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KEN JACOBS

Film is, at one of its most basic functions, a means of exploring space, or at least human

perception of space. Avant-garde film, freed from the conventions of form as used by the

mainstream, is particularly well suited for said exploration of space. And although film, from this

perspective, is inherently about space and how it is perceived, and therefore all filmmakers

investigators of the properties and portrayal of space, perhaps none are as deliberate, nor as

thorough, in this pursuit as is Ken Jacobs.

Throughout his career Jacobs’ extreme preoccupation with space has manifested itself in

many forms, including (increasingly so over the course of the last four decades) a particular

interest in the possibilities of 3D, alongside the development of a technology he calls The

Nervous Magic Lantern, optical experiments demanding as much from the eye of the viewer as

from the function of the projector, and literal manipulations of the perception of depth and

motion on film. Before his formal experiments with space through projection, Jacobs’ singular

fascination can be traced back to his early days to films such as Window (1964), which explores

the notion of the existence of varying planes of depth within set parameters. But perhaps his

most famous work, or at least his most widely accessible film that exists in unchanging form, is

his 1969 feature length Tom, Tom, the Piper’s Son.

Tom, Tom, the Piper’s Son is Jacob’s most thorough and straightforward analysis of how

space exists within cinema and vice-versa. Although it is most widely seen in its original form,

Jacobs is an artist who views his work not as finished products, but as living organisms, that can

be altered and revisited at any moment. Much of Jacobs’ work is nearly impossible to see, for

they are not merely films, but rather performance pieces. They exist in a singular moment, at the

time of their performance, and never again in the exact same way. In this way Jacobs perhaps

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shares a view of Walter Benjamin, whose belief in the aura of an artwork seems to have much to

do with the singularity of a work (Benjamin). One might assume that Benjamin would admire

Jacobs as an artist who, through the instillation of a performance process into his work, has

suffered relatively little in terms of the diminishing of aura. With the spirit of the never-

diminishing aura, Jacobs’ career has been ever changing, yet always seeming to gravitate

towards a preoccupation with space, particularly in how it relates to depth and motion; he has

exhaustively explored these relationships throughout his oeuvre, employing countless theories

and processes along the way, all of which can be extrapolated from aspects of Tom, Tom, the

Piper’s Son—his most thorough exploration of cinematic space—each subsequent reincarnation

of which can likewise be attached to a constantly shifting vision of space by the artist at the time

of their creation.

Tom, Tom, the Piper’s Son, thusly, has had (at least) three distinct incarnations, each

reflective of Jacobs’ vision of filmic space at the time of each resurrection. Therefore an

analysis of Jacobs’ film is useless when considered independently of the rest of his career.

In Tom, Tom, the Piper’s Son Jacobs films (as a projection) and re-edits a 1905 Biograph

short film of the same name. Jacobs’ version is essentially a revisionist piece illustrating the

advancement of a film language since the release of the original short. By adding camera

movements, close-ups, and by dividing up the frame into a multitude of individual smaller

frames Jacobs manages to explore space within a film whose maker had had no marked interest

in such, or at least was lacking an existing (or extensive) film language with which to do so—

ironically which would develop in the next few years after its release with its production

company’s most influential figure—DW Griffith.

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In a way, Tom, Tom the Piper’s Son is an elaboration on an idea Jacobs had had for some

time, and is perhaps most evident in Jacobs’ earlier film, Window (1964). Preceding Tom, Tom

the Piper’s Son by five years, it is in effect a much more literal investigation of the way space is

perceived doubly by the camera and the human eye. Using very simple, and one might think

extremely strict, constraints, the film forces the viewer to consider the coexistence of varying

sizes of space, and in perhaps multiple planes, that nevertheless share a common space. The

space at its broadest, and also its most limited, is the frame of a window, probably no larger than

9 sq. feet. And yet, the space one can perceive within that limited amount of space is essentially

infinite. Ken Jacobs described the premise of the film: “The moving camera shapes the screen

image with great purposefulness, using the frame of a window as fulcrum upon which to wheel

about the exterior scene.” This statement could easily be applied to Tom, Tom, The Piper’s Son,

the window in this case being the found footage.

Each shot of the original footage is essentially a flat plane of existence in which all the

action takes place almost simultaneously, without regard to the space in which it takes place.

Jacobs, in his reworking of the Biograph short, investigates the possibilities of space in several

ways. The most basic way in which Jacobs does this is the division of space. Jacobs breaks up

the action by re-filming and focusing in on individual characters and actions, which otherwise

had existed all in the same space. He is in effect creating multiple spaces, not only separating the

components of the frame by space, but also by time, asserting that these planes exist both

dependently and independently of each other. By compartmentalizing the mise-en scene of the

film, Jacobs can create an infinity of varying mise-en scenes: an infinity of variable spaces. He is

literally dissecting the film, and rearranging it in his own unique way.

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Jacobs illustrates the idea of there being an infinity of space to work with in a frame by

continuously zooming in; getting closer and closer to the film itself until you see little other than

the grain of the film stock. This tendency, as well as some flickering and other general effects

used in Tom, Tom illustrate Jacobs’ fascination with depth in film—a fascination which would

soon come to inform much of Jacobs’ work.

This interest in depth naturally manifested itself in an obsession with 3D and its

possibilities. Jacobs has discussed his relationship with 3D in three essays on the topic. At one

point he discusses Tom, Tom the Piper’s Son in the context of his later work with 3D: ““if my

filming of Tom, Tom was about the weirdness of human activity in a grainy black and white and

2D medium, those bothered by the film (‘boring, boring’) could now shunt me aside as a fellow

totally off on another wacky bender…it wasn’t so much fidelity to nature but unnatural depth

phenomena that drew me on, the tricks that could be played on the mind when, as I put it then,

one stepped between the eyes (Jacobs).”

