Friday, August 14, 2009

Cine-Writing

It's like a stream of feelings, intuition, and joy of discovering things. Finding beauty where it's maybe not. Seeing. And, on the other hand, trying to be structural, organized; trying to be clever. And doing what I believe is cinécriture, what I always call cine-writing. Which is not a screenplay. Which is not only the narration words. It's choosing the subject, choosing the place, the season, the crew, choosing the shots, the place, the lens, the light. Choosing your attitude towards people, towards actors. Then choosing the editing, the music. Choosing contemporary musicians. Choosing the tune of the mixing. Choosing the publicity material, the press book, the poster. You know, it's a handmade work of filmmaking -- that I really believe. And I call that cine-writing. - Agnés Varda
The thing is, I was able to see about eight Varda films in Portland as part of the "Vardian Vision" program at the Portland Art Museum over the last month and there can be no question that the Varda model of cinécriture is what new media / mobile video artists should aspire to.

The quote above could easily have applied to Immobilité. In fact, if I were reading from a teleprompter and someone asked me what I mean by mobile phone video art, how is it made, how does it relate to indie film making and what does it have to do with what in the past we have called arthouse cinema, looking directly into the camera while reading I would say:

"It's like a stream of feelings, intuition, and joy of discovering things. Finding beauty where it's maybe not. Seeing. And, on the other hand, trying to be structural, organized; trying to be clever. And doing what I believe is cinécriture, what I always call cine-writing. Which is not a screenplay. Which is not only the narration words. It's choosing the subject, choosing the time of day, the season, the crew, choosing the shots, the location, the mobile phone, the light. Choosing your attitude towards people, towards actors or non-actors or actors playing non-actors. Then choosing the editing, the sound. Choosing contemporary sound artists to work with. Artists who know where you are coming from and who can synchronize with your vision even as you are not 100% sure what your vision is because you have to make it up as you go along, remixing the moment. Choosing the tenor of the remixable moments. Choosing the publicity material, the web site, the iPhone app, the director's e-book, the poster. You know, it's a handmade work of mobile phone video art -- that I really believe. And I call that cine-writing."


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Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Genoa (Generative Art in Book Form)

If you can find Paul Metcalf's uncategorizable book, Genoa, get it (it was republished by University of New Mexico Press in 1991, and included in Metcalf's "Collected Works" published by Coffeehouse -- of course, the original 1965 publication from Jargon is best). It's one of the great works of 20th century American writing (I emphasize the "American" aspect if for no other reason than Metcalf was the great-grandson of Melville).

In an interview at Dalkey Archive, with John O'Brien, we get this exchange:
JOB: What have been the influences of modern poetic techniques on your conception of prose? I should point out two things: first, the poets I have in mind are Pound, Williams, and Olson; second, I am purposely avoiding the word "fiction," though you are usually thought of as a novelist.

PM: The poets, it seem to me, have offered us an opportunity to "particularize" — i.e., to break a narrative into its particular parts, and rearrange them according to an original pattern. There is a significant connection between the images from the world of electromagnetics, images used in one case by Pound, and the other by Olson. Pound speaks of the poem as the "rose in the steel dust," and Olson describes the poem as a thing among things, that must "stand on its own feet as, a force, in, the fields of force which surround everyone of us..." Both these images suggest particles in a state of chaos, drawn into shape through an act of imagination, but retaining their character as particles, distinct from one another.

The American dynamic (in their example, the historical dynamic) is the separation and exposure of the particles, spread out and shaping, all in one difficult process, seemingly contradictory but not so, and not to be easily congealed in the European manner—particularly in Olson’s and Williams’ view — not brought together, but spreading and shaping in one gesture, as in the "big bang" theory of the origin of the universe, spreading and shaping.
One can sense the influence of the Whiteheadian Olson in these conversational remarks and for my money, Genoa embodies Olson's COMPOSITION BY FIELD more than anything I have ever read by Olson himself.

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Monday, August 10, 2009

Disappearing into the Network (With the Blinders Off)

Baudrillard, in conversation:
[...] one hides in the network, that is, one is no longer anywhere. What is fascinating and exercises such an attraction is perhaps less the search for information or the thirst for knowledge than the desire to disappear, the possibility of dissolving and disappearing into the network.
Bill Readings, from The University in Ruins:
The question posed to the University is thus not how to turn the institution into a haven for Thought but how to think in an institution whose development tends to make Thought more and more difficult, less and less necessary (175).
Yesterday's New York Times most popular online story-link:
Textbooks have not gone the way of the scroll yet, but many educators say that it will not be long before they are replaced by digital versions — or supplanted altogether by lessons assembled from the wealth of free courseware, educational games, videos and projects on the Web.
The digitally-born generation, that is to say the Net Generation, arrives back on campus in two weeks. What will they think of this place that still presents itself as the gatekeeper of knowledge? What can they teach us about the evolving forms of digital media literacy and the growing influence of social networks on personal forms of expression? How will the Net Generation apply their distributed network aesthetics to collaborative learning with or without the university and how will the university ever keep up given how far and fast it is falling behind??

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