Author: greg

“We can easily believe that Bill Viola is worth ten Scorseses.”

Them’s fightin’ words. In his Cinema Militans Lecture, Greenaway thought he’d rile up his audience at the Netherlands Film Festival with his opening, “Cinema died on the 31st September 1983.” (Killed by Mr. Remote Control, in the den, if you must know.) But it’s his claim that Viola’d trump Scorsese that’s the real “they bought yellowcake in Niger” of this speech. He’s just got Britishvision, distracted like a fish by a shiny object passing in front of him [Viola‘s up at the National Gallery right now.] And the conveniently timely evidence he cites seems, well, let’s just say we know from conveniently timed evidence over here.

Sleeping with the enemy, Peter Greenaway Bed Linens. image: bonswit.com
Sleeping with the enemy: Greenaway
texts up a set of bed linens. for sale at bonswit.com

Greenaway argues for a filmic revolution: throw off the “four tyrannies” of the text, the actor, the frame and the camera, banishing at last the “illustrated text” we’ve been suffering through for 108 years, and replacing it with true cinema.
The Guardian‘s Alex Cox sees video games and dvd’s rising up to answer Greenaway’s call, and he makes the fight local, pitting Greenaway against the British Film Establishment, as embodied by director Alan Parker. So the choice is either Prospero’s Books or The Life of David Gale?? This fight’s neither pretty nor fair.
Also in the Guardian: Sean Dodson’s report on a Nokia-sponsored campaign for the new future of cinema, a “festival” of 15-second movies to watch on your mobile phone. It’s part of London’s excellent-looking Raindance Film Festival, and it embodies perfectly the military industrial telecom entertainment complex’s idea of revolution through perpetual hardware upgrading. [It should surprise no one that the little festival is at Nokia’s website, because you can’t actually download movies on your phone yet. Utopia’s always just around the corner.]
image: badassbuddy.comMore than rallying the troops, Greenaway and Nokia are actually tottering to catch up with the next generation. Paul Thomas Anderson’s inclusion of Jeremy Blake’s animated abstractions in Punch Drunk Love. The Matrix Reloaded‘s all-CG bullet time “camera.” The Matrix launching the DVD player, for that matter. Gus van Sant’s Gerry as film-as-video-game and the multiple POV reprises of scenes in Elephant. Multi-screen master Isaac Julien, Matthew Barney, spawn of Mario Brothers. And the unscripted cinematic narrative mutations of corporate-sponsored mediums like PowerPoint and AIM buddy icons.
Greenaway’s righter than he knows, but the evolution’s already underway, with or without him. It always has been

I have a friend at the MPAA

The folks at artblog were going through their trash and found my article on the unsanctioned trading of video art screener tapes. They were upset about my outing Chris Hughes, the Pamela and the Richard Kramlich of screeners. “Who benefits [from exposing and shutting this nice guy down]? Not the public, certainly” they criticized.
They kindly posted my response. I don’t think screener tapes automatically harm video art or artists; net net, they help spread the art’s influence and impact. I still feel that writing about this practice was a good thing, and good things have come from it.
Then I see Jack Valenti, picking yet another misleading, irrational and disingenuous fight against the evil VCR by banning screener tapes, and I worry. I worry that maybe, just maybe, could the screener tape seed have been planted by my article? After all, I worry, I have a friend at the MPAA.

