Month: January 2020 (Page 2 of 14)

 

‘Art as life ritual. The conventional artist looks for his own style; he wants to achieve something but does not ask what. He thus serves the ruling institutions by making his products attest to the concepts on which these institutions have built up their existence. And he is repaid for this, honoured and pensioned. However, art is above all justified through the enjoyment of art and not through the pressure of a style. Art as experience, training, and as the destruction of all established ideas about life…’ — Rudolf Schwarzkogler

‘The six portfolios of photographs that make up ‘Aktionen Wien’ represent almost the entire artistic output left by the Austrian artist Rudolf Schwarzkogler, who committed suicide in 1969 at the age of 29 following a gradual deterioration of his mental health. The photographs of these six actions were to become highly influential to later artists.

‘While closely associated with the group of Austrian artists who became known as the Vienna Aktionists, principally Hermann Nitsch, Günter Brus and Otto Mühl, Schwarzkogler’s work differed in one important aspect: the Vienna Aktionists’ performances were highly ritualistic public actions, designed to be confronting and cathartic experiences for both performers and audience. However, with the exception of ‘1. Aktion ‘Hochzeit’ (marriage) 6 Februar 1965’, Schwarzkogler’s actions were staged primarily for the camera. Schwarzkogler used his collaborator, Heinz Cibulka, more as a passive prop than as an active participant, wrapping him in bandages and subjecting him to implied mutilation by knives or syringes.

‘Some of Schwarzkogler’s contemporaries criticised his ‘staged’ actions as a return to pictorial illusionism, an artifice that live actions were supposed to have eliminated. Schwarzkogler did not limit himself to direct action or endurance in the manner of Marina Abramovic or Mike Parr but developed theatrical scenarios that, in their linear documentation, can be read as narratives. Hermann Nitsch, however, believed that Schwarzkogler’s work was a development that pushed the boundaries of Aktionism to create what he called ‘living pictures’. Whereas many performance works were hastily documented and by their nature were unrepeatable, Schwarzkogler planned his performances and acted them out before the camera: they were primarily staged and repeatable events as opposed to duration works that tested bodily limits. Many of Nitsch’s actions – for example, slicing open an animal carcass and letting its blood and entrails fall onto a naked human body – were intended to create an atmosphere of shock and chaos that was essentially nihilistic. Schwarzkogler, on the other hand, was inspired by his abiding interest in esoteric philosophies and developed a more subtle use of symbolism within his actions.

‘Conscious of Carl Jung’s theories of archetypal symbolism, Schwarzkogler’s recurring images of a man with his head, penis or whole body bandaged, juxtaposed with images of dead fish being sliced open or dead chickens dangling between his legs, are all open to various interpretations. In the later actions his symbolism became more personal, exploring psychological states, and were open to wider interpretations than the more obvious alchemical symbolism of the first action ‘Aktion ‘Hochzeit’ (marriage) 6 February 1965’.’ — Edith Adam

 

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Further

The Mind Museum: Rudolf Schwarzkogler and the Vienna Actionists
RS @ Richard Saltoun Gallery
Rudolf Schwarzkogler | the artist
Rudolf Schwarzkogler Brochure
L’imaginaire à l’Action
Surveying the Wounds
An Aesthetic Panorama: The Art of Rudolph Schwarzkogler
Zwarte kogel – in memory of Rudolf Schwarzkogler
Abject Modernism: The Male Body in the Work of Tatsumi Hijikata, Günter Brus and Rudolf Schwarzkogle
The image of the artist in Performance art: The Case of Rudolf Schwarzkogler
“Altered.” (Rudolf Schwarzkogler, Austrian Cultural Institute, New York, New York)
BODY ART #4: Rudolf Schwarzkogler
the transvestism of objects (thinking of Rudolf Schwarzkogler)

 

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Rudolf Schwarzkogler’s Penis

 

There is an account of Rudolf Schwarzkogler—introduced to the public by Time Magazine critic Robert Hughes in 1972—that maintains that the artist died as a result of deliberate and self-inflicted penis mutilations undertaken in a series of performances in the late 1960s. This account is entirely false. What is more, evidence of its falsehood is available and familiar, having been exposed by a multitude of scholarly studies and exhibitions on Schwarzkogler’s work. During his lifetime, Schwarzkogler was all but unknown outside his native Austria. The myth of his death made Schwarzkogler and the Viennese Actionists (the group of artists with whom he collaborated between 1963– 1969) notorious; but it has also demonstrably impacted the reception of performance art more broadly.

In June of 1965, Schwarzkogler undertook a scripted action for a private audience of colleagues and friends, which was performed in the Viennese apartment of Heinz Cibulka, his model. This action, Schwarzkogler’s third, was also explicitly intended to be photographed—by Ludwig Hoffenreich, a professional photographer—and it followed the descriptive outline of a written Aktionsablauf or ‘action program’. Schwarzkogler’s textual scores and drawn sketches indicate that he conceived of his actions as vehicles for methodical aesthetic exploration in the form of successive tableau arranged to be photographed. The production of action programs and preparatory sketches was by no means unique among the oeuvres of the Viennese Actionists, and Schwarzkogler’s contain specific details for understanding his actions. The sketches show the planned configurations of rooms, props, and models; the scores provide lists of materials used in the actions as well as the identities of the principal actors involved, for example, ‘C.’ indicating Cibulka and ‘S.’ Schwarzkogler.

Specifically, Action #3 used Cibulka’s body, which Schwarzkogler deliberately posed and juxtaposed with various objects, including a gauze-wrapped ball, electrical wire, rubber tubing, a glass medicine bottle with dropper, a fish, razor blades, scissors, a knife, and a dark stone. Hoffenreich’s photographs of Action #3 illustrate Schwarzkogler’s intent to construct and control an‘action field’—what the artist defined as‘the real objects found in the surroundings’ and ‘the space around the actor’.6 In many photographs, for example, the controlled staging of the model and objects is readily apparent: We see a bare-chested Cibulka lying atop a rectangular board that has been placed on the floor and covered with a white sheet; Hoffenreich’s shod right foot can be glimpsed in the bottom corner of the photograph as he shoots his subject from above. In others, Cibulka’s body is concealed by gauze bandages, first tightly wrapped and then disheveled; and in the final images, his head and torso are wrapped again in clear plastic sheeting. In all cases, whether standing upright, sitting, or prone, Cibulka’s body is connected, sometimes quite literally, to a prop—electrical wires are arranged to emanate from his mouth, encircle his head, or seemingly enter his arm like an intravenous drip.

