Page 49 - Studio International - December 1971

hasty judgments, and sit down to see what Manhattan, which Hans Haacke planned to (The internal sensation of Prospect 71 was the
happens, when (for example) Michael Snow show at the Guggenheim, struck the museum as exploding of a cherished Warhol myth, that of
swings the camera back and forth between a so politically sensitive that it abruptly cancelled the eight-hour exposure in his film Empire State
school window and a school door; at each its planned retrospective of the artist's work. Building (1964), in which some critics swore
two-way swing a dull thump is heard, and the More interesting still is the work of Bernhard they detected the passing of morning and
watcher gradually starts to feel first tranquillity, and Hilla Becher, who for ten years have been evening; the whole film is printed from a loop
a state of passive acceptance, then fear, as if in a photographing specific types of industrial about thirty metres long.) The contempt for
prison; at the moment when one starts to get buildings, pit-hoists, water-towers, gasholders, craft and technique which has been taken over
tired of it and decides to go, attention is revived and so on, with time exposures, so that from Warhol, and which stems originally
by tiny stimuli such as the passing of a caretaker everything that moves — workers, smoke- from the Romantic movement, sometimes
in mid-swing or a sudden irregularity in the clouds, motor cars — disappears. No glorification, brings forth weird blossoms of unintelligibility,
regular sound to which one has become no criticism; but if you juxtapose purely or leads to its opposite, the elaborate art film or
accustomed. functionally conceived types in all their variants, the art photograph. When a wave rises, it
The point of the exercise is the way in which the effect is the same as you get from carries quite a lot of sludge along with it. 'Must
it enlists one's attention and makes concrete the photographs of the forests of derricks on remember that, for Carnival time,' the
abstract concept of time. Just as there is a Mexican oilfields : the rationality of each projectionist said when a man on the screen
threshold of audibility, there is probably also a individual unit adds up to an irrational whole. opened his mouth to reveal the word 'yes' and a
threshold of perception of time, beneath which And typological comparison allows a concealed girl's ears turned out to be plugged with signs
the perception of rhythm ceases. This narrow ideology (on industry's part, not the artists') to saying 'no'.
strip between over-stimulation and total boredom be deduced. It is more disquieting that the new awareness
was explored in the 196os by the Happening Pit-hoists, for example, were built in of bodily activity very often leads to a
and Fluxus schools and, above all, by Joseph industrial areas, far from the public gaze, picturesque representation of labour, or to mere
Beuys. In their documentary films, however, we by engineers. They were therefore not made to navel-contemplation, esoteric narcissim. The
can now see that time embodied in space is look like 'towers' but like big machines, which public is not so ready as once it was to go along
merely tedious when it is presented in the form is what they are; we can still accept them today with the self-display of some mystery-making
of an action filmed straight. Clearly, the time as entirely 'honest', marked as they are purely solipsist; there are too many pressing political
threshold in the photographic medium is quite by their function and not by some obsolete ideal problems. Excesses in this direction prejudice
different from what it is in real space. Thus, of beauty. Water towers, on the other hand, the chances of survival of any form of
Richard Serra, fixedly contemplating his own were built at the highest point in a given town individualism. Formally speaking, the weakest
hands as they grasp, talon-like, at falling scraps or neighbourhood, and the nineteenth-century definition is to be found where the problem of
of paper or tear pages out of paint sample books, bourgeois were unable to accept so unavoidable repetition comes in; it is rare for permanence to
and John Baldessari, endlessly twisting and an emblem of their primitive bodily needs; they be attained through the use of an endless loop,
squeezing a hat while he whistles the same few disguised the oval container, high up on its iron and in most cases a visual principle, once
melancholy notes over and over again, have frame, as a church tower or as a medieval comprehended, exhausts itself the more rapidly
clearly found their way to the lowest threshold fortress—this happened much more regularly in as it is repeated more times, unless the sense of
of time-perception in terms of the disembodied Germany than in England, where in the age of expectation is kept alive by subliminal
dimension of film. industrial progress water was much more displacements. And simultaneous projections on
For works dealing in this new way with the readily accepted as the emblem of a community. neighbouring screens promote simultaneous
issue of perception, still prints and slides, in A further possible reason for the popularity vision only if the individual films are arranged
series, often prove to be superior to film. Thus, of film among artists might be their rejection of to complement each other rhythmically. More
one can walk through an empty room and the 'saleable object'. But this has already been often, however, they serve only to dissipate
stumble over a couple of projected images on the shown to be an illusion: even if the photographic concentration.
floor, which shift automatically—but where do medium does yield a product that is immaterial, It is also noticeable how authoritarian the
they come from ? There is nothing to be seen it is still a long way from escaping the material medium is; you have to submit yourself to a
on the white wall ahead, until you finally spot, status of a commodity. Films have become part film, or to a rigidly programmed sequence of
right at the bottom, under the skirting board, of the galleries' stock-in-trade, just like pictures; images, and you have no choice. One artist is
three hairline beams of light which shift their they are often gallery-financed, and they are even planning to leave the spectator for a
vertical angles. The emphasis on the act, which cheaper than pictures, too. Robert Smithson's considerable time in total darkness. And there is
becomes mechanical, and the reduction of the film, for instance, in which a spiral mudbank is the dependence on technical factors; the films
effect to the limits of perceptibility, in order to built out into a lake, can be bought for $400, were grouped for projection, not in accordance
lead from habitual obliviousness to true seeing, or rented for $40 per week. Videotape cassettes with thematic affinities, but according to the
are principles that this light-piece by Wolf in unlimited editions, more durable and often gauge of the film. Anyone who wanted to see
Knoebel illustrates particularly well. technically clearer than films, fetch less than everything at Prospect 71 would have had to
Among those who use photographs as an i,000 marks; in editions limited to a few copies spend thirty to forty hours in the Kunsthalle.
ascetic exercise in perception, one artist who they can go close to 10,000 marks. How far these What was more important for this reporter
particularly engages the attention is William prices are realistic ones, we shall see when the was that he came out of it all seeing reality in a
Wegman, a young American whose name is still major distributors come into the market, which new way. On the way home, he caught himself
unknown on the Continent. He shows pairs of will be next year. watching the feet of all those who were coming
photographs which at first sight seem identical; The few artists I have mentioned here are down the two steps from a railway carriage,
as in a puzzle, one has to try and spot the included merely as illustrations of the respective who were 'getting out' in other words, his gaze
`deliberate mistakes', the changes that have principles involved, and to make it quite clear stopped wandering in its usual bored fashion
been made; but here the puzzle is reality itself. that this is not a question of 'young film- and took up a fixed position in which reality did
The photographic series as a medium has its makers', nor of underground films, but a major the changing. The more of these personal
most convincing successes in the field of totally transition: conceptual art is giving way to experiments he made that evening and on the
non-subjective documentation, presented projection art. Warhol is the initiator of this following day, the more his attitude to reality
without comment. The rows of shots of houses tendency towards New Attention; Marcuse was transformed. q
owned by particular property companies in stands behind the idea of a New Sensitization. TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN BY DAVID BRITT

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