Page 26 - Studio International - November 1974

away from intentions, occurring for their own separate these lulls that for forgetters the likes (with no linear narrative rationale), it throws
accoustic reason, is it'. [7] of these each is the first. Whence invariably the one out of the seductive internal film-event
We are involved in a process of consciousness, same vivacity of reaction as to the end of a back to the essential structure of the experience.
one that, through this dialectic functioning, world and the same brief amaze when the A reflexiveness was brought to bear, thus, on
creates an awareness of itself (=reflexiveness). twofold storm resumes and they start to search the film's making, and is also induced by the
Warhol's Campbell soupcan paintings remain again neither glad nor even sorry'. [10] work itself. One becomes aware of the film-
the hardest of his works to come to terms with The void filled, in one's real time, during the material, (and conscious of ones attempted
because they still seem so meaningless in a process of the creation of the work, is what the dialectic functioning).
culture where every fifth rate tv show claims for
work is about. Space surrounds a Giacometti 'Ruins true refuge long last towards which so
itself universal truth and (melo-) dramatic
sculpture, based upon where the specific piece is many false time out of mind. All sides
importance. We establish ourselves in the same
standing. There is an actual establishing and endlessness earth sky as one no sound no stir.
way as to the soupcans, in our relation to the
giving weight to void through Beckett's word- Grey face two pale blue little body heart
otherness of an early floorpiece by Andre; to the beating only upright. Blacked out fallen open
structures. Or it may be represented as in
physical placing of words or paragraphs on a four walls over backwards true refuse
verbal descriptions in a Beckett work, or the
page by Kafka in his first published work, issueless. (From Lessness). [15]
feeling in a Giacometti of void emanating from
'Betrachtungen', to the totality of words of
Beckett's play NOT I or novel HOW IT IS, the images representational content, based on, Taut tight paragraphs, several pages
to a target drawing as text by Johns, a sculpted (for example) psychological connections to the whole work. Segments placed against one
existential isolation, etc. (The thinness of the another, words one must read over and over,
or drawn head by Giacometti or a film by
Mike Snow or Malcolm LeGrice. (When figures, the muted faces in other words, work with, against, persistently. As they were
the expressionist element of the work). written. One block of words pressures
directing Endgame in Berlin in 1967, Beckett
Here we are again in the illusionist miasma. against another.
stated: 'The work must be played as if there
According to Bertrand Russell on
were a fourth wall at the footlights.' (As it 3.
Wittgenstein, 'The logical proposition is a
happens, a main tenet of naturalistic theatre.) What we must really deal with is the structure
picture (true or false) of the fact, and has in
'The audience must not become an accomplice. of a work of art. Mr Beckett: 'There's a
common with the fact a certain structure. It is
The work is a self-enclosed system.' [8] wonderful sentence in Augustine. "Do not
this common structure which makes it
Beckett thus cut out all references to the despair; one of the thieves was saved. Do not
capable of being a picture of the fact, but the
audience that had originally been in his presume; one of the thieves was damned". That
structure can not itself be put into words,
written version of the play. The objectness of the is a wonderful sentence. I love the shape of that
since it is a structure of words, as well as of the
work became the central function of the sentence. It is the shape that matters'. [11]
facts to which they refer. Everything therefore,
directing. These artists, to an extreme degree, Beckett is concerned with the precise structure
which is involved in the very idea of the
deal with this form of radical work. Some work of a piece of work, and the way in which the
expressiveness of language, must remain
less self-consciously than others. All the work, structuring aspects of the work are more
incapable of being expressed in language,
nevertheless, shows the traces. The works are relevant to the experience of writing and
and is, therefore, inexpressible in a perfectly
both total objects and essentially records of reading it than any specified expression
precise sense.' [16]
their own attempted making. Samuel Beckett `within'. After the introductory explication
You can't say the same thing two different
states: 'I produce an object.' [9] A strong to his filmscript for Film, he wrote, `No truth
ways. In Not I, there is a repetitive phrase
element of this kind of work, on a pragmatic value attaches to above, regarded as of merely
(5 times) of great strength which appears in the
level, is, in drawing, constant erasure and re- structural and dramatic convenience'. [12]
monologue. In the American script it is:
correction; in sculpture, molding and re-molding Beckett of course, as subject, has certain beliefs,
`what? .. who? .. what? .. no .. no!
processes left visible; takes and retakes, in films, but the works' importance lies not so much in
.. she!' [17] In the English script:
incorporating various technical differences in expounding such but in forcing the reader into
'what? ... who? ... no! ... she!' [8]
lighting, speed, lense-movement, etc; in a mental attitude of doing his/her work with
This kind of difference doesn't effect any
writing, changing words, correcting, repeating, the material, with a clear and precise
interpretation, but it does effect the play.
leaving the previous ones to stand for previous awareness of what is being presented, and its
Similarly in one edition of Watt there is
attempts at verbalizing the same 'reality'. attempt, both thematically and structurally to
illustrated the bars of a song taking up over
The objectness of a piece of work is formed come to grips with what is. The relativistic
half a page. In another edition after the words,
not only by the shape (more but not enough on processes of mental activation and dialectic is
'The soprano sang', there is a 3/4 page, left
shape and structure later), but also by the the essential value of the work. The fact that
blank. (An error, as it happens.)
chosen object-environment (space, temperature, much of his prose is heavy reading fits exactly
In 'Writing Degree Zero' (1953), Roland
etc.). Giacometti's figures stand surrounded by into this attitude, as does the fact that much of
Barthes defines structure as being 'the residual
huge and heavy expanses of space, they define the Warhol's filmwork is heavy viewing. One either
deposit of duration'. [19] It is, thus, shape,
weight of the space around them, as do Andre's quits, or must do ones own work [13] as much
a posteriori, after the structuring process has
breezeblocks arranged in serial form. There's with Chelsea Girls for 31/2 hours on two screens,
taken place for the full life of each specific
`no lack of void' in Waiting for Godot.
relentlessly, as with How It is. Chelsea Girls' artwork/spectator relationship. Warhol is
Within the void, Giacometti's frozen figures
composition of 1/2 hour material film-pieces, with endlessly repeating, 'I did it for the design. I
exist, as do the figures in Beckett's The Lost
definite lack of synchronization from left changed it to make a better design'. [20] His
Ones:
screen to right-screen, demands precise work films become structural objects, as much as
`But here too the desisting and deathly still in through constant re-examination of each Beckett's books do (of greatest import:
attitudes verging at times on the obscene alienated [14] segment, and the relations Sleep, Eat, Empire, Blowjob, Chelsea Girls,
whenever the vibrations cease and for as long attendant upon that segment; one screen Poor Little Rich Girl, Kitchen). In film, a
as this crisis lasts. Stranger still at such times all always being in opposition to an other (as such, structural movement exists, though no one
the questing eyes that suddenly go still and fix though not always in internal content). The member fits narrowly within the definition of
their stare on the void or on some old dialectical basis of the work is the real content Structuralism, any more than Beckett,
abomination as for instance other eyes and of the experience. When one segment of 30 Giacometti, Andre, LeWitt, Robbe-Grillet and
then the long looks exchanged by those fain to minutes' duration ends with a flareout and a others can be fitted into a narrow category. It is
look away. Irregular intervals of such length splice, and the 'next' 30 minute segment begins merely this aspect of the work which is most
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