'i was born amidst the most grand of beams, light slashed skies, the Light Age, inaugurated in horrors of blistering faces, eyeless, limb-charred hulks wandering about streets in europe and japan begging to be awakened, not believing such hideousness even in the actuality of holding their own smouldering skin in their hands, wake up this cannot be The Light, awake to some new level of solar evocation! the other light of my childhood, it recently occurred to me, was that of the projector my uncle (also, oddly, godfather) used to create magical evenings for my relatives and myself in my grandparents’ living room. i remember intercepting my mother’s smiling black and white grainy face with my hand, pretending that that image was being generated from my hand. that is my cinema: a noisy projector constantly breaking down, an aunt “remembering when,” all of us waiting to see ourselves flattened and preserved, evenings of nearly mystical intrigue and sharing and hope. for all my words of “intentions,” “meanings,” etc., i come to see that i am really not trying to express anything with film; rather, i am trying to make some form which will recapture a certain delight in living.' -- Paul Sharits
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Bad Burns, 1982, color, 16mm
from Landscape Suicide
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Intro
'What has taken us time to fully grasp and then aesthetically accommodate is the radicality of the break Paul Sharits made. He had abandoned painting by the mid-'60s, seeing in film a practice that provided a greater range of philosophical and aesthetic registers. In short order, he created a series of canonical 16-mm works exploiting the flicker effect, including Word Movie/Fluxfilm 29 (1966), N:O:T:H:I:N:G (1968), and T,O,U,C,H,I,N,G (1968). His subsequent shift to installation — what he termed “locational film pieces” — returned his work to the gallery and brought “the act of presenting and viewing a film as close as possible to the conditions of hanging and looking at painting.” What made these works manifestly ready for the white cube was in part his singular rejection of film's representational content, its traditional reliance on mimesis and language, and in part his willingness to take the technology in hand and refashion it for his own needs.
'He composed his films using color-coded scores and fabricated them from nonobjective sources. His deployment of the standard apparatus for exhibition—the motion-picture projector—required an alteration of the transport and shutter mechanisms. For his first locational piece, Sound Strip/Film Strip , 1971, Sharits shifted the standard aspect ratio of film by projecting the images sideways, and for Shutter Interface he serially aligned the projectors in a manner that critic Rosalind Krauss described at the time as “muraliz[ing] the field of projection.” Even the visible presence of the projectors—a taboo for nearly all forms of cinema, from commercial to avant-garde—created what Krauss termed a “sculptural” presence and revealed “the work's involvement in its own material basis.”
'But formal description alone proves insufficient to capture both the impulse and the impact of these works. Sharits readily acknowledged that there were few individuals thoroughly attuned to his artistic sensibility and iconoclastic techniques. One was Stan Brakhage, the reigning figure in American experimental film for the latter half of the past century and Sharits's early mentor, who responded to the receipt of the younger artist's film Analytical Studies III: Color Frame Passages (1973–74) through his own ecstatic registers: “Within 5 seconds the glow [. . .] was moving thru my system as a heat, as it were: I COULD FEEL IT IN MY VEINS!” He clarified this experience with a description that vividly evokes the immersive quality of locational film pieces like Shutter Interface : “I was as if in midst of a delicious healing fever cycle.”' -- Bruce Jenkins, Artforum
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Further
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6 films
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from 'Wintercourse', 1962
'Until the mid-1980s, Paul Sharits thought he had destroyed 'Wintercourse'; one of his earliest works, rendered while at University studying where to put the brush on the canvas. Fortunately, he did not. If it's nothing else, 'Wintercourse' is a beautifully disoriented work of fundamentally representational cinema; at best marginally of a piece with his later 'flicker' creations (which remain stunning works, regardless of how theory-driven they might have been). Think of it as a trip through the day, but with all the coherent, recognizable moments discarded. As much as any work of so-called 'experimental' film (a debased term, I grant you), 'Wintercourse' suggests -- indeed, makes a credible case -- that the only temporal world worthy of our awareness is that which the eye records just before the mind comprehends.' -- Tom Sutpen