In two photographs, Schwarzkogler himself actually appears in the frame standing behind Cibulka, cupping the side of his face to steady the deployment of a syringe; the next photograph shows his outstretched right hand lifting the edge of the bandage over Cibulka’s eye. Several images depict a large fish hanging down the middle of Cibulka’s naked back, which then reappears, its head decapitated, facing the camera and protruding from Cibulka’s penis with razorblades placed in its agape mouth. What will subsequently become the most controversial element, however, is his bandaged penis. A number of photographs exhibit it swaddled in white gauze secured by flesh-colored adhesive tape, and a few augment the suggestion of wounding. One photograph in particular includes dots of dark color spotting the gauze on Cibulka’s penis, while two others of Cibulka sitting astride the bandaged ball illustrate Schwarzkogler’s written directive for a ‘thin dark trickle’ to run from the model’s penis onto the ball. Three photographs juxtapose a pristinely bandaged penis laid on a table edge with more than a dozen razor blades, or surgical scissors and a syringe.

 

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Extras: Vienna Actionists

Günter Brus and Kurt Kren Selbstbemalung/Selbstverstümmelung (1965)

27 February 1970 – Hermann Nitsch the Viennese Actionist Performs “Abreaktionsspiel”

Kurt Kren 20/68 Schatzi

Günter Brus Selbstverstümmelung Self Mutilation, 1965

 

_____________
Rudolf Schwarzkogler’s Unperformed Aktions
(English translation by Supervert)

Text 21
(1965)

drum with whitewashed bones
r
stretch a wire and hack through it
spill ashes
fill balloons with gas
hang up whitewashed dolls and cadavers
fill a balloon with foam pop it with a whip

weissgestrichene knochen, um damit zu trommeln
r
draht spannen und durchhacken
asche verschütten
ballons mit gas füllen
weissgestrichene puppen und kadaver aufhängen
einen ballon mit schaum füllen mit der peitsche aufschlagen

 

Text 22
(probably 1969)

A: holds an amethyst in his mouth, drinks a sip of wine, then spits the amethyst into a silver bowl, pours a sip of water over the amethyst in the silver bowl, takes out the amethyst and drinks the water

A: halt einen amethyst im mund, trinkt einen schluck wein, spuckt dann den amethyst in eine silberschale, giesst einen schluck wasser über den amethyst in die silbserschale, nimmt den amethyst heraus und trinkt das wasser

 

Text 27
(between 1966 and 1968)

lise a teleplay

she is a pretty girl
lise sits between two palm trees in a conservatory
she wears white stockings and shoes, a white dress, a white hat
she is surrounded by four musicians, a string quartet
the string quartet plays the string quartet in g minor by arnold schönberg
lise puts an ivory ball in her mouth and then drinks a sip of cherry liquor and spits the ivory ball into a silver bowl
first movement
lise takes off her dress
second movement
[lise puts the ivory ball in her nicely painted pussy and wets her nipples with spit]
third movement vomits
lise kneels down and with the help of a feather vomits into the bowl
fourth movement
lise has a basket of eggs in front of her and uses a syringe to begin filling them with inks bright red bright blue dark blue bright green dark green violet and then breaks the eggs over her knees (one after another)

third movement
lise drinks black coffee

lise ein fernsehspiel

sie ist ein schönes mädchen
in einem wintergarten sitzt lise zwischen palmbäumen
sie trät weisse strümpfe und schuhe, hat ein weisses kleid an, eine weissen hut auf
sie ist von vier philharmoniken umgeben, einem streichquartett
das streichquartett spielt das streichquartett in g moll von arnold schönberg
lise steckt eine elfenbeinkugel in den mund und trinkt darauf einen schluck kirschenlikör und spuckt die elfenbeinkugel in eine silbserschüssel
erster satz
lise zieht ihr kleid aus
zweiter satz
[lise steckt die elfenbeinkugel in ihre schöne geschminkte fut und benetzt ihre brustwarzen mit speichel]
dritter satz speiht
lise kniet nieder und erbricht mit hilfe einer feder in die schüssel
vierter satz
lise hat einen korb mit eiern vor sich und beginnt mit hilfe einer injektionsnadel tinten in die eier zu injizieren hellrot hellblau dunkelblau hellgrün dunkelgrün violett und schlägt die eier dann auf ihren knien auf (nebeneinander)

dritter satz
lise trinkt schwarzen kaffee

 

Text 37
(probably 1968)

screaming shrieking shattered glass
2 of the 3 actors lie head to head before the door, so that visitors must step over one of them to enter the room
3 bright red fluorescent squares measuring 1×1 m have been drawn at irregular intervals on the floor

sound:
air escaping from an air compressor
light:
blue
an actor holds a light bulb in his mouth and screws it into the socket
as soon as the light comes on, the sound of an electric bell is heard
darkness
flashlight
a man who has been nailed to the wall by the tips of his shoes at a height of 1 m, and whose hands have been tied behind him, bites on a [bright red…]
light:
rapidly alternating green and pink
then dark blue (indigo)
the first actor breaks open a vial containing ammonia
a sharp smell of ammonia penetrates the room
the third man opens a vein, the blood flows into a glass
kneeling the second actor presses a cloth soaked in chloroform over his face, until he falls unconscious
the first actor vomits into a bowl half filled with green fluid
sound:
SCREAMING
the first actor throws light bulbs
second

kreischen schreien zersplittertes glas
2 der 3 akteure liegen kopf an kopf so vor der tür, dass die besucher beim betreten des raums über einen steigen müssen
auf dem boden sind an 3 verschiedenen stellen in unregelmässigen abständen mit hellroter leuchtfarbe 1×1 m grosse quadrate gezeichnet

