I am in very deeply in agreement with both the frustration and the
appraisals. I'll start by saying that Stan Brakhage is an Artist
working in the medium of film.
What I would observe in answer to this dilemma, in total agreement
with David, is so simple and straight-forward that it seems
ludicrous: paintings, drawings, sculpture are things that get
collected first and foremost for their unique, one-of-a-kind
nature. But also as within the continuum of the visual tradition
associated with other ritually-based institutions (Monarchy and
Clergy). Graphic arts, engravings and lithographs, were always
cheaper reproductions without the auratic cache of "original works of
art". The introduction of photography and cinema only complicated
this formula in favor of the Art, not of the film. Hollywood's
position in the culture "industry" only furthers the problems.
Now to back away from the original/copy issue, the next layer of the
onion tends to be about the Art being placed into museum collections
and finding its audiences through exhibitions, while the films are
placed into archives and given screenings to attract their
audiences. The goal of the Art is to be collected while the film
operates at the other end of continuum seeking screenings. And the
museum collection is conceived as a cultural history which needs to
be preserved, while an archive maintains holdings awaiting future
uses, but not fully integrated into an existing cultural history.
I think to compare the operations of FMC, Canyon, etc. with the
Castelli/Sonnabend project in the mid-1970s is instructive. Castelli/
Sonnabend sought to place works into collections, although it was
also willing to facilitate screenings, and they were about producing
symbolic value for the work, while it seems that the coops have
served many functions, but the production of symbolic value falls way
down the list.
In the spirit of this question, I've wondered how the elements of
this debate, and the other film/digital debates, might change if we
re-conceived of the frame in terms of projection versus monitors?
This might allow a middle position recognizing the material need to
preserve a print, while also seeking a manner to exhibit a film/
projection outside the cinema screening format, and to be placed into
an on-going presentation within the gallery space--possibly resulting
in the film being more readily perceived as Art.
I was recently told the Roy Lichtenstein Three Landscapes (1970-71)
installation at the Whitney Museum in New York was wearing out the
1:00min long 35mm loops daily. Eventually the museum converted to
digital for the remainder of the installation. (http://whitney.org/
Exhibitions/RoyLichtenstein)
While the work was fundamentally different, the sound of the three
film projectors lost to the barely perceptible whir of the LCD
projectors, the images could be said to haver maintained scale and
the aura of the Art--if we grant the orig. 35mm prints that aura.
Damon.
On Mar 5, 2012, at 6:54 PM, David Tetzlaff wrote:
Marilynn, implicitly if not explicitly, poses the question: "How is
it that filmmakers are not considered 'artists' within the 'art
world'?" To FRAMEWORKers, that question is surely rhetorical. Of
course, filmmakers are artists, and it's simply silly for anyone to
draw the sorts of distinctions for which Marilyn faults Balsom. But
the art world DOES draw this distinction, and it's worth asking why.
The history of artists (i.e. painters and sculptors)
A very important point slips by in the parentheses; it's not just
filmmakers who are 'not artists.' Poets, novelists, composers,
musicians, dancers, choreographers, playwrights, stage-directors
etc. etc. Only painters and sculptors and the like really count.
So, what is the operating definition here?
I submit it is this: An artist is a person who makes 'art.' 'Art'
is a unique physical object that has commodity status. It can be
sold, acquired, possessed, collected and accrue economic value in
the process of exchange. Without those properties, creative work
has no function within the instrumentalities of the art world: you
can't do with it the things that art-world people do. So it's 'not
art.'
An 'art work' has to have a provenance, and it's history and value
as an object becomes tied to the history of it's author. 'Artists'
are important in the art world because their imprimatuer affects
the commodity status of their work. As such a mediocre film by a
painter is more worthy of attention than a great film by a
filmmaker, because the painter has an established commodity cache.
I feel kind of gob-smacked that so many people seem not to 'get'
the basic political economy of art -- or maybe it's an aesthetic
economy, but anyway it's some kind of economy -- since Benjamin and
Lukacs have laid it out so clearly.
Curators still don't what to do with Duchamp. When I visited the
Tate a few years back, they had 'Fountain' on display, accompanied
by a wall card that noted in very serious language that this was
not the ORIGINAL 'Fountain' by Duchamp himself, but rather a
'limited' reproduction created by Richard Hamilton at Duchamp's
behest and with his seal of approval. I almost fell over laughing.
Benjamin especially nailed how film upsets the whole aesthetic
apple cart. No aura, no cult value: an artform by definition
liberated from the old way. There was an implicit (if inchoate)
leftist politics in the formation of experimental film institutions
such as Anthology, FMC and Canyon. If filmmakers were hostile to
the museum and gallery world, they had damn good reason to be, on a
variety of higher principles. (This is a very different thing than
being hostile to the art in the museums.) Here, as synecdoche, I'll
just references the writings of Jack Smith, and note that in his
later years he was chummy with the post-marxist folks at Semiotext
(e), and suggested that they simply re-title the journal 'Hatred of
Capitalism,' (which they later used as the title of an anthology).
