Digital temporal magnitude (Williams)

Go read Long Shots by Blake Williams (June 19, 2010) at R and G and B.

excerpts:

"As cinema continues to finalize its transition from a medium composed of celluloid grain into one composed of digital pixels, it is important to take a closer look at some differences between these two means of producing a moving image. [..] ‘Films’ are being shot on hour-long digital tapes or with cameras rigged up to hard drives rather than 11-minute-capacity reels housing a thousand feet of celluloid. [..] Of all that is unique to this new medium of cinema, I cannot see a more significant trait than its drastically extended allowance in shot length.

[..] Given that he has taken on digital recording methods with some of his recent moving image work, there is not a more appropriate artist than Michael Snow to look at the shifts in perception that have been born from digital filmmaking’s extended long takes. [..]

If the lingering shot is the present of a particular, subjective observer, it remains a reproduction of the present until it is finished, whereby it becomes the past, allowing for interpretation. Pasolini’s theory develops to posit that a shot’s meaning can only be given value once it is finished; like with human life, the possibilities of relations and meanings and developments is endless, “chaotic,” until it is over. [..]

A sample of some of the structural filmmakers who have taken the plunge into digital capturing methods, other than Michael Snow, includes Ernie Gehr, Jonas Mekas, and, most recently, James Benning with his 2009 film Ruhr. Benning makes for an interesting model at this point, because a majority of his films are founded on durational concerns that he explores in long, static shots. Ruhr is Benning’s first ‘film’ not captured or exhibited on celluloid in thirty-two years of filmmaking, and contains the longest shot of his career, coming in at 60 minutes. [..]

When a shot is captured on celluloid, the potentiality of missed moments – via reel changes – comes into play. Therefore, because there are moments in the entire duration of the captured event that are ineligible for inclusion in the final presentation, the viewer cannot be confident that the filmmaker was allowed to curate the duration down to his most desired selection."

Foster-child of silence and slow time (Keats)

41. Ode on a Grecian Urn (1819)

John Keats

1.

THOU still unravish’d bride of quietness,

Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,

Sylvan historian, who canst thus express

A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:

What leaf-fring’d legend haunts about thy shape

Of deities or mortals, or of both,

In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?

What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?

What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?

What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

2.

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard

Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;

Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear’d,

Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:

Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave

Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;

Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,

Though winning near the goal—yet, do not grieve;

She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,

For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

3.

Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed

Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;

And, happy melodist, unwearied,

For ever piping songs for ever new;

More happy love! more happy, happy love!

For ever warm and still to be enjoy’d,

For ever panting, and for ever young;

All breathing human passion far above,

That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy’d,

A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.

4.

Who are these coming to the sacrifice?

To what green altar, O mysterious priest,

Lead’st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,

And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?

What little town by river or sea shore,

Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,

Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?

And, little town, thy streets for evermore

Will silent be; and not a soul to tell

Why thou art desolate, can e’er return.

5.

O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede

Of marble men and maidens overwrought,

With forest branches and the trodden weed;

Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought

As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!

When old age shall this generation waste,

Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe

Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st,

“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,”—that is all

Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

Susan Sontag, The Aesthetics of Silence, 1994 :

Plenitude — experiencing all the space as filled, so that ideas cannot enter — means impenetrability, opaqueness. For a person to become silent is to become opaque for the other; somebody's silence opens up an array of possibilities for interpreting that silence, for imputing speech to it.

The ways in which this opaqueness induces anxiety, spiritual vertigo, is the theme of Bergman's Persona. The theme is reinforced by the two principal attributions one is invited to make of the actress' deliberate silence. Considered as a decision relating to herself, it is apparently the way she has chosen to give form to the wish for ethical purity; but it is also, as behavior, a means of power, a species of sadism, a virtually inviolable position of strength from which to manipulate and confound her nurse-companion, who is charged with the burden of talking.

But it's possible to conceive of the opaqueness of silence more positively, free from anxiety. For Keats, the silence of the Grecian urn is a locus for spiritual nourishment: "unheard" melodies endure, whereas those that pipe to "the sensual ear" decay. Silence is equated with arresting time ("slow time"). One can stare endlessly at the Grecian urn. Eternity, in the argument of Keats' poem, is the only interesting stimulus to thought and also presents us with the sole occasion for coming to the end of mental activity, which means endless, unanswered questions ("Thou, silent form, cost tease us out of thought/As cloth eternity"), so that one can arrive at a final equation of ideas ("Beauty is truth, truth beauty") which is both absolutely vacuous and completely full. Keats' poem quite logically ends in a statement that will seem, if one hasn't followed his argument, like empty wisdom, like banality. Time, or history, becomes the medium of definite, determinate thought. The silence of eternity prepares for a thought beyond thought, which must appear from the perspective of traditional thinking and the familiar uses of the mind as no thought at all — though it may rather be an emblem of new, "difficult" thinking.

