1. INTERVIEWS with Roddy Bogawa
INTERVIEW BY REA TAJIRI
Where did you study film?
I didnÕt attend a traditional Ōfilm schoolÕ
but more of an art program with a film component, University of California at
San Diego. UCSD was a great place to study in a horrible town. It was a well
funded program full of Ō70Õs New York art world exiles like Allan Kaprow and
David and Eleanor Antin. I studied primarily with Jean-Pierre Gorin (Jean Luc
Godard collaborator), filmmaker/cinematographer Babette Mangolte (Chantal
Akerman, Yvonne Rainer) and film critic turned painter Manny Farber. Totally
eclectic mix of American B-movies and avant-garde cinema! The program over the
years has turned out some great artists and filmmakers - photographer Lorna
Simpson, Frank Grow who made the feature LOVE GOD.
Can you talk a bit about your earlier
shorts and feature films that preceded JUNK?
Before this film, JUNK, IÕd made four short
films (A SMALL ROOM IN THE BIG HOUSE, FOUR OR FIVE ACCIDENTS, ONE JUNE..., IF
ANDY WARHOLÕS SUPER 8 CAMERA COULD TALK, THE IMAGINED, THE LONGED-FOR, THE
CONQUERED, AND THE SUBLIME) and one feature (SOME DIVINE WIND). I like making
short films. You can make something with a few good ideas, a couple of months
and ten bucks. You can try out a few experiments and see what works and doesnÕt
- then go on to something else. Filmmaking in many ways has gotten extremely
easy. Ten years ago when I made my first feature, there were only handfuls of
low budget features being made and now you can go see hundreds at any festival
or film market. Film schools have become the locus of many university programs
for what used to be pre-med. ItÕs crazy. I have really clear memories of
telling people that I made films ten years ago and getting puzzled
disinterested looks. My first two shorts were preparing me to do a longer
project. They seem now to be parts of a bigger puzzle that IÕd try and work
through with SOME DIVINE WIND. IÕd also made two or three other short films
that I never finished and found their way into the dumpster.
Where they were shown etc?
While IÕd had several screenings in San Diego
at art galleries and events like that, the Asian American Film Festival in New
York was the first festival to screen my work which is one reason why IÕve
supported that festival so much throughout the years. I feel a strong
commitment to them. Daryl Chin, one of the founders who is from a avant-garde
background in theater and the arts, literally jumped out of his skin in 1987 when
he saw my film and those of Jon Moritsugu and Gregg Araki. For the first time,
he saw a young experimental group of Asian American Filmmakers that was making
work apart from the older documentary genre filmmakers or experimental
filmmakers from the seventies avant-garde scene. Daryl brought us to New York
and we three met, saw each otherÕs films, and became friends. This was a wild
moment - I was screening my second short, Jon was showing DER ELVIS and Gregg
was at the festival with THREE BEWILDERED PEOPLE IN THE NIGHT, his first super
low budget feature. We felt kind of ambushed, attacked by the audience. ItÕs
kind of amazing to think back on the dialogue after our screenings - why are we in this festival when we
donÕt make work about ŌAsian AmericanÕ topics? What do our parents think about
us being filmmakers? Where in the hell did we come from? In retrospect I think there were tons of hidden
issues behind all these questions (Asian Americans should be quiet and
respectful, not make art about being gay, etc.). ItÕs very funny because those
questions ten years later seem to not have gone away and now Gregg, Jon and I
are the old farts.
SOME DIVINE WIND was a project that I think
came at the right time for me both developmentally as a filmmaker and with the
developing ŌindependentÕ film scene that was exploding at the time. As it were,
it is a film with Asian American subject matter but its main protagonist is an
Amerasian man who is completely assimilated into American culture (in fact
loves it). It has some tough very formally rigorous moments in it but also some
real cliched narrative devices that I was trying to experiment with. SOME
DIVINE WIND has had an incredible life – it screened in the dramatic
competition at Sundance in 1991 as well as in competitions at Mannheim and
Fukuoka, the Visual Communications and NAATA film festivals, Hawaii
International Film Festivals, AFI Filmfest, and of course the Asian Cinevision
festival to which I gave the New York premiere. It also screened at the Whitney
Biennial, Museum of Modern Art in New York and Moderna Museet in Stockholm, and
was bought by German Television and broadcast on WNET. The Sundance competition
in 1991 was filled with over half of the features made for $35,000 or less
including my film and GreggÕs THE LIVING END. There were some fantastic low
budget films there that year including Chris MunchÕs THE HOURS AND TIMES. In signs of what were to come though,
it was also the year of RESERVOIR DOGS.
How do you make decisions about casting and
how do you work with actors? Do you do a lot of rehearsals?
IÕve always been interested in casting
non-actors with trained actors. My early shorts had pure documentary scenes
along with completely fictional ones - one of my first shorts had my
cinematographerÕs mother just answering questions on camera. With JUNK, Tara
Milutis who plays Christina graduated from NYU in acting and William
Schefferine who plays the male lead is an old friend of mine whoÕs an artist.
They were both great for what I wanted. I think part of the directorÕs job is
to create contexts for building on the actorsÕ strengths and weaknesses in
relation to the script - not quite as cold as Robert Bresson (of course, only
Bresson can do Bresson) nor as loose as something that would be completely improvised.
I do tend to rehearse a bit for what I think will be more nuanced scenes. With
JUNK, Ben Speth (Director of Photography) and I rehearsed with Tara and Bill
quite a bit, often blocking scenes with a video camera and also improvising
segments of dialogue. From that I watched the tapes with Ben to figure out more
technical elements and then by myself to re-write and edit dialogue. I try and
not be so dedicated to my words as most of the time, dialogue is overwritten.
One should trust your images.
Do you make up things on the set?
I try and not do too much of that unless I
realize IÕve made a horrible mistake - either with visualizing the location or
with the physical action thatÕs happening. My films have been so tightly
scheduled that we really donÕt have the time to do that. Hopefully IÕve done my
homework and when we show up on location, I know where the camera is going and
what I want from the scene.
Can you describe how you came to make this
film, how you came up with the story, developed the script, financed it, shot
it etc?
ThatÕs a huge question. I guess JUNK came from
several key things – a friend whoÕs a Vietnam veteran turned artist who
had given me a bunch of texts about randomness and chaos theory, George Bush
proclaiming yearÕs ago in his re-election campaign that he could promise if
elected Ōfour more years of the sameÕ, and thinking somewhat about my own
mortality. I think the main premise was always that my vision of the future
would be banal and the problem was how to make a film about banality without it
being banal. How do you make an interesting film about boredom? One thing that
anchored JUNK the entire way through probably was very strong images I had in
my mind - either with the characters or specific locations (this was the first
location heavy project I would make after moving to New York). I think Amy
Taubin from the Village Voice has picked up on this idea the most concisely.
Probably my vision of New York is rooted in it as an outsider - that I was
fascinated with things about New York as a newcomer - sounds of neighborhoods,
the trash in the streets, even something like the light. Amy Taubin has sensed
this in writing about the film - that I was capturing images of New York that
were disappearing as I was shooting. ItÕs true, there was a desperation to find
locations that werenÕt in every low budget film or music video shot in the
city or completely gentrified with
Starbucks or Barnes and Nobles and to try and find the old flavorful, dangerous
New York.
The financing and shooting of JUNK was a long
process. The money initially came from grant organizations like the New York
State Council on the Arts and the Jerome Foundation. TheyÕve both been
incredibly supportive of my past and present work. After awhile, however, the
money ran out, and I funded the rest through my month to month paychecks. This
meant that the shooting was wildly extended (production went over two years)
and the post was much slower than I would have preferred. I wasnÕt able to work
on the movie seven days a week which makes everything a little difficult. You
end up having to spend several hours just watching things to remember what it
was you were working on. One positive thing about working like this was the
possibility of making adjustments as we went along. I could re-write scenes,
add elements that we realized were missing, ditch things that were unnecessary.
I know you mentioned that the film changed
a lot from the script through the shooting and then even more in the editing
process. Having come from an experimental film background myself, I know this
isn't an uncommon way of working to almost re-write the film in the editing
room. Can you describe the process of how the form of the film evolved and your
particular process?
JUNK started from a fifth draft of a fairly
traditional 100 page script. I had thought that I would make this film in a
straightforward manner. In fact we scheduled it out to do just that. The only
problem was funding that kind of shoot, being able to have the whole crew only
work on my film, etc. You have to realize that this is a 16mm color feature
made for under fifty thousand dollars and everyone working for free. We just
didnÕt have the money. In many ways, IÕm glad we didnÕt. I donÕt like the idea
of barreling through production to meet a festival deadline. I also got bored
with that type of production. I donÕt know how people can do it. It turns into
such an ugly unproductive and silly macho thing. ŅOh making this great film is
so hard so I can act like an asshole to everyoneÓ. I donÕt think people who are
helping you should be treated like that nor should there be an atmosphere like
that around you. IÕve seen it so much on other peopleÕs film shoots that I just
wonÕt tolerate it. So I guess these two things made the shoot much more
fragmented which is difficult for things like continuity and scheduling but in
the long run, worked better for JUNK. Ultimately, it was probably twenty-two or
twenty-three days of shooting total with five consecutive days being the longest
stretch at one time we could afford. Like I mentioned, I was able to be more
fluid with the script, change things along the way, turn a shortcoming into a
strategy for making the film better. As to Ņre-writingÓ the film in the editing
room, this was something that I think resulted from the fragmented nature of
what we shot. Basically, the structure in the script was no longer in the film
dailies. There wasnÕt the dialogue to move the film along in a traditional
narrative manner. There wasnÕt the ŅdramaÓ to make the film work on a
simplistic level. Over the course of cutting the film then, there was a lot of
re-shaping, retrofitting the thing to make a new creature out of it. ThereÕs
probably only about a fourth of the script structurally in the finished film
though I think a much higher percentage of the sensibility of the script is
still in the film.