Whereas, Ten Hours of Polish Film is NOT an Ordeal…

I came to Kieslowski for the fateful mystery of La Double Vie de Veronique, but I stayed for the unassuming, naturalistic power of the Dekalog.
This seminal ten-part series of films is playing this weekend at Symphony Space in NYC. POV has an excellent write-up, with good links to get you in the mood.
The Decalogue was one of the greatest unwatchable works of film, ever. For years in North America, the series, which Kieslowski and writer Krzysztof Piesiewicz originally made for Polish TV, was kept off of video and DVD by weird rights disputes. But it’d turn up at film festivals and cinematheques, and you’d suddenly have to figure out how to shoehorn ten hours of moviegoing into two or three days. It was an experience prewired to disappoint, or, more precisely, leave you wanting.
By 2000, I’d only managed to see half of the installments, when an odd one-year distribution agreement brought a bare-bones 2-DVD set to the market. I snapped it up, and since then I’ve been steeping regularly in some of the most engrossing storytelling around.
This year, The Decalogue reappeared in a far superior 3-disc format, complete with several Kieslowski interviews and other real supplementary material. So get up to Symphony Space for at least a couple of episodes, then watch and rewatch them at home. Of course, GreenCine rents them one disc at a time; it may be better, emotionally, to pace yourself.
[related: the effects of watching Dekalog on an impressionable new filmmaker]

On Transit and Memory

Santiago Calatrava talks about his vision for the transit hub he’s designing for the World Trade Center site. I’m a fan, although there doesn’t seem to be a lot of design meat here.
And the New Yorker‘s Jane Kramer gets Berlin artists/memorial designers Renata Stih and Frieder Schnock to talk about a memorial for the World Trade Center. Their comments seem well suited to the discourse of a year or so ago, when entertaining the world of possibilities didn’t feel so escapist as it does now.
In fact, last year, I was very impressed by their proposed Holocaust memorial.

American Ordealism

Electric Earth, 1999, Doug Aitken, image:victoria-miro.comIs it a coincidence that The Cremaster Cycle, the filmic ordeal-in-a-black-box, is playing in London at the same time as David Blaine, the Brooklyn ordeal-in-a-clear-box?
Read Peter Bradshaw’s Guardian review as if you’re seeing the movies for the first time.
And read about David Blaine getting out of his box as if you thought you’d already heard the last of him.
Late Saturday night, after a party for Doug Aitken at the Wapping Project, an artspace, the gridlock surrounding David Blaine’s impending egress was blamed for the complete absence of cabs that left 20 of us (including Doug and Thomas Demand) stranded in B.F. East London. Result: a group of us walked back to our hotel in Westminster, along the Thames, for about two hours. Ordealism.

Olafur Eliasson: The Weather Project at Tate Modern

turbine hall, Tate modern, image: greg.org

Just got back from the preview and party for The Weather Project, Olafur Eliasson’s absolutely breathtaking installation at the Tate Modern in London. The Turbine Hall is something like 500 feet long, the full length and height of the building.
I can tell you that Olafur created a giant sun out of yellow sodium streetlamps, but that doesn’t begin to describe the experience of seeing it and being in the space. It is this awareness of one’s own perception which is at the heart of his work. Not only does he use and transform this unwieldy cavern, he intensifies the viewer’s sight and sense of being in the space.
And as always, Olafur lays bare the mechanisms that create the unavoidably sublime experience, which in this case include, literally, smoke and mirrors. You can see exactly how you’re being manipulated affected, and you’re fine with it. At least I am.
[update: the Guardian‘s Fiachra Gibbons likes it, too.]

Goin’ to London

Olafur Eliasson, Your Sun Machine, 1997, image:Sao Paulo Bienal
Your Sun Machine, Olafur Eliasson, 1997
Marc Foxx Gallery. Image:Sao Paulo Bienal

I’m heading to London for a few days.
Going to one friend’s exhibition opening and another friend’s art fair. I’ll be doing a little reporting, even though I’m not sure where to find the “Internet” over there.
I have a great idea; at a moment to be appointed (but it has to be today, in time for my trip), everyone goes outside and marks up the outside of their building with their wi-fi network information. Then, a few minutes later, we all disperse into the crowd.
Forward this message to all your friends.

