Peter Gidal 18 Films and Installations – A Systems View of Nature Chris Welsby 26 A Line Through My Work Nicky Hamlyn 36 A Few Notes on Filmmaking Jayne Parker 47 Film Noise Aesthetics Rob Gawthrop 53 Line Describing a Cone and Related Films Anthony McCall 61 SECTION II Languages of Representation in Film and Video: Thresholds of Materiality 75 Trilogical Distractions Lis Rhodes 77 The ‘autoethnographic’ in Chantal Akerman’s News from Home, and an Analysis of Almost Out and Stages of Mourning Sarah Pucill 83 Contents Chapter 10 Film, The Body, The Fold An Interview with Nina Danino on Now I Am Yours Nina Danino and Susanna Poole Chapter 11 Attitudes 1-8 Katherine Meynell Chapter 12 Video Works 1973–1983 David Critchley Chapter 13 Early Video Tapes 1978–1987 Chris Meigh-Andrews Chapter 14 Andrew Kötting What he does, how he does it and the context in which it has been done: An Alphabetarium of Kötting Gareth Evans and Andrew Kötting Chapter 15 Ardent for Some Desperate Glory: Revisiting Smothering Dreams Daniel Reeves Chapter 16 War Stories, or Why I Make Videos About Old Soldiers Cate Elwes Chapter 17 Moving Parts: The Divergence of Practice Vicky Smith SECTION III Philosophies and Critical Histories of Video Art to Cinema Chapter 18 Mutation on a Form Karen Mirza and Brad Butler Chapter 19 Video: Incorporeal, Incorporated Stephen Partridge Chapter 20 Tamara Krikorian – Defending the Frontier Cate Elwes Chapter 21 Another Place – David Hall Jackie Hatfield Chapter 22 Alchemy and the Digital Imaginary David Larcher, interviewed by Stephen Littman Chapter 23 Reflections on My Practice and Media Specificity Malcolm Le Grice Chapter 24 Expanded Cinema – Proto, Post-Photo Jackie Hatfield Chapter 25 Image Con Text (1978–2003): Film/Performance/Video/Digital Mike Leggett 93 102 107 113 126 137 151 163 169 171 180 190 200 212 220 237 246 SECTION IV Images 263 Work by George Barber, Jackie Hatfield, Stephen Hawley, Tina Keane, Tamara Krikorian, Stephen Littman, Jo Ann Millet, William Raban, Kayla Parker, Guy Sherwin, Tony Sinden, John Smith, Jeremy Welsh Forewords Foreword by Sean Cubitt Foreword by Sean Cubitt T here have been honourable exceptions like Mike O’Pray and Stephen Heath, but few of the leading film critics and theorists of the last forty years have spent much time with artists’ video and film Though film-maker Laura Mulvey’s essay on visual pleasure remains one of the most cited in the humanities, her films are more and more rarely screened in graduate classes The demands of genre study, narratology and industrial analysis of national cinemas have led media scholars away from their interests in the avant-garde; while the avant-garde, especially in the United Kingdom, have been driven further away from media-based funding towards the gallery world or the digital underground Political radicalism is not the cause of this: radicals like Ken Loach can still make feature films But it may be a result of marginalisation by the film business and increasingly by funding agencies whose brief must stretch from popular entertainment to documentary intervention and grassroots training Everybody has a reason to step aside Yet there is a powerful tradition of artists’ writings on vanguard media practice in the UK The writings of Peter Gidal and Stuart Marshall informed many young artists’ projects throughout the 1970s and 1980s, sometimes as inspiration, sometimes in reaction, a constant articulation with emerging practices in film and video arts The fabled inarticulateness of the creator was never much prized among film and video makers: talk was always integral to the art where making relied so heavily on other people’s help I remember a New York based avant-garde filmmaker amazed that his London crew on a jobbing music video were all reading Kafka and going off to Fassbinder screenings The art school tradition of demanding a written dissertation as part of the degree still impacts on the distinctive willingness of the UK artist to engage in ideas, and to generate them viii For lack of a continuous tradition of critical writing – despite the efforts of Undercut over the years – this collection is likely to prove a treasure trove for new readers Piled up in one-off little magazines and catalogues, mimeographed sheets and letraset layouts are the fragments of a thriving culture swept under the carpet of history Foreword by Sean Cubitt by a sad confusion of missed opportunities, crossed wires, confused responsibilities and overcrowded archives Given the technological savvy of its practitioners, film and video art in the UK has been for the most part an oral culture, and every time one of its old guard dies, like the African adage about fathers, it is like a library has burnt down These were not theories in the sense of coherent discourses grounded in axioms and built