I remember from a few years ago we had a
conversation and you talked about your point of view about narrative which is
almost anti-story? Can you talk a bit about that, because its a challenging
format and it can try the patience of an audience, yet for myself I really
enjoy sitting through a film like this because it has its own terms and its own
language that I find satisfying in the end.
ThatÕs good. I hope that happens to people. If
I didnÕt want the audience to watch my film or get something from it, I
wouldnÕt make it. IÕd do something else for sure. Although when someone does
see one of my films, I wouldnÕt want them to just leave and go have dinner and
drinks and never think about it again for five seconds. What happened to the
old days of seeing movies and then arguing and discussing them for hours? Did
we change? Have the films changed? ItÕs funny that I donÕt remember describing
my idea about narrative as Ņanti-storyÓ though I trust your memory more than
mine so I guess I have to try and think back to that moment. I would amend that
though and say that everything has a ŅstoryÓ and really nothing can be
Ņanti-storyÓ. ThereÕs stories in Michael SnowÕs film WAVELENGTH or KITCHEN by
Warhol. Is James Joyce anti-story? I am interested in formal devices in film
that can be used to interrupt the narrative flow and complexify the story which
many people think as being anti-story. Film audiences are much smarter than
filmmakers tend to want to believe and narrative can take many shapes and
forms. Narratives can be elliptical, layered, non-linear, poetic. ItÕs just
that the dominant model of narrative filmmaking is so narrow and simple and
reduced to familiar tropes so much that most audiences want movies to replicate
these tropes. That is the power of genre filmmaking but the best genre films
are always the ones that cross signals and add to the genre.
Can you talk about the choices you made?
For instance you use language and intertitles, repeating poetic riffs in the voiceover which goes against the grain of whatÕs
happening on the screen.
IÕm still interested in filmmaking as a formal
experimentation of all its elements, that is sound and its relation to image.
That music videos and commercials have appropriated experimental technique
without any of its reason is a big problem. You see it all over - style without
substance. With JUNK, I found myself wanting to make the film tougher, to make
these gestures more apparent. At one point, JUNK was going to be three hours
long with really long segments of literally nothing happening. I chickened out
though in the end. ItÕs one of my regrets about the film. All these elements
you mention, I wanted to add other levels to the story - that there cold be a
dislodged voiceover commenting on what we seen onscreen or an intertitle that
refers to another intertitle that popped onscreen twenty minutes prior creating
another strand of narration. Honestly, some of it works and some of it doesnÕt
in the film but IÕm willing to stand by the decisions I made and try and
continue working through these ideas in the next film.
Also, can you tell me about how you came to
the decision to have sound take such a strong element and presence in your
film? I can't think of a film that I've seen recently that has used sound in such an aggressive way. How did you
work with your composer and sound designer?
I had a great sound designer, Vin Tese, whom I
pretty much trusted all the way through the post for the audio. HeÕs someone
whoÕd be the audio equivalent to a motorcycle Ōgear headÕ. He loves sound. He
can hear frequencies and distinctions between things that are amazing. When I
met with him about working on the project, I told him my ideas about the
soundtrack to the film and I think thatÕs what interested him in the project.
Soundscapes would dominate in certain scenes, tone over clarity, voiceovers
with many dialects reading texts, rock music motivating action. As an active
element in the film, I think the sound (even if its ambience), sometimes
conveys more to the viewer than the dialogue. I always have loved how David
Lynch would use sound effects and ambience in say ERASERHEAD or BLUE VELVET as
shifting markers of interior/exterior character development. Also the way
Godard uses hard cuts in music and dialogue or ambiences that creep in and out of the soundtrack. Sound is
so under-used in films. Almost all films, partially because of digital systems,
are completely compressed, loud, with no nuance. Vin and I talked a lot about
this and were really on the same page. We wanted the audio tracks to have
colors, change throughout the film, mixed more like music tracks of a song. I
also worked with Ward Shelley who actually ŅbuiltÓ some of the ambient tracks
in the film and some effects. HeÕs an artist who works with sound a lot in his
installation work and I would meet with him with two sentence descriptions of
what I wanted, something like Ņa printing press thatÕs mis-firing along with a distant
high pitched whirrÓ and he would actually record certain sounds and then
manipulate them in a computer. Then weÕd meet and heÕd play them to me and IÕd
say Ņthe printing press is still too regular, make it sound like more gears
have stripped teethÓ and then heÕd work on them more. I would also go back and
say that I think this idea of sound is a remembrance of when I first moved to
New York and was overcome by all the sounds from the streets. I would
constantly be overwhelmed by the white noise of cars, sirens, foreign
languages, distant planes. I had never experienced a ŅsoundtrackÓ like this
before coming from California. There you constantly create your own soundtrack
by what music you play in your car.
As an Asian-American or more specifically a
Japanese American filmmaker, how do you feel about working with
"non-Asian" material, actors, etc? Does working from the point of
view of your experiences as a Japanese American interest you or define your practice? Some
programmers in Asian American festivals have a problem with an Asian American
filmmaker not choosing to work with Asian American themes. I think ItÕs a
really interesting question because I still think of you as an Asian American
filmmaker regardless.
Yes, I would probably agree with your opinion.
You are always defined by your experience even if you donÕt want to be. What is
an Asian American filmmaker if not a filmmaker whoÕs Asian American? I think
the notion of working with material thatÕs strictly ŅAsian AmericanÓ would be
for me just as fictional or experimental or whatever as any other material. I
make films that are about what I perceive to be slips and slides in culture
from my perspective. If IÕm Japanese-American or Asian-American, isnÕt that
informed by my experience? There are really important issues within the Asian
American community that have to be explored but they have been by people much
more close to that material than I am but this shouldnÕt invalidate any other
type of work made by Asian American filmmakers though. That would be an
extremely conservative position that could only blow up in the face of those
who believe in it. Interesting things come from the least expected places so I
wouldnÕt always look to the center. All that being said, I think our collective
experiences as Asian-American (which already wipes out all the differences in
each of the Asian cultures) is an ongoing project that can only be written and
thought about entirely when we have some perspective on it. The problem is to
not believe that the present is the shit. WeÕve got to document the moment and
then let others theorize and build upon it. ItÕs up to the filmmakers though,
now, to do some work. Asian American films are pretty codified, uninventive.
Too many young filmmakers are worrying about how to get a career in the movie
business before making a body of work.
There aren't too many Asian American
experimental filmmakers working in feature length films-Jon Moritsugu, Shu Lea
Cheang can you think of anyone else?
There really arenÕt very many although I
really donÕt know about the younger filmmakers coming up. IÕm sure there are
some. I think the biggest issue in terms of experimental film, in general, is
the lack of historical perspective. ItÕs back to the style versus substance
problem. Experimental film had a project at one time or another, whether it was
to create films that explored time, how film could be similar to painting,
philosophy, writing, politics, etc. This is why you should make experimental
work, not because you want to get a job directing car commercials.
Edited version of this discussion appeared
in CINEVUE magazine
INTERVIEW
BY LINA LAM, SHIRLEY XU, NIKKI HUNG
We want to know a little bit about your background. What drove
you into filmmaking, especially experimental filmmaking?
I took a history of film class at UC San Diego
with this crazy French guy, Jean- Pierre Gorin. He came in about twenty minutes
late to a class that was like 350 students and put on this movie, PEEPING TOM
by Michael Powell about a serial killer
who kills people with a knife in one of the tripod legs and he actually has a
camera with a mirror and he films the people while heÕs killing these women.
Gorin shows this movie and the lights come on after an hour and a half and he
says, Ņthis is where the history of film startsÓ and then he just walked out.
I started taking film classes from then on.
And then from that I ended up in photography and art classes. I did photography
for about two years and the photo pieces I started doing first, they were just
single images, then photos with text and then installations that were series of
photos with text underneath them and I thought well, I should just make a movie
instead of making these pieces that were more and more like films.
So why did you move from California to New
York?
When I finished graduate school, I got
accepted into a one year long program called the Independent Study Program of
the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Then you decided to stay?
Yeah, in Los Angeles, there was no independent
filmmaking at all. New York has an independent film scene that probably dates
from the 60s, media organizations like Asian Cinevision which Angel is a part of, has been
around for I think twenty five years now, first as a community based video
workshop place, and then a festival which is pretty amazing. Third World
Newsreel has been around for a long time, and the Anthology Film Archives, so
thereÕs this whole history of independent and experimental filmmaking.
Throughout your films, the theme of
identity weaves through them. How does that contribute to your films?
IÕm working on a project right now thatÕs
going to be my third feature length 16 mm movie called, I WAS BORN, BUTÉ, a
title from a Japanese film by Ozu
who made all of these films about the family changing—like either
the daughter leaves the home to move to Tokyo, or the grandfather diesÉ
something about the family structure changing. And I took the title because the
film IÕm working on is about my memories of being in bands and things when I
was younger. The whole idea is based on becoming a punk. Growing up in L.A. was
so homogenous and it was this weird thing of making myself different to hide my
difference. I dyed my hair blue and did all this stuff to make myself even more
different. And the punk scene in Los Angeles then, in the late 70s, was very
interesting. It was the first time I met queer kids, Mexican American kids, a
real mix in this kind of scene. I used to take photographs of all these bands,
went to all these clubs all the time. So I think on two levels, music has been
a really big influence on me.
But its also that idea of punk rock--even if
you donÕt know how to play an instrument, donÕt know how to sing, whatever, you
just start a band so thatÕs what I did. And the thing is, when I started making
films-- film is thought of such a technological medium, and itÕs like, you
canÕt do it, you need a fifty person crew. When I started making movies, I just
did the same thing, a couple of friends just started making films. ItÕs all
about the idea, itÕs not really about how well done it is or anything like
that, itÕs all about the energy and the emotion. Music was always this parallel
track that I had-- being an Asian American born in L.A., going to schools where
I was one of five kids of colorÉ and not being able to process that-- music
became a way to escape that and also to process it on another level.