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'Until the mid-1980s, Paul Sharits thought he had destroyed 'Wintercourse'; one of his earliest works, rendered while at University studying where to put the brush on the canvas. Fortunately, he did not. If it's nothing else, 'Wintercourse' is a beautifully disoriented work of fundamentally representational cinema; at best marginally of a piece with his later 'flicker' creations (which remain stunning works, regardless of how theory-driven they might have been). Think of it as a trip through the day, but with all the coherent, recognizable moments discarded. As much as any work of so-called 'experimental' film (a debased term, I grant you), 'Wintercourse' suggests -- indeed, makes a credible case -- that the only temporal world worthy of our awareness is that which the eye records just before the mind comprehends.' -- Tom Sutpen
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from 'Wirst Trick', 1965
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'Piece Mandala End War', 1966
'Blank color frequencies space out and optically feed into black and white images of one lovemaking act which is seen simultaneously from both sides of its space and both ends of its time.' -- canyoncinema.com
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'Blank color frequencies space out and optically feed into black and white images of one lovemaking act which is seen simultaneously from both sides of its space and both ends of its time.' -- canyoncinema.com
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'Word Movie', 1966
'When we watch films we see and hear representations of things, sights and sounds not present at the moment of viewing. However, we choose to take part in the illusion of cinema limited by its rules and technical deficiencies. Word Movie is just a little joke of a film that makes us aware of this. On the screen you see words, another type of signifier, flashing and on the soundtrack you hear those same words read out loud. The only point this film makes is that there really is no difference between the photographic signifier, or in other words the image on the screen, and words flashing.' -- Sorsimus, IMDb
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'When we watch films we see and hear representations of things, sights and sounds not present at the moment of viewing. However, we choose to take part in the illusion of cinema limited by its rules and technical deficiencies. Word Movie is just a little joke of a film that makes us aware of this. On the screen you see words, another type of signifier, flashing and on the soundtrack you hear those same words read out loud. The only point this film makes is that there really is no difference between the photographic signifier, or in other words the image on the screen, and words flashing.' -- Sorsimus, IMDb
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'T,O,U,C,H,I,N,G', 1968-1975
'There is a sensualized form of terror present in the violent enchainment of frames in T,O,U,C,H,I,N,G, a film that inaugurates corporeal cinema, sculpting light and generating a gaseous type of perception characterized by the dancing corpuscles of its relentlessly flickering images. If Making a Home, Leo es Pardo and Chromo Sud attest a radical internalization of space, the obscene luminosity of T,O,U,C,H,I,N,G reaches a quasi-three-dimensional state of cinema, rushing at the viewer rather than inviting exploration. We could plausibly describe this phenomenon as a sort of chromatic ejaculation of light over the audience, since T,O,U,C,H,I,N,G sprays us with cinematic light, accentuating the viewers’ physical awareness of their bodies and the space surrounding them. Irrational cuts and a zero degree form of representation posit this film at the doors of cinema’s dematerialization (or what has been addressed as expanded cinema). Whilst generating a concatenation of neurophysiological vibrations beyond movement, it explores the physical exultation the rotation of images communicates directly to the brain.' -- Experimental_FilmClub
