Page 39 - Studio International - December 1972

Other events made by me during 1967, 68, 69 used slide-
A personal use of projections, TV sets, and film-projection in big open spaces
with the action taking place all around.
projected and The economics of presenting events are heavily weighted
on the side of performance before an audience; I enjoyed the
live audience, but I reacted against the 'showbiz' which
transmitted imagery, went with it, and I wanted a means of working with gesture,
action, etc., which was more private, and yet could be
1963-72 presented before a wider public when ready. Film was an
obvious answer. I had been using film in my events as a
visual element, and the events had been documented on
Ian Breakwell film and video by Mike Leggett. I had already made several
structures, installations and actions purely for the stills
camera; had taken the photographs I wanted, privately, had
[The recent series of toned photo-sequences with accom-
worked on them/cropped them/reverse-negged them/dyed
panying handwritten texts which Breakwell exhibited at the
them/enlarged them, etc., and had then presented the
Angela Flowers Gallery, and in the 'Survey of the Avant-
results publicly in galleries. I continued making collages,
Garde' at Gallery House, London, were the latest of his many
actions, objects, photographs, etc.
combinations of photographic images and words over the
last few years. Alongside the work shown in galleries there
Un word: 16 mm b/w. 1/4 in. 3 3/4 tape soundtrack. 1970.
has been a parallel body of related work using film, trans-
A film by M.L. of a series of theatre-events by I.B. during
parencies and video; in this article Breakwell gives some
1969-70, which themselves made complex use of film-
examples of this aspect of his output. Note: I.B. refers to
projections. The making of the Unword film was an integral
Ian Breakwell, M.L. to film-maker Mike Leggett, who has
part of each event; the cameraman was, by his cool,
collaborated on many of the works1
detached presence the performer who emphasized the
During the mid-sixties I underwent the same process events' overall quality (one of 'calculated relentlessness'
experienced, as I was later to learn, by artists in many according to John Plant, building society trainee manager).
countries who had become dissatisfied with the limitations 'It was found that a normal stills 35mm camera held too little film to
of painting and sculpture; the classic process was via be able to cover all eventualities encountered during an event in
collage, assemblages, structures, environments, etc. I made which the cameraman was intended to photograph continuously as
two-dimensional collages which required the participation part of the "performance". Hence it was decided to use a 16mm cine
of the spectator: they were made up of many layers of camera a Bolex H16, loaded with a daylight spool, made available
drawing, photographs, printed, typed and stencilled texts, 4000 individual frames. Each of those frames exposed at approx.
and they demanded that the spectator moved in from his 1 sec. intervals would mean the event's recording apparatus would
respectable distance in order to explore them. This question function for approx. 66 minutes before reload was necessary. Thus
of distance, i.e. the separation between the audience and
the artwork, was also a pre-occupation in the events and
theatre-performances which I began to make in my attempt
to extend my collages in terms of space and time. Film and
slide-projection were two elements which I used most
consistently in these performed collages. This extension of
media was deliberate, although I was not personally
sympathetic to either the play-participation then current in
mixed-media events, nor to the indulgence manifest in
many of those freak-outs whereby it was assumed, naively I
thought, that the more ingredients one mixed in the better
the salad. I wanted a carefully edited collage of film, slides,
taped sound, visual use of words, physical action, etc., all in
a carefully articulated space. Films and photographs I am
now. making are still collages of visual word-images and
related pictorial images, more strictly edited.
ONE
I used transparencies during 1963-66, but it was only by
1967, in Bristol, that I gained access to the theatre/
projection facilities which I had previously sought unsuc-
cessfully. Buffet Car News was one of the performances
which I made around that time; it took as its starting point
the proscenium arch of the conventional stage, which acts
both as the demarcation-line between the performers and
the audience, and also as a picture-frame for the onstage
action. Buffet Car News was really an animated landscape
with figures, against the background projection (a frame
within a frame) of a 16mm film of automated food packag-
ing, plus a repetitive electronic soundtrack built around the
vowel E (made by Adrian Nutbeem).
TWO
Face History:. London Arts Laboratory (incomplete version
Thelatre Du Vieux Colombier, Paris), 1969. A series of black &
white transparencies (of I.B. from babyhood to 1968)
projected onto a 3.5-metres square white linen sheet, with
accompanying tape-soundtrack of a French vowel lesson.
The final projection worked on by hand; the screen
gradually stitched up with a needle and black tape.