Somebody asked me once, what are my identity
politics? And I said, I donÕt like those words anymore. But I think identity is
definitely always there for me and I always think of myself dealing with
identity as a reflection of culture. So itÕs like, examining culture and trying
to figure out your own identity in relationship to that. I never understood the
whole debate around political correctness and identity politics because
identity to me was always shifting, you were never one thing. So I never
understood this idea that you were always going to be one type of person or
that you canÕt be several levels or layers at the same time.
Are those categories, like Ņindependent,Ó
ŅAsian American,Ó and Ņexperimental,Ó interrelated or are they mutually
exclusive?
I think theyÕre always a part of one facet of
yourself, whatÕs interesting is how youÕre labeled, go into that arena and they
say youÕre not that. For instance, IÕve never gotten funding from any Asian
American funding sources. And even though IÕve shown in their festivals, and
they ask me to be on panels, itÕs kind of interesting because they think, Ōoh,
your work is not appropriate for funding because itÕs not specifically dealing
with Asian American subject matterÕ. But to me, all my work is about Asian
American subject matter, all of it is about culture so I donÕt understand those
kinds of regiments. And then, IÕve been supported in the art world, IÕve shown
at MOMA three or four times, the Whitney Biennial twice, the Guggenheim, and
recently IÕve been funded by an arts foundation, Creative Capital, so I have a
lot of support from there, but then in a certain way the history of
experimental film sees my work as too narrative. Like even though Andy Warhol
movies may be a big influence on my work, people wonÕt necessarily make those
connections.
Do you think the definitions of
experimental, Asian American filmmakerÉ the people who make those definitions,
you donÕt necessarily agree with them?
Yes. ItÕs always in flux and bound up in also
what is going on in the cultural moment. People ultimately, in the end, theyÕll
have your films to look at. And in the end, youÕve either made good films or
bad films.
I also think things have gotten more
essentialist. When I came to your class, and I was telling you about the 90s
and how there was so much going on with AIDS activism, African American film,
and you could see everybody at every event, there werenÕt separate little
communities. It was kind of an amazing moment fueled by certain urgencies, and
itÕs sad to say ten years later itÕs fractured again. ThereÕs really not that
much interconnectedness on a lot of levels, and I think itÕs cultural, like
society is shifting again, whatever, for better or worse, I donÕt know.
How important is a personÕs history to
their identity? Do you stumble upon your identity or does your history define
your identity? In SOME DIVINE WIND, Ben seemed to be haunted by his
history, and it seemed as though while he was being defined by history he was
trying to run away from it and make his own identity.
ThatÕs interesting. I mean that character is
sort of based on me. The premise of the story is true but the idea of Ben as
this completely assimilated character was based on a lot of my memories of
growing up in L.A. Basically you have this love story, and then the history of
the charactersÕ lives start invading their present day even if they donÕt want
that. Once that door gets opened, you canÕt stop it.
I think in this country, weÕre taught to
repress our family history or to assimilate into American culture. ThatÕs what
IÕm sort of interested in, I donÕt even know what that means. To me itÕs this
eight-headed creature. But everybody I know looks at me and they say, youÕre
totally assimilated—you were in punk bands, you skateboarded and in a
certain way I think if that means I was assimilated, I was. ThatÕs the paradox
of America,-- youÕre always an insider until difference comes up and then
youÕre an outsider. I think that this country was built on those principles,
those contradicting principles—freedom but racism. I think itÕs something
thatÕs still not worked out. I think itÕs because we always try and repress the
past and sort of hide it that so what happens is it explodes back out, instead
of talking about it.
I screened SOME DIVINE WIND once in Germany.
And it was a pretty intense screening because it was in Mannheim which was
bombed like mad in World War II, so half the city is completely new, half the
city is incredibly old. And at the question and answer afterwards, this
journalist asked me, is the idea in SOME DIVINE WIND that multiculturalism in
America doesnÕt work? And I sat there, and I didnÕt know what to say, because
coming from their history, going through all these wars, to say that was such
an intense question. I didnÕt know how to answer it.
So in general, when your audience leaves
the theater after screening one of your films, what sort of feelings do you
want them to take away with them? Is there a message in every one of your
films.
I hate the idea that people go to see films
and then they go eat dinner afterwards and thatÕs it. When I was in film school
we would see movies with groups of friends and sit there and talk about them
for two hours afterwards. And that was how I learned to watch movies. I hate
the fact that films have become so simple, and itÕs for a lot of reasons, but I
hate that. When I make a film, I always try out different things and if I try
out seven things and four work out, IÕm pretty happy. The three that fall apart
I try and deal with that in the next movie. IÕve never tried to make the
perfect film. I donÕt know if I could. I guess it was coming out of this art
background, studying sculpture, it was always about changing things, reworking
ideas. Why canÕt you make a narrative film that has all these experimental
things in them? Have a story with all these digressions where the movie can
fall apart? Or have five minutes of screen black with sound, an out of focus
shot, anything can go? So that is fascinating for me as a filmmaker, and that
is something that really drives me.
Maybe the reason why experimental,
independent films arenÕt reaching a larger audience is because the audience is
afraid that they wonÕt understand. Before I took this class, there was an
intangibility around independent/experimental films. Is there a problem there
we should address?
Well I think itÕs always context, right? If
youÕre not exposed toÉ the thing is, most independent films are bad. ThatÕs one
thing. I mean you guys go see independent films, read about themÉMost of them
arenÕt interesting. And I think itÕs because that project failed on certain
levels--the idea of making a film outside of the industry-- because thereÕs
always been a commercial industry.
I used to go to a place called The Collective
for Living Cinema where they would show really important historical films and
the curator, really interesting guy Mark McElhatten would show a young
filmmaker with these films. So you have this built in audience that is going to
see these old films but then they would be exposed to this younger filmmaker
making work that was similar. Before that place closed, I was going there three
or four times a week and every show was sold out and it was really interesting
because there was some sort of context to talk about the film, to look at it in
a historical trajectory and I think that broadened the audience.
The thing is, most theaters show films in a
one or two week run and the time people start hearing about it, like at the
quad or Cinema Village whatever, itÕs gone, right? ItÕs moved somewhere else or
itÕs gone totally. So distribution is a big problem. How do you create a
context so that people can see these films? But you also have to look at the
way the film industry has always operated on a blockbuster or a surprise hit,
thatÕs where they make money. They donÕt really think about it in trying to
create a better context to look at more difficult work. They donÕt really care.
ItÕs all about how we can find the independent film thatÕs going to be the
surprise hitÉ you know BLAIR WITCH 5 or whatever. ThatÕs how they approach the
economics of it.
Are you bored with the state of filmmaking
now? What are your next steps, what are your plans?
ThereÕs filmmakers that I admire a lot. I love
seeing their movies and IÕm friends with them, but by in large, I am bored with
how the film world is now. ItÕs really not that interesting. A lot of it is
because experimentation ended. And thatÕs kind of sad so I donÕt see that many
films anymore. Ten years ago, I would go to some festivals, try to see every
movie. Now the situation is the same thing over and over again.
You personally want to do something about
that? Say, hey guys, lets revive this!
Well itÕs sort of changing I think. I teach
film production, and I try not to be too cynical to the students because
theyÕre excited about learning to make films and I donÕt want to be a downer. I
always say to them, well, it could be the worst time right to be a young
filmmaker but that also means it could be the best time. Because now, with all
the DV stuff, people are saying DV feature, etc etcÉ all that stuff is kind of
bogged down already and people are sick of all that stuff which means if you
make a good film, it could do better than your wildest expectations now. You
can do phenomenal things if you learn your craft, be a good filmmaker. For me
itÕs like, be ethical. Trying to be ethical in a completely sick industry.
Totally opportunistic and sexist and racist, but stillÉ
I also have problem with, what is
mainstream, what is American? Is McDonalds, the Gap American? Do you think we
should assimilate or should we seperate from mainstream culture or have our own
identity and coexist?
Well, I think we are assimilated. ArenÕt we
part of culture just being a participant in the culture? I mean, I teach. I
have thirty or forty students that graduate every year that take classes with
me so I think, IÕm participating in cultureÉ they take my cynical views with
them.
Do you make it a point that you are an
Asian American filmmaker to them?
No, but I try and talk
about their own experiences because I think thereÕs parallels even though we
may seem very different. The school I teach at, New Jersey City University,
Caucasians are in the minority there. The other thing is that class is a big
issue at that school. How do you develop your own set of ethics in relationship
to all this stuff? ItÕs complicated. I say to them to them constantly youÕre
not trying to be the next hot director. You want to make good films, you want
to make films for a long time. When I teach technical classes, I choose the
women in the class to do the technical jobs because if you donÕt do that, then
the guys try to dominate. They want to be the cameramen, and I just say, no,
you canÕt do that. You set up
certain parameters for your own life. This is what your mission is, or
whatever, and you do that. And thatÕs participatingÉ assimilatingÉ
But thatÕs the
conflict of kids born to immigrant families, the push pull back and forth. I
always think that maybe it shouldnÕt be a curse but it could be something
interesting. Like being in flux could be a way to live in both worlds and
enrich your own life or enrich culture. Why do you have to leaveÉthatÕs why
kids of immigrants donÕt want to be anything like their parents. I was like
that. My family when I was young wanted to send me to learn Japanese and I
wanted to play baseball. ItÕs an interesting thing because you have both of
them, why not take both of them – youÕll take both of them with you to
the grave.