In this instance, Jacobs is discussing a very distinct incarnation of Tom, Tom, the Piper’s

Son, one which melded his earlier project with his then-developing technology: The Nervous

Magic Lantern—a technology which produces the illusion of three-dimensionality not through

the filming process, but through a process of double projection and manual adjustment of shutter

angle and speed, and a technology that Jacobs asserts “ is strikingly low-tech and could have

come about centuries ago (Jacobs).”  In  this  Nervous  Magic  Lantern  performance,  Jacobs  

projected  two  prints  of  “Tom,  Tom,  The  Piper’s  Son  on  two  stop-­‐motion  projectors  hand-­‐

triggered  to  pass  very  slowly,  stop  and  go,  one  frame  out  of  synch.  The  small  differences  

frame  to  frame  in  the  positions  of  things  onscreen  could  be  exploited  to  create  depth  

events.”    

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What  Jacobs  fails  perhaps  to  realize  himself,  or  at  least  say,  is  that  this  new  “version”  

of  the  film  simply  elaborates  in  a  more  scientific  way  on  an  exploration  of  depth  already  

present  in  the  original.  He  had  previously  “exploited”  film  “to  create  depth  events,”  in  

Window  and  Tom,  Tom,  just  perhaps  not  in  as  direct  a  manner.  Just  as  he  had  with  his  re-­‐

editing  and/or  filming  in  a  manipulative  fashion  and  his  manipulation  of  projection  

technology,  in  later  years  Jacobs  would  continue  to  explore  this  illusion  of  depth  through  an  

employment  of  motion.    

`   Motion,  in  fact,  is  inextricably  connected  to  the  presence  of  space  in  cinema  and  how  

it  is  perceived,  for  what  is  motion  but  the  natural  alteration  of  space?  In  Tom,  Tom,  the  

Piper’s  Son,  Jacobs  is  content  to  merely  add  movement  to  a  thitherto  motionless  film—save  

the  natural  shakiness  of  the  projection  (a  motion,  perhaps  insignificant  and  unplanned  as  it  

is,  certainly  not  discounted  by  Jacobs,  whose  career  has  in  fact  come  to  be  focused  on  what  

occurs  when  film  is  projected  rather  than  simply  filmed  and  cut)  and  other  unanticipated  

wavering  of  film.  But,  in  a  more  deliberate  way,  Jacobs  began  to  experiment  with  extremes  

of  motion  on  film  with  his  “Nervous  System.”    

Films  from  later  in  his  career,  such  as  The  Georgetown  Loop  (1996)  illustrate  

perfectly  how—within  Jacobs’  method—motion  affects  depth  and  vice  versa.  The  camera  

follows  a  train  as  it  advances  away  from  the  camera  along  a  countryside  track.  Not  only  is  

the  imagery  of  a  moving  train,  presented  straight  on,  evocative  of  a  great  sense  of  depth,  

but  here  Jacobs  also  plays  two  identical  film  prints  side  by  side,  each  taking  up  half  the  

frame,  one  of  them  inverted  so  that  they  become  a  mirror-­‐image  of  each  other.  This  adds  

immensely  to  the  illusion  of  depth,  but  it  also  greatly  exaggerates  and  brings  to  the  

forefront  all  motion  occurring  onscreen.  “Our basic ability to perceive figure and ground,

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movement out of stillness, to synthesize space and time are played with, as though we were

hotwired to the screen (Gunning).”  With  the  horizon  constantly  morphing  into  new  

landscapes,  the  audience  begins  to  see  the  film  as  an  almost  pure  depiction  of  motion  and  

the  illusion  of  depth,  almost  a  “pure  abstraction,”  and  in  effect  coming  very  close  to  what  

Greenberg  described  in  “Avant-­‐Garde  and  Kitsch”  as  “art  for  art’s  sake,”  becoming  entirely  

about  the  visual  elements  and  their  effects  on  the  viewer  rather  than  any  theory  or  

experiment  (Greenberg).    

  Likewise,  much  of  his  work  by  this  point  had  become  increasingly  abstract,  but  still  

in  a  way  that  effectively  explored  notions  of  space,  depth  and  motion.  In  fact,  some  of  his  

work  with  The  Nervous  Magic  Lantern  seems  to  recall  the  Mandala  inspired  work  of  Jordan  

Belson,  the  major  distinction  lying  in  the  mechanism  rather  than  the  visual  elements  

themselves.  While  Belson  was  intrigued  with  the  meditational  aspects  of  the  Mandala,  

Jacobs  employs  similar  imagery  to  investigate  the  relationship  between  the  human  eye  and  

projected  film,  between  imagery  and  optics.    

With  a  move  towards  the  abstract,  so  came  a  new  incarnation  of  Tom,  Tom,  the  

Piper’s  Son,  entitled  A  Tom  Tom  Chaser  (2004).  In  this  work  Jacobs  again  revisits  his  classic  

film,  this  time  in  the  age  of  digital  production.  A  self-­‐proclaimed  “optical  scan  

improvisation,”  A  Tom  Tom  Chaser  manipulates  the  original  film  differently  than  it  had  

been  done  ever  before.  Using  digital  technology,  Jacobs  melds  together  different  frames,  

duplicates  frames,  stretches  and  distorts  frames  and  increases  and  decreases  the  speed  of  

the  projection  drastically,  evoking  a  disorienting  perception  of  space  that  leaves  the  viewer  

mesmerized.    