Reprendre à zéro (Delorme)

Ne plus rien reconnaître

Stéphane Delorme (éditorial, Cahiers n°657, Juin 2010)

La victoire d'Apichatpong Weerasethakul à Cannes n'est pas que justice: c'est la reconnaissance d'un des plus grands cineastes d'aujourd'hui, et certainement le meilleur de sa génération (il a 40 ans). A l'annonce du palmarès, des grognons ont manifesté leur mécontentement, certainement plus enclins à reconnaître des cinéastes « solides » restant dans les paramètres d'un cinéma balisé. La presse internationale n'a pas toujours été tendre avec le Thailandais; et un certain poujadisme pointe chez ceux qui s'inquiètent qu'un cinéaste « inconnu » reçoive la Palme, au désarroi du grand public. Mais le grand public ne devrait pas s'inquiéter: Apichatpong Wee-ra-se-tha-kul se prononce patiemment et ses films s'eprouvent dans la plus grande simplicité. II suffit de s'asseoir dans le noir et d'aimer se laisser étonner, vertu à la portée de chacun.

Rares sont les cinéastes aujourd'hui qui avancent dans le noir en tâtonnant, créant devant eux les hommes, les situations, les bêtes, les paysages, les lumières qui s'extirpent du néant. Rares sont ceux qui reprennent à zéro, totalement à zéro, sans s'aider de cadres, de repères et de normes. La plupart des bons films sont des variations qui alimentent le plaisir du spectateur du plaisir de reconnaissance: reconnaître un type de récit, un type de mise en scène, retrouver un acteur, suivre le style d'un auteur. Cela vaut autant pour le cinéma commercial que pour le cinéma d'auteur. La politique des auteurs elle-même est fondée sur la reconnaissance puisque c'est la cohésion d'un style qui fait la grandeur d'un auteur. Aujourd'hui, plus que jamais, on reconnaît des pans de cinéma. [..]

Et puis il y a des moments où on n'arrive plus à reconnaître. On se frotte les yeux, ce que nous voyons arrive pour la première fois. Un dîner en long plan séquence, les acteurs jouent de manière erratique, un fantôme apparaît, puis un homme-singe, et nous sommes laissés dans une torpeur, d'autant plus profonde qu'elle ne cherche pas à nous saisir, puisque tout se relâche entre somnambulisme et ironie. [..]

Combien de fois avons nous eu le sentiment de ne plus rien reconnaître? Chaque fois que « l'image d'un film » (non le récit ni la mise en scène) s'est gravée dans notre mémoire. [..] La Palme a été donnée cette année à tous les réalisateurs pas raisonnables.

The Aesthetics of Silence (Sontag)

Excerpts from "The Aesthetics of Silence", in "Styles of Radical Will", 1994 (coincidentally this year was the apex of CCC, when more films really started to take off). Read the whole text at UbuWeb. Titles added are mine.

THE PURSUIT OF SILENCE

The newer myth, derived from a post-psychological conception of consciousness, installs within the activity of art many of the paradoxes involved in attaining an absolute state of being described by the great religious mystics. As the activity of the mystic must end in a via negative, a theology of God's absence, a craving for the cloud of unknowingness beyond knowledge and for the silence beyond speech, so art must tend toward anti-art, the elimination of the "subject" (the "object," the "image"), the substitution of chance for intention, and the pursuit of silence. [..]

Practiced in a world furnished with second-hand perceptions, and specifically confounded by the treachery of words, the activity of the artist is cursed with mediacy. Art becomes the enemy of the artist, for it denies him the realization, the transcendence, he desires.

ASCETICISM

Though no longer a confession, art is more than ever a deliverance, an exercise in asceticism. Through it, the artist becomes purified — of himself and, eventually, of his art, The artist (if not art itself) is still engaged in a progress toward "the good." But formerly, the artist's good was mastery of and fulfillment in his art. Now it's suggested that the highest good for the artist is to reach that point where those goals of excellence become insignificant to him, emotionally and ethically, and he is more satisfied by being silent than by finding a voice in art. Silence in this sense, as termination, proposes a mood of ultimacy antithetical to the mood informing the self-conscious artist's traditional serious use of silence: as a zone of meditation, preparation for spiritual ripening, an ordeal which ends in gaining the right to speak. (Cf. Valery, Rilke)

POSITIVITY OF A NEGATIVE (related : Negative wording in CCC reviews)

Committed to the idea that the power of art is located in its power to negate, the ultimate weapon in the artist's inconsistent war with his audience is to verge closer and closer to silence. The sensory or conceptual gap between the artist and his audience, the space of the missing or ruptured dialogue, can also constitute the grounds for an ascetic affirmation. Samuel Beckett speaks of "my dream of an art unresentful of its insuperable indigence and too proud for the farce of giving and receiving." But there is no abolishing a minimal transaction, a minimal exchange of gifts, just as there is no talented and rigorous asceticism that doesn't produce a gain (rather than a loss) in the capacity for pleasure.