This interview was
conducted with several students from a course taught by filmmaker, Angel Shaw,
at NYU and was published in CINEVUE magazine. 4/02
2.WRITING ON FILM by Roddy Bogawa
LESLIE THORNTON: THE (PROCESS) ART OF
FILMMAKING
Technologically speaking, the triumph over gravity (the
steadicam system) and filmic lag time (video playback) in a relatively short
time, has radically changed relationships between subject and filmmaker. These
two ŌinnovationsÕ are the first baby steps towards a new seamless, digitalized
age. Theoretically speaking, the destruction of screen space (the steadicam
shot) allows the ŌactionÕ to be centered at all times—substituting the
possibilities of gyroscopic innovation (adaptation) for what formerly was
accomplished with camera placement and editing (not to mention dynamic). As a
one-trick pony, the steadicam shot amounts to little more than a visual
ŌeffectÕ (a roving point of view shot, a Ōyou are thereÕ follow the action
shot, etc.) that foreshadows a primitive imaging of what moving through virtual
reality promises (without the interactive possibilities). Overused and
underthought, the phenomenon in a perverse reverberation has made the handheld
shaky camera image exoticized. The development of new viewing systems such as
video tap (the process by which a film camera can simultaneously record or
monitor onto video what is being filmed) has realized what speed can be
harnessed. The concept of Ōfilm dailiesÕ now seems to have an unimpressive ring
to it, and one wonders what translation happens when framing a shot can be done
by group0 vote in front of a television screen as opposed to the director of
photography peering into the viewfinder. Perhaps it is too early to see how
non-linear digital video editing machines (AVID and optical disc systems) will
affect post production work (though someone I met recently told me he finished
a rough cut of a feature length film in under one week!).
How boring it is to make movies! How exciting
it must be for Leslie Thornton to make her work! Paradoxically, ThorntonÕs
films seem to exist in two dramatic technological moments. One feels as if she
could not make her films at any other time than now (at the meeting point of
virtual reality sensorium, the physical body in revolutionary urgency, and the
reinvigoration of adapting human life to outer space) while the films
themselves speak of the wonder and newness of film as a technological
invention. This ever present tension in her work makes one feel at times that
each edit amounts to another tooth pulled (sheer precision) and the beauty of
every image submerges the viewer in a world that is familiar yet bewildering,
alien yet desirious.
In her most well known
piece, PEGGY AND FRED IN HELL (1985-?), Thornton documents a brother and sister
exploring, ransacking, and storytelling with artifacts in a supposed
underground post-nuclear bunker (in fact an old apartment of ThorntonÕs). Like
a futuristic Ōwild childÕ, Fred sings songs of old (country western tunes) for
an unknown audience (perhaps us or the witnesses to the opening of the time capsule).
Amidst cascading plants, debris, spectacular backdrops (is that a Jack
Goldstein painting?), Peggy jerks and recites ŌBilly JeanÕ by Michael Jackson
word for word but sans melody – testament to the immortality of pop
music. Peggy and Fred are brilliant sifters of culture, sophisticates with a
glorious naivete. The appropriate, they quote, they cannibalize. They perform
but within a hermetic environment that resembles more a dump site than a stage.
Filmically speaking, the PEGGY AND FRED series
(that is what it must be called as to this date after some five entries that
not only include film but video and film/video simultaneously projected, it
remains ŌuncompletedÕ, is significant for its retrenching of avant-garde
strategies within contemporary cinema (can it be called that without an end
point?). Is this a documentary? Is this an anthropological film? Is this a
science project? Are bits and pieces of an experimental film (yes, that is
itÉthat must be it)? I am struck by the anti-technological look of the film
camera burns within shots, ŌamateurishÕ )read stylized) camera work that frames
like a crude robotic eye, recycled footage that makes the entire film seem as
if it were made either at the dawn of cinema or its demise.
STRANGE SPACE (1993), a video work co-produced
with the actor Ron Vawter, is a three minute geometric puzzle about interior
and exterior knowledge (read unknowable) narrated by Vawter reciting passages
from Rilke while a woman conducts a medical examination. The image track is primarily
composed of shots of Vawter embedded within some type of grid filling the
screen. Other boxes appear (boxes within boxes) showing NASA space footage shot
on the moon and other amorphic shapes. The images often flip, Vawter in the
tiny box, the space footage within the larger, obscuring and revealing. While
appearing to be of the future (one cannot help but think of the internet grid,
jacking in to leave the corporeal behind), Vawter has a curious handle-bar
mustache that recalls another period. The words and delivery of Rilke by Vawter
also contradicts (read parallels) this time slip. To ponder death, oneÕs own or
that of a friend is to move into the future or recall the past simultaneously.
It is an intensely heavy visual image (the moon and beyond and inside
encompassed by the grid) bereft by Rilke and VawterÕs presence/absence.
These two works, PEGGY AND FRED IN HELL and
STRANGE SPACE are curiosities; one an unfinished piece of indeterminate length,
the other a mere three minutes. Both are intricate examinations of the seen and
not seen, both inherently structured by a deliberate shifting relationship to
time – cinematic and cultural and technological. From somewhere within
the rhyzomatic maze of complexities and contradictions, a new film by Thornton
has emerged – THE GREAT INVISIBLE, that provides another facet to her
project. Described byt the filmmaker as an Ōexploded biographyÕ of Isabelle
Eberhardt, a European woman who eventually moved to North Africa and lived
among the people there disguised as an Arab man. THE GREAT INVISIBLE has as its
core – four different Isabelle Eberhardts. Each woman plays different
aspects or periods of her character, though at points in the film, two may be
in a scene at the same time. Deliberately confounding, this gesture is
successful at visually constructing a relentless push-pull effect between the
filmmaker, subject, and viewer. ŌThis film is beautiful and you want to know
about this woman, but no matter how you try, you can truly not understand her
pain, her thoughts, her death. And this is true for all of cinemaÕ, it seems to
scream. The camera work and editing in THE GREAT INVISIBLE also add to this
ŌexplosionÕ of desire (read biography) Soundtracks start and stop, rewind
compete with each other (a North African song and a piano piece) switching from
traditional mood accompaniment to Brechtian punctuation. The camera frame crops
to the point that the viewer must almost imagine what is there outside just
beyond our sight. Things in the foreground (shadows, ornate partitions)
obscure, while other things are obscure, foreign.
Speaking of Isabelle Eberhardt, she has been
described by Thornton as a Ōwayward child of the Victorian ageÕ, a woman in the
late 1800Õs who learned six languages and was versed in history, philosophy,
literature, and the sciences. Giving up Europe for the life of that of a Nomad
among the Sufi Brotherhood, Eberhardt drowned at age twenty-seven in a flash
flood in the desert where there had been no rain for forty years. She was an
exotic in search of exoticism. A woman masquerading as a man, living at the
turn of the century. A nomad killed by modernism.
To attempt some kind of summary of Leslie
ThorntonÕs films would be a betrayal. I donÕt imagine she would want that, nor
do each readily provide clues to their taxonomy. Each is radically different
and to follow a particular path from bits of fragments could lead to a
cul-de-sac as well as a vantage point. If anything, PEGGY AND FRED IN HELL,
STRANGE SPACE, and THE GREAT INVISIBLE, share a precise and studious look at
the familiar, the beautiful, the incomprehensible. That which is around us,
located deep within desire, and the imaginary is the terrain of the films of
Leslie Thornton. And for that, they should be looked at and will be timeless.
Essay written for PURPLE PROSE (published,
issue no. 6)
ŅPretentious and self indulgent. Viewers will
be as bored as the characters.Ó Variety
ŅA victim of its own devicesÓ. The Hollywood
Reporter
IMITATION OF LIFE
Jon Moritsugu and co-director Jacques Boyreau
have made the unspeakable – a 95 minute film about love, death, cinema,
and the boring state of life in the post Reagan/post punk/post modern nineties.
Filmed in 16mm black and white that is as contrasty and washed out as its
characters, HIPPY PORN mirrors the generation of its existence – at any
moment an existence for its makers, characters, and viewere, that seems likely
to fall apart, but goes on for lack of anything better. HIPPY PORN is too close
for comfort, a machine sputtering and wheezing, resigned to its eventual
breakdown and demise.
The poster proclaiming the film as Ōemptier
than kisses better than deathÕ (later re-worked on a flyer as Ōemptier than
kisses, betterÕn meth), sums up the plot/life of M, L, and Mick, three
ŌprotagonistsÕ attending an Ivy League college. Self consciously apathetic,
each of the characters live out distant versions of their desires – M
studies the ŌAesthetics of CrimeÕ hoping to learn about titillating murders but
finds itÕs Ōanother boring majorÕ, L isnÕt interested in sex but steals nude
and mutilation pictures from the one hour photo shop where he works, Mick wants
to be in a rock band but only writes school papers on what it would be like to
be in a rock band. In an early scene of the film, L asks M for a cigarette. As
L is smoking, M picks up her bags to leave, walks three steps, drops her bags,
and then lights a cigarette of her own. The camera stays in the same position;
denying the ŌactionÕ, as if knowing M has no where to go but two feet to the
right within the frame. In a later scene, which is both funny and visually
beautiful, L and M go on a shoplifting spree to cheer themselves up. L and M
massage their breasts as a distraction (handheld camera by Boyreau, with
graphics flashing ŌSTEAL YEAHÕ_ then, after their escape (filmed in slow
motion), L comments Ōmost of what we stole was junk, but thatÕs the point.Õ
This momentary spurt of energy in the film (resembling a bizarre updated GUN CRAZY
compressed into two minutes and made HIPPY PORN) is immediately offset by the
next scene – slow, shot from far away, asynchronized sound, washed out.
Life, as one character acknowledges in the film is Ōlong stretches of boredom
punctuated by moments of funÕ.
Mick and M begin their love affair while
hunting rats in the sewers, and at first it seems their relationship might
change things. But terminal boredom (Ōsex is highly overratedÕ) and their
inability to communicate (Ōwhat do you say to each other when itÕs over?
Nothing. I left before he work up.Õ) dooms the affair. M, L, and Mick canÕt
look outside themselves because there is no longer any inside or outside. They
are their own subject and absolutely unimpressed.
