no respect(able) creatures

Smith was both filmmaker and performance artist. After a period of about eight years (1961 - 1969) in which Smith showed the films in their completed forms in conventional film screening settings, he began to incorporate the films and his slides into the performances. He developed this technique called "Expanded Cinema" in many of his performance pieces of the period: "Exotic Landlordism of the World," "Dance of the Sacred Foundation Application," "Death of A Penguin," " The Secret of Rented Island, " "Shark Bait of Capitalism," and "The Horror of Uncle Fish Hook's Safe."

Smith created startling stage effects through the spontaneous re arrangement and interplay of recorded imagery on film and slides, with the live action on the "stage", editing and re-editing the film images on the spot, in the midst of the performance. This spontaneous editing, however, required a unique form of splicing in which he put together strands of camera original as well as printed material with masking tape. Thus he managed to create a unique version of the films for each performance.

reverberation machines

For many years I have created plays in the following manner. I write-- usually at the beginning of the day, from one half to three pages of dialogue. There is no indication of who is speaking-- just raw dialogue. From day to day, there is no connection between the pages, each day is a total 'start from scratch' with no necessary reference to material from previous days' work. (Though it sometimes-- infrequently-- happens that there is a thematic carryover).

Every few months, I look through the accumulated material with the thought of contructing a 'play'. I find a page that seems interesting and possible as a 'key' page-- and then quickly scan through to find others that might relate in some way to that 'key' page.

The relationship is not narrative-- but loosely thematic-- in a very poetic sense-- even in simply an 'intuited' way. Often-- I can not explain why-- simply that one pages seems interesting in a yet undefinable way, if juxtaposed to other selected pages.

When I have forty to fifty pages, I consider this the basis. I then arrange the pages in search of some possible loose thematic 'scenario'-- which again, is more 'variations on a theme' rather than strictly narrative. I look to establish a 'situation oif tension'-- then imagining how the other pages somehow augment and 'play with' that situation, rather than leading to story and rersolution.

Imagining a loose scenario, I re-write a little for continuity, then assign lines to imagined characters-- and evenutally have a play.

border crossing

The new theatre, defined in terms of the modern and the avant-garde, has been surrounded by prejudice stemming from an old-fashioned way of thinking and from the worst of the traditions of bad taste. Its other causes are ignorance, lack of sensitivity and a total disregard for the crucial functions of art.
One of the symptoms of the prejudice surrounding the new theatre is the old and overused accusation concerning its incomprehensibility, exclusiveness and indifference to social matters. What is ignored is the simple fact that such accusations may result from applying a false strategy to the recognition of a work of art. In this case it is exactly so. The strategy which is used has been inherited from the 19th century, the age of the downfall of arts. The rule applied says that art is an illustration - not of life any longer, but of everyday practices of life and of its superficial anecdote. In this light any artistic production that reaches beyond this thin layer appears to be incomprehensible and strange. I am strongly convinced that only the theatre which is based on the methods of modern thinking and perception has the potential to become the mass theatre, merged with the society. Giving up the pseudo-inquisitive analysis, imagination reaching beyond the limits of everyday experience, metaphors increasing human sensibility, surprising and shocking because of their expressive power - all this creates a sphere of great tension, capable of influencing and convincing a great mass of people.



THE SO-CALLED "SCENERY"


The terms "the stage set", "the scenery" or "stage design" become useless and unnecessary in the new theatre. They imply a distinction. What is understood by these terms ought to be integrated with the theatrical whole so strongly as to melt into the entire stage matter. It should not be discernible.
The relationship between the actor and "this thing", i.e. the former "scenery" or "props" ought to be as inseparable as the guillotine and Kapet's head in the time of the revolution - everlasting.
The theatre that I am talking about has renounced the idea of the "scenery" understood as an illustration of art. This belongs to the worst of theatrical traditions. The scenery does not have to, and even should not, function only as the location, regardless of whether the form is constructivist, surrealist, expressionist, symbolic, naturalistic or poetical. It has much more important and alluring functions to perform, such as the function of locating emotions, conflicts and the dynamics of the action. It may not exist at all, absorbed by the actor's movement and expression, replaced by the light or by works of art: a painting or a sculpture carrying the value of authenticity, just as it used to result from the application of authentic values in the theatre - a poor example of stylization.

closed circuit constructions: (are a) DEAD CLASS

border crossing

piece: one
"A theatrical production is not to be watched
like a picture
for aesthetic pleasure
but is to be tangibly experienced.
I have no artificial canons.
I feel connected to no epoch of the past;
they are unknown to me and of no interest to me.
I only feel that I owe a lot to the epoch
I live in and to the people living next to me.
I believe that in one whole there is enough space
for both barbarism and subtlety, tragedy and coarse laughter,
and that a whole is made up of contrasts
and the greater the contrasts
the more it is tangible
and concrete
and dynamic. (...)"

