January 23, 2011 an obsession, lately
film as poetry:
before stan brakhage was a filmmaker he was a poet. he saw jean cocteau’s orphee and realized that film could be a poetic medium.
the above refers to ms. deren. this was a revelation to me the first time i saw it. as was it to the film world. last semester i encountered an artist’s book called “from the book of legends” (p.s. i tried to find a worthy link to something about this book and i sadly came up with basically nothing save for its bare bones listing in granary’s catalog. visit a special collections near you to get your hands on it cause it’s enchanting) by a woman named jane brakhage (oh, yes, stan’s wife, er, former wife, she’s jane wodening again now). anyway, in it jane wrote these unreal myths about joseph cornell, charles olson, and deren. an amalgamation of “truthful” stories of nearby artists one admires and folkish/mythic storytelling. o! the vortex.
just saw this for the first time yesterday, and lucky me it was a film print on the big screen. wish i had versions of these with english subtitles, alas…i am very intrigued by godard’s use of gesture. think i will be using him a lot in my coming thoughts/processes.
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David Wolach
said
how will you be using–or think you might be using–godard? gesture, i’m interested. thinking of his use of hand-held & silent for shots, esp. the early films.
ah, did we ever do brakhage in class? i have at bard, but can’t remember if i ever have at evergreen. in any case, glaze of cathexis – “to hold” but also, of course, “to desire” and “charge”, as in, a psycho-sexual (and other emotional) attachment to, and discharge of…
yay.
d
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katerr
said
well, the short answer about my use of godard would be this: as an imagined part of my thesis i have been recording myself doing mundane things (setting type, reading blogs, riding the bus, etc.) and my plan is to cut these videos into little gestural clips ie. reaching for a letter, brushing the hair from my face, etc…most of these will be decided at a later date when i go through the massive amounts of footage i’ve collected and parse out some interesting recurring gestures. the plan is to then manipulate them into video collage poems. i’m thinking of some sort of amalgamation of work by brakhage, deren, abigail child, godard…these “poems” would be projected over a poetics theatre piece that will have a typographic score/script that is actually a part of the performance. the title, you may recognize, is IS THIS A TEXT? and is sort of born out of that old project, but mutated.
this is just the aesthetic component of the project. its conceptual basis i will likely be laying out here on the blog more and more. i’ve already talked about it a little bit. i’m thinking of the word “text” in a lot of different ways.
i really wish i could talk to you about this in your living room. i think i will be in olympia in the spring, hopefully in time to sit and talk with you and e about my ideas before i have to turn in my thesis proposal at the end of the semester!
i don’t remember if i ever encountered brakhage in any of your classes, but i wouldn’t be surprised if i had. he’s an old favorite who i’ve been returning to recently because he feels really relevant to me and my work right now. i’m even going to try to convince juliana (spahr) to let me call him a poet and research him for my “major poet” research for my workshop.
actually, speaking of that, any ideas of “major poets” whose work might be relevant to what i’m up to these days? i’m having a hard time with that. most of the poets i feel connected to aren’t “major.” or it’s gertrude, and i’ve done enough with her. obviously, i would like it to be a woman, but that might not be possible?
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David Wolach
said
you probably saw this in tracking his stuff online, but meant to add this link in the above:
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katerr
said
this is part of the above comment, but it was getting long, so…i’m interested in your (brakhage’s?) working definition of cathexsis. i’m thinking of this sort of trance that holds the viewer/subject’s attention to the object to which the s/he is cathexting. (did i just make up that word?) this could be a mental preoccupation, one that sort of buzzes in the background of one’s daily thoughts, but it could also be a literal physical trance or paralysis, maybe like the experience of watching one of brakhage’s films.
it’s also interesting how flexible that viewing experience is. you mentioned in your blog that his work seems well suited for youtube, and i totally agree. i also would love to be consumed by it. watch the same video small on a page, fullscreen, on a television, on a projector screen, on a movie theater screen, on an imax screen, on a planetarium or something…if only i had the means to make that happen!
i filmed myself watching “glaze of cathexis” last night. interestingly enough, i had been filming myself gchatting with someone i’m totally in cathexis with RIGHT NOW, and then i watched that while still recording…we need a phone date.