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| 2007 |
Keywords: Film, museum, POV (point of view), death, cinema, theatre, audience, objects, spectator, temporal, space
In 2007, the international short film festival Oberhausen. London based curator ian white along with other guest curators, organised a series of screenings kinomuseum. Artists, writers, curators such as Pierre Bismuth, Mary Kelly and Dan Graham among others conceived their film programmes as imaginary rooms in a museum of their choice...the focus here was to form a relationship between cinema and the museum...and image a new museum rising from the foundations of the cinema auditorium.
The book (an extended catalogue for the project) brings together a collection of written works, talks and screenings formed by the artists, writers and curators.
kinomuseum is (white p13 2007) 'a proposal for considering a particular kind of cinema as a unique kind of museum ''one where its originality, authenticity and presence'' are not undermined by reproduction, but where reproduction either turns these qualities into a new set of questions for the museum, almost physically disrupting it'....'it leads to a differentiated cinema, a museum, working on the notions of impermanence (not permanent), immediacy (immediate), temporal and the temporary, manifested (obvious) to the audience who experience in the space and time of the auditorium..the museums permutating (arranging of objects..) exhibition hall, and who are its active, defining agent'.
But what does this all have to do with the cinema??? the answer is it is contingent, dependent for existence... dependent on its the theoretical auditorium within the confines of a industrial model, film (white p 20) is a infinitely (no boundaries) reproducible medium, that is it shows the same work to the same maximum people at a maximum number of times'...white continues to suggest that; cinema audiences claim ownership over the work for which they have paid a fee for...the same work being viewed in many cities, countries...Note: and further still at different times of the day simultaneously.
the museum then as discussed by Kaprow & Robert 1967 (what is a museum?) 'is so many things: temple, tomb, grotto, void, theatre; conservative/radical, establishing authority, continouosly unravelling'.. it collects and displays unique artifacts that are strictly controlled. Note: this notion could also relate to the darkness of the cinema, considering here warhols movies..that is, the relationship between spectator and the screen, the film remains the same (koch p39), its time utterly dissociated from that of the audience...the image glows up there, stately and independent...even if one only glances at the image from time to time, it plunges one into a cinematic profundity (depth) the image effects a complete transformation of all temporal modes associated with looking at a movie'...
to continue; white (p23) suggests that the museum is perhaps like a cinema in terms of the display of moving image work...further considered the entrance fee-Blockbuster exhibitions frequently 'sell out'...Preziosi and Farago (p23) describe the museum as a representation, objects are staged or framed to be read in various ways...moreover they suggest that the museum serves as a theatre, encyclopedia and laboratory and of performances..he questions could all be describing the conditions of a cinema? Kinomuseum then is an idea that remains in (white p26) in present tense, collects everything and nothing and is one place made up by many places. The museum becomes a cinema which offers different perspectives....and through selected artists, writers and curators programmes was to provide these different perspectives by constructing 'imaginary museums' to represent and explore the institution, that it the museum (note.not to remove) to bring collective imagination of the cinema audience rather than the authority representing one tangible (actual or real, able to touch) collection within the architecture of any edifice (building).
"Kinomuseum" examines and re-imagines the responses - and their cultural context - of both institutions to artists' work. Concerned not only with what we see but how we see it, the project proposes a radical alignment between viewing and critical thinking. "Kinomuseum" imagines a new museum rising from the foundations of the cinema auditorium.