And none of the aggressions committed intentionally or inadvertently by modern artists have succeeded in either abolishing the audience or transforming it into something else. (A community engaged in a common activity?) They cannot. As long as art is understood and valued as an "absolute" activity, it will be a separate, elitist one. Elites presuppose masses. So far as the best art defines itself by essentially "priestly" aims, it presupposes and confirms the existence of a relatively passive, never fully initiated, voyeuristic laity which is regularly convoked to watch, listen, read, or hear — and then sent away.

[..]

The systematic violation of older formal conventions practiced by modern artists gives their work a certain aura of the unspeakable — for instance, as the audience uneasily senses the negative presence of what else could be, but isn't being, said; and as any "statement" made in an aggressively new or difficult form tends to seem equivocal or merely vacant. But these features of ineffability must not be acknowledged at the expense of one's awareness of the positivity of the work of art. Contemporary art, no matter how much it's defined itself by a taste for negation, can still be analyzed as a set of assertions, of a formal kind.

SILENCE

There is no neutral surface, no neutral discourse, no neutral theme, no neutral form. Something is neutral only with respect to something else. (An intention? An expectation?) As a property of the work of art itself, silence can exist only in a cooked or nonliteral sense. (Put otherwise: if a work exists at all, its silence is only one element in it.) Instead of raw or achieved silence, one finds various moves in the direction of an ever-receding horizon of silence — moves which, by definition, can't ever be fully consummated. One result is a type of art which many people characterize pejoratively as dumb, depressed, acquiescent, cold. But these privative qualities exist in a context of the artist's objective intention, which is always discernible. To cultivate the metaphoric silence that's suggested by conventionally lifeless subjects (as in much of Pop Art) and to construct "minimal" forms which seem to lack emotional resonance are in themselves vigorous, often tonic choices.

[..] Similarly, there is no such thing as empty space. As long as a human eye is looking there is always something to see. To look at something that's "empty" is still to be looking, still to be seeing something — if only the ghosts of one's own expectations. In order to perceive fullness, one must retain an acute sense of the emptiness which marks it off; conversely, in order to perceive emptiness, one must apprehend other zones of the world as full. [..]

A genuine emptiness, a pure silence, are not feasible — either conceptually or in fact. If only because the art-work exists in a world furnished with many other things, the artist who creates silence or emptiness must produce something dialectical: a full void, an enriching emptiness, a resonating or eloquent silence. Silence remains, inescapably, a form of speech (in many instances, of complaint or indictment) and an element in a dialogue.

POSITIVE SILENCE (related : Negative wording in CCC reviews)

In my opinion, the myths of silence and emptiness are about as nourishing and viable as one could hope to see devised in an "unwholesome" time — which is, of necessity, a time in which "unwholesome" psychic states furnish the energies for most superior work in the arts today. At the same time, one can't deny the pathos of these myths.

This pathos arises from the fact that the idea of silence allows, essentially, only two types of valuable development. Either it is taken to the point of utter self-negation (as art) or else practiced in a form that is heroically, ingeniously inconsistent.

MARGIN

Since the artist can't embrace silence literally and remain an artist, what the rhetoric of silence indicates is a determination to pursue his activity more deviously than ever before. One way is indicated by Breton's notion of the "full margin." The artist is enjoined to devote himself to filling up the periphery of the art-space, leaving the central area of usage blank. Art becomes privative, anemic — as suggested by the title of Duchamp's only effort at film making, "Anemic Cinema," a work from the period 1924-26. [..] But these programs for art's impoverishment must not be understood simply as terroristic admonitions to audiences, but as strategies for improving the audience's experience. The notions of silence, emptiness, reduction, sketch out new prescriptions for looking, hearing, etc. — specifically, either for having a more immediate, sensuous experience of art or for confronting the art work in a more conscious, conceptual way.

ATTENTION

Perhaps the quality of the attention we bring to bear on something will be better (less contaminated, less distracted) the less we are offered. Furnished with impoverished art, purged by silence, one might then be able to begin to transcend the frustrating selectivity of attention, with its inevitable distortions of experience. Ideally, one should be able to pay attention to everything.

LANGUAGE

Language seems a privileged metaphor for expressing the mediated character of art-making and the art-work. On the one hand, speech is both an immaterial medium (compared with, say, images) and a human activity with an apparently essential stake in the project of transcendence, of moving beyond the singular and contingent (all words being abstractions, only roughly based on or making reference to concrete particulars). But, on the other hand, language is the most impure, the most contaminated, the most exhausted of all the materials out of which art is made.

