Page 43 - Studio International - November December 1975

produced, rather than illustrated or obliquely poetically 'given'. not-so-masked documentary rather than a filmic articulation and
This is so because of : associativeness, symbolic reading, integration constituting presence, a filmic production precisely in its operations on
into the diegesis, subsumation to the dominant illusory system posited, the level of the problematics of procedure and representation. That the
displacement to a mere different level of fantasy-acceptance, poetic pseudo-documentary is the unspoken gap in current film knowledge, in
shock supportive of the primary story, etc. The signifier and the signified terms of theory, practice, and theoretical practice, I have hinted at
as arbitrary, as artifice, and as less than primary, is the arena in which elsewhere. ('Un Cinema Materialiste Structural', L'Art Vivant, February
production of 'meaning' must take place. Meaning at this stage must be 1975, pp. 16-17, as well as Studio International, March 1975, '5th Knokke
seen to clearly obtain to structural/materialist reading. Yet by collaborating Experimental Film Festival.') Past attentions given by me to critiques of
in the current usage of the term reading I separate myself from the my work made above examples (of a general malaise) closest at hand.
bourgeois oppression of the dominance of the word while acknowledging 7 As to Brecht, there are some illuminating comments from his writings.
its hegemony. 'Science isn't so free of superstition. Where knowledge doesn't suffice,
4 In the Japanese theatre, an actor holding a mask in front of his/her face, faith produces itself, and that is always superstition ... our lyricists didn't
so the audience can see the 'real' face behind, is for all that no less lose their voice because of the book Capital but in the face of Capital
identificatory, no less co-optable into the narrative structure and diegetic itself.' 'If Realism isn't defined purely formalistically (that which in the
linearity. The essential grasping of this example is crucial to the basis for 90's was considered Realism, in the realm of the bourgeois novel) then
the whole theoreticization of the problem of narrative. So far all essays on much can be said against techniques like montage, interior monologue, or
narrative and narrative deconstruction have been mechanistic, distancing (Verfremdung), only not from the point of view of Realism !
derivative of dominant cinema's needs, in inverted form, with no break as a technical means, the interior monologue (of Joyce) was rejected, one
(epistemological or otherwise). The same goes for all attempts at called it formalist. I never understood the reasoning. Just because Tolstoi
narrative-deconstructive cinema. It is in order to point to the fact that would've done it differently isn't a reason to reject the way Joyce does it.
illustration of a thesis (of deconstruction, or other) in (on) film denies The objections were constructed so superficially that one got the
duration, the basic cinematic structure. Illustration mystifies filmic real impression that if Joyce had put the same monologue (Molly Bloom's
relations; the basic project then is thus illusionism, not deconstruction of final one) in the psychoanalytical session, everything would've been all
representational codes, the latter being recuperated as the narrative is right.'
constituted (and not presented as such). 'Realist, that means consciously influenced by reality, and consciously
The latter statement should not be seen to imply naiveté on my part as to influencing reality ... the techniques of Joyce and Döblin are not simply
the frequent occurrence of so-called non-narrative film which in fact sets wasteproducts ; if one eliminates their influence, instead of modifying it,
up an imagist illusionism, a set of ideological codifications equally one ends up merely with the influence of the epigones, such as the
manipulatory, undialectical, identificatory. The system of identification Hemingways. The works of Joyce and Döblin betray, in the largest sense,
into the imagist code relies heavily on the usage of the imaginary the world-historical contradictions into which the forces of production
referent, that which is referred to transparently, wherein the medium is not have fallen vis-a-vis the relations of production. In the works, productive
produced as opaque. This system of identification also relies heavily on forces are represented to a certain degree. Especially the socialist writers
the repression of the production of the signifier-as-arbitrary, that is, as can learn valuable highly developed technical means (Elemente) from
the strictly ideologically posited coherence artificially manufactured these documents of hopelessness (Ausweglosigkeit). They see the way
between signifier and signified. As long as these relations are not studied out.' 'Perhaps our readers might just not feel that they've been given the
and made to produce work, the illusionist project is not one step further key to events when they, seduced by many wiles (Künste) merely take
out of its miasmic repressed state. part in (beteiligen) the soulful emotions of the heroes.' Bert Brecht,
I must add : when stating that in identification real relations are Uber den Realismus, 1938-1940, Suhrkamp Gesammelte Werke.
mystified, I in no way refer to real relations in a positivist or empiricist Brecht also, of course, wavered from the above views more often than
manner. Webster's 1961 New Collegiate Dictionary: not ; though he fought against the formalist notions of Realism which the
Empiricism: (1 b) Practice of medicine founded on mere experience, social(ist) realists conveniently sidetracked, he also wrote often of a
without aid of science. (c) quakery. (2) The philosophical theory 'Realism directly from the standpoint of a class, unfolding the ruling
attributing the origin of a//knowledge to ,experience' viewpoints as the viewpoints of the ruling, and ... representing reality. the
Empirical: Depending on experience or observation alone, without due way it is' (die Realität wiedergeben.) Brecht's usage of the word
regard to science and theory. representation, of modification, shan't be questioned at this point.
Positivism: A system of philosophy which excludes everything but natural Correct class position and representation were linked for B. B. For
phenomena or properties of knowable things, together with their certain film-makers currently working, this is not only not a necessary link,
relations of coexistence and succession (italics mine). it is a vital weak link. The whole platform between two ideological camps
Positive: (3) independent of changing circumstances or relations; within film production rests, finally, on this opposition ; it is the
opposed to relative and comparative. overdetermining aspect. The anti-illusionist project is determined, or not,
'For objective dialectics the absolute is also to be found in the relative. at this juncture.