Moving Pictures at an Exhibition
Mary Kelly
'Fallout' conveys 3 films which involves moving spectator (moving from one theatre to another) and the still the image...Shelly Millner & Ernie Larsen Disaster (1976); Gregg Bordowitz's Fast trip, Long Drop (1993) and The Speculative Archive not a matter of it, but when...(2006). Kelly (p45) say's of the piece, 'the alternative arrangement was intended to engage the spectator performatively in the temporal sequence of events, so resembling a gallery space, where physical movement constructs an imaged discourse that is intertextual and simultaneous in time'. This is hard to discuss without viewing the images myself (not on Tubetube) its interesting that she later imagines her intrusion would ask the spectator to see the screenings in real time and then let them slip back into history reappearing in the present, but instead what occurred was the interaction that took place during the transitory stage where viewers displayed a sense of community, that is, ephemera of looks, sighs, shuffles and fragmented exchanges...further she later states that by 'watching the films (herself) she claims are close to the surface of everyday life ...the films propel us into the here and now, the moving image is retained, im memory, as a series of stills that cling to the past' Kelly (p47) notes Barthes ''brushed with death'' and the *Mulvey's technological shifts that over determine the psychic disposition (habit, routine) in the domain of spectatorship.
*See Mulveys' stillness in the moving image: ways of visualising time and its passing' saving the image; Art after film, glasgow, centre for contemporary Arts 2003
and now for POV...Screening Room and Death. Morgan Fisher
(p85) Screening Room a remake by Volker Koster at the Gloria cinema, Oberhausen Film Festival in 2007 originally filmed by Morgan Fisher in 1968.
Fisher discusses one aspect of the film which he feels was not evident to him at the time, that being death!
(Again I am unable to view this film so therefore having to visually understand it through description given) Screening room is a tracking shot into the theatre where the audience is watching the film...every theatre where the film is shown requires its own version, so the film must be shot again and again-not remade. Despite showing in different places, the different shots are so to speak, duplicates of each other; that is duplicates of each other without anyone of them being original...further even though all shots are different from each other (even though each shows a different place) they have the same relation to the space in which they are shown, so all are one film. To discuss POV (point of view) he states: 'In a fiction film a point-of-view shot is the point of view of someone who lives forever, as a character in fiction does. But Screening Room is the point of view of the person who shot it, a real person, who unlike a fictional character will die. And by implication it's also the point of view of people who are watching it, and they will all die too.
to add further he suggests that POV is what the character sees, we are required to see the character first and the eyes to the body of the character (pov only made possible because of the body). The character expresses reaction, shock, surprise, pleasure, disappointment etc etc. the act of the character looking makes us want to look at what he / she sees. Moveover, Fisher continues that our desire to see (what is viewed by the character) is satisfied by the cut to the second shot when we are given access. Example offered is 'Rear Window' (i have discussed this in a previous posting) James Stewert's pov shows him looking out from his apartment window onto a stage of interwoven narratives of people lives occupying the apartments opposite his...he is in a sense the camera (eyes) we see through his lens to what he wants us see, as discussed in previous posting in psychoanalytical terms also mirrors his own life.
To consider Fisher's point on death in his discussion, he claims that 'Screening Room is the point of view of the person who shot it, a real person, who unlike a fictional character will die. And by implication it's also the point of view of people who are watching it, and they will all die too. To return to 'Rear Window' Stewert's character is immortal, we identify with the actor and the character he plays, thereby the actor is also immortal, so it is a shock to us when the actor eventually dies. Further he suggests that when the actor no longer works, their career ended (for what ever reason) they disappear. Career dies, they die too, the actor may live on, but they are as good as dead...years later the actor long forgotten finally dies for real...you can only die once, but the fact that the actors career has already died is a shock knowing that death has come twice.
Important to understand here...we know that James Stewert character is immortal (his pov being exclusive forever) and will live on, however the screening room the pov is not exclusive , it is a pov shared, even shared now cannot be shared forever as we will die also, the pov will pass on and so on.
Extract taken from-http://old.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/exclusive/morgan_fisher.php interview Melissa Gronlund
"Kinomuseum" examines and re-imagines the responses - and their cultural context - of both institutions to artists' work. Concerned not only with what we see but how we see it, the project proposes a radical alignment between viewing and critical thinking. "Kinomuseum" imagines a new museum rising from the foundations of the cinema auditorium.