LOOK/STARE

Consider the difference between "looking" and "staring." A look is (at least, in part) voluntary; it is also mobile, rising and falling in intensity as its foci of interest are taken up and then exhausted. A stare has, essentially, the character of a compulsion; it is steady, unmodulated, "fixed."

Traditional art invites a look. Art that's silent engenders a stare. In silent art, there is (at least in principle) no release from attention, because there has never, in principle, been any soliciting of it. A stare is perhaps as far from history, as close to eternity, as contemporary art can get.

CONTEMPLATION (related: What is Contemplating Cinema?)

Silence is a metaphor for a cleansed, noninterfering vision, in which one might envisage the making of art-works that are unresponsive before being seen, unviolable in their essential integrity by human scrutiny. The spectator would approach art as he does a landscape. A landscape doesn't demand from the spectator his "understanding," his imputations of significance, his anxieties and sympathies; it demands, rather, his absence, that he not add anything to it. Contemplation, strictly speaking, entails self-forgetfulness on the part of the spectator: an object worthy of contemplation is one which, in effect, annihilates the perceiving subject.

It is to such an ideal plenitude to which the audience can add nothing, analogous to the aesthetic relation to "nature," that a great deal of contemporary art aspires — through. various strategies of blandness, of reduction, of deindividuation, of alogicality. In principle, the audience may not even add its thought. All objects, so conceived, are truly full. [..]

Plenitude — experiencing all the space as filled, so that ideas cannot enter — means impenetrability, opaqueness. For a person to become silent is to become opaque for the other; somebody's silence opens up an array of possibilities for interpreting that silence, for imputing speech to it.

CLEAN SLATE

Behind the appeals for silence lies the wish for a perceptual and cultural clean slate. And, in its most hortatory and ambitious version, the advocacy of silence expresses a mythic project of total liberation. What's envisaged is nothing less than the liberation of the artist from himself, of art from the particular art work, of art from history, of spirit from matter, of the mind from its perceptual and intellectual limitations.

WORDS

A good deal of contemporary art is moved by this quest for a consciousness purified of contaminated language and, in some versions, of the distortions produced by conceiving the world exclusively in conventional verbal (in their debased sense, "rational" or "logical") terms. Art itself becomes a kind of counter-violence, seeking to loosen the grip upon consciousness of the habits of lifeless, static verbalization, presenting models of "sensual speech."

[..] It's not just that words, ultimately, won't do for the highest aims of consciousness; or even that they get in the way. Art expresses a double discontent. We lack words, and we have too many of them. It reflects a double complaint. Words are crude, and they're also too busy — inviting a hyperactivity of consciousness which is not only dysfunctional, in terms of human capacities of feeling and acting, but which actively deadens the mind and blunts the senses.

NONDESCRIPT EXPERIENCE

The function of art isn't to promote any specific experience, except the state of being open to the multiplicity of experience, which ends in practice by a decided stress on things usually considered trivial or unimportant.

DISTANCE

Such art could also be described as establishing great "distance" (between spectator and art object, between the spectator and his emotions). But, psychologically, distance often is involved with the most intense state of feeling, in which the distance or coolness or impersonality with which something is treated measures the insatiable interest that thing has for us. The distance that a great deal of "anti-humanist" art proposes is actually equivalent to obsession — an aspect of the involvement in "things" of which the "humanist" nominalism of Rilke has no intimation.

INEFFABLE

This tenacious concept of art as "expression" is what gives rise to one common, but dubious, version of the notion of silence, which invokes the idea of "the ineffable." The theory supposes that the province of art is "the beautiful," which implies effects of unspeakableness, indescribability, ineffability.

Téléréalité contemplative 2010

La vie moderne (2008/Depardon/France) DOC [PDF]

* * *

M6, chaîne de télévision française, a recréé pratiquement sur le modèle de la trilogie documentaire de Raymond Depardon, une émission de "télé réalité" sur le monde des paysans célibataires cherchant l'âme sœur. Blind date, et caméra suiveuse. Les silences de leur timidité, les truismes et les répéditions font disparaitre toute idée de scénario pré-programmé, de mise en scène, d'image-action, et ce malgré le montage recoupé (et le commentaire narratif). La paysannerie transforme l'épitome de la société de consommation télévisuelle (la télé réalité) en un moment se rapprochant du cinéma contemplatif...

L'amour est dans le pré (M6, Juin 2010) TV

Les exploitants agricoles sont travailleurs, passionnés, proches de la nature… Leur emploi du temps surchargé et leur isolement géographique ne favorisent pas les rencontres amoureuses...

extraits vidéo (7 et 21 juin 2010):

• Bulletin météo
• Pascal est touché
• La moutarde de Pascal
• Silences interminables
• Le language "vache"