But time moves on, situations change. It is no longer possible for
institutions, much less artists, to support themselves by renting
celluloid prints. The all-powerful market speaks, and most of us
have to find some way to pay for rent and groceries. The only way
for an 'experimental filmmaker' to thrive in the art world is to
adopt the practices of that world, even though they may be
antithetical to the apparent nature of the medium. As Chuck notes,
photography faced a similar problem. Photographic prints though,
unlike film prints, are subject to significant manipulation in
enlarging from the negative. Thus, a photographic print can achieve
auratic, commodity status: there is only one 'Piss Christ' and that
has been destroyed...
Marilyn quotes Balsam:
“recent exhibition practices have demonstrated the persistent
vestiges of not considering film to be a legitimate artistic
medium on a par with, say, painting or sculpture -- unless, that
is, it is sold in limited editions on the art market. Despite the
increasing interpenetration of the worlds of art and experimental
film, these lasting ramifications of their differing models of
distribution and acquisition continue to mark out a divide between
the two realms and their treatment in the contemporary museum.
Woot. There it is.
Marilyn, (putting the real skinny in parentheses again):
[Further to these points, the selling by filmmakers of limited
editions of their work (on celluloid) to museums may, indeed,
become more of a norm, as the use of digital reproductions
increasingly becomes the norm elsewhere.]
In a nutshell, somebody has to pay the bills, and right now the
best bet is the 'art-world'. And the only way to extract resources
from the art-world is to give them what they value: objects that
"fit the art world model of purchasing and ownership."(MB)
What then do 'film artists' (or their estates) do? Withdraw all
prints from circulation, and sell the entire materiality of the
work -- the camera original, internegs, masters, whatever -- to the
highest bidder. (At least celluloid HAS a materiality -- if
photochemical film posed a problem for the art-world, digital
origin in a total nightmare.) So MOMA could be THE owner of, say,
Dog Star Man.
This is certainly not the way I wish for things to be, but taking a
pragmatic view I think it's potentially not so bad and even has an
upside. For here we have to consider the economy not of the art-
work itself, but the economy of the relationship between the work
and it's reproductions. Reproductions are subject to the economics
of pure information, which has really only made itself apparent in
the age of the Internet: information forms accrue value by breadth
of circulation, not by scarcity. Id software remains the paradigm,
as it's founders became rich beyond their wildest dreams by giving
away 'Doom' absolutely free, thus establishing it's popularity and
appeal, thus allowing them to get paid handsomely for part 2. It's
pretty obvious that auratic art objects become more valuable as the
reputations of the maker, and of the specific object, increase, and
every reproduction adds to that reputation. We've all seen
reproductions of 'Crows Over a Cornfield' but that only makes the
original canvas worth more, not less.
Thus, the commodification of celluloid art actually 'incentivizes'
its distribution via reproduction: DVD and/or Blu-Ray at popular
prices. Which I, for one, would welcome. A couple weeks back I
asked a question about what values can be found in the corpus we
call experimental film. Nobody offered a reply. There was a bit of
the usual blah-blah-blah about 'medium specificity.' But a) that's
not really a value b) it doesn't really distinguish 'experimental
film' as a whole from other rubrics c) to the extent that SOME
experimental works foreground a medium specificity, the number and
importance of works that do, and the degree to which this the key
to their aesthetic significance is wildly overestimated by the
celluloid cultists.
Fred said: "It is simply my claim that many of the best avant-garde
(and other) films come through far better in their intended
format." I wholeheartedly agree. But, first, I believe 'their
intended format' is a GOOD print, not one full of dust, tram line
scratches, torn sprocket holes and crappy tape splices. At least
that was the case when I made films... Second, look how weak 'far
better' is as a claim. And I think Fred is being honest here.
There's a whole spectrum of deviation away from the ideal, and just
because one form is 'far better' doesn't mean another form is
'bad.' (Either the faded and worn print or the projection from
DVD). It's not an ideal world and there are aways trade-offs. Shall
we take the slides away from the art history professors? Or, more
to the point, is a gay teenager in rural Nebraska better off
watching a DVD of 'Flaming Creatures' or never having even heard of
Jack Smith because his work will never be shown in its 'intended
format' in flyover land? I submit that the values that make the
corpus of experimental film truly worthwhile are by a very large
margin things that survive substantive measures of image
degradation quite well.
IMHO, the real battle is not 'film vs. digital', but 'cinema vs.
iPod'. My personal experience is that the experimental films I
value most highly do not suffer much from slight image
degradations, but do suffer greatly when withdrawn from the context
of cinema: i.e. display on a large screen in a darkened room. You
have to concentrate to 'get' a lot of this stuff. It NEEDS a
certain scale, needs to trap you in your seat without the available
AV distraction of everyday life, to force you to deal with it's
otherness.
As such, I find Marilyn's endorsement of gallery-type film
installations disturbing. I've seen a number of them (including
Brakhage) and I thought they all were awful, basically reducing the
work to 'TV': small screen, too much ambient light, people
wandering in and out distractedly... (The one exception being an
Anthony McCall piece where the constant influx of people in and out
of the room, figuring out the sculptural nature of the thing, then
playing with the beam seemed just right.) If anybody has the
responsibility to present the material in a way that maximizes it's
integrity, it's museums. But they don't value the work in that
sense, because they can't value it in the other sense, so maybe
we'd get better screenings under a regime of "purchasing and
ownership." (???)
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