GRAMMAR OF HELL / APPROPRIATION AND PASTICHE
Jon Moritsugu is Dennis Hopper (of the EASY
RIDER and THE LAST MOVIE period) gone post punk. He cannibalizes HopperÕs flash
frame techniques and non-linear interventions to energize the dead weight of
the narrative lulls, thereby substituting a sixties hippie sensibility with
punk abandon. Moritsugu explores the emptiness of the Ōrealm of the cinematic
deadÕ while simultaneously being enthralled with the details of its
decomposition. In the opening of the film, M runs over a cat on the way to school.
While the camera holds on the dead cat, the buzzing of flies going in and out
of the catÕs mouth gets louder and louder. M speaks her first line of dialogue.
Simply, ŌsorryÕ. HIPPY PORN is GodardÕs WEEKEND remade by WarholÕs factory, a
road movie about the End of the Road. The Pure Beauty of Decay.
In a short scene Mick spray paints his
clothes, snorts the fumes and between the last gasps of his high, gives a
pseudo-academic lecture on the genealogy of punk from Johnny Rotten to Iggy Pop
to Richard Hell to Marlon Brando to Errol Flynn, etcÉIn another segment, Mick
reads his sophomore paper titled ŌI Sing the Body Divided. Dismemberment as
Universal Signifier in Rock MusicÕ. These arenÕt anti-intellectual jokes but
poignant moments that underscore the division of experience from cultural
readings of the events (or non-events). In Andy WarholÕs film, VINYL, an
ŌadaptationÕ of A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, the relationship of Gerard Malanga, Edie
Sedgewick, or any of the other characters to the story or narrative is fleeting
at best. The disjuncture between Malanga, Sedgewick, and the others as actors
in the film or playing themselves is inseparable. Similarly, there is a
compelling dialogue between the characters, M, L, and Mick and their real life
counterparts Liz Canning, Victor E. of Aquitane, and Marek Waldorf, that speaks
with lucidity and honesty. This is artifice but then again, it isnÕt. To their
filmmaking credit, Jon Moritsugu and Jacques Boyreau capture truly great
performances – Liz Canning and Victor E. of Aquitane perform a surreal
cabaret number, Marek Waldorf brushes his teeth while doing a ŌprimitiveÕ dance
to a punk song (a la EL SPECTRO ROJO). To their nihilistic credit, Moritsugu
and Boyreau structure their cinematic forms and experiments to imitate life
– confused, bizarre, and often banal. At one point, L says, ŌI wish there
was a way to fast forward to the good partsÕ. Thing is, you canÕt. If Andy
Warhol once revealed the glamour of fifteen minutes of fame, Moritsugu reveals
the humdrum life after that brief bliss.
ŅAs I said, I want a show of my own-called
Nothing Special.Ó Andy Warhol.
THE WORLDÕS A MESS, ITÕS IN MY KISS
There is no nostalgia in HIPPY PORN for failed
utopian visions. Art, learning, writing, sex and punk have become symptomatic rather
than redemptive. ItÕs hard to label the film cynical as to do so would imply
there is something better to aspire to. The last line of dialogue, ŌI never
found out why heÉÕ isnÕt even allowed to finish. When M gets kicked out of
school for slashing paintings in an art show and Mick kills himself to Ōget
attentionÕ, one gets the sense that these events are all part of the entropy.
No drama, no emotional shifts, no climax. George Bush was elected president
with a platform that guaranteed Ōfour more years of the sameÕ. At the time, no
one questioned what the ŌsameÕ was or meant. HIPPY PORN dives headfirst into
the reality of BushÕs vision, revealing the horror of the ŌsameÕ – a
world without transcendence, a world of steadfast parameters
CITIZEN K: NEW YORK SURVEY
It's an incredibly depressing moment when you
come to realize how much of art and filmmaking is about business. One shouldn't
have ever been surprised (remembering the origins of cinema - the circus as
theaters, magicians and charlatans as director and producer), but one dreams
and desires for something else beyond the 'crossover hit', 'box office smash',
'indie success'. Perhaps this has never been the case (dead and buried with THE
MAN WITH THE MOVIE CAMERA). Still there is something interesting in the
"journey", one that is peripheral to the five or so well traveled
routes Hollywood prescribes must be taken. This is where I search for tracks
from my tribe.
Making films is like having your teeth pulled
(at least the type of filmmaking my friends and I make). There's a lot of
unnecessary torture and masochistic pleasure involved. For what? To make
something that takes up two years of your life and five christians in a cave
will see? Filmmaking is the most wasteful art form created by the modern world
and you should acknowledge this at every moment. Your filmmaking should be
motivated from guilt and you should try and make something that isn't a piece
of shit. And there's an awful lot of shit out there.
Written for citizen k (French fashion
and art magazine). 7/95
"My favorite film set in New York has got
to be a recently released film shot over twenty-years ago called DOWNTOWN 81
written by Glenn OÕBrien, produced by Maripol, the art director and stylist,
and directed by photographer Edo Bertoglio. It's a film that features a young
Jean Michel Basquiat playing a character pretty much like himself - that is
selling paintings for a few hundred bucks to pay his rent, cruising downtown
clubs, and doing street graffiti (the shot of him doing the samo tag is worth
the price of admission!), and just of the cusp of hitting it big as an artist.
It's a gem of a time capsule - the shots of the abandoned lots on the lower
east side, performances by DNA, James White and other bands, the hip hop scene
in a basement apartment, and of course, Deborah Harry as a homeless woman /
fairy godmother who ends up granting Basquiat's wish of making some hard cash.
He stuffs homeless peoples' pockets with bills as he heads towards Houston
street where he buys a cadillac, tags it with his graffiti, and spends the last
moments of the film driving around New York as the morning breaks. Fucking
brilliant! It's hard to imagine this film was lost for so long but to emerge
just a few years ago is like uncovering some tomb of cave paintings. It's a
movie that really speaks to why I wanted to move to New York, where danger and
adventure lurk in any back alley and you could turn water into wine...."
Written for a survey of New York based independent
filmmakers on their Ōfavorite movieÕ shot in New York. 5/04
I WISH I HAD CHANTAL AKERMANÕS CAJONES
When my students talk about wanting to become
filmmakers, I always ask them why? Is it that you canÕt stop making films, you
shoot even when youÕve got no ideas or money, you love being around an editing
room? If you make film so you can get invited to all the parties at Sundance,
then thatÕs cool. So be it, everyone likes a good party, but for fuckÕs sake,
put in some work first. How do you develop respect or a set of ethics working
in an industry dead set on destroying these aspirations (how many distributors
does it take to ruin a filmmakerÕs career?).
I feel out of step, out of sync with a moment
that bears little interest to my concerns as a filmmaker. Between the cracks,
fallen off the truck (the self imposed moniker of my film company,
FallenCinema). Culture has quickened and filmmakers are slow to the punch. The
notion of oppositional cinema of form and content has devolved into a simple
replacement of content or the cannibalization of surface style. ItÕs a
rejection of the past, a lightweight attempt to insert yourself into the
present so you can get invited to the right parties. There are so little
thrills in filmmaking now that I grasp for any glimmer of excitement, long for
something thatÕs not there.
If this sounds like a dirge, itÕs not. ItÕs a
call to arms, a sounding of the alarm. Look out, I and a ragtag handful of others
are going to steamroll you motherfuckers. Get ready, the funÕs about to begin.
This
piece appeared in Cinevue as part of a survey on ŌIndependent FilmmakingÕ from
various directors with films in the festival. 6/02
BETWEEN NIRVANA (heaven) AND PAVEMENT
(earth)
"Usually, all I need is tracing paper and
a good light."[1]
Long before andy warhol began making his
'films', his art manipulated public opinion. In a an interview by cavalier
magazine from september 1966, his paintings were endearingly described as
"cruel, unsentimental, machine-like, mass produced, tedium-induced,
purposefully banal, nasty (?)...unsigned, clichˇ carved, stereo-typed,
dehumanized, mass mediaized...carefully contrived exact, disciplined..."[2]
One of my favorite series of paintings were the ones he 'did' quite later, in
1978; the oxidation paintings. They're rarely reproduced in survey
catalogues, either a buried page or one small image, perhaps because they
literalized the phrase 'taking the piss' out of someone. By that time, he had
stopped making films. The year andy warhol died, 1987, I finished my first-a
small room in the big house. It was also the year, I broke up the last band I was in.
I loved warhol's movies like I loved punk rock
as a sixteen year old. I liked the fact his movies could be summed up by a
title and a still image-eat, sleep, kiss, etc. I heard about
his films before I saw them and seeing them in a way wasn't half as fun as
describing them or having them described to you. david james has written that
in warhol's films "the spectator is revealed as being as much a function
of the camera as are the actors"[3].
Images of friends climbing onto four foot high stages at particular points in
songs and dancing madly only to launch themselves back into the crowd at
another point in the music bring back warm feelings. After seeing most of
warhol's films, I feel very similar to how I did initially---you can pin them
down (as much as they do so to themselves) but there is an inexplicable
elusiveness embedded within them as well. That is a guy sleeping, but is
that it?
SOME FILMS
kiss, sleep, haircut, eat, empire, couch, blow-job, shoulder, harlot, apple, pause, lips, suicide, drunk, horse, vinyl, bitch, restaurant, kitchen, prison, face, afternoon, space, camp, hedy, lupe, bufferin, courtroom, sausalito, rollerskate.
NOTES FROM THE (POP) UNDERGROUND
In 1966, warhol was asked, "do you want a
lot of people to see your films?", to which he replied, "I don't
know. If they're paying to see them."[4]
That year, at the tender age of minus one, kurt cobain of nirvana couldn't possibly
remember warhol's ambivalent answer- but twenty six years later, he writes,
"I don't feel the least bit guilty for commercially exploiting a
completely exhausted rock youth culture because, at this point in rock history,
punk rock (while still sacred to some) is, to me, dead and gone. We just wanted
to pay tribute to something that helped us to feel as though we had crawled out
of the dung heap of conformity. To pay tribute like and elvis or jimi hendrix
impersonator in the tradition of a bar band. I'll be the first to admit that
we're the 90's version of cheap trick or the knack but the last to admit that
it hasn't been rewarding."[5]
warhol couldn't have been more prophetic when he wrote "business art is a
much better thing to be making than art art".[6]
I bought nevermind along with most of my friends. It was edgy and strange pop (?)
music that made me desperate to buy records again. It made me want to go to
club shows and be in a band again.
the next year, pavement put out their record, slanted and enchanted.