ton:
aus einer pressluftflasche entweichende luft
licht:
blau
[einer] hält eine glühbirne im mund und schraubt sich die fassung hinein
sobald das licht sichtbar wird, ertrönt das geräusch einer elektrischen klingel
dunkel
blitzlicht
einer, der mit den schuhspitzen in der höhe von 1 m an die wand genagelt ist, und dessen hände am rücken zusammengebunden sind, zerbeisst einen mit [hellroter]
licht:
schnell abwechseln grün und rosa
dann dunkelblau (indigo)
der erste zerbricht eine philoe mit salmiakgeist
eine penetranter geruch nach salmiakgeist zieht durch den raum
der dritte öffnet sich eine ader schweinwerfer, das blut fliesst in ein glas
der zeite akteur presst sich kniend ein mit chloroform getränktes tuch vor das gesicht, bis er ohnmächtig umfällt
der erste akteur erbricht in eine schüssel halbvoll grüner flüssigkeit
ton:
KREISCHEN
der erste wirft mit glühbirnen
zeite

 

Text 38
(1966)

painting action in an art gallery

syringes inject 1000 raw eggs with spirit colors (bright red bright blue dark blue bright green dark green violet) and the eggs thus prepared are cracked open on a large aluminum table by the visitors

malakt in einer kunstgalerie

in 1000 rohe eier werden mit injektionsspritzen spiritusfarben injiziert (hellrot hellblau dunkelblau hellgrün dunkelgrün violett) und die so präparierten eier von den besuchern auf einem grossen aluminiumtisch aufgeschlagen

 

Text 42
(1965)

his face is white
her dress is white
he knots a stocking around her throat
he blindfolds her eyes
he pours paint over her head he pours water over her breasts
he rips open her dress — he ties her arms behind her and then her legs and puts her on a bed
he slits her dress with a knife
he dips his hands in red paint
he touches her mouth
he bandages her face
he paints her white
he hooks a belt around her chest and hangs her from a hook — face down
he winds hoses around her

monochrome painted dolls and cadavers

sein gesicht ist weiss
ihr kleid ist weiss
er knotet ihr einen strumpf um den hals
er verklebt ihr die augen
er schüttet ihr farbe über den kopf er schüttet ihr wasser über die brüste
er zerreisst ihr kleid—er bindet ihr die arme hinten und die beine und legt sie aufs bett
er schlitzt ihr kleid mit dem messer
er tunkt seine hände in rote farbe
er greift ihr in den mund
er verbindet ihr gesicht
er überspritzt sie weiss
er bindet ihr einen gürtel um die brust und hängt sie an einen haken—gesicht unten
er umwindet sie mit schläuchen

monochrom gestrichene puppen und kadaver

 

Text 43
(ca 1965)

a white square a white circle

ether chloroform

a thin wire a needle

pulse glance

cut apart bitten off

the fever the conflagration

a yellow line a red line

ein weisses quadrat ein weisser kreis

äther chloroform

ein feiner draht eine nadel

pulsschlag blick

zerschnitten abgebissen

das fieber die feuersbrunst

ein gelber strich ein roter strich

 

Text 47
(between 1966 and 1968)

musical comedy for television (color television)

4 musicians (string quartet) sit in a conservatory and play the string quartet in g minor by arnold schönberg or another suitable string quartet
a young girl with white-colored hair clad in a white dress white stockings and shoes drinks a glass filled with a white liquid during the first movement
during the second movement she drinks a glass filled with a bright red liquid
during the third movement she drinks a glass filled with a dark violet liquid
during the fourth movement she kneels on the ground and with the help of a feather vomits into a bowl

musikalische komödie für’s fernsehen (farbfernsehen)

4 philharmoniker (streichquartett) sitzen in einem wintergarten und spielen das streichquartett in g moll von arnold schönberg oder ein anderes geeignetes streichquartett.
ein junges mädchen mit weiss gefärbtem haar bekleidet mit einem weissen kleid weissen strümpfen und schuhen trinkt während des ersten satzes ein glas gefüllt mit einer weissen flüssigkeit leer
während des zweiten satzes trinkt sie ein glas gefüllt mit einer hellroten flüssigkeit leer
während des dritten satzes trinkt sie ein glass gefüllt mit einer dunkelvioletten flüssigkeit leer
während des vierten satzes kniet sie auf dem boden nieder und erbricht mit hilfe einer hühnerfeder in eine schüssel

 

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Show

1 Aktion

 

2 Aktion

 

3 Aktion 1965

 

4 Aktion 1965

filmed by Gunter Brus

 

5 Aktion

 

6 Aktion

 

 

*

p.s. Hey. ** kier, Hi, kier-ing. (That’s supposed to be smushed by your brain into ‘king’.)  Hope you liked the film. Cool that you’ll be here for the Pinault/Ray opening. Very psyched. Yeah, Zac and I saw the Heizer show, and, yeah, it was super good. Weirdest thing was his paintings. I had no idea he painted, and they were pretty amazing too. Yury’s pretty much off doing his own thing, but I think I can speak for Zac in saying we would love to accept your dinner invitation, whoop! I hope the group critique goes well and that you had a blast with your visiting friend, and, yeah, that your friends will get accepted. Does it seem likely? I wish I knew voodoo or magic or something and could transmit orders to the powers that be. My day wasn’t so exciting. I can hardly remember it. Yet more last minute TV script shit. Started writing a blurb for a book I agreed to endorse. I waited all afternoon for a plumber to show up to fix a pipe but they never showed up, and now they say I have to wait all afternoon again today for them to show up. Pretty blah day. I’ll see if I can squeeze something out today. And you? Day of days? Overarching love, me. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi. Yes, a wonderful and unfairly under-recognized filmmaker, I fully agree. By the time I lived in NYC, it was The Ninth Circle and The Phoenix in the Village and Rounds on the upper East Side for upscale renters/rentees and a couple of very skeezy bars in Times Square whose names I forget. Numbers moved to WeHo for a while, but it didn’t survive long. Are you referring to Billie Ellish? She may not be to your taste, but she’s not “a Piece of total Garbage”! Wtf?! And you’re decrying people who aren’t nice?!?! ** Steve Erickson, I adored ‘ken’, and the new one promises to be even greater, but I’ll find out today. Fun is all I’m expecting from COoS. I’ll be surprised if it gets a release here however. ** Bill, Hi, B. She’s terrific. I don’t know if Zulueta did the soundtracks. I’m imagining so, but … yeah, I don’t know. Strange that ‘Arrebato’ is so hard to see since it was his one big hit. Maybe Filmin has it, but Filmin is only useable in Spain unless you can hack into it. ** Okay. Someone popped in here recently and asked me about Rudolf Schwarzkogler, which made me realise I’d never covered his work, but now I have. Hoping it’s of interest, of course. See you tomorrow.

