Reading Response 2: Due Sept. 29 @ 5 p.m.

Coincidentally, a major retrospective of Abstract Expressionist painting is just about to open at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Here's a description of the exhibit for those interested:
http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/exhibitions/1098#related_events

For those who would like an overview of Post-WWII American Painting, take a look at the documentary Painters Painting:
http://www.ubu.com/film/deantonio_painters.html

Now, on to the questions:
Post a brief response to one of the following Brakhage films: The Wold Shadow, Window Water Baby Moving, Dog Star Man Part 2, Dog Star Man Part 3.

Window Water Baby Moving was a film I personally enjoyed. I liked the color and the fact that it was silent. I don’t think I could have handled the baby screaming when it was born! It was a unique experience watching the woman in the bath juxtaposed to images of the baby being born.

Sitney, “Apocalypses and Picaresques”

Why does Sitney argue that synechdoche plays a major role in Christopher Maclaine’s The End, and how does the film anticipate later achievements by Brakhage and the mythopoeic form? (Implicit in this question: what is synechdoche? It is a figure of speech, but what kind?)

Synedoche means a part of the whole. It also can be used the other way around in order to explain the uses of techniques in films, particularly Brakhage’s films. In the Dog Star Man films, stylistic techniques are used to show the man in relation to the seasons. They have their own characteristics, but they are put together to make the film as well as the idea of the seasons in a year. With different scenes in Maclaine’s films, such as arms flexing or a man on the bridge, they represent bigger ideas through the fact that all the characters are connected somehow.

What are some similarities and differences between the apocalyptic visions of Christopher Maclaine and Bruce Conner?

They both have visions of apocalyptic despair. Sitney says that Connor is not naive in his vision of doom and Connor has irony and symbolism in his films.

Bruce Jenkins, “Fluxfilms in Three False Starts.”
NOTE: This is in the "Kreul Articles" folder on the Flash Drive that you gave me.

4. How and why were the “anti-art” Fluxfilms reactions against the avant-garde films of Stan Brakhage and Kenneth Anger. [Hint: Think about Fluxus in relation to earlier anti-art such as Dada, and Marcel Duchamp's "Fountain."]
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/3671180/Duchamps-Fountain-The-practical-joke-that-launched-an-artistic-revolution.html

Flux filmmakers were more like everyday people and not just filmmakers that believed art shouldn’t be a certain way when it came to film. As a result, they were against the established avant-garde which was Brakhage and Anger at the time. Because they were also involved with other parts of the art, they were known for incorporating other artistic items in their films, but in such a way where anybody could be a part of it. Flux kits became part of the Flux movement.

5. What does Jenkins mean by the democratization of production in the Fluxfilms?

He’s talking about the fact that due to the fact that Fluxus films can be made by anybody, then when a group is making one, everybody should have a say in what the film should look like. It is the making of the film that makes it art.

6. Critic Jonas Mekas divided avant-garde filmmaking into the "slow" and the "quick"; which filmmakers were associated with "slow" and which filmmakers were associated with "quick"? Which Fluxus films were "slow" and "quick" (name one of each)?

Slow category and films: Andy Warhol and Yoko Ono; Disappearing Music for Face and Joe Jones’ Smoking
Quick category and films: Stan Brakhage and George Maciunas; Sun in Your Head and Opus 74

7. How is the Fluxus approach to the cinema different from both Godard and Brakhage?

Brakhage and others were concerned with creating a new art form through the medium of film in a new and rebellious way, but Fluxus artists sought to create art through many mediums.

8. Why does Jenkins argue that Nam June Paik’s Zen for Film “fixed the material and aesthetic terms for the production of subsequent Fluxfilms”? How does it use the materials of the cinema? What kind of aesthetic experience does it offer? A version of the film (and other Fluxfilms) is available here:
http://www.ubu.com/film/fluxfilm.html

Because a 7 minute film of a white screen is the perfect way to downplay Avant-Garde films up to this point. All the while filmmakers are trying to break into a new art form, Zen For Film is unbeatable according to the Fluxus logic because not only can a blank screen be art, but everybody participates because everybody is going to have a different take on it.

For those looking for more information about Fluxus, here is an interesting podcast called "The Sounds of Fluxus" by the Poetry Foundation:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/audio/agat_may2010.mp3

Posted by kreulj at 10:01 AM