Moving Pictures at an Exhibition
Mary Kelly
'Fallout' conveys 3 films which involves moving spectator (moving from one theatre to another) and the still the image...Shelly Millner & Ernie Larsen Disaster (1976); Gregg Bordowitz's Fast trip, Long Drop (1993) and The Speculative Archive not a matter of it, but when...(2006). Kelly (p45) say's of the piece, 'the alternative arrangement was intended to engage the spectator performatively in the temporal sequence of events, so resembling a gallery space, where physical movement constructs an imaged discourse that is intertextual and simultaneous in time'. This is hard to discuss without viewing the images myself (not on Tubetube) its interesting that she later imagines her intrusion would ask the spectator to see the screenings in real time and then let them slip back into history reappearing in the present, but instead what occurred was the interaction that took place during the transitory stage where viewers displayed a sense of community, that is, ephemera of looks, sighs, shuffles and fragmented exchanges...further she later states that by 'watching the films (herself) she claims are close to the surface of everyday life ...the films propel us into the here and now, the moving image is retained, im memory, as a series of stills that cling to the past' Kelly (p47) notes Barthes ''brushed with death'' and the *Mulvey's technological shifts that over determine the psychic disposition (habit, routine) in the domain of spectatorship.
*See Mulveys' stillness in the moving image: ways of visualising time and its passing' saving the image; Art after film, glasgow, centre for contemporary Arts 2003
and now for POV...Screening Room and Death. Morgan Fisher
(p85) Screening Room a remake by Volker Koster at the Gloria cinema, Oberhausen Film Festival in 2007 originally filmed by Morgan Fisher in 1968.
Fisher discusses one aspect of the film which he feels was not evident to him at the time, that being death!
(Again I am unable to view this film so therefore having to visually understand it through description given) Screening room is a tracking shot into the theatre where the audience is watching the film...every theatre where the film is shown requires its own version, so the film must be shot again and again-not remade. Despite showing in different places, the different shots are so to speak, duplicates of each other; that is duplicates of each other without anyone of them being original...further even though all shots are different from each other (even though each shows a different place) they have the same relation to the space in which they are shown, so all are one film. To discuss POV (point of view) he states: 'In a fiction film a point-of-view shot is the point of view of someone who lives forever, as a character in fiction does. But Screening Room is the point of view of the person who shot it, a real person, who unlike a fictional character will die. And by implication it's also the point of view of people who are watching it, and they will all die too.
to add further he suggests that POV is what the character sees, we are required to see the character first and the eyes to the body of the character (pov only made possible because of the body). The character expresses reaction, shock, surprise, pleasure, disappointment etc etc. the act of the character looking makes us want to look at what he / she sees. Moveover, Fisher continues that our desire to see (what is viewed by the character) is satisfied by the cut to the second shot when we are given access. Example offered is 'Rear Window' (i have discussed this in a previous posting) James Stewert's pov shows him looking out from his apartment window onto a stage of interwoven narratives of people lives occupying the apartments opposite his...he is in a sense the camera (eyes) we see through his lens to what he wants us see, as discussed in previous posting in psychoanalytical terms also mirrors his own life.
To consider Fisher's point on death in his discussion, he claims that 'Screening Room is the point of view of the person who shot it, a real person, who unlike a fictional character will die. And by implication it's also the point of view of people who are watching it, and they will all die too. To return to 'Rear Window' Stewert's character is immortal, we identify with the actor and the character he plays, thereby the actor is also immortal, so it is a shock to us when the actor eventually dies. Further he suggests that when the actor no longer works, their career ended (for what ever reason) they disappear. Career dies, they die too, the actor may live on, but they are as good as dead...years later the actor long forgotten finally dies for real...you can only die once, but the fact that the actors career has already died is a shock knowing that death has come twice.
Important to understand here...we know that James Stewert character is immortal (his pov being exclusive forever) and will live on, however the screening room the pov is not exclusive , it is a pov shared, even shared now cannot be shared forever as we will die also, the pov will pass on and so on.
Extract taken from-http://old.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/exclusive/morgan_fisher.php interview Melissa Gronlund
....You are doing an iteration of Screening Room, aren't you, your film that tracks into the cinema where the audience are watching it?