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'There is a sensualized form of terror present in the violent enchainment of frames in T,O,U,C,H,I,N,G, a film that inaugurates corporeal cinema, sculpting light and generating a gaseous type of perception characterized by the dancing corpuscles of its relentlessly flickering images. If Making a Home, Leo es Pardo and Chromo Sud attest a radical internalization of space, the obscene luminosity of T,O,U,C,H,I,N,G reaches a quasi-three-dimensional state of cinema, rushing at the viewer rather than inviting exploration. We could plausibly describe this phenomenon as a sort of chromatic ejaculation of light over the audience, since T,O,U,C,H,I,N,G sprays us with cinematic light, accentuating the viewers’ physical awareness of their bodies and the space surrounding them. Irrational cuts and a zero degree form of representation posit this film at the doors of cinema’s dematerialization (or what has been addressed as expanded cinema). Whilst generating a concatenation of neurophysiological vibrations beyond movement, it explores the physical exultation the rotation of images communicates directly to the brain.' -- Experimental_FilmClub
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from 'Shutter Interface', 1975
'Shutter Interface is a room installation that consists of four projectors placed side-by-side on large black pedestals. Their projections partially overlap, so effecting live color mixing, and creating a horizontal flood of changing hues on an infinite loop. Each filmstrip is made up of consecutive frames of solid colors punctuated by single frames of black. The pulsing flashes and disappearances of frames create optical aftereffects and sensations of horizontal currents—an environment that Sharits likened to watching "fireflies or water flowing over a dam—something that's moving. A fire or candle flame—it's shifting—but it doesn't change its form dramatically." High frequency tones are emitted from the four films’ soundtracks, echoing each appearance of the black frames, so imitating and calling attention to the shutter—a revolving wheel that separates moments of illumination and darkness as the film runs through the projector. Sharits so presents a filmic metaphor for a mechanical element normally eclipsed by the illusion of cinema.' -- Greene Naftali Gallery
(read the rest)
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'Shutter Interface is a room installation that consists of four projectors placed side-by-side on large black pedestals. Their projections partially overlap, so effecting live color mixing, and creating a horizontal flood of changing hues on an infinite loop. Each filmstrip is made up of consecutive frames of solid colors punctuated by single frames of black. The pulsing flashes and disappearances of frames create optical aftereffects and sensations of horizontal currents—an environment that Sharits likened to watching "fireflies or water flowing over a dam—something that's moving. A fire or candle flame—it's shifting—but it doesn't change its form dramatically." High frequency tones are emitted from the four films’ soundtracks, echoing each appearance of the black frames, so imitating and calling attention to the shutter—a revolving wheel that separates moments of illumination and darkness as the film runs through the projector. Sharits so presents a filmic metaphor for a mechanical element normally eclipsed by the illusion of cinema.' -- Greene Naftali Gallery
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Paul Sharits 'Intrigues of Rollo', 1965 *
courtesy of Mark
(read the rest)
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*
p.s. Hey. ** Nb, Yeah, what is with the Olson Twins behind Ishmael? Proof positive of the paranormal, I guess. Except they're not technically dead. I did take more pictures, and they were all blurry. I need a new camera. ** Dandysweets, Hey. Oh, well, then thank you for saying that. Really nice about the Prince concert. I saw him a few times. Early on during the 'Dirty Mind' tour when he played at a roller rink, and then a couple more times once he was big. I'm among the fairly large, it seems, group of people who think he was unstoppably great up through the 'Sign o' the Times' album, and then went into a gradual decline. I will admit I haven't bought or listened to an album by him in a long time, though. What's your take on him? Is there later work by him that I would be well served by checking out? Really appreciate your thoughts on Kafka. They make me feel less alone. ** Handmade. seaweed. soap, Hey, thanks. Yeah, occasionally posts will appear here for a short while and then just disappear, and I have no idea why that happens. I look forward to you contributing to the blog, and take care. ** David Ehrenstein, Thanks, David. Cool, let me ... Everyone, David E and Bill Reed attended the reading/ event for Sam Irvin's new biography of Kay Thompson at LA's Book Soup the other night, and Bill captured a bunch of it on his iPod Nano, and you're all invited to watch if you would like. If so, go here. ** The Dreadful Flying