From the Dept. of WTF

“It’s Nike Ground! This revolutionary project is transforming and updating your urban space. Nike is introducing its legendary brand into squares, streets, parks and boulevards: Nikesquare, Nikestreet, Piazzanike, Plazanike or Nikestrasse will appear in major world capitals over the coming years…”
And where does this new and friendly revolution begin? Oh, where so many of western civ’s not-so-great-after-all ideas heil from: Austria. “Starting from 1 January 2004 Karlsplatz (in Vienna) is going to be called Nikeplatz.”
! indeed.
[via Archinect]
[update: this turns out to be art by 0100101110101101.org, which released it’s press release Oct. 10, four days after Nike denied its involvement, and a full three days before Archinect or I posted it. Don’t let the facts get in the way of a good conclusion, I guess.]
[update 2: and to answer reader Chris’s question, no, all of Austria’s not all that bad after all. Schwarzenegger’s our problem now, anyway.]

Seeing Lost In Translation on the Upper East Side

Lost in Translation soundtrack, image:amazon.com

Context isn’t everything, but it counts. We just got back from seeing Lost In Translation with a multi-generational crowd, in the movie theater around the corner from Holly Golightly’s brownstone. As they say, it’s the little differences:

  • “Gorgeous sheets.” –Woman of a certain age behind us, upon the cut to Bill Murray sitting on the Park Hyatt bed. [300-count egyptian cotton? Nice, but could be better, lady. Now pipe down.]
  • “hahahaha.” –me, laughing alone at the previously unrecognized 4:20 reference.
  • “nice soundtrack.” –me, wondering if the limited edition soundtrack is out yet.
  • “soundtrack’d be better if the idiot in front of us’d stop proclaiming Shinjuku landmarks to his mother/sugar mama. It ain’t no Harajuku, pal. Now pipe down.” – me.
  • “I loved it.” –adult children of the sheets woman, after it was over.
  • “I hated it.” –the sheets woman.

    • I Report, You Decide: Speaking with a former WTC juror

    Friday, I met an architecture professional who was on the LMDC jury last summer to select the architects for the World Trade Center site design study. We spoke about the Memorial Competition, details of which were familiar to this person.
    The juror was deliberately cagey, but said the Memorial jury was down to ten proposals: “And when it gets down to ten, the lines start to sharpen.” Asked about the timeline, this person said, “very soon,” but when I bounced the rumored names of finalists, the response I got was, “you know more than I do, then.” (Which is so clearly not the case, it’s almost embarassing.)

    about making films, really.

    I’ve been very quiet about my actual filmmaking activities of late, mostly because they’ve been pretty sparse. My efforts to re-edit Souvenir November 2001 have been stymied by Final Cut Pro for a while, and I’m coming to grips with the idea of re-building it from scratch. Well, from a late-stage EDL (Edit Directions List), actually, which is the cut-by-cut source code of the film. That’d mean dumping all 80Gb of my media, so it’s an irrevocable decision, which I’ve been avoiding making.
    But this week, I’ve been invited to show and talk about my work in November (More details to come.), so it’s about time to pull the trigger. Of course, movement on that will also impel movement on the re-scoring effort, too. Sometimes a deadline can be a very helpful thing.
    Beyond this non-working on film, I’ve been researching and began negotiating for the film rights of a novel. It took a while to trace the rightsholder (the book had been out of print in English for many years and was recently reissued.) and to fill in the backstory of the book’s creation. The writer’s estate is represented by a small but very sharp agency in Europe, so my very early mornings have been full of iterations on the contract points, a lot of phone calls, etc. Makes me feel productive, but exhausted. It’s very interesting and exciting, but not something I can really post about in realtime detail, you understand. As soon as it closes, you’ll be among the first to know.
    But enough about me. (Heh. As if.) POV points to a new (to me) filmmaker weblog, Nyurotic, which is quite engaging. Ang Mito is a documentarian, whose film screened in the Work In Progress section of this year’s IFP Market to very positive reaction. Mito posts her rollercoaster experiences at the Market. Definitely check it out.