One-Take Super 8 Event, Oberlin, OH

On April 4th, I will be one of the artists screening an unedited [I will never have seen the product before the night of the screening] reel of super 8 film in Fairchild Chapel on the Oberlin College campus.

For further information, see: One-Take Super 8 Event.

My film is entitled, "I love chips." I will also be providing a live soundtrack.

[Not a] Recommendation: "Pete Travis makes history."

Vantage Point, dir. Pete Travis, 2008. I mention this film not because this is a recommendation. I mention this film because it is the worst movie that I have ever seen. I am unable to fathom how this script got funding, which gutter they grabbed Pete Travis out of, or why they proposed to execute a film in such a haphazard fashion. This was the sloppiest, most disgusting excuse for a movie I have ever had the displeasure of sitting through. The film tells the story of a supposed U.S.-presidential assassination in Cordoba, Spain. This flimsy premise is told from around 7 or 8 perspectives over the course of the film - each time the president is shot [or around that time], the movie "rewinds" [and this is quote possibly the most annoying, agonizing gimmick in the history of cinema - I felt like I was sitting through a piss-poor version of No Exit] and we are brought back to approx. 20 minutes before the president is shot. Oh, don't worry, I'm not giving anything away. It gets worse. So much worse. Wooden acting - the actors look like they're just as aware as the audience that this script sucks. Poorly executed CGI. AND this is a movie about terrorism - yet the film refuses to take ethics into consideration - it's just like Pete Travis said, "oh, here's a movie, I made it yesterday in iMovie. I thought if I hired enough great actors and had them perform terribly for 80 minutes, it might make a splash - you know, art or something." Oh, Pete Travis... it made a splash for me. I threw up afterwards. [The worst part about all of this: he will get funding for another movie - asshole]

Manifesto

Correction: it would be great to miss the point, but I don't think I have. No, I've just sidestepped it into oblivion. And that's as inexcusable as missing the point out of ignorance.

A quote from a book that I'm reading, Rollo May's The Courage to Create:

"This courage will not be the opposite of despair... rather, the capacity to move ahead in spite of despair... Courage... is not to be confused with rashness. The ultimate end of such rashness is... [getting] at least one's head battered in with a policeman's billy club... In human beings courage is necessary to make being and becoming possible. An assertion of the self, a commitment, is essential if the self is to have any reality... Paul Tillich speaks of courage as ontological - it is essential to our being."

I have certain methods of avoidance - most unconscious - that I am becoming more and more aware of as time passes. I believe that, in certain ways, the creation of an ambivalent manifesto was a method of avoidance. I said nothing - made no commitments - and so accomplished or received nothing. Is ambivalence another word for nihilism?

This semester, I propose to create a film in which I will display a courage to trust the image - a film in which I will commit action to my thinking and understand why I am making decisions - a film in which I linger over the image. Jeff Pence has mentioned "slow pans, long takes, dialogue, no heavy editing."

I also might mention: a less violent form of filmmaking. This is not to say that the film might not have violence - but that the formal aesthetic of the film does not involve a certain - warfare on the image.

More on this later.

Recommendation

Diary of a Country Priest, dir. Robert Bresson, 1950. Bresson begins to experiment with paring down the audiovisual experience in this film. This would become his trademark in later films such as 1959's Pickpocket: attempting to reach a state of transcendental audiovisual purity. He also began to use non-actors in this film: the Country Priest is played by non-actor Claude Laydu, though Laydu would go on to achieve some success in acting and directing later. Laydu plays a priest recently assigned to a country town; the film documents his trials in attempting to reconcile the differences between reality and high, religious morals. Ultimately, this is a film about a single individual - Laydu's character - and his struggle to justify his faith toward God. The film follows Laydu's character, as he observes the townspeople in his journal - the journal entries are given to the audience in voice over. Voice over is also used to narrate what the character is doing at various moments - often the narration itself distracts from the sublime power of Bresson's stark visuals. However, given that this is the story of a man obsessed with reality and attempting to embrace the sublime, the oppressive narration makes sense: he is unable to embrace the Grace of God as it exists around him. We are trapped in that state with him; we realize how similar we are to the Country Priest, a man of God.

Recommendations

Theme Song, dir. Vito Acconci, 1973. Vito uses a video camera in CU on his face, his body in the middle and background. He undulates to seduce the viewer - using pop songs as advertisement for his sexuality. Interesting: video as masturbation ... Acconci acknowledges the viewers nonexistence to him: "I can feel your body right next to me ... I know I'm only kidding myself ... you're not here."