Glove, Thanks, man. Yeah, that apartment or rather set of rooms in a loft was amazing. Very homey actually. Really glad to hear you're finished or close to that with the visa stuff. Are you taking most of your stuff along with you or storing a lot of it? If so, how do you choose? Yeah, I can safely say that the last four, five days as a blog maker have not been my happiest. The mixtape SPD idea is a great one, and, yeah, it sounds like a green light of a proposal to me, as is the illustrated essay of a post if that ends up seeming more suitable. On the former front, what can I do to help and occasion it? Yes, I got your Day, and it's all but set up/ scheduled, so I'll be in touch very soon. Thank you million. I love Monk, naturally, and I need to go find out if I know 'Alone in San Francisco' or not. Yes, thank you, kind sir. ** Kiddiepunk, We had the hangage of which you spoke, and more is due today, yes? Did you get a look at that Grolsh party last night? It was huge. ** Wolf, I'll go with Seitan as God, yes. Vegan 'cheese' plus yeast extract ... yum. I'll see if Naturalia has it. I love non-cheese. Ishmael and, I think, Changeling answered your goat-as-food question if you missed it. ** Ishmael, Hey, Ish! Yeah, where did those Olson Twins come from? I never got a straight answer. From Johnny Walker's imagination maybe, ha ha? Obviously, I'm hoping hard that the January thing happens. Enjoy Virginia and Minneapolis. Are you teaching there, performing? All the love in the world to you, Ish. ** Sypha, I have to admit that Kafka has never really floated my boat. He a huge figure for a ton of writers I love a lot, so it's weird, but I just don't get excited by his work. Should try again, clearly. John Fowles, wow. I haven't thought about him in decades. ** Pilgarlic, Hey. Well, that question seems really loaded, but I don't think I understand what you're getting at. Can you be a little clearer about what's troubling you in particular? Thanks. ** Postitbreakup, Look, Will Decker commented here regularly for months and months and months. Until the confrontation of a few days ago, not a single person here, and that includes you, ever raised even the tiniest objection to him being here or objected to anything he said. Not a word. Not a peep. If people here felt they were 'endangered' by him being here or were enraged and offended by his presence or whatever, they/you should have said something. I can't read your minds. I don't want to have to be the local cop or bouncer. If people had expressed problems with Will Decker's presence and comments before the other day, I would have addressed them, and presumably the community here would have made their feelings known, and the problems would have gotten resolved in some way. Having had no input whatsoever from anyone here on this issue, it seemed to me that no one cared that he was here and wasn't paying much of any attention to him. When he finally said something that pissed a lot of people off, there was an eruption, he left the blog, and now there's an ongoing discussion, which seems like a fair and natural conclusion to the incident. You're implying that I endangered you and others on the blog by allowing him to be here. This is a blog full of words, not a neighborhood full of people. You're going to have to explain to me exactly how I endangered you before I'm going to accept and consider that accusation. ** Andrew, Ishmael explained the dead goats' destinies yesterday, if you missed his comment. Oh, school essays, right, sorry. ** Alan, Hey. It's amazing that you even considered the Blood Manor option under the circumstances. I'm glad you're back and that the trip wasn't too, too hard. Thanks for the kind words about my handling of the WD situation. Clearly, the situation is far from resolved, but I'll keep trying to figure it out, and I'll do my best. ** Hedi, Hi, Hedi. Yes, I'm excited about the Chereau residency at Le Louvre. Some great stuff. The 'Coma' monologue/ Guyotat interview is a total must. He's apparently a big fan of my pals Stephen and Peter's band KTL, and he invited them to perform a live score to some silent film whose title I can't recall. I'm greatly looking forward to all of that. Well, the Sarah Kane Day was all thanks to you, man. I'm glad you thought the form it took was okay. Wow, your last comment showed up four times. It was very structuralist or something. Thank you so much for the tip on Gerard Blain's films. I know nothing at all about them/him, and they sound incredible. I'll hit that dailymotion clip in just a minute. Yeah, thank you so much, Hedi. That's so thoughtful. Wonderful to see you, of course. ** Empty Frame, Good morning to you. Well, I also have a smoothie for breakfast, which tilts it to the Californian