Guggenheim Exhibit Stills and Videos

Paul Chan's 6th Light

NOTES

· I am inspired by Deren, since she is essentially the 1^st female avant garde filmmaker

· I’d consider my work to be experimental, multi-media use like those artists she has influenced

· I feel very similarly about Deren as they do

· I am prone to black and white photography/film

· Although this may be a cop-out for emotion today, it was all some of these artists had to work with and I think it was beneficial to the overall dark and gloomy affects, themes and concepts, symbols

· Deren always has an underlying mysterious motif for the viewer to actively play a role, be the camera

· Su Friedrich says that this part of Deren’s work allows the film to be more engaging -
“makes the experience more of a participatory sport than a passive one”

· Deren theme 1 = movement of the camera – its role, it is a character with its own unique perspective

· Deren theme 2 = the woman’s body and time sense – we have an advantage as women

· Deren theme 3 = time – it’s not 1 moment that’s important but what is continuously happening

· Deren theme 4 = utilization of space

· Theme 5 = nature and aesthetics

· MD says her major theme is “constant metamorphosis” – one image becomes the next, which then becomes the next

· Barbara Hammer calls this Deren’s “crossing of time and collapsing it”

· Barbara Hammer likes how Deren shows personal feelings in an individual way

o like Munstenburg’s "Why we go to the movies" in The Function of Photoplay

· Eisenstein’s montage theory editing involved the audience – we should actively engage and see the symbolic realizations

o Transference/ Synaesthesia ideas relate

WHY THESE STILLS?

· Looking back, I have come to realize that I enjoy both looking at multi-media art and creating it

· The combination of materials is more interesting to me, personally – more of a puzzle to figure out

· My UPenn collage almost eerily resembles Okanoue’s piece – which I had never seen before

· Building this piece was a creative and explorative experience for me

· I could build my own world, create my own story, characters, scenes

· It looks like she started off with a simple and architectural photograph and by placing a seductive leg cut-out, woman-headed bird, walking man, and woman’s head atop a building, she spoke without any words

· What I love bout art, especially art like this, is that the story I create in my head about these characters in “In Love” will completely differ the story of the spectator standing beside me in the gallery or museum

· Even if the viewer comes up with an idea far different than that of the artist, perhaps that wasn’t the artist’s intent = think what you want to think

· Art, after all, is a medium which allows freedom of expression and mind

· Which is probably why I enjoy studying film and art at school. I learned that you are never wrong. Your teacher or classmates may not agree with you but your individualized opinion is what matters most

· Without conversation and debate, art would be too mundane – it would crave some controversy

· Art needs differing perspectives to survive and evolve

· I like art that tells a story and progresses, makes you think and feel

Maya Deren Film Notes

b) Ritual in transfigured time

-Exploration of social rituals

-Young woman is introduced into society

-The protagonists of her works, including MD herself, move seamlessly through shifting encounters/spaces

-Circulates through guests at party – becomes part of group in silent social dance

-Joins a man in a park

-Wanders away in a trance

-Gesture of death and rebirth

c) Meshes of the Afternoon – b/w and silent

-Flower on ground

-Hand shadow

-Shadow of woman – no face yet, just hands

-Feet

-Key falls

-Knife falls out of bread

-Phone off hook

-Detail

-Walking

-CU eye shut – lashes

-Back and forth to shot outside through the circle window

-Black cloaked woman walking

-Shadow chases her/flower

-See MD’s facial expression finally

-Slow motion on stairs running up

-Cool stairs shot up and down angles

-Face reflection on knife – eerie

-Slow continuous movements of hers, screams

-Woman sleeping in chair

-Key comes out of mouth

-Black cloak – mirror face = a death symbol

-Use of editing

-Cuts move her in time

-Key, knife, key

-Multiple MD’s in shot

-Suspense – black hand – key, knife

-Kills herself – glasses

-She becomes a man

-Now they are in place

-Man = death, same actions

-Flower reappears on the pillow

-He picks up mirror

-Flower – knife

-Broken mirror washed up at sea

-Waves

-Back in the house – mirror sliced her on chair

c) At land

· Woman washes up with waves

· Sky, birds look up eye

· Shot down on her eyes

· “defiance of normal space/time”

· editing style

· multiple shifts of geological location in single sequence

· like in meshes of the afternoon, to express activity of the subconscious mind

· used it to explore the hidden dynamic of the external world

· chess party – back to beach where odyssey began

Su Friedrich’s work like Deren’s theme: “Can we hold a knife without stabbing ourselves? Can we hold a knife without thinking of stabbing ourselves?”

