_______________
Fiona Banner Wp Wp Wp, 2014
‘Fiona Banner has fixed the twin set of gigantic Chinook blades to the ceiling of one of the Sculpture Park’s indoor galleries. It’s quite a feat of engineering: it took a year of preparation and a team of specialists from a mix of disciplines to ensure the building would not collapse with the strain.

‘Switched off, the blades have all the character of outsized ceiling fans. But as soon as the hidden motor whirrs them into action, they become something else entirely. The moment they swing lazily into motion, you’re struck silent by the sense that something awful is about to happen. Banner has captured cinema shorthand for menace and divorced it from any narrative context.

‘The blades scythe faster and faster in opposite directions, beating up to a speed where they are no longer distinguishable. It seems impossible that the thin spokes to which they are attached can hold them steady much longer. This was the moment when I made a break for the exit. But just as they have sped into a vortex, they wind down again. You gasp with relief.’

 

________________
David Adamo Untitled (axe n°4), 2010
axe, wood chippings. ‘I don’t necessarily think about aggressive things when I’m in the studio…although I do work myself into a sort of frenzy.’

 

________________
Arman Heroin and hypodermic needles, 1969
plastic, plywood, hypodermics, heroin and steel

 

______________
Sigalit Landau Barbed Hula, 2001
‘The powerful image of a naked Sigalit Landau doing the hula-hoop with a piece of barbed wire on an Israeli beach refers to the sacrificial practices dating back to the origins of religions: rituals, stigmata, propitiations, indelible markings.’

 

________________
Robert Lazzarini Knives, 2008
‘Robert Lazzarini is best known for his sculptures of common objects in which detailed craftsmanship is combined with precise illusionistic distortion. Scaled to the size of the original object and using the same materials, Lazzarini creates versions of guns, knives, brass knuckles, chairs, telephones, telephone booths, and skulls, among other things. Factuality is a theme that runs throughout his imagery, as is visual perception and how that perception is constructed in both the mind of the viewer and in the physical world. “I am concerned with the direct relationship between the viewer, the original object (the role of memory), and the sculpture (the object reconfigured),” Lazzarini explains.’

 

________________
Osang Gwon Metabo, 2009
‘Gwon takes thousands of photographs of his subject from every possible angle, collaging and moulding them onto a compressed Styrofoam sculpture. The result is uncanny. Proportion, 3D mass and 2D photography give the sculptures some, though not a great deal, of verisimilitude (a high gloss coating takes care of the rest). In appearance, it’s almost as if they’re contemporary cadavers mummified in the pastiched pages of magazines instead of peat.’

 

________________
Sylvie Fleury Razor Blades, 2001
stainless steel, 290 x 145 x 1 cm

 

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Graciela Sacco Tensión admisible, 2011
Digital print on mirror, knife and light source. ‘Graciela Sacco graduated in 1987 with a thesis devoted to the Argentinian avant-garde movement of 1960. The artistic expressions of that decade established strong ties between artistic experimentation and social commitment, culminating in Rosario, the artist’s hometown, with  ̈Tucumán Arde ̈ (Tucuman Burns) now esteemed as a landmark of international Political Conceptualism. This generation of artists was harshly repressed by the military dictatorship that seized the country from 1976 to 1983. Graciela Sacco’s work shows that even under democracy, that the retrieval of memory is a collective and conflictive task.’

 

______________
Aldo Giannotti Safe & Sound, 2021
‘He went with an electric chainsaw, cut a piece of plasterboard wall and took an important drawing by Aldo Giannotti. The Genoese artist, in fact, next to the drawing depicting a chainsaw placed on a wall, had written – as an instruction and interpretation of the work – “This drawing can be taken free of charge by a collector who comes with a chainsaw and cuts a piece of wall “. It is not known who he is, perhaps he is an artist.’

 

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Yoshitomo Nara Various, 1991 – 2001
‘Known for his portraits, Nara’s subjects are vaguely ominous-looking characters with penetrating gazes that occasionally wield objects just as knives or cigarettes, as well as heads and figures that float in dreamy landscapes.’

 

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Tayeba Begum Lipi Agony (Various), 2010 – 2015
‘Bangladeshi artist Tayeba Begum Lipi recreates memory-laden objects by connecting thousands of razor blades, transforming the sharp metal tools into tennis shoes, wheels for strollers, sewing machines, sensuous fabrics, and more. Lipi’s sculptures address female marginality and speak most specifically to violence facing women in Bangladesh. The razor blades also references her memories of witnessing the birth of her nieces and nephews as a child growing up in the small town of Gaibandha, where the tool was often used during delivery.’

