Constant Movement

Lately I've been interested in the relation between constant movement vs. stationary objects. The stationary becomes animated in a way, like in stop-motion or a person standing against a moving stream. It really depends on where you place your focus. Exploring this dichotomy results in some pretty mesmerizing videos:

Variation VI: Motion panorama still landscape from Aitor Gametxo on Vimeo.

The Constant and The Flux (excerpt) from Callum Cooper on Vimeo.

eye know from Woody Kaine on Vimeo.

Wong Kar Wai

Chungking Express (1996)
 

The time confusion created in this film's editing is pretty interesting in that it's subtle yet the technique it uses (jump-cutting?) is pretty jarring (which adds to the effectiveness). It took me a while to understand what is going on.
In this sequence, we are given two constants: The cop character walking up to the counter to order takeout for his girlfriend and Faye's repetitive cleaning motions.

Time is condensed into an extreme. There is nothing to suggest a change from one day to the next other than the dialogue and Faye's costume changes. The cutting to mark the next day are bridge by Faye's cleaning and it is here we are almost induced into a feeling of deja vu as the cop (in the same uniform he wears everyday) places his order. It the continuity feels seamless yet it isn't quite.

I've seen this sort of technique before but it always involved someone motionless as the background elements is sped up. In Chungking Express, I feel like this was done in an ingenious way. Having the character move in slow motion against the sped up back drop heighten his disconnect with reality, despite his evident steadiness. Another contradiction. 

Jean-Luc Godard's trailers and title sequences

Godard's films have been been one of the major influences of my own work for a long time. Not so much in content but more in technique and style (though not as much now). I'm not sure the proper film language to describe it (its not montage), but there is definitely a collage like way he puts together his films. Text, images, and sounds intercut into the dietetic world of the film and yet it all works together. The title sequences and trailers are basically condensed versions of the films, accurately reflect the crazy energy, flow, and rhythm of the narrative.

Pastpresentfuture

Edvard Munch (1974)

In terms of editing and sound, Peter Watkins' film is an incredibly poetic and lyrical take in the life of Edvard Munch. The past, present, and future blend together in the narrative, sounds carry from time to another. In the example above, a group of artists have a discussion about Munch and laugh about his Puritan up bringing. Then it cuts to a shot of Munch in his room crying. Interwoven in the the sequence is also of scenes of Munch's mother's death, with the sounds of Munch's sobs and the laughter of the artists carried through out. Even though these events are totally unrelated in a linear understanding of time (the first is from the present, the second we later learn is from the future, and the third is of the past) the decision to edit this way adds another layer of meaning to the moment at hand, of endless torment and sorrow.

Bas Jan Ader

Is he magic?

Jan Dibbets

Panorama Dutch Mountain (1971)

Land 0-135° (1972)

Shortest Day at the Guggenheim Museum New York (1970)

New Horizons (2007)

Cloud Love

Here's some old work from last term. It never had an opportunity to be shown in a proper viewing environment. But someday . . .

Cloud Love from Sarah Chan on Vimeo.

Li Hongbo

Flexible Woman (2010)

Continuous Happiness (2010)

Li Hongbo - Pure White Paper from Dominik Mersch Gallery on Vimeo.

Some Saul Bass

Images from the title sequence of Grand Prix (1966)

Work in Progress: Some thoughts

I'm struggling a bit in making a piece for our coming show. My first instinct was to do a video projection or some sort of work with monitors. However, the installation space is a public area where security would be an issue. Not that it should deter me, but feel that even with a video, it seems like it would get lost in the space somehow. So I see as an opportunity to do some print based work, but still conveying a passing of time or a potential to shift perspective.

The above are sketches made using found images from an old home movie and crayon. The act of mark-making cover details but also seem to make the images more alive, as if to activate a memory. Through activation, memory is animated but not accurate.

Since these are stills from a film found on an online archive, I feel like there might be conceptual issues surrounding the use of media. The footage has gone through stages of mediation will continue to do so if I choose to go forth with this project. Existing as an actual film, it has been digitized (with the level of quality reduced), then will be printed, and marked. The question I pose is this: Is there a difference in the project if I marked the actual film vs. marking the mediated image? How is it different from marking a photograph? Somehow I feel that trying to "animate" a film after printing it as stills is a little redundant. Perhaps it's an attempt to give it new life (abeit a false one)? Is it just an illustration of movement? I don't know yet.

Bam!

Cut to the third man!
A great find on and description on Observations on Film Art

Geoffrey Farmer

Leaves of Grass (2012)

Images cutout from 50 years of Life Magazines (1935-1985).
The history of America in images. Not necessarily arranged in a progressively linear fashion, but the organization of images, mixing time and subject create whole new relationships between different points in history.

Colter Jacobsen

Notice the shift, of the accuracy of memory. One drawn from a photograph, one drawn from memory.

Frans Zwartjes

Mohammed Melehi

The Light Surgeons

Most of their work I don't care for because they're too on the nose with image/sound relationships. But this particular piece I found to be very poetic because it more ambiguous with their images.

APB: The 9th Inning from THE LIGHT SURGEONS on Vimeo.

R.H. Quaytman

Murakami Saburō

Passing Through (1956)

Madeline Stillwell

Strange and fascinating. A body escaping from/merging with its surroundings, there is both struggle and acceptance with the situation. It's difficult to tell which is happening.

Nicole Cohen

Elad Lassry

Douglas Gordon

Déjà-Vu (2000)

A Right Angle?

Vertical Travel from Sarah Chan on Vimeo.

Just some pretty lights . . .

I'm a little annoyed with this . . .

“Lenticular Compositions” by Christopher Derek Bruno.

Jason Gowans