(MoMa 2010)

Barbara Hammer (American 1939)

Bent Time 16mm, color 1983

-Version of Maya Deren’s approach to time and space

-Simulated by walking across US from and to different high enery locations

-1 geological step in time to be 1 frame of film time

-result = a jittery, continual binding of the nation from end to end

-subjective, forward moving views

-shot through a wide angle lens = distorted the image

-suggests physics theory that time may literally bend

-shot of sun clock = time lapse shots

-speeds up/slows down

-dizzy but want to keep looking

-California to Ohio to New Mexico to California to NYC

(MoMa 2010)

-Past work of mine that reminded me of the art I saw at the MoMa

stills from the moma

MoMa - 1. Pictures by Women: A History of Modern Photography

Left: Hannah Hoch
Indian Dancer (from an ethnographic museum)
1930 cut and pasted printed papers and metallic foil on paper

Right: Toshiko Okanoue
In Love
1953 cut and pasted printed papers on printed paper







Left: Annette Messager
My Vows
1988-91
Photographs and Sculpture: colored graphite on paper, string, black tape, and pushpins over black paper or black synthetic polymer paint
11' 8 1/4" x 6' 6 3/4"

A Visit to the MoMa

Where: 11 West 53 Street

2. Henri-Cartier Bresson: The Modern Century



3. 9 Screens

4. Maya Deren's Legacy: Women and Experimental Film

"A woman has the strength to wait, because she's had to wait. She has to wait nine months for the concept of a child. Time is built into her body in the sense of becomingness...Now in any time form, this is a very important sense. I think that my films - putting as much stress as they do upon the constant metamorphosis - one image is always becoming another. That is, it is what is happening that is important in my films, not what is at any moment. This is a woman's time sense. And I think that it happens more in my films than in almost anyone else's." (MoMa 2010)

Biography:
Maya Deren (born Ukraine, 1917-1961) was a pioneer of experimental cinema and the first prominent American avant-garde filmmaker and film theorist. Her debut work, Meshes of the Afternoon (1943), made with Alexander Hammid, is one of the most well-known American experimental films, and her work overall - including film, performance, and poetry, laid the groundwork for future generations of experimental filmmakers. Throughout the 1940s and 1950s Deren wrote about film, screened her work, and lectured at universities, colleges, museums, and film societies across North America, helping to span the growth of independent cinema. (MoMa 2010)

Work:

a) Meditation on Violence
1948, 16mm black and white, sound and music
-flute and drums heard
-Chinese martial arts master
-perform traditional movements of Wu-Tang and Shaolin schools
-bare room
-camera revolves around the subject
-continued strength
-continual flowing movement reflects the Chinese martial arts concept that constant motion contains all possible forms of movement
-halfway through the film, the sequence reverses, creating a seamless loop that ends as it began

b) Ritual in Transfigured Time
1946, 16mm silent black and white

c) Meshes of the Afternoon
1943, silent black and white

d) At Land
1944, 16mm silent black and white

e) Talley Beatly
1945 - A study in choreography for the camera
-explores the relationship between movement and the camera
-dancer travels fluidly through time
-moves seamlessly between a forest, domestic space
-the camera acts as the dancer's hidden partner
-the shooting and editing technique is used to describe metaphysical concepts and to create the illusion of continuous motion.
-It depicts movements that could never be realized on stage

(MoMa 2010)


Modern Female Artists Influenced by Deren:
-Barbara Hammer
"I was struck by Maya Deren's use of time when in Meshes of the Afternoon she placed one foot in the sand, the next one in vegetation, the next on a cement sidewalk, and in the last on the floor of her apartment (one assumes). She crossed time and collapsed it in those few shots."

-Hammer considered Deren a role model and was inspired by her ability to "show personal feelings in an individual way." Hammer makes experimental films including themes such as lesbian sexuality and identity. Interestingly, she never has women on screen. Rather, she prefers to express physicality and emotion through her presence behind the camera. (MoMa 2010)

-Su Friedrich
"Although Deren gives clues to the viewer she still leaves certain things open or mysterious or sort of challenging...we have to connect the dots in order to get everything that's there...I leave a certain amount of work up to the viewer on the assumption that that makes the film more engaging, makes the experience more of a participatory sport than a passive one."
-Carolee Schreeman
"Maya occupied the creative prefeminist thresholds where I could anticipate the complexities, resistances to my own creative will, her visual focus on the body and nature was part of an aesthetic we shared."