 

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Lewis Stein Untitled, 2020
‘Lewis Stein is interested in the subtle ways a particular class of familiar objects, such as doormats, garbage cans and culinary tools, organize and structure our lives. The cleaver is a butcher’s knife, designed to cut through bone, and is thus implicated in ideas of cleanliness within cooking. Their imposing blades dulled by paint, the cleavers are surreally removed from functionality. They thus enact a humorous performance of a typically unanalyzed ritual of daily life, but without its end goal.’

 

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Jan Hakon Erichsen Balloon Destroyer, 2020
‘Erichsen has become well known for his “destruction videos”, which he began making in late 2017. Now, he typically posts one video a day on Instagram. The videos most commonly depict elaborate methods of popping balloons with knives, of which Erichsen has said he owns “somewhere between 500 and 1000”.’

 

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Chitra Ganesh Scissors, 2005
‘In Scissors, the faces of a woman and a man are merged to create the third eye—a reference to the Hindu deity Ardhanarishvara, a combination of the gods Shiva and Parvati who represents the coming together of male and female energies. Breaking the barrier of the thought bubble in which they are contained, the woman reaches to remove her partner’s unshared eye. Perhaps the eye will be added to the collection of excised eyes below only to grow back and be removed again.’

 

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Monica Bonvicini Latent Combustion #1, 2015
‘“Latent Combustion” is a monumental work, both handcrafted and readymade, made of thick construction chains and conglomerates of chainsaws, covered with black industrial liquid rubber.’

 

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John Conn NYC Subway 37, 1978
‘John Conn’s New York City Subway photographs were originally taken between 1975 and 1982. In the 1980s, over 250 felonies were committed every week in the system, making the New York subway the most dangerous mass transit system in the world.’

 

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Nathan Lerner Eye and Barbed Wire, 1939
‘The wide-open eye watches from the ground (which can represent also a burial ground) that is criss-crossed with barbed wire.’

 

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Barry Le Va Cleaved Floor, Four Paths, 2009
29 meat cleavers

 

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Chris Burden TV Hijack, 1972
‘During a live television interview to which he had brought his own camera crew, Chris Buden held interviewer Phyllis Lutjeans at knifepoint and threatened to kill her if the station stopped live transmission. To conclude the piece, he demanded to be given the station’s recording of the incident, which he then destroyed.’

 

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Timur Si-Qin Axe Effext, 2011
‘In his work “Axe effect”, Si-Qin purchased a sword and pierced several bottles of Axe-branded shower gel, which subsequently seeped out colourful pungent goop on to the white plinth. He tells about a study that discovered that when a sample of people evaluated two images – one of a person with a branded shirt and one without – participants were “far more likely to evaluate the branded person with positive characteristics like honesty and kindness. This reveals how our brains have evolved, to read clues from our environment that could possibly help us navigate our environment. In the case of branding, logos tap into the part of our brains that are evolved to read signals about the fitness of people… I think that is a beautiful thing”.’

 

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Kelly Reemtsen Various, 2011 – 2018
‘Kelly Reemtsen creates portraits of anonymous women wielding hefty and dangerous tools. The inclusion of the late 1950’s/early 1960’s dresses on the figures suggest that it’s unlikely the women would be engaged in the kind of work the tools are intended for, pointing to dark and perhaps murderous intentions.’

 

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Christophe Delbeecke Untitled, 2019
Epoxy resin, knife

 

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Liliana Porter Man with Axe, 2017
‘Man with Axe features a tiny plastic figure of an axe-wielding man who appears to have demolished an array of items, from dollhouse furniture to large vases, clocks, and even a full-size piano. This trail of destruction signals both the entropic effects of time and the collapse of historical progress that can be caused by a single agent of chaos.’

 

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Wen Fang Rain, 2009
‘Wen Fang’s art piece titled Rain, a photographic installation consisting of images of garbage printed on 300 steel knives, addresses the problem of trash affecting China directly. She uses photography creatively by printing the photographs of trash that plague the urban streets of China on knives in an installation. These knives are then suspended by strings from the ceiling where gallery patrons can walk under them; this signifies the problem of waste metaphorically, as if it is raining from the sky uncontrollably on to the heads of the people of China. The knives not only signify the danger and destruction, but forces the viewer to see trash as an inherent problem that they themselves may have ignored when walking through the urban streets of China. Think about gallery patrons as they look up at the sharp tips dangling above their heads, one can only imagine the sense of unease if any of the knives were to come down when gravity beckons it. Wen Fang intentionally wanted her patrons to feel the same unease she did when she visited poor neighborhoods plagued by waste.’

 

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L. Spillaert Magiс Staircase, 1945
wood and knives

 

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Baptiste Debombourg Flow, 2013
‘FLOW is resurrection, rebellion, the sudden mirror of our mass consumption society that kills human beings and the objects it mass-produces. Here the windscreens of cars surge up like the wave that engulfs towns in catastrophe films such as 2012 or The Day After Tomorrow. They are broken, discarded, ignored objects that take the place by storm, rebel and attack us. Like ignored vomit being spewed out from on high.’