side, I guess. Honestly, I've been better, but what can you do? The novel proceeds, but it is not steaming along. I wish. Yeah, use the usual email address for the post, and, once again, thanks a lot. Yes, I do have serious Top Ten List fetish, although I regulate my indulgence most of the time. You more than welcome to the comment/blurb. It's very me, isn't it? ** Matt Cassidy, Hey, Matt! Long time no see. It's excellent to see you. Sure, you can send some of your novel to me. I'd love to read it. Just know that it's going to take me a while, even quite a while because I'm finishing my novel, and I'm avoiding reading anything right now other than the blog and emails. If that's okay, yeah, send it: dcooperweb @gmail.com. You good in general, I hope? ** Heliotrope, Hey, Mark. I wonder if that BBC Harry Nilsson show is on youtube or something. I'm going to look. I really want to see that. J's being toyed with financially for her good and hard work is such a piss off. And then there's other part of me that says thank God she has a job. What a mess we're living in. RIP: Sparky Anderson, no? That made me sad. Bundles of love. ** Steevee, Really sorry to hear about the crap with Kent Jones. I'll hope the Denis interview is handled much more professionally from her people's side. ** JW Veldhoen, You're not your own evil ghost anymore! I'll take that as a good sign. A drive from where you are to LA would make a fucking amazing road trip if you have time and take an optimal route. ** Changeling, Hey. Oh, sorry I missed your question of the other day. Things have been kind of, uh, trying. As to my answer, well, I guess unless you're intending to go out of your way to ridicule or impugn the real person you want to write about, I say go for it. I mean, you might want to change the names and maybe the location and stuff, But I say it's fair game. I'll pass your question on to everyone. Everyone, here's d.l. Changeling with a question for anyone who cares to answer: 'Basically I wanted to know your take on doing work about someone's real life story - like someone I don't know & can't really ask permission to use it from? The chance of them coming across it would be super miniscule, but if they ever did they would know pretty instantly it was theirs ... I don't know, would it be totally unethical?' I'm very, very glad to hear you don't have cancer. I mean, you know, yeah, very glad. Oh, but that Edwardian hospital sounds exciting. Ha ha, the room I was staying in in NYC was pretty messy, yeah. Suited me and my ways just fine. ** Steven Trull, Hi, Steven! None of them, truthfully. We do think two of them might have slept together, though. Not sure about that, but the vibe was heavy. The bed was a lot roomier than it looked in the photo. It wasn't immense, but it was king. Well, since you are also THEM, or one of, you're awesome too. It follows. ** Paul Curran, Funnily enough, there is a pile of gaff tape next to my Paris Desk too. Okay, a roll. And I don't know how the heck it got there. ** _Black_Acrylic, I'm going to have to order that book, I think. ** Slatted Light, Yeah, that would work. The Skype thing. I'll launch my Skype when I get done here, and call me when you see 'my name' go green, if you like. That would be great! That goat had really short hair, but it had plenty of hairs. We ended up having to use three goats. We'd hoped to use two, but the second we were sold was improperly refrigerated, and it only lasted for two performances. The goats were frozen between performances and then carefully and slowly thawed on the afternoon of the show. They did rot, of course, but gradually enough that, with the exception of the one, fucked up dead goat, they held their own pretty well. The mattress was the same throughout. We just washed the sheet every day as best we could. Okay, thanks, D., and hopefully talk to you in just a bit. ** Polter, Hey. Those are serious courses. Or they sound serious to me. I barely nicked university, and I mostly took lit. classes and poetry workshops while I was there. My jetlag is fading pretty quickly by my usual standards. It's all about my lower back, for some reason. But thats slightly better too. I'm going to try to walk it off this afternoon. Paris is sublime for walking. For running too, according to my jogger boyfriend. You ever been here? I really want to come to Oslo. I've never been. I have good visions of what it must be. My theater pieces get to go to Oslo, but not me so far. Being a theater writer doesn't come with many privileges. Oh, I'm sorry if I used a male word when referring to you. I didn't think you were a guy. I didn't think about the gender thing. You were just you. But now I'll know what to do when sentences require the implementation