 

‘Storm De Hirsch made her first motion picture in 1963, two years after the untimely death of Maya Deren, the woman who had virtually masterminded the avant-garde film movement in the United States. Although De Hirsch was born five years earlier than Deren, she was a mature artist — over 40 years old when she began her filmmaking career. Deren was only 25 when she made her first film — the classic Meshes of the Afternoon –and at the age of 44, she died.

‘Though they may never have known each other, they had quite a bit in common. Both women had created new names and personas for themselves; Deren’s were earthy and radical, De Hirsch’s more imposing and regal. Both had backgrounds in poetry and other arts; they were also deeply involved with primitive cultures and the occult. In making their first films, both were supported by their husbands. In Maya Deren’s case, it was an inspired artistic collaboration with Alexander Hammid in a short-lived marriage; Storm De Hirsch’s first professional collaboration with Louis Brigante was disappointing, but the personal relationship endured. Both women made lasting contributions to the American avant-garde film scene, within the limits of their times and talents.

‘The 1960s offered Storm De Hirsch many more options than the 1940s had offered Deren, allowing her to start big, with an ambitious feature-length story about three young women, living in Rome, loosely based on a poem she had written and on her own experiences. Brigante was associate director. Called Goodbye in the Mirror, part scripted, part improvised, it was shot on 16mm and later blown up to 35mm, at a total cost of some $20,000. Variety’s reviewer found it too uneven for a feature, and thought it might have been a sharp, incisive short. Even before its release, De Hirsch already had begun making short films that were much more suited to her painterly and poetic roots.

‘Independent, cheaply made underground films, she later said, were not merely a futile rebellion against Hollywood’s slickness, but were spontaneous efforts to create the equivalent of off-Broadway theater in the medium of film. De Hirsch’s first short film, Journey around a Zero, was made without a camera, simply because she did not have one. Using old black-and-white film stock and some rolls of 16mm sound tape, she painted and etched images of her imagination with a variety of discarded surgical instruments and the sharp edge of a screwdriver. Compared to the $20,000 cost of Goodbye in the Mirror, Journey’s cost was cheap indeed — practically zero. The visuals were pure abstract animation, which De Hirsch described as “a phallic invocation.” In her writing and especially in making her animation abstractions De Hirsch felt she became both man and woman, or either one — not for lack of sexual identification but with an awareness of a cosmic sexuality.

‘De Hirsch’s trilogy entitled The Color of Ritual, The Color of Thought, explored relationships of abstract animated imagery (this time in color) with live photography and what she called “voyages into buried continents of the self.” The very titles indicated her penchant for magic, myth, and ritual: Divinations, Shaman: A Tapestry for Sorcerers, Peyote Queen. In 1968 Storm De Hirsch was awarded $10,000 in the American Film Institute’s first round of grants to independent filmmakers — the only woman among the winners. With the money she made a mini-feature called The Tattooed Man, based on her poem of the same name; it was more episodic than her first film had been, like a “happening” more than a dramatic film, and more representative of her times. For her tenth film, Third Eye Butterfly, De Hirsch used dual screens, side-by-side, creating a 70mm effect. One critic wrote that this encouraged the viewer’s mind to give the two horizontal images a third meaning, as Eisenstein’s montage of two images on a strip of film gave them an implied third meaning.

‘In 1973, for her Hudson River Diary series, De Hirsch used a handheld 16mm camera to create cinematic landscapes and waterscapes shot from a moving train (Cayuga Run) or walking along the frozen water’s edge (Wintergarden). These films began to look more like visual poems than movies based on poems or films for which she had written poetic descriptions. Sometimes for convenience or safety’s sake, she shot on Super-8 which later was blown up to 16mm. When she was given a cartridge loading Super-8 camera to take to the Venice Film Festival, she began her Cine-Sonnets series. Filmed in England?s Heathrow Airport, on the train from Rome to Venice, or in her Venice hotel room, each was three or four minutes long, short and edited in the camera. No random shots of this and that — as her first European film had been — each carefully selected shot was framed by her eye and mind and hand, beautifully lighted by nature or perhaps by God Himself. As the films outwardly became shorter and simpler, inwardly they grew richer and more revealing.

‘With Louis Brigante’s death in 1975, Storm De Hirsch lost not only her much-loved companion of some 25 years, but also the studio where they had worked, much of her creative energy, and ultimately her health. As she succumbed slowly to Alzheimer’s disease, eventually she lost all memory of her achievements in film — the retrospectives at New York’s Whitney Museum and the Museum of Modern Art; her classes in visionary filmmaking at the School of Visual Art; lectures and screenings in Pennsylvania and Ohio, Vancouver, and Brussels, and at many film festivals and women?s programs. At the time of this writing, Storm De Hirsch continued to survive in a Manhattan nursing home with this long and devastating illness. Her fascinating role in independent cinema has yet to be well documented and assessed.