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In Tom, Tom the Piper’s Son, Ken Jacobs revisits a film which, having been made

previously to any sort of established cinematic language or grammar, also failed to effectively

evoke a sense of space in the viewer, and explore that space. Since the making of Jacobs’ film in

1969, he has revisited that film a number of times as well, and with each subsequent version

created a unique depiction of the endless possibilities of the way space is portrayed on film; each

version being a singular work representative not only of its time in history, but also of Jacobs’

artistic vision—particularly in regards to his perspective on space--at the time of their creation.

Benjamin, Walter. "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction." Marxists. UCLA, n.d. Web. 29 Oct 2013. <http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/benjamin.htm>.  

    Gunning,  Tom.  "Films  That  Tell  Tim:  the  paradoxes  of  the  cinema  of  Ken  Jacobs."  Moving    

Image  Source.  Museum  of  the  Moving  Image,  06  2  2009.  Web.  28  Oct  2013.   <http://www.movingimagesource.us/articles/films-­‐that-­‐tell-­‐time-­‐20090206>.  

  Greenberg, Clement. "Avant-Garde and Kitsch." sharecom. Partisan Review. Web. 29 Oct 2013. <http://www.sharecom.ca/greenberg/kitsch.html>.  

Jacobs, Ken. "Three essays by Ken Jacobs." Jacket 2: Charles Bernstein. Anthology Film Archives, 2 11 2011. Web. 26 Oct 2013. <https://jacket2.org/commentary/three- essays-ken-jacobs>.

Jacobs, Ken. "Ken Jacobs." UbuWeb Film . UbuWeb. Web. 30 Oct 2013. <http://www.ubu.com/film/jacobs_window.html>.

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Mediation and Mechanization: Owen Land’s (W)holey Deal with the Broker

Perhaps one of Owen Land’s1 most complex films, On The Marriage Broker Joke As

Cited By Sigmund Freud In Wit And Its Relation To The Unconscious, Or Can The Avant-Garde

Artist Be Wholed? could be misconstrued as simply a retaliation against Sitney’s classification

concerning Land’s former filmography as a body of Structural films. If taken as this Structural

parody, the work seems filled with haphazard images and metaphors that mock Land’s

filmmaking peers. Though this mocking exists, and is divinely executed in the work, it is not

central to the film’s purpose. Rather, On the Marriage Broker Joke is a highly literary work

created with the intention to exhibit a higher meaning than simply satire. This seminal piece

exposes how the technical mediation of the camera brokers between the viewer and what is

captured, just as all institutions broker between the individual and truth. Ultimately

concerned with mediation, On The Marriage Broker Joke is Land’s offering of an

alternative to what he observed as the deceptive use of the mechanized camera, the

conventional displays of spirituality in cinema, and the emerging meaninglessness of avant-

garde film.

Land’s frequent allusions to the literary are his means of Aristotelian imitation, fitting

Greenberg’s description of the artist: “In turning his attention away from subject matter of

common experience, the poet or artist turns it in upon the medium of his own craft. The

nonrepresentational or ‘abstract,’ if it is to have aesthetic validity, cannot be arbitrary and

accidental, but must stem from obedience to some worthy constraint or original” (Greenberg 3).

Land drew from many “originals,” as he was educated in painting and sculpting, a classically

                                                                                                                1  Formerly  known  as  George  Landow  

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trained guitarist, and a formally trained actor. These collective interests did not distract Land

from creating his early films in high school, nor did they deter him from becoming comfortable

with vital classic works of literature. Not only does he put Milton and an array of Eighteenth

century poets to use in On The Marriage Broker Joke, but also he repeatedly refers to James

Joyce’s work as highly influential to his own in interviews.

Consequently, Greenberg’s comments on Joyce’s work could just as well apply to

Land’s: “Joyce's Ulysses and Finnegan’s Wake seem to be, above all […] the reduction of

experience to expression for the sake of expression, the expression mattering more than what is

being expressed (Greenberg 3). What aligns Land more with the great authors of the past rather

than his Structural filmmaking counterparts is his relationship with the spiritual. As film

historian Paul Artur notes, his work is “paradoxically infused with a rare spiritual yearning

focused not on idealized Nature or the blessings of individual Imagination but on unseen, indeed

unrepresentable, transcendent Truths conventionally couched as religious or Freudian dogmas.

[…] Land's humor is leavened with ethical purpose” (Arthur 42). In On The Marriage Broker,

this spiritual yearning emerges in Land’s use of exaggerated mediation of the medium and the

narrative.

This overt mediation begins instantly when a close-up of the moaning woman’s mouth is

looped both in sight and sound, and the “Preface to the Twelfth Edition” is superimposed over

the screen. In this moment viewers are given an option: will they attempt to read the

overwhelming amount of text, or will they continue to focus on what is looped behind? The

words disappear within seconds, making the former challenge unmanageable without pausing the

film. Most will not do this, but even the thought of rewinding or pausing in order to read of the

words already gives the viewer agency and a participatory role in the film.

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This is much like in Land’s Remedial Reading Comprehension, which plays with the

advertising idea of the viewer as central to the product, or in this case the film: aka “this is a film

about you.” This participatory aspect found in both Hollis Frampton and Land’s work was the

vital quality that advanced structural film to the “participatory form,” as Sitney explains, they

“extended their aspirations for an unmediated cinema which would directly reflect or induce

states of mind and which first generated the structural film, into a participatory form which

addressed itself to the decision-making and logical faculties of the viewer” (Sitney 365). This is

echoed in the last scene of the On the Marriage Broker Joke, with the woman in bed who recites

condensed versions of Freud’s work on wit, while another monologue competes for the viewer’s

listening attention. The overwhelming amount of sound and text could arguably be chaos, or

could allow participation, al la choice.