I was dressed for
success
but success it never
comes
and I'm the only one
who laughs
at your jokes when they're so bad
and your jokes are always bad
but they're not as bad as this.
(lyric to here, pavement)
I love to walk but I can't
I love to swim but I can't
I love to sit in the sun but I can't
I love to smell the flowers but I can't
I love to play tennis but I can't
I love to water-ski but I can't
(quote from warhol)[7]
I'm trying, I'm trying, I'm trying, I'm
trying...
(lyric to conduit for sale!, pavement)
slanted and enchanted had a cover that looked like the title
was painted with liquid paper solution and scrawled by scratching into it
with pennies. You could be puzzled by it and sing along to it. I
cannibalized my bank account in search of every out of print sonic youth record (realizing the
great music they were still putting out) and starting reading fanzines
again. I bought records and cd's of bands that were on labels like sub pop, matador, drag city, caroline... (remember slash, posh boy, twin tone, sst...) without knowing
what they sounded like.
RAPE ME (1993)
teenage angst has paid off well
now I'm bored and old
(lyric to serve the servants, nirvana)
In late november, as an homage and a dirge, I
made a short film- if andy warhol's super-8 camera could talk?. A single image
'film' of warhol's super-8 camera sitting on a window shelf. 100 ft. 16mm roll,
unedited. Shot silent with a sound track added later (a phone solicitor
repeating 'hello, hello' for 3 minutes).
THE YEAR OF THE DOG (1994)
'career, career, career, career, career,
career!'
(lyric from cut your hair, pavement)
I go into massive pre-production on a new
film, junk, which my producer and I pitch as a version of stalker by tarkovsky as
re-made by andy warhol. The description is met with absolute delight or
absolute puzzlement. We smile, knowing we're on to something. I finish the
third draft of the script listening to codeine's frigid stars lp on headphones (the
cd player programmed to repeat and volume so high I often find myself
delirious).
I start seeing warhol everywhere. Not the weekly
world news incarnate vision, but the real thing. It seems the
world at large has finally caught up with the bits and pieces warhol discarded
in the factory trash. Some absorb, inhale, or ingest. Some mimic and get it wrong. One day after a night of binging
that ends up in the bathroom of save the robots, I wake to find myself on the
couch of a friend's apartment. I flip on mtv which happens to be broadcasting
the entire series of 'episodes' of the real world show. I lay
transfixed for some six hours engrossed in something that's kind of like real
time but not really (an odd feeling considering I am also locked in his
apartment and can't leave and teetering on vomiting every half hour or so).
Later, I think about warhol and how he wanted to keep the video cameras on all
the time in the factory to capture the banal and the ordinary (who knows what
it will get?). I hear that in fact the kids in the real world show answered wanted
ads (cast?) and were interviewed for the parts (benetton uber alles). Even one
of the girls wants the guy behind the camera. This is the real world, I guess.
LAST FILMS (WITH MORRISSEY)
fuck (blue movie), flesh, trash, heat, l'amour
SOME BANDS
pond, ride, sugar, plywood, codeine, seam, come, superchunk, swell, hole, cell, bum, olivelawn, ween, suede, fudge, wool, unrest, unsane, belly, quicksand, milk, dustdevils, paw, lush, fur, lunachicks, morphine, acetone, mudhoney, crust, smudge...
ROOTING AROUND FOR THE FEW SECRETS PUNK STILL
HOLDS [8]
It's been how long since
Andy Warhol died? Does it matter? In america, the ghost often returns. Like
elvis or michael landon, the guy who played a ghost when alive. elvis, okay, I
understand the guns, cars, karate, taboo. But michael landon? I thought about
why warhol has never been spotted...in the back corner of some dingy club...or
dean and deluca...or the fourth floor of pearl paint. A silly image, I agree.
Every other year or so, though, it becomes clear andy never left. His art is
debated. His persona deconstructed. His savvy emulated. We sucked his blood
until his skin turned a pale white. andy was consumed by us all and shit out of
popular culture's collective ass.
If the warhol
phenomenon (read also the philosophy of warhol) exists anywhere, it has sprouted
in 'alternative' music that is no longer alternative, sub pop that is now pop,
the symptom that can now be identified as a slacker or a generation x'er. In a
recent article, pavement was described as "drone, accident as structure,
lo-fi as strategy, self-indulgence as both indifference and dedication..."[9]
Go Lo-fi. Aim below radio's technical standards. Embrace the rough edges of the
silk screens. Record an album for five hundred dollars. Dress down, be true to
your label. Piss on your canvas. On the last page of the nirvana biography[10],
kurt cobain says he'd like to re-release all of their material on vinyl but
remastered lo-fi like a bootleg recording or punk rock record. I return from
stockholm where an art critic has played me every lou reed and velvet
underground album he has collected. The last one we listen to is a live bootleg
of v.u. playing in front of one of warhol's films. I close my eyes and imagine
it's empire...
Complete essay
written for FRIEZE for the Andy Warhol Special Issue (extremely edited version
published)
STILL FRAMES
Joey Ramone died on my birthday, April 15th,
a few years back. I turned thirty-nine that day, an age for most of my life, I
couldnÕt imagine reaching (let alone in fact being). I grew up on the west
coast, born and raised in Los Angeles but now I live a block and a half away
from CBGBÕs in New York. I had seen The Ramones once in the early eighties but
wasnÕt a rabid fan though I would run into Joey around the East Village every
few months or so and sometimes pop into the holiday shows he would promote.
Almost immediately, punks had begun leaving gifts, notes, graffiti, mementos,
beer, photos and records, converse tennis shoes, flowers, lunch boxes, candles,
and assorted bric-a-brac under a big ŌJoey LivesÕ sign in front of the gates of
CBGBÕs and I decided to document this totem one morning (at least IÕd have this
on 16mm I remember thinking). Lying on the sidewalk at seven in the morning, I
started shooting close ups of all the objects and though I was quite sleepy
moving from shot to shot, I was struck by the pungent smells - weekend upon
weekend, decade upon decade – of piss, blood, and vomit embedded into the
concrete inches from my face. It seemed fitting but didnÕt make for any Proustian
moment I had ever envisioned. On one of the last shots, I framed up a
handwritten note, drawn in blue and red crayon on a ripped out sheet from a
notepad. Focusing the lens, I began reading it while I rolled the camera. ŅDear
JoeyÓ, it began, ŅI grew up in Columbus, Ohio and my life was empty. Then I
discovered The Ramones and Rock and Roll High School and everything changedÓ. I
couldnÕt see the rest of the note but I had already found myself crying
uncontrollably. Moments later, I still couldnÕt grasp what had happened.
Filming that morning had been a very spontaneous decision and this twenty
second shot that had affected me so deeply written by a fan from Columbus, Ohio
would be a prophetic one - twenty seconds that would fold back to more than
twenty years.
PARALLEL LINES
Recently I spoke in a class about Asian
American studies, and talked at length about being nostalgic for the moment of
the late eighties and early nineties art world and its swirling ambition driven
flame out (ŌHey. YouÕre coolÕ) and how key this whirlpool was to what I thought
art and filmmaking could be. I had one foot in the art world (working during
the last gasps of the Ōstudio assistantÕ employment boom) and one in the film
world (at this point, people still made films without a career planner) and
there was no codified language yet of how to visualize the explosion of theory
and conceptual work. It was precisely the crossing of boundaries, analyzing and
misunderstanding texts, riffing and jamming which led to such interesting stews
of experimentation. I had always talked about my films as sculptures, in some
interviews discussing scenes as Donald Judd boxes and with my film friends
talking about Chantal Akerman and Michael Snow films as muscular wall
constructions. Through the enveloping discourse of identity politics and
cultural critique, I pushed minimalist conceits a la WarholÕs strategic
ŌboredomÕ and conceptual interests via narratives teetering on falling apart
with open-ended structures. Co-incidentally as the film projects became more
and more elaborate, time consuming and more difficult to fund, I began making
small sculptures and drawings and bought another electric guitar.
I started playing in a version of a band with
Michael Joo, Mike Minelli, and Laura Nordman, all art world friends and weÕd
meet once a week with a six pack of beer and just improvise non-stop for three
hours. ŅNo songsÓ weÕd say and usually Laura would start a bass line and weÕd
all just follow whatever loud or soft rhythms would develop. Eventually the group
fizzled out once we started learning songs and first Laura then Mike moved
away.
THE REBEL WALTZ
At Damien HirstÕs show at Gagosian in 2000
amongst the Martha Stewarts, Steve Martins and so on, appeared Joe Strummer
with rolling travel bag in tow and I made as they say a b-line to meet him
(this some twenty years later after seeing The Clash in 1979 and 1980). Damien
and Joe had become close friends and he would be the DJ at the party later and
it turned out the rolling bag was filled to the brim with CDs. Joe was a bit
apprehensive or perhaps still reeling from the plane trip and sensing this I
simply said hello and shook his hand and he disappeared into the crowded room.
For the rest of the opening and continuing into the party, all I could talk about
was meeting Joe Strummer to my friends who were infinitely more star struck by
the movie and art world celebrities. I moved my friends closer to the table
from where Joe was manning the music and in the midst of a song, heard a loud
call several times of my name. Looking over, Joe was waving and signaling me to
come behind the table. I moved through the crowd and he handed me a lit joint
and though I hadnÕt smoked weed in years, I of course, had to. This was Joe
Strummer after all offering me his joint. He smiled as I awkwardly took a drag
and said ŌEh, Roddy, what shall we play then?Õ as I coughed and answered back
ŌLetÕs play some old reggaeÕ and he dug up some old rock steady beats that had
the crowd dancing like mad.