‘Comparison with Maya Deren deserves these further comments. Deren was something of a genius, far ahead of her times in virtually everything she did. Storm De Hirsch was an extremely talented filmmaker of her time, exploring many aspects of film as an artist’s medium. The very title of her film, Peyote Queen, shows her to be an outspoken product of those times — the rebellious sixties, the Beat Generation, the hallucinatory decade. It is a sad footnote to those times that although P. Adams Sitney played a major role in one of her major films (The Tattooed Man, 1968), Sitney’s seminal book on American avant-garde cinema (Visionary Films, 1974) does not even mention her name.’ — CECILE STARR

 

_____
Stills

 

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Further

Storm de Hirsch @ Film-makers Coop
SdH @ LUX
SdH @ IMDb
Mythology for the Soul: The Collected Poems of Storm De Hirsch
‘PEYOTE QUEEN’: STORM DE HIRSCH, THE WOMAN WHO MADE MOVIES WITHOUT A CAMERA
Book: Twilight Massacre and Other Poems, by Storm De Hirsch
Storm de Hirsch and Shirley Clarke’s conversation (full length)
SdH @ letterboxd
SHIRLEY/STORM
Independent Filmmaker, Storm de Hirsch, Press Conference

 

_____

 

____
Extras

Excerpt: Jonas Mekas Walden (1969), featuring Storm de Hirsch

Gwendolyn Audrey Foster ‘Film for Storm de Hirsch’

Velvet Underground @ Village Gate, NYC, June 7, 1966, raw footage featuring Andy Warhol, Gerard Malanga, Barbara Rubin, Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky,Tuli Kupferberg, Ed Sanders, Storm De Hirsch & more …

 

___________
Conversation: Shirley Clarke and Storm De Hirsch
from Underground Film Journal

 

SHIRLEY: Do you think that lady film-makers are mechanically equipped to handle their field?

STORM: Well, if they’re not, they have other compensations […] The film has to be done in a certain way with Hollywood as the symbol and women were certainly never approached as directors.

[…]

SHIRLEY: Now there’s no doubt that as an industry, [Hollywood’s] reaction to women would be very similar, let’s say, to the advertising industry or the automobile industry or anything where a woman sits and has a certain slot. It’s a preconceived idea and they fulfill it and they allow them to be editors, which has always struck me as very strange, because anyone who knows anything about film knows that the very thing a film is going to say can be changed in the editing. […] And they will give that responsibility to a woman and yet would not allow her, supposedly, what they would consider the highest responsibility as producer-director.

[…]

SHIRLEY: Would you make a difference here in terms of, let’s say women film-makers: that they would be better off doing the kind of film that they can do entirely by themselves, where they got their own eight or sixteen millimeter camera and went out — or where they were in a position like you just described, where they are the director and therefore have people working with them and for them? […]

STORM: No. I don’t favor this whole business in the first place, of making a distinction between women film-makers and male film-makers. I think that when it becomes a creative process there is no distinction. It’s an imposed distinction which is imposed by people in the…

SHIRLEY: Well, historical precedents. In other words…

STORM: It’s a young field where not too many in terms of women enter that field, like they have the other arts, but still I don’t see any reason why it couldn’t have happened sooner except that there were these taboos.

[…]

STORM: I think that society was involved also in the act of film-making. It was very unseemly for a woman to enter into a field of this kind.

SHIRLEY: But why, because it never seemed unseemly to be a poetess or a painter and yet it was unseemly.

STORM: These are the definitions that are laid down by society.

[…]

SHIRLEY: It never occurred to me that I worked in a masculine field because of how I got in, in that I was a dancer and started making dance films on a very personal basis. It never occurred to me that masculinity and femininity and being in a field called film-making was not what I thought I was doing. […] In your case it’s true also.

[…]

STORM: To me, making poems and making films are one, and neither activity excludes the other.

[…]

SHIRLEY: Unfortunately, the cost of making films even now is still too high in reference to the immediate return on the investment; which means that you must have enough money to wait five years — you can make a film and then sit around for five years waiting to get your money back to make the next […] An artist can’t grow that way.

[…]

SHIRLEY: One of the things that people have said to me is how come — how did you ever get to make films? I said, you know, there are several possibilities. One, you could be independently wealthy. Secondly, you could be married to someone who is wealthy. Thirdly, you could find a way to scrounge. And then beg, borrow, and steal. […] How does anybody function in a field that really isn’t going to be lucrative and where your motivation – the thing that starts you — isn’t to make money but merely to maintain it.

STORM: Here we are, two “quote-unquote” lady film-makers. We’re talking, I assume, objectively — like any film-maker. I mean, what is the distinction here? We both operate differently. We have a different approach to our work. We have different concepts or goals, what we want to attain visually.

[…]

STORM: I think both The Connection and The Cool World are very powerful films and they have a sense of violence and they have a large sense of strength which, if one didn’t know, they would unquestionably be identified by most people as the work of a man.

SHIRLEY: And yet to me, it’s an endless give-away in both those films and in the one I’m just doing, that is, what I would consider a feminine way of looking at something […] violence personally, to me, is extremely repugnant. It’s something I’m terribly afraid of. And yet, I’m obviously very attracted to it.

SHIRLEY: Up to this point the only person so far who’s done a real woman’s film has been your Goodbye in the Mirror. In other words, for some reason, even so far, women film-makers have yet to deal with the subject of women. […] I’m jealous that you have been able to do it because I wish I had been able to do it.

[…]

SHIRLEY: Are you saying that you don’t think that there is any particular difference between a man’s film and a woman’s film?

STORM: No, I don’t. I consider both to be artists and that they primarily are artists first and male or female afterwards.

SHIRLEY: Because my own feeling is that there is a difference that hasn’t yet been revealed.

[…]

STORM: You do feel that the time will come when there will not be the labeling?

SHIRLEY: Yes. I don’t think there will be labeling. I don’t think anybody’s going to be concerned.

[…]

SHIRLEY: I’ve no idea what most men film-makers look like from reading reviews. […] Yet I can tell you what every woman who’s making films looks like — size, shape, her coloring. They are described that way.