piece: two
"Cricotage does not eliminate emotional states or strong tension.
Cricotage relies on REALITY.
Liberated from any kind of "plot."
Its fragments, relics and traces
torn by the power of IMAGINATION,
defying all the conventions and the "common" sense
are joined together and strained to such an extent
that at any time they
could rupture
and disintegrate.
This sense of
danger
and imminent
disaster
is an essential feature of Cricotage.
What remains is the problem of the symbol.
Characters, situations, remnants of action
are not symbols.
They are rather EXPLOSIVES,
which cause short-circuits.
They come near the "IMPOSSIBLE" and the "INCONCEIVABLE."
Despite their manifest references to real life meanings, they do not at all
Meet the need for a solution that would follow the everyday logic. It would be
an unpardonable simplification to try and explain them through such meanings.
All the real-life meanings are instantly denied and erased.
In an instant a wedding becomes a funeral ceremony.
A "pre-programmed" message does not exist.

the 5 (apparent characteristics of the) new image

the dispersive situation
the deliberately weak liks
the balade-form
the consciousness of cliches
the denunciation of conspiracy

framed/notions of breaking the frame(away from live cinema performance as a re-production of other arts)

post:mortem

tyrants (4)

The Cinema Militans lecture by Peter Greenaway, is a timely treatise and call for the reinvention of cinema. Critical themes of evolving cinematic conventions and grammar are becoming more relevant as the digital film field and the accompanying technologies mature. (More detailed commentary on this area can be found in the forthcoming book, The End of Celluloid). The lecture highlights Greenaway's 'Four tyrannies' destroying cinema - that of the text, the frame, the actor and the camera.

the perfect crime

"It's a good thing we ourselves do not live in real time! What would we be in 'real' time? We would be identified at each moment exactly with ourselves. A torment equivalent to that of eternal daylight—a kind of epilepsy of presence, epilepsy of identity. Autism, madness. No more absence from oneself, no more distance from others"

hot camera/cold camera*

*the camera doesn't itself constitute the event (hot camera); it is reduced to the mere recording of events whose progression relies on the characters (cold camera).

main body of small text:
Dogme technique: to produce the truth out of the material being worked — characters, settings. The truth is understood as unveiling characters being naturally veiled. The camera is no longer an instrument of fiction; the feeling is of films producing themselves before the eyes, in real time (theatrical process). More than realistic cinema, live cinema.

beyond dogma is the point(or one of the points) of live cinema

what can be kept in mind is a phrase from robert bresson (especially for all those working/exploring live cinema and especially those that are prone to "over working" the possibilities afforded to them from the latest in technological advancements)

THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN BEAUTIFUL IMAGES AND NECESSARY IMAGES

audio_visual montage based on musical contrapunct/soft cinema

hitory_02/non-linear/semantic clash

“…All in all, in contrast to cinema’s sequential narrative, all the “shots” in spatial narrative are accessible to the viewer at once. Like nineteenth-century animation, spatial narrative did not disappear completely in the twentieth century, but rather, like animation, came to be delegated to a minor form of Western culture - comics. It is not accidental that the marginalisation of spatial narrative and the privileging of the sequential mode of narration coincided with the rise of the historical paradigm in human sciences…..Although digital compositing is usually used to create seamless virtual space, this does not have to be erased; different spaces do not have to be matched in perspective, scale, and lighting; individual layers can retain their separate identities rather than being merged into a single space; different worlds can clash semantically rather than form a single universe.”

history_01/pre-verbal/silent signs

The Pre-Verbal Language of Cinema , as follows:

“Through the use of different screen sizes and the framing of shots, the juxtaposition of camera angles and point of view, expressive music and lighting, and the principles of editing, they found that the camera can, uniquely, photograph thought. Since that time, those directors who have made the best use of the film medium have used the camera to communicate to audiences at a level far more immediate and primitive than the spoken word. By primitive I don't mean more simplistic and less subtle. Far from it. Cinema deals with feelings, sensations, intuitions and movement, things that communicate to audiences at a level not necessarily subject to conscious, rational and critical comprehension. Because of this, the so-called 'language' the film director uses may, in fact, make for a much richer and denser experience. Actions and images speak faster, and to more of the senses, than speech does. A recurring theme of these notes is that cinema is not so much non-verbal as pre-verbal. Though it is able to reproduce reams of dialogue, film can also tell stories purely in movement, in action and reaction. Cinematographic images, particularly when synchronised with recorded sound, deliver such quantities of visual and audible data that the verbal component (even, in the days of silent cinema, title cards) is overwhelmed and becomes secondary. Consequently, the essential and underlying meaning of film dialogue is often much more effectively transmitted by a complex and intricate organisation of cinematic elements that are not only not verbal, but that can never be fully analysed by verbal means.”

Silent cinema shares similar elements with live cinema, as neither uses verbal dialogues as the basis for communication. Silent cinema was also traditionally accompanied by live orchestra playing music in the movie theatres, which was sometimes referred to as live cinema.

border crossing

Live Cinema has hitherto been used primarily to describe the live musical accompaniment of silent movies. But that was yesterday.

Live Cinema today stands for the simultaneous creation of sound and image in real time by sonic and visual artists who collaborate on equal terms and with elaborate concepts. The traditional parameters of narrative cinema are expanded by a much broader conception of cinematographic space, the focus of which is no longer the photographic construction of reality as seen by the camera’s eye, or linear forms of narration. The term “Cinema” is now to be understood as embracing all forms of configuring moving images.

hypothetical grammar

live cinema seems to be a creative space that is emerging more and more and yet it lacks an organized( or the possibility of an organized) grammar and/or vocabulary.
we propose to look at this new language.