foreign 's explosive debut breathless is often most characterized by its own willingness to conform to cinematic convention Goda was essentially rewriting the rules of film as he was making his own this free-form technique was viewed as liberating Cinema no longer had to be restricted by What was seen as dogmatic principles although viewed now is revolutionary gota didn't know whether or not this technique would work he was one could say experimenting [Music] Carl Theodore dryer when creating th
e passion of Joan of Arc created a film that even during the silent era was perceived as silent a completely silent film devoid of all music as Dreyer opted to prioritize close-ups in his cinematography a film almost entirely reliant on the solemnity and intensity of the actor's performance was a completely unconventional approach which many would refer to in retrospect as experimental two films completely separate from one another considered experimentations of their form and yet there remains
a defined genre that these two pieces wouldn't qualify for categorization that genre is experimental film and it's a genre of film that we don't even particularly associate with Cinema why well the answer is immediately recognized by anyone watching experimental films there's simply two different they're too esoteric and too impenetrable they're seemingly about nothing yet at the same time these abstract Effigies possess an Allure to them as though beneath their strange exterior there's somethin
g to be discovered perhaps not all of them but surely there's something to be found here if we can enjoy Cinema that deviates from all manner of tradition then where is the line drawn to where Cinema ends and the experiment begins if we go back to Cinema's primordial soup we could argue that every film was experimental filmmakers in the very Act of their profession were attempting to decipher the mystery of this almost magical new piece of technology everything they did was without a pre-establi
shed rule but even in the days of early and Silent Cinema we can still find something in film Outsider to cinema the work of Hans Richter begins one of the more notable deviations from the trend of cinematic convention that had been established by the 1920s the most obvious Omission from his work is the lack of a basic narration in his rhythmus series the anti-sinematic obsession with geometric objects indicates that there is no subject to the piece and in a simple interplay of shapes Richter te
lls us that in a movie everything becomes an object a symbol a storytelling device thus you can put anything in the frame and some story will emerge [Music] in essence the meaning being that there is no meaning at all and although Hans Richter is often the most well-known and experimental at the avant-garde filmmakers of this era he didn't invent this notion Walter rootman's litchbeel Opus was already exploring the interplay of light and composition in its most abstract format the idea that emer
ges time and time again was that film was a new language this didn't necessarily mean the complete issue of all narrative but what was the Cinematic imagery that dictated its meter how does one convey The Poetry of the moving image this was the nature of Giga vertov's Explorations in man with the movie camera experimental film is always searching for the secrets hidden within the images of film and finding the methods of how to reveal them through Montage composition mison-sen and of course the
camera itself for many decades throughout cinema this has been a major tenet of experimental film The Meta awareness of the camera we can trace this all the way back to James Williamson's the big swallow in which a subject swallows the camera devouring the director himself all the while the film continues having never truly reached a point of absolute objectivity in cinema as such a thing seems impossible and since then this Fascination has been the sandbox for artists to play around in cipherin
g the syntax of the camera precedes any classical storytelling filmmakers like toshio Matsumoto with his famous short Mona Lisa aim to disrupt the rigid art system by integrating these new accessible forms of art amongst the previous Old Guard [Music] by the 1970s audio visual apparatus had become household consumer items and with the Advent of video film stock NOW didn't even need to be used you had a tape and you could produce countless copies of your art before long established artists were d
ipping their toes into this new medium of course I can't see your face I have no idea what your face looks like but eventually this realm of video Art became homogenized making a video on tape was much easier quicker and cheaper for artists than to produce a sculpture or painting and distribute it to a single Museum and with this the idea of video art denigrated into the reputation that it has today and to some degree rightly so many of its messages were repeated because such is the nature of ex
perimentation when you're dealing with the highest of abstractions in cinematic Linguistics by avoiding the established Norms some stuff is bound not to work however much of the art World ate up anything that was deemed experimental at the time after all it was the hot new trend Momo wanted these artists in their Museum because this scaffolding to the world of art is the world of business but to speak of the pieces we had artists like James Whitney and JX Williams though a pioneering the realm o
f video art with their highly expressionistic pieces although it's hair that experimental film coalesced into the Kaleidoscope of splattered color that one would conjure if asked to imagine a frame some may be inclined to believe that this era of experimental film is an example of a soma-esque Descent of colorful meaninglessness and part of that I'm inclined to believe art becomes indulgent when it reaches a level of pretense wherein every artist ultimately is discussing the same thing here it w