 

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Claes Oldenburg and Coosje Van Bruggen Saw sawing, 1996
‘This sculpture is located in the north side of the Main Entrance Hall of the Tokyo International Exhibition Center. It is a large scale saw placed as if it were sawing through the earth.’

 

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Catherine Biocca Good spirits, 2016
‘A ‘cotton candy’ pink floor attacked with knives and hypodermic syringes, depicting hidden violent fantasies that can pop up when deeply frustrated, characterize the artist’s work. Masochistic themes and behaviour that is merged into the contrary aesthetic of the safe heaven. Within her art practice Catherine Biocca is interested in this dark side of the ordinary, or to put it in other words; the momentum where brutality and pure innocence meet and can co-exist. The split second when ‘schadenfreude’ is created; when we laugh about and enjoy the metal or physical pain of others.’

 

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Liza Lou Security Fence, 2005
‘Security Fence is characterized by the absence of a human subject. As the artist herself explains, the structure is a “claustrophobic enclosure […] with its layers and layers of chain link– a moiré effect, as if the pleasure and pain could go on forever.” Tiny glass beads cover the entire structure, creating a surface which challenges the viewer’s perceptions of physical barriers and confined spaces, for what should appear as bare and harsh instead shimmers with an extraordinary sleek coating.’

 

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Beili Liu The Mending Project, 2019
‘The installation consists of hundreds of Chinese scissors suspended from the ceiling, pointing downwards. The hovering, massive cloud of scissors alludes to distant fear, looming violence and worrisome uncertainty. The performer sits beneath the countless sharp blades of the scissors, and performs an on-going simple task of mending.’

 

 

*

p.s. Hey. ** Dominik, Hey, Dominick!!! Great book, as is ‘Eden Eden Eden’. Ha ha, yeah, for some reason people posting GIFs as reactions on social media drives me nuts. Like if I see one more person post that GIF of Leonardo DiCaprio applauding with a smug look on his face there’ll be cyber-hell to pay. I think making GIF novels has turned me into a GIF snob. I would enrol in your love’s class. That would be very useful knowledge. I suppose I should enrol in a learning French class first, but still. Love making every restaurant in the world have cold sesame noodle Szechuan style on their menu (I’m feeling greedy today), G. ** jamie, Howdy, J. Right, zLibrary is such an amazing find. Incredible what they’ve got stored there. And it’s made making book spotlight posts infinitely easier too. Yes, Puce Mary will be doing all the sound for our new film, and as it’s about a haunted house attraction and includes a ghost character who needs to have a noise/sound language, etc., we’ll need a lot of different kinds of sounds, and she’s perfect for the gig, and Zac and I are thrilled. Yes, the performance of ‘Jerk’ we filmed was the last ever. Jonathan announced that he doesn’t want to do it anymore, and after traveling all over the world doing it for more than a decade, that’s understandable. The film turned out great, so the piece will live on. For sure I remember that animation guy you worked with and the troubles thereby  too. That sounds potentially really fun, and I hope you guys can stay on mutually agreeable ground. Soon you’ll be out running around all day, and you’ll get to share in my high. And then hopefully you’ll even be running around in Paris at least briefly before too long. I hope your Friday is peary. (I love pears). xoxo. ** Steve Erickson, It seems possible that the Romero could get a theater release of some kind here, yes. I’m just about to walk down the street and get the new issue of The Wire. The Van Der Graff Generator one. I’ll check out Dalibor Cruz. Thanks. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi. No, I was in Paris when Guyotat did his US tour. But I saw him read once here at the Pompidou, and it was mesmerising. I came very close to meeting him a couple of times, but it never happened sadly. ** _Black_Acrylic, Guyotat is a hell of a read. Such good news that you got through your second jab scot free! Hopefully it’s all bright-eyed and bushy tailed Ben from here on out. ** Bill, Hi. ‘Tomb’ is almost nothing like ‘Coma’. It’s super hallucinatory and non-stop wild. Brook’s theater is sporadically active. They rent it out sometimes. It’s an amazing theater inside, sort of half-gutted and transformed into a very flexible, strange space. Gisele has been wanting to do a piece there for years. ** Shane Christmass, Hi, Shane. It’s nice you watch the videos. I never know whether anyone ever looks at those. Paul Strand! Thanks, I’ll watch it. Have I done a Paul Strand Day? Hm, I can’t remember. I will if I haven’t. Yes, in fact ‘Latex’ was in my mailbox when I arrived home last night. Thanks so much! ** Okay. Today there’s a little, or not so little, cutlery-like post for you. See you tomorrow.