Much later in the early morning on the patio
of DamienÕs hotel room, Joe started a bonfire on the rooftop with some broken
up chairs and after others took control of the burning heap of furniture and
trash, Joe walked over to me and we shared a cigarette in silence looking down
West Broadway. I remember an old film teacher of mine had once told me that
making films was like sending smoke signals to your tribe and as I watched Joe
smiling at the chaos he had orchestrated, his face lit by the morning sun and
glowing fire, I couldnÕt help but think he too was still sending smoke signals
out into the world.
Excerpt from an essay written for YARD
magazine, issue no. 2.
3. ART REVIEWS by Roddy Bogawa
JASON SIMON / PAT HEARN GALLERY / SEPTEMBER 1998
Jason SimonÕs work has always in some way addressed
paradoxical interests in scale, format, and medium to that of content.
Previously, he has exhibited a 16mm film on art ŅrestorationÓ (or mutilation as
revealed by his co-director Mark Dion) of paintings freely traded and
auctioned, large format polaroid images of various knick knacks and personal
items, and an installation filled with photos of patterns of smoke, plaster
cast bones re-fitted and painted to resemble cigarette butts, and an antique
stereo broadcasting the sound of the artistÕs enthusiastic inhale and exhales.
His most recent exhibition continues this investigation while ironically
redefining the term Ōsound sculptureÕ. Indeed what better description fits a
work whose main components include two large stadium size speaker elements emanating
ambient sounds of some unknown place/event? Whereas many sound sculptures
utilize hidden speakers, multitrack audio tracks, and sophisticated
quadrophonic or other audio placement systems, SimonÕs installation, ŅPublic
Address - CollapsedÓ, inverts the notion of sound/image - visually
foregrounding the means by which we hear the magnification of sound only to
create an extremely clever minimalist sculpture of sound. The speaker
elements are gigantic, showing attachments of their once secure riggings alongside
broken and scattered chairs, drink containers, a lone shoe, pieces of drywall .
As massive forms, they are technological caricatures, abstract sculptures
reminiscent of Dr. Seuss horns (images which Simon further elaborates in a
series of drawings and collages in the show attaching these forms as body parts
and making reference to the openings of the Lincoln Tunnel as perhaps
projectors of commuters and culture). From where have they been imported? A Van
Halen concert? The Million Man March? An art auction? Whether literal or
metaphorical, the speaker elements deliberately draw the viewerÕs attention
away from patiently listening to the sounds projecting from each - a faint
sound of footsteps, some odd p.a. feedback, reverb of nothing. It is here where
the crass joke within the piece is embedded - that whatever it was, weÕve
missed the party. WhatÕs left is rubbish, emptiness, the sound of empty space
around. ItÕs time to hit the road and head home.
In a smaller untitled piece, Simon exhibits a
tiny portable monitor atop a smaller set of damaged and worn speaker horns of a
strange honeycombed design. The images are barely visible due to the size of
the monitor and even upon examination they seem relatively insignificant -
images of the artist making a pot of coffee, chopping some vegetables, a flea
market or swap meet, some trees blowing in the wind, a walk through knee high
grass, for instance. In trying to make a connection between these images, one
comes to the realization that the seduction of the piece occurs in the listening. The viewer (or
listener as it may be) is lulled into the rhythm of the sounds of these places
- blips of conversations and deal makings at the swap meet, the rustle of the
grass by oneÕs feet, the repetitive creak of a large fan rotating. Though they
are sounds of the everyday, when edited next to one another, they become
musical, evoking other senses of smell, memory, colors, texture.
Though the human eye is a relatively
sophisticated piece of equipment, it is scientifically known that the ear can
distinguish thousands of sounds in an instant. Both these sculptures are subtle
pieces and while Simon flaunts the Trojan Horse in the front room of the Hearn
Gallery, as viewers in an art gallery, we are not accustomed to privileging our
ears to our eyes, listening rather than looking at art. If installation art is
to progress in any fashion perhaps it is this facet of sculpture which needs to
be developed, and while upon first glance this show by Jason Simon seems
subtle, if you stop and listen, itÕs Proustian world is released.
Review written for Flash Art (not
published)
ASHLEY BICKERTON / SONNABEND GALLERY / JUNE
1999
Much has been made about the potential
disasters - both technological and biogeneered - that will come with the new
millenium. As we desperately restructure the world around us, we have also
returned to the primal - a schizophrenic in a log cabin obsessively writing and
creating wood carved bombs, eleven year olds hunting their own at school, taboo
sex in hallways of the White House. In a way, Ashley Bickerton has prefigured
all of this and in his newest show at Sonnabend, makes it horrifically
crystalline. Throughout his career, Bickerton has mixed metaphors, crossed
wires, layered signage in attempts to perhaps create his own Dolly clone or at
least send smoke signals to the others of his mutant tribe. His earliest
ŌboxesÕ, glossy and cryptic, were though we have all forgotten - at their
essence, text pieces. Strange conductors, lightning rods, or some forms of
automatons connected to utter ŅKUKÓ, ŅGOHÓ, and ŅUGHÓ. Like some low tech
preservation of futuristic cave paintings, the boxes were mounted with machined
brackets and delicately protected with armoured sides and corners. As a wacky
joke to the workers who installed the pieces, Bickerton often filled the boxes
with studio garbage, marbles and such to make them think they had broken in
shipping. Upon inspection, the handlers would discover the crude jokes painted
on the backside (only for their eyes).
While the work moved to more elaborate boxes
and suspension systems, the text became modern - company logos (even Bickerton
created his own - Susie Culturelux), toxic warnings, declarations (as
ŌlandscapesÕ, Ōstill lifeÕ, Ōself portraitÕ). The titles became grander and
more fantastc - ŅMINIMALISMÕS EVIL ORTHODOXY MONOCULTUREÕS TOTALITARIAN
ESTHETICÓ, ŅTHE BIG SCREWED UP CYCLE OF WOOD, SHIT, AND HUMAN TINKERINGÓ. Of
this body of work that was to become BickertonÕs signature (at least for the
moment of the explosion of the art market in the eighties), he describes it as
a Ōperverse literalismÕ - if itÕs valuable, it should be protected and also
covered, a work should thrust out into the viewerÕs space so it needs to be
somehow supported. Beneath all the armatures, cables, and mountaneering gear,
however, was the same hand and mind that painted dirty jokes on the backs of
his earliest work. Having escaped the tag of Neo Geo, Bickerton now found
himself an ŅEcoÓ artist. While the work did inform of ecological issues
confronting humankind, he didnÕt leave behind any of his reflections upon
language or self. One can still see these containers as anthropomorphised
bodies. Among the pebbles and coral in ŅCATALOGUE: TERRA FIRMA NINETEEN HUNDRED
AND EIGHTY NINEÓ, are Cheese Doodle potato chips. These works were never simply
one note pieces - humans are bad, nature is good - but rather plundered this
friction. One could consider the Ōperverse literalismÕ of ŅFLOATING TRANSPORTER
CONTAINING THE WASTE PRODUCTS OF ITS MAKINGÓ a timely masterpiece of
BickertonÕs consciousness of himself (perhaps an updated high tech Manzoni can
of shit - later he would create a floater for an Elvis suit to be set free).
Several shows later, Bickerton had moved from
abstract containers to the figurative. Grotesque monstrous bodies in
flourescent orange, black rubber sharks, a blue clear rubber cast of his own
head, photographs of dirty male and female genetalia populated his cosmos.
Whereas in much of the earlier work, painting had been relegated to frisket
masking for logo work, Bickerton now painted in unmixed black and white on
aluminum, shapes of atolls and small islands, naming them as if a Rorshach
test. As a painter moving to sculpture and slowly making his way back to
painting, this body of work is key. In this work, boxes lie alongside bodies,
painting upon sculpture, ecological concerns merge with abstraction. Amongst it
all once again, Bickerton somehow is able to maintain equilibrium along with
his sense of humor - high tech tubes attached with nets of images of genetalia
are labled with the latest cuisine, from his Buddha-like rubber cast protrudes
two large palm trees woven from human hair. If one were to decode these shows
as the segue to his latest painting shows, one could see them as the moment of
his shedding of skin, and the work, the remnants. All the references to
inebriation, classification, and of course, the South Pacific are notification
that Bickerton is indeed becoming Cat Stevens.
Of the two painting shows at Sonnabend, the latest body of work shows Bickerton
has rehatched as a beautiful creature to everyoneÕs squeals and delight.
Whereas the first show relied on grotesque charicatures (most notably in three
versions of himself - as biker, transexual, aged), ŅGoing Dutch: One ManÕs
Odyssey Into the Depths of Anal RetentionÓ demonstrates Bickerton hasnÕt lost
an ounce of obsessive technique nor complexity of thought. With a technique
closer to his earliest text boxes, the hyperreal surface of the paintings mask
their depth. All painted on treated wood and mounted to what appear to be large
blocks and then hung on the walls of Sonnabend, the work almost entirely
features extremely detailed air brushed characters and/or heads floating on
backgrounds of washes of varnish, water patterns, and blotches of quickly
applied paint. Moving from simple character studies (the earlier show reminds
one of August SandersÕ portraits gone beserk), this new work reintegrates all
of BickertonÕs past technique and vocabulary. Once again, there is the word
play (the daughter featured in THE VLAMINKOÕS among her cigarettes, walkman and
gameboy and encased in a placenta-like shape perhaps one day to emerge in
violent eruption is curiously named ŌLaxmiÕ), self portraiture (THE FIVE SAGES
includes five Bickerton heads spouting not only Ņmotherfucker, cock sucker,
etcÓ but also Ņpoo-poo, pee-peeÓ in perhaps an vague attempt at communication
not only with his collectors but his two year old son), and classification (the
painting THEM shows two figures contorted, gawking, pointing outward at the
viewer). It would be amazing to see one of the early boxes like ŅKUKÓ or ŅGUHÓ
hung next to one the paintings like a balloon of dialogue in a cartoon strip.
