Village Voice January 24, 1974

BY JONAS MEKAS

All in all, a good week. I managed to miss Dan Barnett’s show at the Collective for Living Cinema because I picked up a wrong issue of The Voice and I thought nothing was going on there. But P. Adams Sitney went and he says Barnett’s films were interesting,” which is a lot, since P. Adams Sitney is very difficult to please. Then, John Whitney came to town for a very fine show at the Millennium of his early and late computer work.

Saturday I went to the Sonnabend Gallery, to see films by Vito Acconci, John Baldessari, David Haxton, and David Shulman. Different films running in different rooms. You can see a few minutes of one, a few minutes of another; or you may sit through any one from beginning to end, and then try to catch the beginning of the other one in the next room. People walk around, or sit and watch quietly. People keep crossing the projector light beam, blocking parts of the image. They keep coming in and leaving.. Some are milling around the entrance, talking. Most of the films are silent, but Baldessari’s has sound, some voices and some noises.

Most of the films have no titles and no credits, but the manager occasionally announces whose work is coming next. This bothered me because I always like to know with whose work, and which work, I’m dealing. I have brought this habit with me from my childhood when I used to collect flowers from the fields for a very old woman doctor:

I had to know at all times what I was picking. But that is a small matter. In general, the situation at Sonnabend was very much the same as at the early Factory (Warhol) screenings, where, actually, this kind of screen ing was inaugurated; or the Castelli video show (works of Sonnier, for instance); or Paul Sharits’s show at Bykert last fall. Artists and filmmakers have been screening films in galleries for a good decade now. And, of course, to see a film by Warhol, Sharits, Baldessari, or Acconci in a gallery situation, as described above, is one thing; and to see them in a closed, undisturbed room is again another.

At this point, and really all the way back through the 60s, one could see two very clearly positioned camps. In one camp were (and still are) those who called themselves (and this remains true today) filmmakers, and who insisted on careful and proper projection of their films, which means their films must be treated as finished works of art to be watched under ideal conditions on a good screen, in a dark and silent room, projected perfectly. In the second camp were undefined artists-film-makers, most of them with gallery experience, or gallery-oriented, who were much more liberal about the presentation and usage of their film works they allowed them to be projected in casual gallery situations; they allowed their films be used as backgrounds for music; they were projecting their films on multiple screens; etc. Many of them believe that the solution for an independent filmmaker will come from gallery screenings and from the sales of their prints through the gallery circuits and setups.

Those who side with “filmmakers” usually distribute through film-makers’ cooperatives, such as the New York Film-Makers’ Cooperative or the Canyon Film-Makers’ Cooperative, and there is a great solidarity among them. There is a feeling among them that they have to stick together and strengthen their own distribution centers.

Those who side with the artists-film-makers seems to feel less solidarity and seem to have lesst understanding of the problems involved, and gravitate more toward gallery film-video distribution set-ups such as Visual Resources, thus undermining their colleague filmmakers who have not only worked hard for over a decade to liberate them- selves from private distribution concerns, but without whose work (and the creation of the cooperative distribution centers) the whole gallery artists-film-makers movement would be totally unimaginable today.

Anyway let me go back to the Sonnabend programs. The gallery situation seems to dissipate one’s attention. Speaking for myself, I tend to watch films projected in a gallery situation with much less intensity. I don’t really watch; rather I survey them, and I don’t mind if I miss some parts. I don’t think I’m missing anything essential by skipping a minute or two from Acconci’s film, as projected at Sonnabend; but I’d be terribly upset if I had to miss even 10 seconds from the same Acconci film projected in a theatre or other closed’ screening situation. It even seemed to me that the works I saw at Sonnabend were made to be watched under distracting and relaxed gallery conditions, to be watched again and again, projected in loop fashion.

What were the films like? What were they all about?

 Continiation of Mekas Movie Journal 6/24/74    pg. 2 of 2

I am not too sure. Was Haxton’s three-screen movie work (one minute long) about three similar realities, in different tonalities? Lights, curtains, veils? A triptych, in any case. Was Acconci’s 90-minute work an autobiographical, contemplative comic strip? Were David Shulman’s four short films about manipulations of “calligraphy calligraphic spaces, calligraphic inversions, calligraphic montages and collages, and calligraphic tricks? Or was Baldessari’s film a, remake of Un Chien Andalou” 50 years later, even if tangentially so? I wouldn’t know, and it should be clear by now that I won’t be able to pass any judgment on any of the films presented under such conditions. Really, I could but I’d have to see them many more times. As a matter of fact, I believe that absolutely any film, no matter, how heavy or stupid, or how bad, or what kind, would look interesting under these relaxed and out-of-context conditions.

When I go to a museum or a gallery I seem to be able to stand in front of, say, a Malevich and look at it and shut out all the other reality around me, all the other paintings and all the other visitors. I am there as if by myself. And so I am able to enjoy it or appreciate it or evaluate it for myself. In the case of gallery screenings I don’t seem to be able to do so. Is it only a matter of the conventions I am used to, or a matter of a form of art that is being presented in the wrong way? I have no answers. Certainly viewing the four artists-film-makers at Sonnabend last Saturday was a unique and profitable aesthetic experience. I found the presentation different from the presentations of Anthology or Millennium or 42nd Street theatres, but nevertheless valid on its own terms. But movies projected in a gallery seem to be at a disadvantage, when compared with other works of art exhibited there, unless they are made to be shown that way that is, unless the “relaxed” viewing situation is built into the form of the film. For instance, the Bykert show of Sharits film loop work last fall worked perfectly, I thought. The work was obviously designed, structured so that it had neither a beginning nor an end, and you could watch it like a painting, either for a minute or for an hour. I was told that the Sonnabend is planning more such weekends of films. I certainly welcome it. It was enjoyable and instructive.

Ah, one more thing. I wanted to close this week’s column by praising seriousness. I praise the seriousness of artists at work. At the Spnnabend last Saturday I was watching artists at work; I was watching David Haxton in utmost concentration and seriousness. I was watching David Shulman in utmost seriousness. And I knew that no matter what goes wrong with their show, they are okay. They are serious artists, they are approaching cinema with utmost seriousness. “Oh, they. are so amazingly serious,” I nodded to Annette Michelson. “We, the classical avant garde, we seem to have more sense of humor” “You are getting old, that’s why,” said Annette. Ah, the seriousness of the young artist! Something was in the air at Sonnabend last Saturday, and I said this to Annette, “There is some- thing of the spirit of the avant garde of the ‘20s here; while at the Brakhage, Snow, etc. shows I feel as though I’m among the classicists ...”