 

‘Although its centre was Paris, the cinematic avant-garde that emerged after World War I originated in Germany. Composed almost exclusively of modern painters and photographers, the international experimental film movement mounted a sustained effort to extend the formal strategies of the various strands of post-war modernism to the cinema. In deliberate opposition to the naturalizing, indexical tendencies of the popular cinema, the highly reflexive films of the first avant-garde emphasized the medium-specific properties of cinema by drawing attention to its capacity for spatio-temporal transformation. The focus was on the nature, properties and functions of the camera, film strip and screen, rather than on human actors or narrative flow. It is, therefore, highly appropriate that the films that inaugurated the movement were all works of abstract animation, an area in which German artists made a decisive contribution. Foremost among these early pioneers was Hans Richter, who, as a participant in most of the major art movements of the inter-war period and as a director, educator, theorist and cine-activist for more than four decades, played a pivotal role in the development of the avant-garde film.

‘After a brief career as a Cubist and six months of military service, Richter became, with Tristan Tzara and Hans Arp, one of the founding members of Zurich Dada. As the acknowledged author of many of the Dada manifestos, Richter was certainly sympathetic to its ideas, but his paintings in this period are less concerned with anarchic revolt than they are with the dissolution of natural objects into pure forms. Following the failed Spartacist uprising, Richter returned to Munich in 1919 to lead the short-lived Action Committee of Revolutionary Artists. Richter quickly turned away from politically charged figurative art, however, and devoted his energies to the development of a new system of rhythmic abstraction. Some scholars have interpreted Richter’s growing interest in non-representational forms as a response to the failure of leftist groups such as the Action Committee to affect political change. Richter, however, reads things differently:

“Influenced by cubism and its search for structure, but not satisfied with what it offered, I found myself between 1913-1918 increasingly faced with the conflict of suppressing spontaneous expression in order to gain an objective understanding of a fundamental principle with which I could control the ‘heap of fragments’ inherited from the cubists. Thus I gradually lost interest in the subject – in any subject – and focused instead on the positive-negative (white-black) opposition, which at least gave me a working hypothesis whereby I could organize the relationship of one part of a painting to the other.”

‘Richter’s preoccupation with the relationship between structural elements reflects his desire to move past the individualistic emotionalism of Expressionism by finding some way to harness, and exert dialectical control over, the flow of abstract form-combinations in his work. Ironically, one of the founders of Dada quickly became concerned that “if we allow […] an uninhibited fulfilment of all personal impulses without, at least, trying to establish harmony we are led to anarchy and suicide in life as well as in art”, and began searching for universal principles that could be used “so that we might attain a sovereignty over this new matter and justify this new freedom”.

‘Late in 1919, Richter met the Swedish artist Viking Eggeling, who was similarly concerned with systematizing abstraction. The two artists began living and working together, finding in the counterpoint of Johann Sebastian Bach’s fugues a principle that could be used to control both the form and the rhythm of their paintings. For Richter and Eggeling, contrapuntal polarity “was more than a technical device, it was a philosophic way of dealing with the experience of growth” and it led them to the idea of a universal language. Although no copies survive, in 1920 they jointly published an article on this subject, entitled “Universelle Sprache” (“Universal Language”), in Theo van Doesberg’s magazine, De Stijl, in 1920. The essay demonstrated how an unlimited multiplicity of relationships could be arranged by equilibrating form-elements with their opposites through similarities that they called “contrast-analogies”. In a series of scroll paintings they made between 1919 and 1921, Richter and Eggeling took their ideas further by introducing the idea of continuity to the methodical arrangement of their contrast-analogies. Since the scrolls progress sequentially, the dynamic energies of the form-element relationships are able to accumulate, allowing the viewer to experience the work not as a static fact, but rather as an active process unfolding in time. Richter and Eggeling both saw utopian possibilities in the mnemonic demands their scroll paintings placed on the eye, and this inspired them to try to apply their principles to the time-based medium of film.

‘Although neither Richter nor Eggeling had any experience with film technology, they were able to begin experimenting in the trick film studios of UFA in Berlin through the patronage of a wealthy neighbour. After several failed attempts to directly transfer their scrolls to strips of film, Richter and Eggeling tried to animate hand-drawn images by holding them down with thumbtacks and manually moving them on an editing table. Richter successfully adapted his 1919 Präludium scroll into a brief sequence, but became frustrated at the cumbersome production process and the somewhat awkward results. Increasingly convinced that their techniques were inadequate to the task, Richter abandoned this method in late 1920, which precipitated a falling out with Eggeling, who insisted that picture scrolls should be treated as “scores” for films. After what Richter has called a “Herculean effort”, Eggeling was eventually able to complete the final version of his Symphonie Diagonale shortly before his death in 1925.