 

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9 of Storm de Hirsch’s 27 films

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Newsreel: Jonas in the Brig (1964)
‘Anyone who remembers the historic contribution that the living theatre made to the New York scene couldn’t possibly forget their production of The Brig which was running when the government seized the theatre for non-payment of taxes. Jonas Mekas decided to make a film of the production to preserve its brilliance and in-depth dynamism. Actors, stage hands, and camera crew broke into the seized locked theatre with its impounded properties during the middle of the night. They recorded the play from start to finish in one night. Storm De Hirsch was there and she made a short newsreel called Jonas In The Brig. Not only was she able to capture a study of Mekas while he was filming, but also in the newsreel there is a tension and apprehension of the moment and even the panic of the possibility of not being able to finish the film.’ — Bob Lehmann

Excerpt

 

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Peyote Queen (1964)
‘Storm De Hirsch is one of those avant-garde goddesses without much name-recognition outside of underground film circles, but her influence and dynamism has always been lauded by peers. Jonas Mekas, for example (often referred to as the “godfather of American avant-garde cinema”), called her psychedelic classic, Peyote Queen, “among my favorites … beauty and excitement.”

‘De Hirsch was actually a published poet before transitioning to film, and as such didn’t have ready access to a camera early on. Her first improvisational techniques were innovative manipulations of whatever film was just lying around at the time, making her as much a “sculptor” of celluloid as a filmmaker. The results of her experiments are now recognized as foundational films in avant-garde cinema. In an interview with Mekas, she spoke of her early work, like Peyote Queen, saying:

‘”I wanted badly to make an animated short, but I had no camera available. I did have some old, unused film stock and several rolls of 16mm sound tape. So I used that—plus a variety of discarded surgical instruments and the sharp edge of a screwdriver — by cutting, etching, and painting directly on both film and [sound] tape.”‘ — Dangerous Minds

the entirety

 

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Goodbye In The Mirror (1964)
‘A dramatic feature shot on location in Rome. Centered around the adventures and illusions of three girls living abroad, the film explores their restlessness and personal involvments in assuming the role of woman as hunter.’ — S. D. H.

‘I, myself, belonging to the Spies for Beauty, Inc., and the humble monk of the Order of Fools, was allowed to peek at this film, and I couldn’t believe what beauty struck my eyes, what sensuousness.’ — Jonas Mekas

 

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Divinations (1964)
‘Divinations was completed in 1964 at the same time Storm De Hirsch was finishing her only feature film, Goodbye in the Mirror. According to the Film-makers’ Cooperative Catalogue No. 4, published in 1967, the music making up the film’s soundtrack is a ritual chant of a Maori medicine man and a Sicilian tarantella performed on a jew’s harp.

‘Also in the Catalogue, De Hirsch described the film as: “A film poem that records a psychic event in color, shape and sound. The inner eye reveals its visionary powers through a series of mystical signs and symbols, a collage of negative and positive images, incantations and sorcery.” P. Adams Sitney and Ken Kelman both called Divinations “Among the best films of 1964.”’ — Underground Film Journal

the entirety

 

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The Tattooed Man (1967)
‘A major work in terms of style, structure, graphic invention, image manipulation and symbolic ritual. Short, abbreviated dream-like moments, fused together like a tension and the dynamics of motion picture time… groping around for new myths. Symbolic invention and theatricalisation of dreams, and making them literal, is the whole function and purpose of movie making… her concept of the problem is sweeping and very large.’ — Stan Vanderbeek

The film can be viewed online here

 

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Third Eye Butterfly (1968)
‘THIRD EYE BUTTERFLY requires DOUBLE SCREEN projection, i.e., Reel #1 and Reel #2 are to be projected simultaneously on two separate projectors with one screen area directly adjacent to the other. Reel #1 is to be projected on the LEFT screen; Reel #2 on the RIGHT. Synchronized start marks are indicated by a punch hole on the leader of each reel. BE SURE TO OBSERVE THIS SYNCHRONIZATION! Sound must be open on one projector only during projection (Reel #1).’ — Filmmakers Coop

‘Where is the light coming from? The flavor of the colors are succulent to the long vision in the soul. How can dust cover the arrows of light? How can darkness favor oblivion in the face of light? The variations of soul-touch exist in the auras of illumination. The Great Eye dominates.’ — S. D. H.

‘The 70mm-like effect of THIRDE EYE BUTTERFLY encourages the mind to work as a third eye by fusing the two side-by-side screens into a third meaning, just as Eisenstein caused the meanings of two juxtaposed shots to result in a third implied meaning.’ — Casey Charness, Columbia University

 

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An Experiment In Meditation (1971)
‘The shape of change, the shape of memory has walked many miles in the mind to recreate a landscape, a manner of subterranean speech which may never reach its destination to the surface but roolls in the bloodstream swollen with speech invisible to the ear but palpable to the feelings that travel inside the network of the body/brain. The vision and the visitation occur simultaneously.’ — S.D.H

 

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September Express (1973)
‘A study of time in motion. An accelerated montage of reflections and landscapes framed in the window of an express train running from Rome to Venice. Dedicated to the writings of J.W. Dunne, the collage of Kurt Schwitters and the cubistic paintings of Braque …’ — MUBI

This film is available on MUBI

 

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Geometrics of the Kabbalah (1975)
‘5 is water, 5 is the letter X. 5 is distance. 5 says no. 5 laughs when divided into 2. 5 swims backwards, and space is five. The cherry tree is one. The hurt is 1 plus 1, the wish is two. The wonder three. The absence four, and the five is the Universe. The Universe in the head, the universe in the eye, the sky and the waterdrop.