as what is film what are the mysteries of the technology yet to ponder this much on the medium of film or video is to do the same about the pencil ultimately it's just a tool for the idea and it was here the image became secondary to concept because what is a symbol in the era of images and what is an image in the era of film these admittedly remain an interesting concept Andy warhol's entire artistic Explorations can be summarized in his reflections of a consumer society that transformed ready-
made images into the new sacred icons hence when Warhol moved into the realm of video art his Focus was simple gestures a facial expression or an eight-hour shot of the Empire State Building the acts in reality are nothing more than a contextual symbol onto which we imprint some greater meaning we've circled back around to hansrichta's rectangles and so the question lies where sits the defined markation where an image moves from an esoteric art piece into Cinema for Warhol it's either that it's
all Cinema or that the artist must evoke some definitive meaning himself through technique but you can accept that it should all be treated the same in which case a film can be as meaningless as one can possibly be with George Landau creating film in which therapy Edge lettering sprocket holes dirt particles Etc the artist decided within the film's title that there is nothing more here that is the artistic concept it becomes very intellectualized although this is the often cyclical tautology of
experimentation in art but in order to distinguish we must understand the formalistic principles R is attempting to transgress this way we're armed with the tools to differentiate failed experimentations from avant-garde Innovation and the experimentations in film arguably reached its Zenith with the medium's most important figure Stan brackage brackage was a filmmaker whose work is typified by his hyper fast editing the painting onto Celluloid and an abundance of light and color splashed across
the screen and yet at the same time there's a clear narration and sentimentality within the work of wreckage which wanted to explore visually that vision is not the same as sight and an image is a multi-layered thing what do we see when our eyes are closed what do we see when we dream his work delves into complete deconstruction as well as the instantly recognizable a woman giving birth a man climbing a mountain snapshots of objects that appear familiar all interlaced with the unknown oh bracka
ge is exploring how we see in a completely new dimension redefining the idea of an image and Beyond his conceptual prowess there's a mood and a Serenity throughout his work that's difficult to replicate even within the domain of the experimental foreign [Music] experimental film as a thesis needs a rebellious string to combat the general precepts of Cinema if this brand of experimentation with the standard then the rebels would most likely be making narrative-based films at Future lengths but it
's about the questioning of cinematic language the greats of experimental film evoke moods through their interplay of imagery that clearly work on some cinematic level is a combination of self-imposed metric Montage rules to figures dancing in negative space the initial reaction may be that the filmmaker is just experimenting but we see a very similar implementation of this technique over 40 years later in Mulholland Drive this seems to be the driving force for experimental films influence findi
ng methods within the language in ways that haven't been used before that later become part of the medium's vocabulary because as all experimental film shows as soon as something is filmed in front of a camera meaning emerges from somewhere and so some of the greatest experimental films are those that base their entire piece around a single technique that evokes every Speck of emotion from the viewer it's pure technique of the Cinematic language separated from traditional narration foreign was p
art performance part video piece with artist John Jonas utilizing the rolling frame of the video input to convey a desynchronization between reality and recorded footage the loop of the same footage dissected by a changing scrolling resetting frame predating our modern relationship with images through the infinite scroll all good Arts will without context transpose the feeling the artist wants in the viewer the rise of video art began to blur the boundaries between mediums as beyond the craftsma
nship of filmmaking much video art includes the art of performance this is another medium in and of itself which shouldn't be overlooked simply because it can be created with immediacy one of the most wonderful early works of experimental film is padded an examination of the human body and gestures all beautifully choreographed through the art of ballet foreign you can't speak about the history of experimental film without speaking of the work of Maya Darren whose expertise in both dance and cho
reography granted her an ability to transform simple gestures to evoke great meaning her work is not only one in which the linearity of film is shattered but one where motion within film is given a different meaning entirely these are the Heralds of experimental film which is why in the supposed Canon of video art people are not entirely convinced when Staples such as semiotics of the kitchen are reliant on their performative aspects and yet convey an ineptitude towards that Medium Fork sadly ma
ny people are turned away from video art for this precise reason most people don't want to be the guinea pigs for an artist's exploration to see what sticks for it came with the rise of video that there emerged and altering in a manner of viewing a moving image just as the kinetoscope revealed the shift from stasis to motion now all of a sudden images could be viewed simultaneously as they were occurring whereas film quite being sent to a lab and developed video was available to watch instantane