‘Richter, on the other hand, decided to adopt an entirely new strategy: rather than attempting to visually orchestrate formal patterns, he focused instead on the temporality of the cinematic viewing experience by emphasizing movement and the shifting relationship of form elements in time. His major creative breakthrough, in other words, was the discovery of cinematic rhythm, which he then used as the title of his first film, Film ist Rhythmus: Rhythmus ’21 (Film is Rhythm: Rhythm 21, 1921). For Richter, rhythm, “as the essence of emotional expression”, was connected to a Bergsonian life force:

“Rhythm expresses something different from thought. The meaning of both is incommensurable. Rhythm cannot be explained completely by thought nor can thought be put in terms of rhythm, or converted or reproduced. They both find their connection and identity in common and universal human life, the life principle, from which they spring and upon which they can build further.”

‘In one of his final essays, Richter observed that the “pure cinema” has three characteristics that determine its place in twentieth-century society: the freedom of the artist; the moral responsibility of film content; and the value of the obscure. Although all three of these criteria are inter-related, they also delineate, roughly, three of the major stages of the history of the international avant-garde cinema: the initial assertion of cinematic independence (1921-9); the turn towards a more politicized use of the documentary form in the 1930s; and finally the emergence of the romantic, “visionary” New York-based avant-garde of the 1940s and 1950s. Having played a pivotal role as an activist during the first two stages, Richter’s major contribution to the third was as an educator. As the first director of the Film Institute of the City College of New York from 1942 to 1957, he taught, befriended and supported such seminal members of the New American Cinema as Maya Deren, Jonas Mekas and Shirley Clarke. As significant as his publications, paintings and organizational activities were, however, his primary achievement was the creation of nearly a dozen independently controlled films. Having affirmed the formal integrity of the screen as a flat surface in his first film, he ended his career with a set of oneiric feature-length films (Dreams that Money Can Buy, 8×8 and Dadascope) that emphasized the revelatory potential of the irrational and the subconscious depths of the human psyche. In moving between these two poles, Richter’s film corpus mirrors, in microcosm, the dominant historical trajectory of the avant-garde film.’ — Senses of Cinema

 

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Stills

 

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Further

Hans Richter @ Senses of Cinema
Hans Richter @ Wikipedia
Rescoring Richter
Hans Richter @ Re:Voir
Hans Richter @ Light Cone
Habs Richter @ The Art Story
Hans Richter @ The Film-makers Coop
Book: ‘Hans Richter’ (les presses du réel)
Hans Richter: Anti-Film and Radical Dada Abstraction
Hans Richter, le film et la refonte du système moderne des arts
Hans Richter in Exile: Translating the Avant-Garde
Hans Richter: The Dream of Universal Language and the Birth of The Absolute Film

 

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Extras

Hans Richter on Film

The various works of HANS RICHTER

Trailer: ‘Hans Richter: Everything Turns- Everything Revolves’

Hans Richter : expo au Centre Pompidou Metz

 

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Quotes

 

Rhythm

The rhythm of a work is equal to the idea of the whole. Rhythm is the thing that informs ideas, that which runs through the whole: sense = principle, from which each individual work first gets its meaning. Rhythm is not definite, regular succession in time or space, but the unity binding all parts into a whole.

The emotional world, as well as the intellectual, has laws governing its expression. It is much more the inner, nature-force which directly forms and animates ideas, through which we are bound up with the elemental nature-forces.

Just as the path of the intellectual formulating-power leads to thought, as a justifying moment of intellectual activity, so the emotional formulating-power leads to rhythm as the essence of emotional expression. Just as thought gives value to an abstract work so rhythm gives meaning to forms. Abstract activity for its own sake is the same as formal games for their own sake, they can be ingenious or subtle, but in any case they are futile, so long as they do not follow, to a letter, the whole determining impulse.

Rhythm expresses something different from thought. The meaning of both is incommensurable. Rhythm cannot be explained completely by thought nor can thought be put in terms of rhythm, or converted or reproduced. They both find their connection and identity in common and universal human life, the life principle, from which they spring and upon which they build further. The analysis of a rhythm can thus only be undertaken quite generally and comparatively, so long as it does not deal with material construction, with the discipline of building.

 

Cardboard/Metal

love cardboard.

The cheap corrugated paper, the grey carton lid, the black adhesive tape. Something out of nothing!

That is how creation begins. What is

valueless has value. What is valuable is suspect. Possessions!

Customs admit the cardboard relief. It is valueless, is no possession.

But copper is beautiful, or brass, aluminium, iron. Metal is more intense than cardboard, harder, more glistening, or else more dull. More aggressive. Less yielding.

I love metal.