WhatÕs interesting about the figures that Bickerton has presented in this show
is the move from a flat representation to a more pictoral distortion achieved
in a seamless collage fashion. Not only are we to stare in awe of our own
species (the horror, the horror), but we are witness to a strange universality of
body parts. Bickerton has painted the figures from various distortions then
joined the elements perspectively for the finished character (one wonders if
like Frankenstein, theyÕre even matching parts). The push pull of this
distortion of foreshortening with elongation makes one at unease not only with
our self consciousness at looking but also its physical effect. If one stares
long enough, like a circus mirror, the distortion gives way to a bit of
dizziness. ItÕs a calculated subtle move, one to great effect that we havenÕt
seen before in any of BickertonÕs paintings. The symbols, be they Donald Duck
masks or game boys, jail tattoos or Hawaiian shirts, adorning the VLAMINKOÕS,
HERR SCHOENDORFF or the two characters in THEM, also reflect this unease - the
recognizable iconography of Manahlo Blahnik heels donÕt jive with the Nazi arm
band. It is this quality which gives the paintings their power. While we hope
Bickerton isnÕt pointing the finger at us (thank god, a lot of the time it is
at himself), we are all implicit, we are all part of the same repugnant
species, glorified hungry chimps.
While many thought BickertonÕs self imposed
exile to Bali some kind of Gaugin move, in fact, heÕs reversed it. Rather than
paint the peaceful natives, heÕs created his own village of misfits. Like the
famous image in BunuelÕs film, Viridiana, in which the homeless having taken
over the villa recreate the Last Supper, Bickerton has brought his midgets,
jugglers, fire eaters, and lion tamers to town and come home to roost.
Review of show (not published)
MOYRA DAVEY /
AMERICAN FINE ARTS
When you examine a
body of work like that of Moyra Davey, you sense a larger conceptual project
than the actual 'objects', in her case, photographs, and now collage. In previous
exhibitions, she has presented dozens of extreme close ups of worn, scarred,
and discolored pennies (essentially useless currency in this country, a
nuisance), large scale landscapes and still life scenarios magnified from the
back sides of twenty, fifty, and hundred dollar bills (the banal and the
everyday), dozens of newspaper and magazine kiosks (open/closed displays of
design, efficiency, texture, and language), South African ant hills and mining
debris (markers of work). Several words immediately come into one's mind -
obsession, traces, remnants, collections, elusiveness. But what they lead to is
something far more reaching and abstract, far less personal than what the
viewer immediately perceives - notions of loss, nostalgia, joy, the melancholia
of inescapable death.
In the latest series
of work, Ms. Davey creates literal frames - frames that encase fragmented
assemblages of photographs, cards with painted on emulsions ('liquid light'),
and objects - hackneyed Hockneys of bookshelves, record collections, domestic
junk that speak not so much of space but their content. The edges of the joined
images sometimes match perfectly, other times leaving gaps of photo paper white
negative space. Most of the time, the exposures show no change, rarely do the
seams call loud attention to themselves. These larger images seem to make up
the spine of each piece. Put together, they show details of bookshelves filled
with 50 cent dime store pulp novels, high brow cinema and art theory journals,
and eclectic record collections hinting at excess - the moment when you've
bought one too many books and to fit them onto the shelf, you begin stacking
them horizontally atop of the others .
Alongside, above, or
next to these constructions, there are glued, sometimes thumbtacked, smaller
images - a summer ice cream shack, people by the sea at outdoor food stands -
in a washed out desaturated color scheme that betrays outdated Ektachrome. In
some of these, we see the sprocket holes subtlety cueing us that they are still
frames from Super-8 film. It is then we realize the repetition of these images
are in fact different moments of a continuing sequence. We go back and look at
them again and now see the silhouette of a person moving across the frame, in
another the blur of a car. Other small stills show people eating ice cream by
the sea, solitary acts seen from afar as if Ms. Davey's voyeuristic curiosity
got the better of her rather than pick up a double scoop and sit to join them.
Almost as if a backdrop to these assemblages, are unfolded paper napkins,
marked by notations in delicate ink or spotted with shit-like coffee stains.
Not quite the mystical
constructions of Robert Frank or In its most brutal, they show a psyche flayed
and laid bare. In their most humane, it is an act of love. Perhaps this push
pull is what makes the constructions so aesthetically and emotionally engaging.
It is as if for the first time, one can see the montage theory of cinema
component by component, shot by shot. A worktable. A sketch in progress. A
rough cut. Think of in cinema the work of Robert Bresson who beat detail to
death so one could live his protagonist's experience, be it the despair of a
little girl's loss of innocence or the technical execution of a pickpocket, or
that of the more recent Hong Kong filmmaker Wong Kar Wai who with five films to
date has captured in minutia what loneliness means and what it is to follow
one's distant love like a detective searching for any clue left behind.
"An image must
be transformed by contact with other images as is a color by contact with other
colors. A blue is not the same blues beside a green, a yellow, a red."
-Robert
Bresson, Notes on the Cinematographer
The following
interview with Moyra Davey was conducted over a two week period via fax. It was
re-entered into the computer, re-arranged and re-worked.
In your latest show
at American Fine Arts in New York, you seem to be moving to a more complex set
of arrangements - within each piece and then one in relation to another. Do you
think other people's obsessions become your own?
Photography in general
is about arranging things within a frame, about creating order and meaning
where in reality none exists. Then there was another level of fastidious
choices within the collages themselves. And finally the installation is like a
giant collage. I think photography is by nature aquisitive and obsessive.
I like the idea of
the show as a big collage. This is appealing in terms of the work becoming
expansive, both formally and content-wise. An open endedness. Usually
photography shows are about distillation, recognizable name brands.
Can you talk about
the different forms within the show? The use of slightly matching separate
images, painted emulsions on different types of paper (depicting matchbook
1-800 numbers), actual objects (movie ticket stubs).
The original concept
for this series was the bulletin board, a blank space to contain various
photographs, small objects, bits of paper, etc. I also had in mind storyboards,
a series of empty frames to be filled in. The fractured photographs echo this
idea of disparate, unrelated parts adding up to a whole, or telling a story. In
terms of the mediums and materials used, I wanted to contrast different types
of photographic surfaces and resolutions. I painted a light-sensitive emulsion
onto index cards and exposed them with images of things that are flat and made
of paper such as ticket stubbs, empty matchbooks, cash register receipts etc. I
was interested in ideas of realism, naturalism, and trompe l'oeil, how it is
that realism (in the novel, in painting and in photographs) is often conveyed
through attention to mundane detail.
It's intriguing you
mention storyboards.There is a cinematic feel to the series. I think in some
way it is inextricably bound up in texture and detail. Also in filmmaking when
you make a paper edit (index cards color coded describing scenes and shots), in
some way it resembles a textual equivalent to what you've done visually. The
titles of the work seem to have a certain conceptual element to them as
touchstones for looking. Most always it's a buried book title among hundreds,
"The Octopus", a
newspaper heading, "The City", or a record, "Bitches Brew".
Are these clues to your organization of all the elements of the pieces?
All of the titles can
be found within the frame--I've always liked the idea of a title that chooses
you. Some titles refer to naturalist/realist novels such as "The
Octapus" by Frank Norris (called the American Balzac). Several others
refer to money, gambling, and indirectly to shit.
It makes me wonder
if it is then an organization built around chance? One of my favorite pieces is
"Eisenstein", the large photograph of the rear of an overstuffed
bookshelf. It seems to speak in a way not so much about the content of the
books (what titles etc. like in some of the other photographs) but really of
the enormous space and weight for storing the goddamn things. Like a minimalist
block.
It's interesting that
you mention a minimalist block. I began to think of these bookshelves as
sculptural, free-standing slabs...tombstones.
The lighting is
also quite different in that one. Could you talk about how you use natural or
artificial light?
The light in this
particular photograph is early morning window light--very fleeting. I am a
traditionalist in that I stalk natural light. Window light illuminates
selectively, often spotlights a scene. When it's not available, I use a strobe
which gives the opposite look: the hyper clarity and illumination of a
catalogue shot.
-That would
suggest at least two types of
moments - the snapshot and the portrait. The photographs have distinctive looks
to them. Not different styles perhaps, but maybe hijacked functions. There
rarely are actual people within the photographs, yet one really gets a strong
sense of a person represented by what the image reveals through objects,
framing, even lighting.
There are no people
within the photographs except in the movie frames--and these have an
abstracted, distanced quality which contrasts with the clarity and detail of
the interior arrangements.
Do you see them in
some sense as portraiture?
Funnily enough, the
bookshelves began to take on an anthropomorphic quality--I thought of these
photographs as portraits.
There is the
physical mass of the things. As well as the "knowledge" contained
within-what a person consumes on an intellectual or really practical level-how
they spend their time. In a way, these newer works take on elements of still
life constructions. That you sit with the photographs, glue them together, add
another, rather than your previous work, though one could make the observation
that all the pieces have been about looking, finding details that speak of
larger systems - collecting, transaction, work. Do you see this new assemblage
as another direction in your conceptual project? Do you take pictures all the
time?
I'd like to pursue the
theme of people eating.
This discussion
followed a solo exhibition of work by Moyra Davey at American Fine Arts, Inc.
NY (not published).
[1]andy warhol, the philosophy of andy warhol, 1975.
[2]nat finkelstein (introduction), 'inside', cavalier , september 1966,
[3]david james, allegories of cinema, p 68.
[4]ibid, cavalier.
[5]kurt cobain, record liner notes, in utero. Released in 1991, nevermind, nirvana's first major label lp, ending up selling something like 300,00 copies a week at its peak, and making $50 million USD.
[6]andy warhol, the philosophy of andy warhol, 1975. p. 144.
[7]ibid, andy warhol.
[8]joe levy, village voice, do you want to know a secret?, feb. 22, 1994.
[9]ibid, joe levy.
[10]michael azerrad, come as you are-the story of nirvana, 1993.