Without intervention by the viewer, what is left of the opening scene is the memory of

the particularly religious music of the choir, the looping orgasm, and perhaps a few snippets read

from the text. This synesthesic experience lends itself to the content of the text, which speaks of

a study of mysticism, psychology, and theology. In this way, the image of the moaning woman

becomes absorbed in these higher truths: Enter John Milton, proclaiming, “How charming is

divine Philosophy!” Here, the overwhelming amount of sound, image and text allows

transcendence from a mediated experience with the film; leaving some lost, and others

completely invested in the complexity that verges on randomness.

In part eight of “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” Walter

Benjamin speaks of the technical mediation of the camera between the audience what is on the

screen: “The audience’s identification with the actor is really an identification with the camera.

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Consequently the audience takes the position of the camera” (Benjamin 9). For Benjamin, this

mediation inevitably removes the aura of the experience:

Guided by the cameraman, the camera continually changes its position with respect to the performance. The sequence of positional views which the editor composes from the material supplied him constitutes the completed film. It compromises certain factors of movement which are in reality those of the camera, not to mention special camera angles, close-ups, etc. Hence, the performance of the actor is subjected to a series of optical tests. (9)

Evident through Land’s work and interviews, he would agree with Benjamin, but works with this

limitation of technical mediation by exaggerating it: “The camera is a machine. It doesn't

perceive the way a human being does. What it sees is not affected by what it thinks. That's why I

do not like to hold the camera when I'm filming, or even to move it on a tripod or manipulate the

lens. I want the mechanical part of the film-making process to be as purely a mechanical process

as possible” (New Improved, 91). To augment the camera’s mechanical “truth” is to be perhaps

less “deceptive” to the viewer, in the sense that the medium’s limitations are overstressed and

thus revealed. In some kind of reversal, it is as if Land is on the right path to creating Benjamin’s

aura for the film-viewing experience.

A key to this creation is the relationship with the audience, as Wheeler W. Dixon

explains. He says that in Land’s work, “the film acts upon us, addressing us, viewing us as we

view it, until the film itself becomes a gaze, rather than an object to be gazed upon” (Dixon 2). In

addition to the participatory invitation to the audience, Land creates an eye in the screen as

another remedy to the medium’s confines. “There has been much discussion of the viewer as

voyeur or omniscient auditor of the cinematic spectacle, and recent reception theory has

aggressively investigated the crucial role of the audience in interpreting the film it visually

apprehends, usually along the sociological or psychoanalytic lines of interpretation” (Dixon 2).

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The explicit technical mediation is almost always paired with a conceptual

defamiliarization in this film. For example, the contrast between the Milton character and the

proceeding Lecturer character makes the Lecturer’s poem unanticipated: as he begins speaking,

one may begin to feel comfortable at last, recognizing Land’s use of academic images found in

his earlier films; qualities that drive “New Improved Institutional Quality” and “Remedial

Reading Comprehension.” However, the Lecturer’s “speech” begins to rhyme, disorienting the

viewer from the recognizable discourse of an academic teacher to the misplaced rhetoric of a

poet. Within the poem, the Lecturer begins to speak of the film technician as a “bard” in

Rochester—Rochester being the location of the headquarters of the Eastman Kodak Company in

New York (Land 51). This is unmistakably an allusion to poets such as the 2nd Earl of Rochester,

John Wilmot, who is considered the most famous poet of satire and wit. This dual meaning is

only one example of the nuances in this skillfully crafted poem, and is evidence of Land’s own

abilities and knowledge of high-poetry. Yet it is also simultaneously mocking both the literary

and academic realms by hosting them in such a monotonous, uncomfortable character.

To conclude his poem, the Lecturer says, “the importance of holes is no delusion / To

them we’ll always be the thrall / For providing us with all the illusion of movement / On a flat

white wall” (Land 52). While images of holes are repeated throughout the film, there is also the

homophonic “whole” in the latter part of the title: Or Can The Avant-Garde Artist Be Wholed?

This aspired wholeness is curiously contemplated via the use of “hole-ness,” for the importance

of sprocket holes as technical invention in film is extended to a discursive method in plot: holes

in editing (implicit “mistakes”—glimpses of the film strip, the clapper board, etc.) are

accompanied by “holes” in the narrative.

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In an early form of Zen called Chan, koans were riddles given to student to “exhaust the

logical activity of the mind so that the mind will break out of its conventional view of the nature

of reality” (Grenard 153). These Koans were based in Zen writings that have a very distinct

form, which I believe On the Marriage Broker Joke follows, giving reason for these narrative

“holes”:

Typical techniques include (1) the extensive use of allusions, which create a feeling of disconnection with the main theme; (2) indirect references, such as titling a poem with one topic and composing a verse that seems on the surface to be totally unrelated; (3) inventive wordplay based on the fact that kanji (Chinese characters) are homophonic and convey multiple, often complementary or contradictory meanings; and (4) linking the verses in a sustained string based on hidden points of connection or continuity, such as seasonal imagery or references to myths and legends. (Heine 52)

In an interview with Mark Webber, Land discussed his interest in Zen koans at the time of the

creation of this film (Land 108). Hence, the holes of in the narrative are actually the theme of the

film itself, and much like Zen writing, the patchy, disorienting, and seemingly unrelated aspects

offer the viewer a new way to watch a film, and come together with enough viewings: “From

another angle, the hole as visual shape indicates an adjacent realm of inevitable ‘circularity’:

things that turn back on themselves, like looped images, musical drones, puns, palindromes,

dreams, straight dramatic repetition, or references to one's own artistic output” (Arthur 43).