Morgan Fisher: That's correct. The camera approaches the theatre by a route characteristic of people entering that particular space. It enters the back of the theatre, which is dark and unoccupied. The projector is on but empty, so that it projects a rectangle of white light onto the screen. The camera slowly zooms into the rectangle until it entirely fills the shot, and we hold for a moment. Then we cut the tail off the end of the film, so that when it is projected there is a sort of cut, not from one shot to another, but from a picture of a screen of white light to that actual screen of white light. The film brings you to where you are sitting watching it.
In principle the film is very simple, and this means that I don't have to shoot it, I can describe it to someone else and they can shoot it. This is what happened at Kill Your Timid Notion: they shot it, and told me it turned out fine - although they had to use a different kind of film stock than in the past. It's getting harder and harder to find the right kind of stock - what used to be available as a matter of course is no longer available. It's important to shoot on film - there's a lack of forgiveness which demands precision - but there will come a point in 20 or 30 years at which it will be no longer possible, and I'm glad I won't be here to see it happen.
What about the wider infrastructure of cinema - the rehearsals, the shot types, the entry into the film theatre? That context has been as much a part of your interest as the materiality of film.
You're right. Yet in one sense Screening Room is very conventional. In a lot of my other films you see film equipment or other signs of self-referentiality. In Screening Room you don't see the apparatus of production, directly or indirectly, so the film's technical means are self-effacing, just as they are in conventional films. And the shot is a tracking shot, implying that it's someone's point of view; this contrasts with the tendency of the other films to show things in an impersonal way.
On the other hand, the film makes you aware of things that conventional films do their absolute level best to make you forget about. A good narrative film - and I love good narrative films - makes you forget the world outside that of the film, it makes you forget about the space you are sitting in, that you even have a body. Although the film is not reflexive about production, as many of my other films are, by making you aware of these things it is reflexive about the circumstances in which you view it. The film uses illusion to bring you to the space where you are sitting, a situation about which you can have no illusions.
When you gave a lecture accompanying Screening Room at the Oberhausen Film Festival in 2007, you rather movingly linked this awareness of the body to an awareness of mortality.
I had been asked by the curator Ian White talk about death in relation toScreening Room, and that is what I tried to do by talking about the case of the point-of-view shot. In a fiction film a point-of-view shot is the point of view of someone who lives forever, as a character in fiction does. But Screening Room is the point of view of the person who shot it, a real person, who unlike a fictional character will die. And by implication it's also the point of view of people who are watching it, and they will all die too.
Could you speak more about its site specificity?
Movies are expensive to make, but after the initial production the film is finished, once and for all. You make prints, which are not site specific. The relation between these two phases, a one-time initial production cost, even if high, and then the exhibition of many identical prints to recoup that cost - and sometimes earn it back many times over - is the economic model that underlies the film industry.
Screening Room is the exact opposite. The film shows the theatre where we watch it, which the title names, so you have to undertake the nuisance and expense of production for each new place it's shown. Yet the different versions are always the same film, because each has the same relationship to where it is shown.
To pursue what this implies, no prints can be shown on television. It's unimaginable to recoup the expense of producing the film in any one theatre, so the film flies in the face of economic sense, and considered in that light it is irrational, which I think is an important part of the film. So Screening Room is against the idea of film as a universal commodity and the model that the commercial film industry is founded on. This universal commodification was implied from cinema's beginnings, but then it seemed positive - people all over the world could have pleasure in seeing the same thing. Still, they had to make a commitment - going to the theatre at a certain time, for instance.
What I call a problem became explicit with the arrival of videotape, and accelerated with DVD and the internet. These have coarsened the experience of looking at a film. Now it's instantaneous and the cost is negligible. You've made so little effort to look at a film that you have no commitment to seeing it all the way through. Screening Room is absolutely against this model of the universal commodification of the moving image. You have to see it in a theatre.
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