It resists. It dictates its own rhythm. It shines. It is proud… So very different from the friendlier cardboard which adapts itself willingly to chance, and remains undiscovered.

 

On Dada

Art historians and critics, not too long ago, discovered Dada. They decided the movement was something like a glorified practical joke that had some useful destructive function at the time.

This definition has now been sanctioned by repetition and has become an “historical fact.” But we who were all together there when it happened look at it from another angle, not from the big noise we made together at the time to “épater le bourgeois” but from the ideas and problems with which we, the artists, were then concerned and which were the bone and flesh, though not necessarily the skin, of this movement. For example, under the name of “New Life” a group of creative Dadaists worked, exhibited and developed until 1922. What we still need is a treatise on the “Dada spirit” that had afforded us a special mental climate: a belief in the purity of man, a source of art welling up from the depths of the subconscious. While it was flabbergasting and mystifying, Dada also succeeded in creating pure poetry. While it was tearing down, Dada also experimented and created the foundations for a new social aesthetic to serve the artist—at least in its last, positive phase. It is a problem which is still awaiting its solution.

Dada will last. Not so much because of the experiments and the literary excesses that gave birth to Surrealism, but rather because of the creation of the prophetic spirit found in the works of Arp, in the poetry and art of Klee, in my scrolls, in the abstract films of Eggeling and me, in the attempts in mural paintings, abstract plastics, mosaics, and in the beautiful tapestries of Sophie Taeuber.

Dada was anything but a hoax; it was a turning on the road opening up wide horizons to the modern mind. It lasts and will last as long as the spirit of negation contains the ferment of the future.

 

“A Painter Speaks to Painters”

What are we doing to oppose the battles that are raging all over Europe?

Everywhere and continuously—battles, killers, the death of human beings! Is that not our concern? Can anyone say that still-lives, nudes or any paintings, titled in some way or untitled, do anything in opposition?

Art is well established everywhere, and poor suffering men have the right to expect some artist to be the mouth of their soul (the soul of those who are less privileged in their ability to use image and word)—their mouth passionately cries out their pain.

Artists flee from the banality of this simple request. But look at the earth now! THAT is the reality. And testify whether the most banal of our demands is fulfilled and whether the very least IS done according to our sincere convictions.

We torture ourselves for special observations in our own field of work, yet in the end we haven’t even found a safe refuge on earth for our ideas and ideals.

If today we are forced to discard, to overcome, to sublimate, it is not done lightheartedly, for it is not in our character to jump on the bandwagon of heroic sacrifice. No. But if we continue to paint and work in the future without regard (as persons and as artists) to these events, we shall be painting and working for an earth void of spiritual heritage, for an earth of corpses.

Is it possible to be aware of this every day, every night, even though one might not be physically involved in it, and then forget it entirely

If we ever expect to receive the gratitude of present and future generations, we will have to find a way to express human passion. The gratitude of deeply mutilated mankind is something far different from the gratitude of even the most sincere art-lover.

If something exists now in all men, it is the burning pain, disgust and shame of living and participating, at least morally, in such a devastating time even though our “good-will” or “better judgment” might oppose it.

How can we quietly accept the responsibility that everything is so cruel, brutal, devoid of the spiritual values we have cherished all our lives? How can we stand this without exploding in a roar of pain?

 

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13 of Hans Richter’s 26 films

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Rhythmus 21 (1921)
‘The first experiment of Abstract Cinema. It is a non-narrative-based film, the first of Richter’s “Rhythm” series, developed through the placing of abstract images in a specific order. The film is conceived as a piece of music composed of images instead of sounds.’ — iconauta

the entirety

 

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Rhythmus 23 (1923)
‘Rhythmus 23 is constructed entirely out of the interplay between square shapes and diagonal lines, often related via superimposition, and the underlying architectonic principle is geometric symmetry. In the opening of the film, for example, two white squares on the left and right sides of the screen move towards each other along an axially symmetric path until they finally “fuse” into a larger white square, before breaking apart into shrinking squares that careen off diagonally, in parallel with one another. At the end of the film, this same sequence re-appears, but this time inverted, with black squares moving against a white background.As a favour to his old friend Tristan Tzara, the film was premiered in Paris during the final Dada soiree on 6 July 1923. This has led many critics to mistakenly read it, and indeed all of Richter’s abstract work as Dada, despite the fact that his writings and films demonstrate a much stronger affinity with the rationalist systemiticity of Constructivism.’ — Richard Suchenski

the entirety

 