Perhaps in this sense Land’s work is the antithesis to most of the avant-garde cinema

produced around him, as he notes, “It's difficult, too, because film has so many purely

technological rhythms. I'm really fascinated with what comes out of the camera. The camera has

a life of its own. It's hard really to get to the point. That's why so many experimental films seem

so drifty. They may be interesting but they're not really saying anything, you don't know what

they're about. It's a big danger in all art, but especially in film. So what I've given myself to do is

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to know exactly what I'm saying and then go about saying it, cutting out anything extraneous to

that” (New Improved, 93).

Thus, if Land honors the literal, to interpret the presuming scenes of the film in a way

other than summary would be either trifling or exhausting to the point of needing to write a

whole book. What is vital to the middle sequence of the film is that sets up constraints that can

be deconstructed by both the viewers and the actors on screen—very much following the form of

Zen writing. The pandas set up these constraints in the form of a game: the first Panda asks,

“what game are we going to play tonight?” and the second responds, “we each have to tell one

marriage broker joke, and then pretend we are avant-garde filmmakers making a film about

marriage broker jokes” (Land 52). The following scenes offer ways to build up and deconstruct

these constraints, providing multiple ways to analyze the employed metaphors and triad of the

“marriage broker, suitor, and prospective bride.” To set up these constraints and deconstruct

them is to ultimately mechanize the entire act of constructing an avant-garde film. To mechanize

this content, much like exaggerating the mechanized aspects of the camera, allows for an

unmediated viewing experience. One can explore multiple options presented of meaning, and

participate in the creation of such.

It is the unmediated form that Land wants to achieve, both between the viewer and the

aura and the individual and truth. The camera acts as a mediator between the former, and

institutions between the latter. In a late scene, the lecturer tries to analyze the metaphors created

by the pandas and Land by presenting them on a board—substituting pander with panda and

broker with God—a scene that shows Land’s disillusionment with academic institutions. When

asked about the relationship of Christianity and the avant-garde, Land responds, “It's interesting

that it should come around to that, because there are two things that are almost considered to

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have no connection, but in a funny way there is one because they're both anti-conventional in

essence. Although Christianity has become a convention, and so has avant-garde art in museums.

Both have been academicized” (New Improved, 91). Overall, it is Land’s devotion to

transcendental truth that creates such a spirituality unmediated in his films. This is not film for

films sake, it is truth for truth’s sake, and it needs no broker.

  16  

Works Cited

Arthur, Paul. "Joker At Play In A Sea Of Holes." Film Comment 41.5 (2005): 41-44. Print.

Benjamin, Walter. "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction." Marxist Literary

Criticism. Web.

Bergan, Ronald. "George Landow (aka Owen Land) 1944-2011." UbuWeb. Web.

<http://www.ubu.com/film/landow.html>.

Dixon, Wheeler W. "Chapter One." It Looks at You: The Returned Gaze of Cinema. Albany: State

University of New York, 1995. 1-20. Print.

Greenberg, Clement. "Avant-Garde and Kitsch." Greenberg: Avant-Garde and Kitsch. Share Com,

1939. Web. <http://www.sharecom.ca/greenberg/kitsch.html>.

Grenard, Jerry L. "The Phenomenology Of Koan Meditation In Zen Buddhism." Journal Of

Phenomenological Psychology 39.2 (2008): 151-188. Academic Search Complete. Web. 14

May 2013.

Heine, Steven. "Zen Writes: Fun and Games with Words and Letters." Zen Skin, Zen Marrow: Will

the Real Zen Buddhism Please Stand Up? Oxford: Oxford UP, 2008. 37-72. Print.

Land, Owen. Two Films By Owen Land. Ed. Mark Webber. London: LUX, 2005. Web.

<http://mikehoolboom.com/thenewsite/docs/692.pdf>.

"New Improved George Landow Interview." Interview by P. Gregory Springer. Film Culture No. 63-

64 1976: 87-94. UbuWeb. Web. <http://www.ubu.com/papers/springer_gregory-

landow_interview.html>.

On the Marriage Broker Joke as Cited by Sigmund Freud in Wit and Its Relation to the Unconscious

or Can the Avant-Garde Artist Be Wholed? Dir. Owen Land. Perf. Morgan Fisher, Kevin

O'Connor, and Keith Anderson. 1977. Http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xrwkim_on-the-

marriage-broker-joke-1977_shortfilms.

  17  

Sitney, P. Adams. Visionary Film: The American Avant-Garde, 1943-2000. Oxford: Oxford UP,

2002. Print.

  18  

  Ana Mendieta and Her Silhouette in Film

Ana Mendieta (18 November 1948 – 8 September 1985) was a Cuban American performance

artist, sculptor, painter and video artist who is known for her "earth-body" art work. Mendieta was

born in Havana, Cuba. At age fourteen, in order to escape Fidel Castro's regime, Ana and her sister

were sent to the United States by their parents. She and her sister were moved through several

institutions and foster homes in Iowa. Mendieta attended the University of Iowa where she earned a

BA, an MA in Painting and an MFA in Multimedia and Video Art.2 Through the course of her career,

she created work in Cuba, Mexico, Italy, and the United States. Mendieta returned to the island of

Cuba seven times between 1980 and 1983, and had been the only exiled Cuban who had been

permitted to make public work in the country.3 Unfortunately, when Mendieta was gaining more

recognition for her work she died on September 8, 1985 in New York by falling naked from her 34th

floor apartment, where she lived with her husband of eight months, minimalist sculptor Carl Andre. 4