of a he or she. How nice it is to talk to you. You've very cool. ** Inthemostpeculiarway, Blogger loves to eat comments every once in a while, so it was probably Blogger. I wonder what's up with that. Weird about your electronics holocaust. It seems like it must means something, but what? I'm sorry you're feeling sick. Damn those ears of yours. They're always up to something mischievous. Yes, I got the reviews! They're amazing! In fact, I can tell you right now that they'll appear here a week from tomorrow. Like not on this imminent Saturday, but on the next one. Oh, yeah, I put the pictures of the top of each review because the version you sent didn't tell me where you wanted them to go. I can move them to your chosen locales very easily if you want to specify the right places. Anyway, they're wonderful, and I'm thrilled and honored. My day kind of sucked: I worked on my novel for a while, but my back was killing me yesterday, so it wasn't such a great work day. I had a coffee with Kiddiepunk and Oscar, and that was nice. Then I came back here, and then I started getting these hate emails. I've gotten seven as of this morning, Basically, they're from people telling me I'm a sick, evil, amoral monster for harboring a pedophile on my blog and saying they were reporting my blog and going to do everything they can to get it shut down. Between that and one person here accusing me of endangering people on the blog, and at least one other person here seeming to agree, the whole thing was and is stressful and depressing, and I suppose there are people who read and/or comment on this blog who think I deserve the hate and threats, so, hey, enjoy, if you're reading this. Anyway, that kind of colored the rest of the day during which I tried to write a little more, worked on some blog posts, emailed, and so on. Yeah, I think that's enough. I have this feeling or at least hope that today is going to have to be more entertaining to talk about than yesterday was, and, whether it is or isn't, you'll hear it first. I hope you're feeling better today. Tell me about your Friday. ** Misanthrope, Yeah, ha ha, those were the best photos I got, believe it or not. April in Paris is pretty damned sweet, yes. Recommended. Oh, your poor nephew. That's sad. He deserves a billion WWE byproduct Xmas gifts, clearly. Thank you a lot for your very kind words about the blog. Good timing, man. ** L@rstonovich, Hey, man. How was your Halloween and related time at the ocean? Yeah, I think WD has left the building. Given what's going on, I certainly hope so. Enjoy everything, my pal. ** Bill, Hi, Bill. The street level door to where I was staying was literally six inches from the entrance to Evolution. I only managed to pop in there once, and, yeah, it was a treat. Too early to know about possible 'Them' gigs. The show in January is mostly so curators can see 'Them' and then maybe book it at their venues, if they want. PS122 is closing for two years for a major refurbishment, and they want to do a big 'PS122 on tour' show featuring a few shows, including ours, and I think that is in the works or at least feelers are being put out re: it. Hopefully, if that happens, it would go to SF. That would make sense. No, I don't know if I'll get to LA in December or not or when or anything yet. I need to get on that, and I will. ** Catachrestic, Hi, J. Great, I'll go find and watch that video today. Thanks a lot! I'm surprised you haven't been to NYC in so long. Well, I don't know why I'm surprised exactly, but I just thought a big-brained, globe-trotting guy like yourself would have landed there with frequency. It's worth a visit, duh. Two years, wow. Still, nothing that can't be surmounted. Can I do anything to nudge you towards the page? I don't know what I could do, but I'll do it. ** Brendan, Hey, man. Hope you're not having post-WS depression or anything. Your rant was valuable and much appreciated, be assured. The 'Helter Skelter' catalog, cool. Now that was a fun show. Now that was a hell of an opening. Keep mucking around in the studio. That's how it happens. Everything good evolves from the muck. ** FreeFox, Hey. I agree with you completely about the Sex Crime Registry issue and the stigmatizing that comes with that and other forms of official, generalizing labels. I couldn't agree with you more. For me, those were very valuable words, my friend. Thank you. Yeah, that quote by me on 'purest ...', ha ha ha. Weird. Thanks a lot for mentioning that too, man. ** So, another blog day is done on my end of things. I think Paul Sharits is quite an interesting artist/ filmmaker, and I urge you to give his work and the post's stuff about him a good look. See you tomorrow.
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