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Filmstudie (1926)
‘Hans Richter’s pioneering Dada work Filmstudie was an early attempt to combine Dadaist aesthetics and abstraction. Made in 1926 Richter’s film presents the viewer with a disorientating collage of uncanny false eyeballs, distorted faces and abstract forms… Hans Richter’s pioneering Dada work Filmstudie was an early attempt to combine Dadaist aesthetics and abstraction. Made in 1926 Richter’s film presents the viewer with a disorientating collage of uncanny false eyeballs, distorted faces and abstract forms (none of these themes is treated constantly). It’s similar to Man Ray’s work in its ballet of motion which combines a playful tension between figurative and abstract forms, both in negative and positive exposure. Filmstudie is essentialy a transitional work of mixed styles. A number of devices drawing attention to the technical specificity of photography (multiple exposures and negative images) are also included and enter into a successful fusion with the remaining elements.’ — Marco Milone

the entirety w/ score by Jon Daou

 

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Inflation (1928)
‘A criticism of capitalism using avant-garde means, in keeping with Richter’s argument that “even invisible things must be made visible”. In this experimental collage of animated numbers and documentary images, he shows the increase and devaluation of money, and the winners and losers of inflation during an economic crisis. Within seconds, a wealthy man reading a newspaper becomes a beggar, the zeros on the banknotes multiply – right up until the stock exchange physically collapses.’ — Berlinale

the entirety

 

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Ghosts Before Breakfast (1928)
‘The hats won’t stay on heads. The bowtie won’t be tied. The gun can’t shoot and the target can’t keep still. When objects themselves rebel, something terrible is upon the land, and anarchism will out. This is one of the takeaways from painter Hans Richter’s 1928 DADA short film Ghosts Before Breakfast, or Vormittagsspuk in its original German (literally “Morning Spook”). And you might take that a very different way than the audience in 1928. That is fine. This is Dada. It is a bomb thrown into the mind.

‘But actual events and problems surround the film and its aftermath. By the end of the 1920s Richter was nearly two decades into his abstract/cubist painting career, and at the beginning of the decade he had already been experimenting with the relatively new medium of film. His 1921 Rhythmus 21 was one of the first films to attempt to bring abstract ideas–shapes, light, rhythm– to the medium. Writing in a German periodical around 1926, he said “…cinema can fulfill certain promises made by the ancient arts, in the realization of which painting and film become close neighbors and work together.”

‘Ghosts has a tragic afterlife: the Nazis burned the original film and the score Hindemith wrote for it. However that has left a flowering of music in its wake, as composers have tried to fill the gap: Ian Gardener, Jean Hasse, the band The Real Tuesday Weld, and others. Steve Roden composed four versions for a LACMA retrospective of Richter’s work, using various Dadaist tactics, including recording a Hindemith vinyl he had prepared with sandpaper.’ — Ted Mills

the entirety

 

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Race Symphony (1928)
‘Richter’s brilliant gift as an editor in nowhere more evident than in this impressionistic documentary on the preparation and start of a horse race at a track near Berlin. Marked by a sharp pace and an acute visual observation of telling gesture and detail, it is hard to believe that this film was made over 40 years ago. It was produced for Maxim-Emelka, a Berlin studio, as an introductory to the feature film, ARIADNE IN HOPPEGARTEN.’ — Standish D. Lawder

the entirety

 

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Every Day (1929)
‘Every Day was a film that German avant-garde filmmaker Hans Richter made as part of a film production course run by the Film Society. It features filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein playing a policeman, while Len Lye and Basil Wright provided technical assistance. These contributions reflect the sense of internationalism occurring at this time in British film circles. The film was completed in 1929 under the title The Daily Round, but was never released because Richter was unhappy with the result. Richter began to rework the film in 1975, but died before its completion. It was finally restored, with the addition of a soundtrack, after his death.’ — Chris Agg

the entirety

 

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Two Pence Magic (1930)
‘Hans Richter’s Two Pence Magic is an avant-garde advertisement for an illustrated tabloid newspaper (the films title refers to the cost of a newspaper in the 1920’s). Utilizing a technique evident in his previous films, Richter creates a synthetic experience by “rhyming” with images instead of sounds.’ — Walker Art Center

the entirety w/ score by Ben Kammerer

 

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Die neue Wohnung (1930)
‘A commissioned film for SWB – Schweizerischer Werkbund – Die neue Wohnung was produced for the Basel architectural and interior design exhibition (WOBA) to demonstrate innovative aspects of modern architecture and highlight their differences from the event’s highly conservative approach. Aimed at a bourgeois Swiss public, this version, screened in Basel in 1930, was the outcome of the collaboration between Richter and the members of the SWB, responsible for the script but also for the film’s formal elements, such as a refusal to use animation.’ — Letterboxd

the entirety

 