One of her many “earth body” works included the “Silhouette Series” (1973–1980) that

involved Mendieta using her own body, the raw materials of nature, and Afro-Cuban religion to

express her feminist political consciousness and poetic vision on various landscapes. One of the

works in the series that will be discussed through this paper will be her untitled film of a female

silhouette that she executed on the beach on Guanabo, Cuba in 1981.5 In this film, Mendieta

expresses how female identity is reestablished once the body and nature reunite. This idea of the

female body being one with the earth is something that was comprehended right away when I

watched how the shore caressed the silhouette. The film was able to capture the silhouette with nature

in the most untainted way. In those two to three minutes one can explicitly see how the outline of the

                                                                                                                2 Blocker, Jane. Where is Ana Mendieta? : identity, performativity, and exile. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999. Print. 6. 3 Viso, Olga. Ana Mendieta : Earth body : sculpture and performance art, 1972-1985. D.C.: Ostfildern-Ruit: Museum and Sculpture Garden, 2004. Print. 34. 4 Blocker, 7.     5 Viso, 133.

  19  

abstracted female body carved and mounded in the sand is harmoniously balanced with its landscape.

It also makes us question what Mendieta’s purpose of going back home to a beach and doing this

was. When learning of Mendieta’s life story, this idea of identity through the female silhouette and

becoming one with the earth is linked to how she was alienated throughout her life from society, her

motherland and parents. By connecting her body with Mother Nature back in her homeland,

Mendieta found that motherly absence and belonging she always yearned for.

In the film we see a lot of feminist appeal that likely comes from the fact that Mendieta was

exposed to many feminist artists while in Iowa. Some of those artists included Martha Rosler and

Martha Wilson, who both worked with their bodies to convey personal/political messages, much like

Mendieta did. 6 Ruby Rich, a friend and strong supporter of Mendieta, insists that, "She came out of

the feminist movement as much as Cuba.” 7 Mendieta's art is very rooted in the feminism emerging

from the 1970s, as explained by Rich. Her work represented every woman, especially through the use

of abstract female silhouettes. By illustrating the female body in nature as she did with the silhouette

in the Cuban beach, she made the female body be viewed as virtuous and at the same time asserting

that the female body is something that women should not be ashamed of. By silhouetting the female

body, she made it be recognized as art. It was as if the nude body of a female was a religion in its

purest form that should be respected and not seen as a taboo.

Furthermore, Mendieta’s early earth works, particularly those made in Mexico and Cuba are

very powerful because they are made by a woman. Many have placed Mendieta in the earth works

tradition of Robert Smithson or Richard Long, but the way that Mendieta gets intimate with her work

creates a different approach with the earth. It is as though when a woman engages with the earth it is

a very different statement; it is like a woman being in her natural environment. This was something

                                                                                                                6 Redfern, Christine. Who is Ana Mendieta?. New York: Feminist Press, 2011. Print. 23. 7 Redfern, 24.  

  20  

uniquely done with earth works that separated Mendieta from other earth work artists. This

uniqueness is associated with Walter Benjamin’s idea of the “aura” being present in an artwork. The

way that the “aura” is connected to Mendieta’s work is that she incorporated her history, anxiety,

hopes and passion into her silhouette in Cuba that can never be replicated with the same sense

anywhere else. Although there are many silhouettes that Mendieta created, each one is unique

because of its placement and materials.

Moreover, Robert Smithson had provided Mendieta with enormous sources of inspirations for

her silhouette works, such as the landscapes of Mexico and the Untiltled work in Guanabo, Cuba.8

However, it is evident that Mendieta went against how artists like Smithson tampered with the natural

landscape in order to create a work of art. What Mendieta did was fuse her body in its natural form

with the landscape instead of dramatically changing its natural state. Mendieta had once mentioned

that Smithson used “brutal tar and concrete pours” to make his mark on the earth.9 It can then be said

that many of her earth works were to prove to artists like Smithson that one can use the earth as an

inspiration and muse but not as something that should be tampered with harshly.

The early exposure to Santeria, the Afro-Cuban religion, also influenced Mendieta’s choice of

materials dealing with nature. Some of the materials included in her work that are connected with

Santeria are blood, hair, feathers, flowers, fire and water.10 The Afro-Cuban religions of Santeria

were part of her Cuban identity. Ana had mentioned once that since childhood she was fascinated by

the ‘primitive art’ and culture and explained that, “it seems as though these cultures are provided with

an inner knowledge, closeness to natural resources.”11 Mendieta’s body was that raw material. At

some point in her career, Mendieta wasn’t satisfied with her paintings because they weren’t “real

                                                                                                                8 Moure, Gloria. Ana Mendieta. Barcelona: Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea, 1996. Print. 137.   9 Blocker, 30. 10 Redfern, 117. 11 Blocker, 46.    

  21  

enough” for what the ‘magic’ she wanted to convey like in the sense of Santeria. She believed that

the only way she could put ‘magic’ or ‘power’ into her art was to work directly with nature, the

source of life. Since the Santeria community was seen as an exile, it made sense that Mendieta would

want to identify with it since she felt as an exile in Cuba and in the United States.

