Page 63 - Studio International - November December 1975

appearances of a time structure articulated by light, and more scratched and these scratches seem, as an
darkness, sound and silence (structure articulated by after-sensation, to fall into the holes.
light, negative of light structure, structure articulated by Some films were even a counter-reaction to the serial
sound, negative of sound structure, light meets sound, films. Instead of condensed countable metric time, we
light structure meets negative of sound structure, etc.). preferred an elongated time defined by the filmed object,
Adebar already had a graphic notation (vide the the material or the concept : action time, duration time,
analysis by Export)4 that could be mistaken for a musical real time. Schlemmer's anti-metaphysical positivist
score. Rainer has a score like a musical one, defining the film 8h 01 —8h11 (16mm, 10 min, 1968) showed a
film completely so that it can be remade by anyone digital clock for ten minutes. Scheugl's Wien 17,
without possible error : the true machine film. Kubelka Schuhmanngasse (16mm, bw, 2¾ min, 1967), solved an
called Adebar, Schwechater and Arnulf Rainer 'metrical equation successfully : the length of a film reel in the
films' because by focusing on the frame and serial camera should be the equivalent of the length of a street.
methods his films became countable. This conception of In one shot he filmed the beginning and the end of the
filmic time is also related to a conception of musical time street so that the filmstrip started and ended equally with
which derives from Hegel, who defined tones as 'time it. Weibel's Glanz und Schicht des Zelluloid was a short
points' and musical time as countable, and which filmstrip, half of which changed the shine of the
triumphed in Webern and post-Webern music. His celluloid with only one side perforated, so that at the
methods of editing derived from all sorts of musical projection when the perforation changed sides the film
techniques like counterpoint, permutation, variable was torn. Weibel projected this piece during a tour of
velocity, retrograde development of motifs and intervals. Germany in 1968. After each projection he again cut the
Repetition prepared the ground for his theory of filmic pieces, which thus became progressively smaller and
articulation : a reciprocation of the relations between smaller. The film ended when the filmstrip disappeared.
image and sound, the interval between two frames and Filmic parameters defined the attitude to reality, but
the split-second sync sound- image event. Kubelka reality defined the angle of the shot and the attitude to the
preferred mathematical and musical structures because material. New techniques of montage were employed by
they have no reference to outside events, so he could Schmidt and Scheugl, who took two cameras and
make absolute films with no relation to the world, filmed the same events simultaneously from different
neglecting the referential aspect of the image. But the perspectives — Hernals, 1967 (11 min).
moment he had images with a strong representative An important feature of second generation cinema was
quality, as in Unsere Afrikareise, 1966, he could no longer the transformation and substitution of the constituents
avoid meaning and had to build up a grammar. The of the cinema machine. Abstract film Nr. 1,1968 by
interval between two frames in his metric films became Export, was organized concretely : a mirror, water and a
the sync event between two images or image and sound spot made abstract shadows on the screen. There were
(before or after or synchronous with the image). Like new projection situations and systems, for instance
Eisenstein and Vertov he found in the collision of images Action lecture, 1968, by Weibel, where the noise of the
and sound the meaning of expression, but with him it is audience directed the projector; and Adrian's Weisse
more precise and computable. The sync event is the unit und Schwarze Schatten, 1969, where the projected
of his filmic grammar, and it seems to me that his theory of shadow of a loop mingled with the real shadows of
articulation built on frame-sound relations is the first spectators through a transparent screen.
notable theory of filmic syntax — something music A lot of expanded movies and cinema performances
achieved a long time ago. The possible limits and investigated all parts of the film machine : the strip, the
problems of picture processing raised by such a theory projector, the screen, the light beam, the curtain etc.
will be discussed later. Scheugl put a twine through the projector instead of the
In his spring 1973 exhibition at the gallery
grünangergasse 12, Vienna, Kubelka displayed the scores
and the filmstrips of his metrical films. The strips were
arranged in the form of pictures, so that the combinative
and serial character of his compositional method stood
out especially. At the moment he is working on two films :
Monument for the Old World, approximately 30 minutes
long, which will be finished probably by 1976 and seems
to be concerned with the representational aspect of
pictures and the application of his theory of articulation.
The other film has the preliminary title Body Language,
and is on the body work of Arnulf Rainer. A book of the
shooting material has been published. ,
The younger generation has extended the cinema of
structure to a cinema of material, or the cinema itself to
expanded cinema. Not a cinema of condensation, but a
cinema of elongation. Not so much music as a model but
painting and sculpture. As a result of the disregard
for condensation, all sorts of limits and frontiers
have been broken down. A classical system has
strict limits and rules, eg for deciding when an art work is
finished or not. But as one word leads to another, so any
finished film can be regarded as footage for the next.
Even the difference between a good image and a bad one,
where the lighting was wrong or faulty —such frontiers
were abolished. The emancipation of many other parts
of the cinema machine went on to include the spectator
as well. Literary footage was used by Schmidt in many of
his films, eg in the film with the proper title Film footage,
1967 (16mm, bw, sound, 10 min), a contrapuntal
montage of sound and image in groups of ten different
shots. Scheugl made another film but with a reduced
view. The materiality of film was exploited in many ways,
especially the filmstrip and the projection situation.
Weibel put his fingerprints on a blank filmstrip, making an
original from a print. Schmidt punched holes in the
blank strip, White, 1968 (16mm, bw, 2 min), where
through failures in the projector the strip becomes more Weibel & Export A Journey is Worth a Journey 1968
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