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w/ Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp, Alexander Calder & Fernand Léger Dreams That Money Can Buy (1947)
‘“Everybody dreams. Everybody travels, sometimes into countries where strange beauty, wisdom, adventure, love expects him.” These words, a tad floaty and dreamlike themselves, open 1947’s Dreams That Money Can Buy. “This is a story of dreams mixed with reality,” the narrator intones. He can say that again. Directed by Hans Richter, painter, graphic artist, avant-gardist, “film-experimenter,” and energetic member of the Dada movement, the picture takes a storyline that seems mundanely realistic — impecunious poet finds apartment, then must figure out how to pay the rent — and bends it into all manner of surreal shapes. And I do, literally, mean surreal, since several of the scenes come from the minds of noted avant-garde and surrealist artists, including, besides Richter himself, painter and photographer Man Ray, conceptualist Marcel Duchamp, sculptor Alexander Calder, and painter-sculptor-filmmaker Fernand Léger.’ — Open Culture

Watch the film here

 

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w/ Marcel Duchamp and Jean Cocteau 8 x 8: A Chess Sonata in 8 Movements (1957)
‘Like his earlier Dreams that Money Can Buy, Richter’s 8 x 8 engaged the talents of an array of artists with whom he had associated over the years, including Jean Arp, Jean Cocteau, Yves Tanguy, and Richard Huelsenbeck. The title refers to the 8 x 8 arrangement of squares on a chessboard and the film’s equivalent segmentation into a “Chess Sonata in 8 Movements.” It is a tribute to the game Richter loved: “a game of chance and accident, kings and pawns, retreats and successes—in short, the thousand and one combinations of life.”’ — Film Affinity

the entirety

 

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Dadascope (1961)
‘Hans Richter’s “Dadascope” is a comprehensive portrait of the Dada movement featuring original poems and prose spoken by their creators: Hans Arp, Marcel Duchamp, Raoul Hausmann, Richard Huelsenbeck, and Kurt Schwitters. Filmed and completed in 1957.’ — Sound Zone Art

the entirety

 

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From the Circus to the Moon (1963)
‘Short doc on Alexander Calder making mobiles and assemblage in his backyard in France (probably just after he moved there). Richter provides some surrealism with backwards footage and music. Calder also shows off his wire and tin circus performers. Instructive if you think Calder just made abstract mobiles–these are playful works of art.’ — Ted Mills

the entirety

 

 

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p.s. Hey. ** Misanthrope, Theater context rules, I agree. I don’t even like to play games on my phone. My phone is basically a clock with two communication devices inside it. As far as ‘MD’, rausch, rausch! ** Dominik, Hi!!! Yeah, agreed about the Finns. I did like that they kept flashing the word ‘join’ written on their hands and the back of the guitar and stuff. It added this nice fake sinister quality. No, the old film, but now I’m intrigued to see this film with the ‘s’ at the end. I’ll see if I can seek it. Ha ha, if I were a cop I’d say your love’s attempted murder was excusable as self-defense via an understandable case of mistaken identity. Love giving everyone the magical ability to walk on water but, secretly, only for 1 minute and 30 seconds, G. ** _Black_Acrylic, The last film I saw in a theater was that weak-ass recent Gaspar Noe film, but I’m hoping to break the dry spell as soon as tonight. Oh, ‘Tangerine’. I remember being excited about how it was filmed and how the filmmaker maxxed out the possibilities but not so excited about anything else. ** jamie, Hi, J! Thank you a lot, man. Well, me too, re: wanting it to be longer, but I pretty much much used every ‘film grain’ GIF that’s on the web, and that’s far as I could get. I don’t know what is it. I like ‘interlude’. I’m good. I’m still giddy about just being out and about, going to museums and sitting in cafes and the usually normal stuff. Oh, no, shit, about Hannah. Yeah, I think it’s easy to feel like we’re past the whole thing, but we’re not, obviously. That does sound tricky, the home life du jour. I keep imagining one of those old silent films where people keep opening doors and walking through rooms at the split second after someone else has just left the rooms and closed the doors. I hope she gets through the symptoms and infection as quickly as the human body can make happen in the ideal circumstance, and that you and the kiddo stay clean as whistles. Love, me. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi. Thanks. I’m going to try to sit on my hands and wait to see those scenes in the context of the whole film, but the gesture is much appreciated. ** Steve Erickson, Well, you living in the USA can surely understand how absolutely nothing can become a three-day scandal these days thanks to a sadly sizeable portion of humanity having devolved into nosey control freaks with no lives. I can’t remember the last Eurovision winner who went on to be a big or even middling star, even just here in Europe. Bucks Fizz a billion years ago maybe? ** Jack Skelley, Aw, thank you, Jack. Much, much appreciated. xo ** Right. Today I present the beautiful and very influential films of Hans Richter for your hopeful intake. Great work if your senses of curiosity and hungers for inspiring source material are functioning. See you tomorrow.