Throughout the beginning of her career, Mendieta also moved away from performance art like

Acconci’s and Schneemann’s work that demanded a direct physical engagement with the public, and

instead worked with nature alone and documented it. By filming her work, Mendieta brings out a lot

of that intimacy that is felt throughout her Untitled film of her silhouette in the Cuban beach. This

intimacy is felt as the camera sits focused on the silhouette for three minutes, letting us experience

how it interacts with the water and the wind. It was important for Mendieta to use documentation of

her earth works because most were ephemeral, like the one in the Cuban beach. Perhaps this is why

she decided to get her MFA in Multimedia and Video Art. There’s something magical to the fact that

we can still witness what Mendieta did on that trip back home to reunite with her homeland. The

artwork becomes permanent and therefore a bit of Mendieta’s soul lives on in the earth perpetually

and the “aura” of the work lives on, although she died tragically.

Speaking of the “aura” infused in Mendieta’s film work, Benjamin had once explained that,

“Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time

and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be.”12 This “perfect reproduction”

connects back with Mendieta documenting some of her works through film. What Benjamin

describes is this idea of authenticity. Although Benjamin might argue that Mendieta’s film has

depreciated its authenticity of the artwork, I would argue that if she had not documented her piece her

artistic vision would just have been washed away by Mother Nature without getting as much

recognition as it does today. I would also argue that Mendieta did not use any editing or manipulation

                                                                                                                12 Benjamin, Walter. "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction." (1936): n. page. Print. <http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/benjamin.htm>.

  22  

to alter one’s perspective. The camera was motionless and kept its focus on the silhouette for three

minutes. The film was felt like a raw documentary of her silhouettes interacting with its landscape.

While one wishes they could witness Mendieta’s work in person, the use of film lets us connect with

her vision.

All in all, Ana Mendieta’s work in film gives us a vivid depiction of how the female body is a

form of art linked with nature in its most pure form. The camera lets us contemplate Mendieta’s

elements of feminism, Santeria, quest for identity and belonging all infused with nature. Through her

work and life story, we recognize why those elements are incorporated in her art. Through the

documentation of her “Silhouette Series”, Mendieta’s trace on the earth will not be washed away.

  23  

Works Cited

Redfern, Christine. Who is Ana Mendieta?. New York: Feminist Press, 2011. Print.

Benjamin, Walter. "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction." (1936): n. page. Web.

<http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/benjamin.htm>.

Blocker, Jane. Where is Ana Mendieta? : identity, performativity, and exile. Durham, NC: Duke

University Press, 1999. Print.

Moure, Gloria. Ana Mendieta. Barcelona: Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea, 1996. Print.

Viso, Olga. Ana Mendieta : Earth body : sculpture and performance art, 1972-1985. D.C.:

Ostfildern-Ruit: Museum and Sculpture Garden, 2004. Print.

  24  

  Stan Brakhage: Lyrical Abstraction on Major Life Events

Brakhage’s work was growing in popularity through the early 1960’s, and his style was

becoming more recognizable and distinct. He began to experiment more with color and texture, and

used frequently a technique of painting directly onto the film. As he was a strong force in the

development of the Lyrical Film aesthetic, he wanted to experiment with ways of causing the viewer

to recognize more his own moment of consciousness, and drift away from the specific viewer’s

interpretation of what and object is. This influence came from his relationship with Open Form poets

Robert Duncan and Charles Olsen, whose primary goal in poetry was to “restore the relation between

the word and world, but not be reverting to reference, rather, [they] proposed that we think of words

not as tokens that refer to categories of objects, but as physical objects that act upon other elements of

physical reality.” (Elder, 134) In the same sense that these poets used words in a non symbolic way,

Brakhage wanted to defy the use of symbolism in his imagery, and reconnect it in a way that the

viewer can see it for what it actually is. The most relevant use of this idea in his work is how he uses

abstract paintings on the film to show the sensation of closed eye imagery that his brain produces.

This is what Brakhage believed was the strongest way for him to produce what he thought was the

most authentic art. In Walter Benjamin’s article The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical

Reproduction, he explains how mechanically reproduced art devalues and inhibits the aura of a given

work. He claims, “The feeling of strangeness that overcomes the actor before the camera, as

Pirandello describes it, is basically of the same kind as the estrangement felt before one’s own image

in the mirror. But now the reflected image has become separable, transportable. And where is it

transported? Before the public.” (Benjamin) Bejamin hits on a significant idea, that the naturally the

viewer sees some aspect of his or herself when viewing a film. Brakhage, does something quite

brilliant with this idea, which is that he attempts to cut out the actor, or the subject, and force the

viewer to feel what he as the filmmaker is experiencing. This is how he argues that his art is

  25  

authentic, and although this style of filmmaking wasn’t relevant when Benjamin wrote his article, I

think it’s safe to say that Brakhage's art does have that sense of aura that Benjamin doesn’t think is

attainable through this medium.

In 1961, Brakhage made a film in reference to his 1959 film Window Water Baby Moving,

entitled Thigh Line Lyre Triangular. This film, like Window Water, takes images from his wife

giving birth to create an abstract representation of Brakhage’s reality while he watches his child being

born. The film begins with a series of paintings and scratching on film, that creates a fast and

overwhelming forward motion on the screen. Until about 25 seconds into the movie, the viewer is

unable to attach to any specific objects or give name to what is happening on the screen, at which

point the first image of Brakhage’s wife is presented. Her face is shown and it’s visible that she is

distressed. The abstract imagery is once again becomes the foreground, introducing a wider palette of

bright colors. Breakinging through is once again a shot of Mary, at the point in which the doctor is

doing preparatory procedures for her birth. Although there are no sensitive aspects of the procedure

being show , this is the shot where the viewer begins to feel that initial statement of the reality of the

piece. It’s quickly disrupted by another slew of abstract painting, now a darker set of colors and even

fluxuations in texture. After the two minute mark of the piece, a return of non-effected footage

appears, but this time it’s an indecipherable that is frequently interrupted by a bright light. This part

both gives the viewer the impression of disorientation that is associated with the overwhelming

nature of being a part of the childbirth, as well as mimics the bright lights a patient would see while

undergoing surgery. Using mostly abstract images, Brakhage has represented a narrative and a setting

within 2 minutes. After establishing this, the piece begins to develop, as the colors fade to blend with

the colors of the actual footage being used. This causes a sort of ambiguity and unsure nature

between the two aspects, and allows the glimpses of more graphic material to be seen without the

viewer fully perceiving the event. Brakhage as an artist strived to make this concept a reality, so that

  26  

viewers of his films would finish watching and understand fully the emotional aspect of what

happened, from the first person point of view.