Check Acconci out on UBU.

***

Death Day Suit: with self-inflicted damage, dir. Jubal Brown, 2002. In DV, Brown showcases the injuries he has inflicted on himself over the past 10+ years, chronicling the possibility of suicide and/or death at any moment. Absolute nihilism, pure schizophrenic ecstasy [what would Baudrillard say?]. Brown counts his scars, relaying tedious information to us, yet the scars are not showcased in a manner apparent to the viewer - for instance, chronologically. Time has no meaning, and, simultaneously, time means everything: all this pain will end.

Manifesto

Manifesto, 13 Feb 2008

Manifesto

Everything and nothing can neither be proven nor refuted. All is based on faith. Weight is assigned based upon ideology. Ideology is a system of choice.

All relationships are cyclical and lead back onto themselves.

Deconstruction is an endless system.

Language is a structural system used to manipulate.

All is weightless. All is depthless. All is surface.

All is paradox.

It is impossible to escape the system of objects.

***

Manifesto 14 Feb 2008

[This is without the formatting]

Most importantly: all is paradox! Because: everything and nothing can neither be proven nor refuted. All is based on: Faith!

Weight is based on ideology. The Way we live Now: (1) Politics (2) History (3) Nostalgia ... As such, THE CINEMA! Viva la cinema! And down with the cinema. Down with nostalgia!

Structural systems are manipulative systems. USE them to MANIPULATE.

It is impossible to escape the SYSTEM of OBJECTS.

All relationships are cyclical and lead back onto themselves!

Deconstruction is an endless system! The importance of Deconstruction: the DECONSTRUCTIVE act!

***

Manifesto, 08 March 2008

I think I've missed the point.

Connection.

The world is a strange disconnect over which we perceive the illusion of a connection.

Strange how people change, and strange also how they stay the same. I look around me: I see people I've known and also people who I have not known. Many faces: faces, faces, faces.

And most of the faces are merely surface: there is nothing in most of them for me - no investment, no story, no plot, no connection. I wonder: do they all have stories? Do they have lives? How might I know such things? And, also, how could I prove otherwise?

There are very few people who I actually know. Half the time I feel as though I do not know myself, so then how could I claim to know others?

I look across the library. I spot someone I know. He taps his pencil against the palm of his hand. I do that sometimes when I am nervous. Is that connection? Commonalities? Can differences be connection, too? Is even touching connection?

Recommendation

THX - 1138, dir. George Lucas, 1971, with Robert Duvall and Donald Pleasance. Set in the 25th century, a man and a woman rebel against a rigidly controlled society that exists entirely inside a world of simulation and consumption. Interesting: Jean Baudrillard would later discuss these ideas in some depth in his work of the 80s and the 90s.

Bare Bones

I realize that, when I meditate, there is only me: as if I were in a room surrounded on all sides by mirrors and all I could see was myself. It is at times freeing, at times frightening - always sobering. It makes me think of the past - of things and people gone, what I haven't done. And I think of the present and realize that the past is a mere illusion, predicated on the absolution of memory. In Sans Soleil, Marker's woman says - and I paraphrase - "Memory is the silver lining to the clouds of forgetfulness," which is why the past is romanticized, never allowed to disintegrate. But it seems a disreality - we can never prove it.

I return - in my meditation - and think of the present: of where I am, what this is. What is this? Where is this? And I realize the present is predicated on a history of reality - the past once more. Rules of the present are the mistakes of the past - the painful memories. Thus, what is the present but a reflection of the past? But the past itself is an illusion - thus, what is the present but a reflexive, painful memory of the past - itself a romanticized, unprovable illusion?

All I can see clearly is myself but this - like reality, like the past, like the present - is but a reflection of other reflections. I cannot prove myself - whether I exist or not. Descartes' statement is utter bullshit - perhaps his thoughts are an illusion themselves.

But this notion of "illusions" must also be cast aside, for the very notion of illusion is a ground on which to stand. One could become paranoid, believing that one is surrounded by illusion - evil illusion, even. But, really, this paranoia simply arises from the fear of being fundamentally different. Those who are different are paranoid - paranoia arises from a view of reality that differs from the norm. But really this is just a dumbing down of the fundamental actuality of the human existence: all experience differently (if we claim that "all" exist). Therefore, even illusion must be cast aside.

Nothing is proven in any case. All is groundless.