ously and vital Works in this area of video art fused concepts with technology the work of Dan Graham in pieces like two changing rooms utilize the circumstance of live recording and projection into its concept by recording people that enter the room and delaying their projection slightly questions the perception of oneself as you watch yourself in the recent past foreign [Music] the fact of the matter is a large portion of video art benefits more from its live performative counterpart or at the
very least is making some manner of commentary with that nine evenings theater and Engineering by Robert rauschenberg made use of the mixture of sound video performance action and perception by using a game of tennis synced up to two microphones that simultaneously made the room darker and slowly unveiled a recording of all of the people in the room rather than the game of tennis that was being played all right there are many questions to be asked here but the unique experiential nature is one
that can't be experienced in any kind of cinematic fashion even though there is a crossover with the viewer element the r is reliant on the filming but the film is not the art itself which brings us to the fundamental Crux of filmic experimentation and this essay what exactly constitutes a film we know that it's not the literal usage of film stock to capture motion because films are made with digital cameras and we no doubt see those works as cinematic but at the same time not everything that's
filmed in front of a camera is Cinema or is it Pioneer Jonas meccus essentially compiled the curated history of his life into the most sentimental and Beautiful film ever put together in as I was moving ahead occasionally I saw a brief glimpses of beauty I am looking at these images now many many years later I recognize and remember everything with nothing more than musings on his life Jonas meccus manages to transcend the moving image into an entity of divine Beauty much of his work falls into
this category and by formal standards his work is nothing more than a collection of home movies it's most likely that as he was filming these pieces he had no intention of creating a film out of them so then why do we perceive it as art do we consider it a movie would the compiling of anybody's collected recordings be considered cinematic ah my friends the hours the evenings we spent together that was Paradise my Winnipeg for instance by GUI medong follows a similar vein to Jonas makish in that
the film is about the filmmaker's love for his often maligned Hometown shot in an alien manner he finds Beauty in its mundanity even the architecture in Winnipeg is sad has an adult concept of itself emblematic of this is the Arlington Street Bridge a vast span of enfrosted Steel girders which arches over the city's sprawling train yards with my Winnipeg we know that the filmed image is shot through the autistic lens of conceptually transforming the landscape but isn't that the nature with all i
mage by presenting an image to a viewer haven't you avoided any objectivity in glimpse of the garden by Mary Menken this idea is stretched to its limit in the all we see is as the title suggests there's nothing more to this film than a glimpse of the garden but as a viewer we still don't get to see the whole garden we only get to see what the artist chooses we see with a duchamp-esque deconstruction of image artists have decided that to place an artistic hand on any medium transforms it into art
and people like George cooker have without any deviation away from what we would consider a modern Vlog moved any recorded image into a place with the potentiality for art I can drink some of the likely the sardines in water they want it to hydrate this is California some footage is of important historical significance and yet within that some is still considered more art some has no attempt to transgress any sort of medium and is still considered more art than its counterparts and there is the
fourth great assumption known as d yeah that is known as P it seems as though film is Art but filmed art is not film and Cinema is Art but not all film is Cinema but there are those experimental films which carry just enough of Cinema's DNA that it's classified in the same realm as Cinema returning again to the work of Maya Darren particularly her most infamous piece meshes of the afternoon it's a transgression of the kind of cinematic narration that we're used to daisies features techniques th
at would be ubiquitous in the realm of experimental film but would have no qualms in recognizing daisies as a film [Music] because it's so similar to a film but it can't simply be because of its length Empire isn't really a film but Satan Tango is dog star man isn't really a film what daisies is by Chris Marque is considered a film by many even though the very medium in which it's told represents no facet of Cinema or film or video that exists it's a photo play foreign appears more cinematic eve
n though Legette is more narrative driven and so even the idea of narration is not what appears to distinguish the two forms it appears that the dependent factor of what makes something cinematic is the very similar truth to our reality of its techniques for when we look at Works which transgress the idea of narration through the radical aesthetica film then we're left with work that Teeters on the precipice between art and Cinema two sides of a spectrum that I don't feel should be mutually excl