‘5 is the unicorn in the circle, 5 can multiply, subtract, and dismiss. Divided and dismiss. 5 is the smoke of heaven, 7 unholy and 12 unmentionable. The privacy of Alpha and Omega is 12, the world is 12. The first and the last of the hunt is 12. 12 is the cry, the secret, the Great Mistake. 12 is the falling steeple. 12 stands high like the meeting of the gods because 12 are lurching altitudes beyond man whose life and death lie only in the 3. Stand 1 to 5, divide and topple. The points beyond the gate of 5 are sharp, walk carefully. 5 is the enclosure, 5 is the pointed start of the planet.’ — from Brook 16, “Source Books of Storm De Hirsch,” 9/24/66

 

 

*

p.s. Hey. ** esme, Hi, esme. Well, the website in the novel is based on a real escort advertising/reviewing site that existed at the time. I had found it and grown fascinated by how the men commenting and reviewing there seemed to be using the escorts as mere inspirations to spin fantasies for themselves and for each other, and how the escorts themselves, who were presumably real guys looking for paid sex dates, ended up being totally derealised. And I copied the form of that website in the novel as it seemed to be some kind of perfectly designed trigger for all those sexual fairytales. The absence of women characters is to help make the setting and novel feel myopic and ‘utopian’ for the characters, such that the real world could be successfully excluded and not challenge or foreshorten their imaginative leaps, so the novel would become a private sexual fantasy in and of itself, if that makes sense. I hope that answers your question? Thank you! ** David Ehrenstein, Hi. I personally don’t care if Frampton was pompous or not. I’m interested in the work. When I used to curate and host readings and events at Beyond Baroque in the early 80s, some of the writers I hosted whom I really admired turned out to be assholes to deal with, but that didn’t change my admiration for their work anymore than the niceness of the nice ones did. I was their reader, not their friend. Everyone, Mr. Ehrenstein offers this share to those who are interested. David: ‘Now here’s a real find: A complete performance of the Original Chicago Second City from 1960. An hour and a half’s worth of the greats: Alan Arkin, Barbara Harris, Severn Darden, Paul Sand, Eugene Troobnick, Andrew Duncan and Mina Kolb. Most are gone now, alas. But Alan Arkin is as big a star as ever, Mina Kolb is on “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and Paul Sand (who the husband had a brief affair with back in the day) performs off and on at a club out near the beach in Venice (Paul is now 88 and his real last name is Sanchez). ** Thomas Greig, Hi, Thomas. Well, I wrote ‘The Sluts’ gradually off and on over as period of about 10 years, and it changed a lot during that time. For instance, I started it before there was an internet, so obviously it was a very different thing to begin with. Essentially, I was very interested in the power dynamic and mode of communication that happens between someone selling themselves as a sex object and those who are looking for a sex object. I was very interested in how someone would choose to present and advertise themselves thusly, what they would include or exclude, how or why they would lie or tell the truth, and similarly on the ‘buyer’s’ side, what they would wilfully forget or overlook about the intended sex object’s personhood and personal identity to make him the object they desired. That exchange, so coded and slippery with the truth, fascinated me as a place to create fiction. I hope that helps. ** Bonnie, Hi, Bonnie. Yes, my intention was to create participation in the reader, for sure. I kind of wanted the reader to be something like the commenters and reviewers, getting caught up in their game, sometimes seduced, sometimes skeptical, but also to not completely lose the humanity, I guess, of the young guys who might be ‘real’ people using their escort identity to play their own games. So, yes, boundary crossings, but, in the case of the reader, in a context that is clearly and safely defined as fictional. Thanks! ** Iulia, Hi, Iulia. Yes, I’m very exciting by virtual communication, both what it has already enlarged and complicated and simplified in terms of interpersonal connection and by the unknowns ahead. As a fiction writer, it presents enormous new ideas and forms to work with, so it feels like an incredible windfall in that sense. I’m interested in miscommunication. I’m someone who believes that confusion is the truth. So, for art in general, I find virtual communication nothing but inspiring. Obviously, social media can become a big mess when the issue is what is the truth, and obviously in regards to politics especially, but I’m kind of an optimist, and I think the frontier-like layout of online communication will gradually become a language that is graspable and less mystifying. Thank you! ** kier, Hey, hey, kier!! I think the Charles Ray show opens at the very beginning of June, so I think you’ll be here? Very excited to explore that amazing building the Pinault Collection is housed in. It’s in central Paris, at Les Halles. This is the building, and this is the central space. So hopefully you’ll be here to join the exploration. Land art near Paris? Maybe you mean the Michael Heizer show at the Gagosian space? That was temporary and gone now. I can’t think of any other Land Art around here unless I’m spacing. Cool that your prof. loved your drawings. I mean … no brainer, but still. And your day sounds both sparkly and productive, not bad, man. Me? I had to do some last minute shit work on the TV script, but that’s over. Hung out with my friend the writer Andrew Durbin, who’s the new editor of Frieze. I think I finished my new GIF novel. I’m going to check it over a few times, but I think it’s finished. Kind of quiet. Seeing Sunn0))) do a three night gig/residency starting on Friday, so that’ll be cool. Zac’s down south visiting his mom, but I’ll say hi as soon as he returns. All’s good. What’s new?  Big, big love!!!! ** Laura Baliman, Hi, Laura. It was difficult to write because I wrote it over a long period of time, off and on, ten years, and it took me a long time to figure out how to make it work correctly. It wasn’t difficult for me to write if you mean in terms of coping with the subject matter. I’ve written about that subject matter in different ways for a long time, and I’ve gotten to the point where I can be quite objective about it and concentrate on how to illustrate its power/assaultiveness while trying to challenge it too. Thank you. ** Schoolboyerrors, Hi, prof! Zac and I have already shot quite a bit of footage for the Fujiko Nakaya documentary, but we put it aside to make the fiction films. We hope to go back to that and make the film, but it’s been long enough that we need to meet with Fujiko and make sure she’s good with us finishing it. Also, we have a producer for the documentary now, whereas when she said we could do it, it was more of an experiment, so we need to discuss all of that with her, which means visiting Tokyo where she lives. We hope to do that and see her this spring. Sorry about the commenting issues. I’ve tried to get my host to fix that many, many times, but they can’t figure out what the problem is, so the blog is doomed in that sense, I guess. Love, me. ** Rebekah Rochester, Hi, Rebekah. Oh, I completely understand why someone wouldn’t want to read or finish reading ‘The Sluts’. It offers a particular challenge, and the decision of whether it’s a challenge one wants to take is 100% a reader’s. One of the things I love about books, novels, is that a novel can’t be born or exist without a reader’s imagination, and the reader has the power of life or death with a novel. I love how much