Page 29 - Studio International - November 1973

of possibilities of image-sound relationships, but
The camera MS: No. A still life is a particular kind of it's particularly to do with speech. So in a way
problem compared to painting a landscape.
Obviously in a landscape you can't paint all the each section of the thing is equivalent to the
kind of reality that is indicated in the colour
and the leaves. So those definitions are of use. You see changes in Wavelength. But in this case it's done
I did some interiors that worked with interior
spaces, and La Region Centrale was a landscape, by what happens between the sound and the
image. It's really encyclopaedic, which is partly
spectator: and New York Eye and Ear Control had some why Diderot's in there, and one of the
landscape things happening and it also had
some portraits. And I've tried to do a still-life sub-titles is that it's for English-speaking
Michael Snow in discussion thing, so, okay, now I'm trying to work on audiences. So it has to do with English, or
figure compositions, and I'm also trying to work language in a way too.
with John Du Cane to get away from that painting thing which is I've been interested in Wittgenstein for
only so usable. I'm trying to work with speech, quite a long time and that kind of thing has
John Du Cane: One of the things I'm most spoken sound, and people, in some way that been a sort of background to part of it in a way.
concerned about is the business of talking about utilizes the range or scale of possibilities, of But also the language has a plastic nature. I
types of communication that are manipulative relationships between the image and the sound. wrote some scripts around the time I did
of the audience and types of communication It has to do with people or the representations Wavelength. I was interested in getting a kind of
that activate the audience, make them aware of of people. two-dimensionality. They're little discussions.
their own ways of dealing with the immediate JDC: So how are you organizing what you Some of this happens in the film and it's a
film event. In conventional cinema you're might call the speech patterns ? certain kind of talking that I hope enables one
dealing with people being led by the nose . . .
Michael Snow: It's a pleasurable thing, people
seem to like being led in a certain way.
Joyce Weiland: But this society is such that
people are being led by the nose from when
they're born — so if you want to go along with
that school of thought, that's the only thing
they know.
MS: It's a question of being well led . . .
JDC: Exactly. But I think it's important if
you're making visual statements that you do it
in a way that reminds people that they are
creative agents while watching films.
MS: I'm personally interested in that. I'm not
so much involved in what I think of as
communication as in making something. It
certainly does communicate but the sense isn't
what's on the screen. I'd like people to learn
how to see and hear, so they can always see and
hear .. . and know the truth.
JDC: To do that what you've got to do is to
remind people of the immediate situation.
MS: Yes, what is it that's happening right now,
what is this ?
JDC: Which is not what is encouraged in most
other types of cinema or on television.
MS: They're more like tranquillizers. The news
on TV, for instance, is a little composition that
has some very remote connection with some MS: I'm working on it differently from what I to hear the thing for its sense but also
events that happened somewhere and in was doing in my other films. The other films for its sound and functional quality in the
some cases it's not even demonstrable, the were all single shapes. It could be broken up a structure of the film. Without necessarily
connection between that event on television and little bit but basically the thing was a whole. making any strange alterations, although that
the event that's supposedly being reported. This one is all separate little pieces, so it's more happens a bit too. I've written the thing with a
Another thing that'll probably happen is that mosaic-like. I'm working on a section that's certain idea as to what can be seen and heard
the newspapers, which can describe in more near the tail and a section that's near the head again too. There are certain spoken things that
detail than TV and can be less manipulative if and I'm not finishing them: all these various are dramatic, that you can't see more than two or
there are a number of them, are probably going parts are falling into place. It's very fragmented three times because their function is only to get
to disappear and we'll be left with a news compared to the other ones. you to this dramatic climax. But I'm trying to
source that is primarily a titillation. JDC: In what way are the figures going to be make something that will be fairly objective in
JDC: Let's talk about what you're working on represented and how are those speech patterns the way that the other films were objective.
now. I hear you're using people in your new going to work in relation to the representation? JDC: All of your films, in very different ways,
film Rameau' s Nephew by Diderot. MS: Difficult. I've actually been working on the seem to have encyclopaedic concerns.
MS: I guess the fastest way to get to talking film for a year and a half and it will probably MS.: Yes, they're all scalar. Region Centrale
about it is still to divide things into landscapes, take another eight months — because it comes out goes through the possibilities a those kinds of
still life, portraits, figure compositions, things of things that I was thinking out that came out movements.
like that. of Wavelength and Back and Forth, but won't JDC: But you do organize it in a dramatic
JDC: They're not too limiting ? really be like them. It works with that scale fashion.
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