The unity, the coincidence, identity, resultant force, of opposites, is 8 'Stella's emotional and critical reaction at this time against what he
conditional, temporary, transitory, and relative.' Lenin, 'On Dialectics', in considered rhetorical in the abstract-expressionist posture was more
Materialism and Empirio-Criticism. marked than the gradual mutation of his style suggests. "I think I had been
'Feeling like a voyeur watching Warhol's pornographic Couch is badly affected by what could be called the romance of Abstract
precisely not to be in the position of a voyeur. It is precisely the stare, (and Expressionism", Stella recalls, "particularly as it filtered out to places like
the seeming stare of Wavelength) that works to counter the identificatory Princeton and around the country, which was the idea of the artist as
process, though it does not of necessity smash it. And the word subvert terrifically sensitive, everchanging, ever ambitious person — particularly as
has become too cliched and ambiguous to be used effectively in this described in magazines like Art News and Arts, which I read religiously. It
context. The ineffable stare presents the medium's presence, though began to be kind of obvious and ... terrible, and you began to see
positing a deep space centrepoint out from the screen, across from the through it... I began to feel very strongly about finding a way that wasn't
objects of the film, particularly in 13 Most Beautiful Women and parts of so wrapped up in the hullabaloo, or a way of working that you couldn't
Chelsea Girls.' (London College of Printing Notes on Film, Peter Gidal write about... something that was stable, in a sense, something that
1971). wasn't constantly a record of your sensitivity, a record of flux."' (Frank
5 Aristotelian catharsis is inseparable from identification and the purging Stella, by William Rubin, MOMA, NY, p.13).
(whether this is a pseudo, ie unreal, concept or not) is inextricably bound ' "I always get into arguments", he reported, "with people who want to
to the latter's operations. retain the 'old values' in painting — the 'humanistic' values that they always
In reference to my own work, Michael Snow implies such a constant find on the canvas. If you pin them down, they always end up asserting
production rather than consumption. The example is apt because often that there is something there besides the paint on the canvas. My painting
what seems like (and is, in fact) an untheorized position is of the order of a is based on the fact that only what can be seen is there ... If the painting
theoretical supposition. Snow's words : '... your film (Room Film 1973) were lean enough, accurate enough, or right enough, you would just be
had to be worked at. I felt as if it were made by my father, as if it were made able to look at it. All I want anyone to get out of my paintings, and all I ever
by a blind man. I feel that searching, tentative quality, that quality of get out of them, is the fact that you can see the whole idea without any
trying to see.' (MS, September 1973, London). This attempt at confusion ... What you see is what you see."' (Ibid). I quote the above
verbalization, loose as it is, in fact is stating theoretically clearly beneath the with full awareness that the statements broaden the parameters and raise
surface an aesthetic necessitating dialectic attempts at image as many confusions as they attempt to close up, yet in relation to the
arrestation, the necessity for production rather than consumption. problematical, humanistic, ideology of process, Stella was more aware
'Sometimes the repeating shots would be clear, sometimes one couldn't than most. And this his painting at its best is also clear on.
tell if it was continuous.' The constitution of the work, coming from the 9 Michel Foucault in 'On the Subversion of Knowledge', in the
material relations of the work, but not mechanistically positioning interviews with Gilles Deleuze and Paulo Caruso, is particularly
(ie illustrating ) itself tautologically, is at the base of the meaning of illuminating. (Hanser paperback).
Snow's statement. Similarly, what seems an aesthete's formalist delight in 10 For a beginning though also insufficient piece of work on the above
light in Jonas Mekas' (Village Voice, February 10, 1975 and October 29, mentioned, see my 'Beckett Et Others Er Art : A System' (Studio
1973) and to some extent Lucy Fischer's piece on my film are really International, November 1974, pp. 183-87).
attempts to bring to speech a problematic of the constitution of the filmic 11 Including Joyce's unreadable but essential Finnegans Wake and
image opaquely through the agency of light, the whole problematic thus Beckett's late works, HOW IT IS (1964) and NOT I (1973).
of image-constitution through something, a representation as a 2 Reflexiveness can be as much a diversionary tactic from the anti-
constitution rather than as a given, 'captured' transparently. This illusionist project, as anything. Similarly, the concept of subversion,
theoretically important difference is thus elucidated beneath the idealist ie subverting the codes, subverting the meaning, is merely a rationalized
mask which film prose in fact mostly is. Fischer is more analytical, less annexation of precisely those codes and meanings, with attendant guilt
poetic, than Mekas. I quote only the former, the quote most apt to be contributing the enormous libidinous energy necessary for this repressive
diversionary without meaning to be so. 'The rest of the film proceeds with operation. The bourgois academic cine-semiotician's simplistic usage of
an examination of a room and the way that light illuminatesthe objects psychoanalysis is a ruse.
within it.' (Lucy Fischer, SoHo Weekly News, January 16, 1975, italics 13 The self posited here is situated in its self -alienation/distanciation, and
mine). this still refers to the concept, which must be fought, of self as centre
According to Lawrence Van Gelder in the New York Times, (distanced though it be), self as unitary. This psychological centering of
(January 17, 1975), 'It (Room Film 1973) is a murky, granularjourney the self must be nullified in order to even begin to set up a concept of a
around a room, broken by occasional incursions of light.' The ideological dialectically posited, distanciated self. Merely to drop the usage of a word
concept of journey, a man's journey through a given universe, is somehow such as self does not fulfil the requirement of redefining the word, And the
at the base of the writings on Room Film 1973. It is as if all film were (and I redefining must be done so that self is understood, not to be that unitary
suspect this to be the case) still recuperated as some form of masked or centre of knowledge, that 'I' through which the world is. For the 'I' does
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