usive but sadly are Blue by Derek Jarman again features a tangible narration yet it's all told on a single blue unchanging saturated image you say to the boy open your eyes when he opens his eyes and sees the light you make him cry out saying oh blue come forth oh blue arrives here there is literally no moving image yet it must be experienced through the Avenue of Cinema but an artist that possesses an even more tenuous relationship towards a narrative is Michael snow Snow's relationship to narr
ative is one that's only explained through the techniques of the camera similar to the earliest avant-garde filmmakers films like wavelength offer a relationship from the viewer and the diegetic space of the film through the simple mechanistic action of a camera zoom similarly in back and forth the narrative snow conjures is that a camera is in a room panning back and forth perhaps it's only the length of these features that emphasize that extreme lack of cinematic convention but then we reach r
ecorded images which are neither Cinema nor traditional video artist Chris burden was more noted the extreme nature of his performance arts it's in the 70s burden paid for multiple ads on television as regular advertisements rolled all of a sudden burdens art pieces played and the video was shown of Burnham crawling across broken glass all right around a quarter of a million people saw this live on television so can advertisements be Cinema we know Cinema can be an advertisement Stan Van Der Bee
k uses computer and digital systems to create visual moving images but does that mean that they are films since the 21st century in particular it seems pointless to try and find separations between video arts and media arts because there's now an innumerable number of media platforms the video in itself is too abstruse an idea to be isolated on its own the very nature of video has shifted multiple times within a single generation I saw the worker of hito sterile at Tate modern and her how not to
be seen A didactic educational.mov file and her take on instructional videos and the nature of human beings being absorbed into the Cyber ether of the information age is told through the congruent technique of digitized half real images of Google Earth and corporate grade stock footage there are 54 ways to merge into a world made of images [Music] but the purpose of Art in some manner is to tell a story whether that story be a cosmic realignment of our metaphysical perceptions or as intimate as
a fleeting emotion or thought as concrete or as abstract as a story can be when I think of experimental film I think of an elevation of filmic technique of true originality in which the syntax of the piece is integral to its message one can think as broadly as the katsuki trilogy painting a picture of our world through pure Montage a majestic cinematography comparatively 2187 by Arthur lipset comments on the dominance within our society of machines and their dwarfing of the human spirit laughs
these Concepts in and of themselves would lead many to believe that they're simply documentaries but their poetic lens takes them into another realm entirely the work of Peter jacowski evokes incredible mood through the interplay of an image's transparency and opaqueens the peaks of vision and overlay of images through his manipulation and deconstruction of the film stock itself watching work like this makes you wonder why can't Cinema be more daring much of the great stop-motion and animated wo
rk is classified more as an experimental piece as even within the medium of Animation there are transgressions that make it unconventional work like Renaissance by valerian borovich or Johannesburg the second greatest city after Paris by William kemprich [Music] Woody and Steiner vashulker were Pioneers in the medium of video art manipulating the technology to create images and objects that couldn't exist without it any pictorial justification the object just exists one of the most beautiful ene
rgetic conceptions comes from Bill Viola in his non-trip Tech in the center an image of body submerged underwater on one side is video footage of a child being born on the other his footage of Viola's mother dying how the interplay of separate images bring into one's mind the universal experience of life and death video hair is elevated to the highest form of Art or to simplify one's message in um by John Smith are playing with our perceptions of image by playing with the symbols inside the fram
e reveal an innate characteristic about the deception of images and the deceptions of our own perspectives where we are now in the story of experimental film video R avant-garde Cinema is an uncertain place the rise of the internet has given everybody the opportunity to create their own art as well as developing the new platforms for which those Arts can be created and exhibited in turn television and Cinema have become the new museums things now require a seal of approval to make it onto their
Airwaves or in theaters just as people thought was the case with having your work presented in a gallery but experimental film is always looking for authenticity to break free from the constraints of formalism to evoke a new standard but the dichotomy being that this can never be the standard for its purpose is to transgress expectations but standards have to exist this is not to stifle R by imposing rules art requires an understanding of one medium so you can transgress it otherwise the chaos o
f the unknown will take over any work and you'll be lost to interpretation of those who are unaware of what you're even attempting to translate but the greatest experimental films will create a new Baseline open a new Avenue of thought the cinema and the rest of our alike will blur the boundaries open new possibilities for conveying the great abstractions of life this is not limiting this is finding the Divine in the face of adversity it's adaptation and it's finding the answer in your own exper
iments [Music]
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