power that gives a reader. I love how relatively balanced the power dynamic is between books and their potential readers. It’s very different, in that sense, from movies or TV or photographs where a viewer can be assaulted and transgressed at even an accidental glance. So, yes, people declining to read or finish the book is more than okay, it’s only interesting to me as the writer. Thanks a lot. ** Meg, Hi, Meg. Sorry about the problem of not seeing other comments. There’s some issue there with this blog that I haven’t been able to fix our get fixed. Mm, very interesting question. I don’t think I would have written the novel differently given the birth and development of highly visual platforms since I wrote it. Even at the time, there were a lot of visual components, for instance with the escort website whose form I copied for the novel, images showing the escorts were a very important aspect of the site and how it worked, but I decided to exclude them. I’m interested in what happens to the novel now that the internet is so rich and developed and offers a greatly more fleshed out and exciting context. I don’t think the answer is to try to turn a novel into some kind of book-shaped media outlet. I’m interested in how the challenge of the internet makes the novel a place where a writer is challenged instead to use language as complexly and vibrantly as possible in order to offer a different and unique experience. I think in terms of depictions of sex and violence in particular, the written word is a far better and more generous, accurate way to depict those things than video or other imagery. With imagery, it’s extremely difficult to get around the effect of shock or of base titillation. Imagery tends to greatly simplify sex and violence in a way that I find problematic personally. My interest is in those things as areas of exploration and of determining one’s own relationship to them, and I think the written word, in its passivity and drug-like effect, is a more fruitful way to interact with a viewer when it comes to those things. Thanks very much. ** Maia, Hi, Maia! You’ve been here before, no? It only greatly interests and pleases me that the novel would be taught in a course like that. I think of that context as being a situation where the novel will get a more attentive and detailed reading than not. So I like it. And, you know, I respect Diarmuid greatly, so I feel pretty confident that he’s teaching the book in a way that I would be honored by. Even though I left academia very early, after my first year at university, I do think of academia in a perhaps romantic and idealised way. Anyway, thanks. ** Nick Toti, Hi, Nick! Your friend’s work looks awesome at a glance. I’ve investigate/watch once I get out of here. Thanks a lot! Ha ha, of course I remember him from the film now. What a multi-talented fella! Hope all is great with you. ** Jabin, Hi, Jabin. Your reading of the novel’s dynamics and intentionality is very right on, thank you. Well, hm, in the case of the novel, I was mimicking a structure or structures that preexisted — the form of the website in the novel , the reviews, the chatroom, etc. — exactly mimicked the form of the site I was using as a model, and I was very interested to figure out how they worked as they did in the ways you’re speaking about — how/why it effected the participants/commenters and how/why it riveted an outside viewer, and in my case a writer who became obsessed with simulating or transposing or reinventing its effect in a novel, and, more precisely, taking its effect one step further where my viewership of the site’s goings on and my refinements/ alterations became yet another filter for yet another, more distanced viewer, i.e., the reader. So I was more of an explorer when writing the novel than someone with a preset idea of how the spaces and forms I was studying worked, if that makes any sense. I’m not sure I’ve expanded out as much as you asked. It’s a complex question that would be easier to answer if you and I were able to have a conversation around the topic, I think. But I hope that helps somehow. And thank you a lot. ** Patrick F, Hi, Patrick. Thanks a lot! I’ve always been interested, as I kind of explained above somewhere, in the exchange between the self-styled or self-invented ‘sex object’ and the person seeking a depersonalised ‘sex object’. Before the internet, I was interested in the real world equivalents — hustler bars, streets hustling, etc. But then the internet made it possible to pay attention to those exchanges in great detail without having to inordinately intrude. I don’t know why I’m so drawn to that particular kind of interaction. Something about it scares and confuses and excites me in a way that I want to understand, and writing is a kind of self-exploration for me in addition to being an art I try to master. Sure, I haunt various sites looking for ideas for my fiction and for just general pleasure, mostly stuff I geek out on like amusement park fanatic sites and experimental music sites and stuff. ‘Helicopter’ is actually based on something I wrote here on the blog, a seemingly true story about the death of Russian porn star. Bradford used to be a fairly regular commenter on my blog before Deerhunter got big. He’s a fantastic guy, and, obviously, I’m really honored to have had a part in inspiring ‘Helicopter’. Thanks a lot. Take care. ** Isla, Hi, Isla. I’ve been writing about the axis of sex and violence since I was a teenager. It’s always been something very powerful to me, and I’ve always wanted to understand why, and I use my writing partly to try to understand, or at least to organise, things that confuse me. I wrote a number of novels before ‘The Sluts’ that tackle that axis in different ways. It’s very tricky because, on the one hand, I want to try to get around the inherent assaultiveness and shock that that material carries with it, but, on the other hand, I want to give the material its power and force. The vast majority of art that tackles that area tends to neuter it, make it merely pornographic or horrific or use it as a venue for psychological analysis. For me, those reductions don’t answer the question of why that axis is so powerful. I am deeply interested in negotiating the issue of complicity between a reader and the writer and the material the writer is working with, yes. When I’m writing, I’m thinking almost exclusively about how to negotiate that in a way that is as fair to the reader as possible while not compromising the effect the material necessitates. I keep trying to find the right way to depict it, and ‘The Sluts’ is one of my attempts. Thank you for the question and about the blog too! ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. Ah, the days when Damien Hirst didn’t make one’s skin crawl before one even looked at what he made. ** Steve Erickson, Hi. Really, high hopes? I hope it met them. I haven’t listened to the new Destroyer album yet, but if the incredible tracks I’ve heard from it so far are any indication, I expect it to be amazing. But I’m a massive fan of his, as you know. I think books are still seen as serious endeavors, even if not so many actually read them anymore. And God knows the world, or at least the US, right now is filled with people desperately searching for anything that they can employ to justify their knee-jerk censoriousness. Yawn. Sequels can never top the startle caused by the originals. ** Hi, Bill. Thanks, buddy. That Kerry Skarbakka piece is cool. I’ll go look for others by him. Yeah, I’ve always found Davenport’s writing to be quite witty, so I don’t understand either, but so it goes. ** Okay. Do you know the films of Storm de Hirsch? Well, now you do, or at least you have a golden opportunity to. I recommend utilising it, of course. See you tomorrow.