A little over the 4 minute mark, footage of the actual birth is present, but it remains difficult to

fully tell what is beings seen. Often Brakhage will mix colors and even paint over the part of the shot

with the action so that when he shows the uninterrupted shot of the baby finally coming out, the

viewer feels that sudden sense of clarity and beauty. Once the baby has actually come out of Mary,

the hues and texture of the painting become softer and more delicate as the viewer gets to see the first

moments of a newborn life. This material goes back and forth with footage of Mary after the birth has

happened. When the shot is on Mary, the colors switch to dark blacks and reds as her face is shown in

a state of half consciousness, but switches back shortly to the baby and bright colors. Viewing this

it’s possible to understand the emotional vairance between when Brakhage looks at his wife and

when he looks at his newborn child.

The conflict between the image of Mary from various angles and the abstract painting

becomes deliberately more frequent after the first glimpse of Mary. The viewer only gets short and

distorted glimpses of the actual footage, mimicking the overwhelming sensation a father feels when

viewing the birth of his child. This conflict is maintained carefully through the entire birth. Brakhage

makes it so the viewer is able to not grasp any particular aspect of the film in the sense of narrative,

but arrive at the end of the film knowing exactly what happened and how it was perceived in the first

person. Brakhage stays true to the Lyrical Film genre, while adding in his own unique elements of

abstraction.

When compared to the works of Robert Duncan and Charles Olsen, it’s clear that Brakhage

took great influence from them. In each medium, narrative is forfeited and symbolism is purposefully

avoided, yet in both instances, the viewer or reader is left with the sense of understanding of the

given experience. Clement Greenberg’s essay Avant Garde and Kitsch was written in 1939 to

  27  

acknowledge and deconstruct Avant Garde art and its distinction from Kitsch, in terms of the specific

time and cultural period he was living in. He explains that “the most important function of the avant-

garde was not to "experiment," but to find a path along which it would be possible to keep culture

moving in the midst of ideological confusion”. (Greenberg) This is a relevant thought in terms of

both Brakhage and Duncan and Olsen. Brakhage was plagued with difficulties from romance to

existentialism, but maintained his sanity through filmmaking. Rather than just experimenting (which

he did a great deal of) he had a purpose to the things he was doing. His films show his highest

insecurities and his greatest fears, but remain something that give the viewer a sense of comfort, and

simultaneously reveal a deep part of him, normally invisible to the world.

Stan Brakhage set out to create films in which used abstraction as a means of allowing the

viewer to release any predispositions of film or any art, so that the viewer could have an unfiltered

and uninhibited glimpse into his reality. Throughout his extensive list of works, Brakhage has

managed to maintain this goal as a filmmaker and create a unique experience within each of his films.

He is able to take a significant event, such as his child being born, as in Thigh Line Lyre Triangular

and simultaneously creating a visually striking and unique piece of high art, and giving the viewer an

experience.

Works Cited

Barr, William R. "Brakhage: Artistic Development in Two Childbirth Films." Film Quarterly 29.3

(1976): 30-34. Print.

Elder, R. Bruce. "Experience as Energy: A Pattern for Thinking." The Films of Stan Brakhage in the

American Tradition of Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein, and Charles Olsen. Waterloo, Ontario, Canada:

Wilfred Laurier UP, 1998. 133-37. Print.

  28  

James, David E. Stan Brakhage: Filmmaker. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 2005. Print.

1.docx

Nanchao Li:

Aida Ruilova “Compilation” http://www.ubu.com/film/ruilova_comp.html

Research Paper

OPENING AND THESIS WILL BE DUE ON D2L M 4.27.20

The subject of this paper is the analysis of a filmmaker and one of his/her films. This paper should be no shorter than 5-7 full pages in length, written in a doublespaced, 12-pt font.

-This paper must have a clear, critical thesis that is supported throughout the body of the paper.

-Choose a filmmaker from the time periods looked at thus far in class. Students may select someone we have discussed in class, or pick someone mentioned in the Sitney book but not covered in lecture. Two artists that will be prohibited as subjects for this paper are Maya Deren and Salvador Dali.

-One film should be chosen as a focus.

-Discuss the filmmaker's career, including background, colleagues and influence. Do this in the context of your thesis.

-Provide an analysis of the film as a way to talk about the filmmaker's style, interests and techniques. Consider styles or artists whose work they may be reacting to or rejecting, and assert how such a relationship may be critically significant. Do this in the context of your thesis.

-At least two ideas from Benjamin and/or Greenberg, should be incorporated into the larger critical argument of the paper. Use citations. Do this in the context of your thesis.

-Ideas from sources should be cited within the paper. Paper must have a works cited page.

- Besides the required class texts and supplied articles that may be used as references, students must use three additional text references appropriate to a college course in support of the student’s own ideas. Students should only use research resources available via http://libguides.depaul.edu/content.php?pid=235073&sid=1944783 If students would like to use other resources, these resources must be approved by the instructor before submission of the research paper.