Page 40 - Studio International - November December 1975

specifically, of Abstract Expressionism and Minimalism more precise definition 'real time' did serve its purpose
on Structural/Materialist Film is not direct ; some films a propos for example much of Warhol's filmwork
were made before, during, or after essential works in (interrupted by splices and leaderfogging).
painting, in photography, in film, in writing. Work by
Hill-Adamson, Lumiere, Vertov, Ruttman, Moholy-Nagy, Reflexiveness
Cameron, Klee, Kafka, Joyce, the Dadaists, Beckett lies Another matter which the investigation of structural/
at the root of much avant-garde practice this century." materialist film brings forth is the bearing it has on
The problematic of reading duration when viewing a reflexiveness, which is inculcated by a film through
painting was important to Klee and others. Actual certain procedures. Reflexiveness, or self:reflexiveness,
duration can only exist in film, in terms of the or auto-reflexiveness, is a condition of self-consciousness
approximation towards a 1 :1 relation between work and which invigorates the procedure of filmic analysis during
viewer (production time and 'reading' time). Vertov's the film viewing event. Thus it is not merely a matter of
Man With a Movie Camera, Eisenstein's Strike, reflection, or thinking, broadly taken. Reflexiveness,
Lumiere's films, form a core of basic work in this field of as a concept, can serve a meaning counterproductive to
research, the anti-illusionist project. As to structural the direction structural/materialist film would give it.' 2
music, Bach's preludes and fugues relate strongly to It can, for example, serve as a decoy, an alibi, the opening
some of the work of Terry Riley, Steve Reich (Stick up of individual interpretation. Such simulacra turn the
Piece), etc. More specific to film : 'real' time is more often ideological thrust of an issue towards radically
than not utilized in the structural/materialist film in reactionary paths, and bring one's work clearly to a point
clearly defined segments or in the film as a whole, thus where each conceptual entity must be absolutely clearly
breaking from illusionistic time (substructured in codes of defined and rigorously made clear, in order not to move
narrativity). The closing of the gap in space between down a blind alley. Without such rigour, one finds the
viewer and viewed, and between the representation in illusionist, narrative, identificatory individualist mode of
one shot and another, is a basic repressive illusionist cinema is re-presented, re-instated without a battle, and
device. The implication of an unseen splice to integrate the wearying struggle to define clearly and precisely
two shots also elides the function of editing, the function becomes recuperated at the moment of least vigilance.
of producing, from material segments, a new complex A weak link in one's analysis of idealist, anti-materialist
relation. Instead, there is a seeming natural flow practices, can turn a whole body of work (in film, for
established, which suppresses all procedures of the example) to uselessness in affecting a forthcoming film's
editing stages. The concept of integration rather than radically retrograde practice.
disruption is predicated on a repression of the material A film practice in which one watches oneself watching
relations specific to the film process, and this of course is is reflexive ; the act of self-perception, of consciousness
not unconnected with the violence done to (eradicate) per se, becomes one of the basic contexts of one's
the adequate presentation of material relations in the confrontation with work. The process of the production of
sphere of ideology, of the image, of plastic representation, film making, and the filmic practice of filmviewing as
narrative mimesis, etc. Attempted in structural/ production, become interlinked. 'Reflection' does
materialist film is a non-hierarchical, cool, separate ideological combat with self-consciousness,
unfolding of a perceptual activity. That perceptual reflexiveness. To operate thusly is to break the dichotomy
activity is not to be understood as relegating the primary between feeling and thinking, or rather to break the
function to the individual perceiver, who of course is illusion of their necessary separation and the illusion of
embedded in ideological structures/strictures. The their automatic oneness. The filmic enterprise, if such,
problematics of perception as a concept have yet to be presents consciousness of film to the self. The radical
delineated. Still, film is a perceptual activity (amongst rejection of the representation of consciousness is a main
others) and without perception and the relations concept.
attendant upon that process there is no film practice Film cannot adequately represent consciousness any
(or in any case not one that is non-idealistic, not one that more than it adequately represents meaning ; all are
is not mechanistically materialist). transparently, invisibly, encumbered by mystificatory
systems and interventions which are distortions,
Distance repressions, selections, etc. That a film is not a window to
Through the attempted non-hierarchical, cool, separate life, to a set of meanings, to a pure state of image/meaning,
unfolding a distance(ing) is sought. This distance ought to be self-understood. Thus the documenting of
reinforces (rather than denying) the dialectic interaction an act of film-making is as illusionist in practice as the
of viewer with each film moment, necessary if it is not to documenting of a narrative action (fiction) (within certain
pass into passiveness and needlessness. This interaction codes, both). And consciousness is as encumbered by the
on the level of flesh and on the level of critical praxis is illusionist devices of cinema, if one is attempting to
obvious. The real time element demands such a document 'it', as anything else. Filmic reflexiveness is the
consciousness and will. I can here only hint at the deeper presentation of consciousness to the self and
problematic within which the 'real time' 1 :1 relation consciousness of the way one deals with the material
between viewer and viewed is located. operations; filmic reflexiveness is forced through
cinema's materialist operations of filmic practice.' 3
Aspects of Time Self-consciousness, and consciousnessperse, must in
(1) 'Real time', that is, time present as it is for the film- no way imply consciousness as deflecting onto a
maker, denoted not connoted at the stage of shooting, mythical subject; it must in no way imply transcendence
editing, printing, projecting, and interrelations of these. or transcendent subjectivity ; it does not set itself up in
Commonly, 'real time' is presented in single takes or film opposition to real relations, ie consciousness as
segments utilized for their actual duration (often after knowledge in opposition to material relations as
many viewings they separate themselves as such). knowledge. One can see it in a schematic—|—form, the
(2) There is illusionistic time, time made to seem what it is horizontal being the work upon which functions operate
not, as in conventional and in much, it must be said, (the film plane), the vertical being 'consciousness', the
Eisensteinian editing. Cutting from 10.15 London line to the recipient as her/his necessary mode of
interior the lovers kiss, to midnight, near the lake, inculcated dialectic operation.
husband and wife murder each other, longshot. (Either
implying a linear thread of events, with time compressed, Technique
or a simultaneity, with time compressed). (3) The third Access to involvement with technique is the formidable
'example' is that of post- Newtonian time, Einsteinian basis of all art which poses questions seriously, and
time. There is here no absolute value other than that of which moves forward to new stages of development, the
the interaction of film moment and viewer. This working through of contradiction in its practice. Thus
relativistic time may but does not necessarily connect to technical innovation is itself ideologically conditioned ; in
'real time'. The notion of 'real time' on its own fails to take many cases innovations and conceptual entities were not
account precisely of this relativistic nature of time, the thought through inside a culture though the apparati and
absence of some universal clock, though for lack of a the actual scientific discoveries were already present. Or
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