brick by brick as theorems and theses They were assertions, political manifestos, memos from cutting rooms and gallery floors They spoke from the delirium of greeting a new machine – the Film Coop’s legendary optical printer, LVA’s first non-linear suite Some come from the lost ages of 16mm film and monochrome television Whole aesthetics have evaporated since video migrated from open reels to cassettes, as they did when television and shortly thereafter video migrated to colour The possibilities for invention were no less then, though the palette was perhaps more limited – just as Dürer’s prints are scarcely poor compared to his oils Despite everything, the discourse is still in hock to the gods of time: progress and fashion still rule the ways younger artists approach older art The voices seem faded and stilted perhaps, the concerns remote and old hat Most of all, of course, there is scarcely anything available to them or their teachers of the roar and shove of the Coop and LVA, or the irrational passions that drove regional initiatives in the South West, the East Midlands, Hull and Liverpool Startling loyalties and antagonisms between film and video folk, strange destinies each pursued often separate from the other Odd allies that emerged from the British Council and Canada House when the national collections found it impossible to buy or archive the culture of artists working in the moving image This Anthology, Experimental Film and Video, is one of a number of moves to reinstate a lost history It does so not only to secure a pension for unjustly neglected artists, not only to fill a blank in the annals of the culture; nor even to bring an era of extraordinary achievement in the arts back into public view Most of all, the Anthology exists in a broader action to bring to the emergent artists of the 21st century some flavour of the pioneers of the 20th Great as they were, Picasso, Duchamp and Pollock are poor masters for artists whose media move in time, make noises, connect to networks In some ways the only genuinely native avant-garde movement of the 20th century in the UK, the film and media avant-gardes of the 1960s, 70s and 80s set the groundwork for the emergent digital arts These stories are alive and infectious Sean Cubitt March 2005 ix Images Tina Keane Above: Circus, Shot on Super projected on video, screens, 1990 Below and top of facing page: Transposition, Shot on Super projected on video, screens, 1995 Images Below: The Heart of the Illusion, Video installation, 1981 Tamara Krikorian Images Stephen Littman I Want, Video screen playdecks live camera, 1983 Big Time - The House, 19:4:90, Video, 1990 271 Images Smile, Video screen playdecks live camera, 1984 The Enlightenment, Video installation or single screen, 1993 Surface Vale Boogie, Video installation or single screen, 1999 272 Images Digital Boogie Woogie, Video, 1998 Predator Cat Selfish Diva, Video installation or single screen, 1999 273 Images 25 of 85 Notes, Sound/video installation, 2001 Jo Ann Millet William Raban Civil Disobedience, 35mm, 2004, sound, David Cunningham 274 Images Above: Cage of Flames, 16mm, 1992 Kayla Parker Below: Project, 16mm, 1997 Images Guy Sherwin Above left: Musical Stairs, 16mm film, 1977 Above centre: Flight, 16mm film, 1998 Above right: Newsprint, 16mm film, 1972 Right: Animal Studies, Ongoing re-groupable series of short 16mm films, 1998–2004 276 Images Both images: Man With Mirror, Super 8mm film/performance, 1977 Images Tony Sinden Behold, Vertical Devices, Video/sculpture installation, 1974/76 Cinema of Projection, 16mm projection, 1975 Another Aspect/ Another Time, 16mm film, 35mm slide projection, 1986–89 278 Images Above: Ancestral Voices, Video installation channels, 1994 Below, left: Pedestrian Colours, 16mm film, 35mm slide projection, 1986–89 Below right: Everything Must Go, Video installation/sculpture, 2002/03 279 Images John Smith Both images: A Girl Chewing Gum, 16mm, 1976 280 Images Both images: Worst Case Scenario, Digital stills and video, 2001–2003 281 Images Jeremy Welsh Above: IOD, Video, 1984 Below: GREY, Video, 1995 282 Images Above: Come Together, Video DVD, 2002 Dialogue Transition, Video installation, 2004 283 ... exhibiting his films, and film/ video installations since 1969 With Film and Installations – A Systems View of Nature’, Welsby discusses structure and structuring, and considers structural film in relation... 1999) Experimental Film and Video An Anthology Edited by Jackie Hatfield Picture Editor: Stephen Littman British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Experimental Film and Video: An Anthology... structures determined by the systems within landscape and the xiii Introduction interconnectedness of landscape, filmmaking material and process Nicky Hamlyn is a filmmaker and writer (Film Art Phenomena,