The River

Mr John: “We should celebrate that a child died a child. That one escaped. We lock them in our schools, we teach them our stupid taboos, we catch them in our wars, we massacre the innocents. The world is for children. The real world. They climb trees and roll on the grass, close to the ants […]” - from Jean Renoir's The River [c/o Senses of Cinema]

State of the Art

Growing at Your Own Speed

For a young artist, it is as important to study the lives of other artists as their work. One has no idea how to proceed and is looking about desperately for a clue. Of course, every artist is--as every life is--different. There is no one way.

The early, seemingly predetermined success of a Picasso, a Basquiat or a Brakhage can be quite unnerving to a young stumbler. Stories of late-bloomers are both welcome and necessary for those of us whose actual achievements have not yet aligned with our ambitions. As such, Hollis Frampton's memories of his own artistic development are comforting:

"I didn't find it a picnic to be a photographer, through the sixties, not because photography was disregarded, although of course that was true, but because my predicament was that of a committed illusionist in an environment that was officially dedicated to the eradication of illusion and, of course, utterly dominated by painting and sculpture. At that time I didn't understand how luxurious it was to find myself alienated in that way. Nothing is more wonderful than to have no one pay the slightest attention to what you are doing; if you're going to grow, you can grow at your own speed." --Hollis Frampton

"Works of art... teach, move and delight."

Circles of Confusion, a mini-retrospective of the work of Hollis Frampton presented by Los Angeles Filmforum and Khastoo Gallery in conjunction with Art Los Angeles Contemporary at the Pacific Design Center, will screen from January 21-February 7. A full schedule is available here.

After the screenings, many guest speakers--including David James, Erika Vogt and Yvonne Rainer--will consider the impact of Frampton's films as well as his writing. I will participate in one such discussion at the Pacific Design Center on Saturday, January 30 at 2:00 pm.

Frampton's rich film work is as relevant now as ever. The problems he considers and attempts to solve in his films have not left us. In this audio recording, Frampton discusses cinema with Ken Jacobs and students at what was then known as the State University of New York at Binghamton.

"I seek whatever... feeling you can intensely construe for yourselves."

Part 2 of the recording can be found here.

Help Haiti

Before humanity can come to grips with the cataclysmic loss of life in Haiti, there are many places where one can go to financially assist the devastated region. Here are some of them:

Doctors Without Borders
Partners In Health
American Red Cross
Yele

I don't pray, but for those who have lost loved ones, my sincerest condolences.

Merry Christmas (from Douglas Sirk)

A Conveyor Belt Worldview

Sans the music, this is absolutely stunning.

The Smell of American Exceptionalism

Ed Ruscha's Chocolate Room, 1970-2004, will be on view at MOCA until May 3, 2010.

Chocolate Room by Ed Ruscha is an installation made of prints, silkscreens to be precise. It is, according to his catalogue raisonné, Nestle's chocolate paste silkscreened onto paper. There is no image, per se, just the rich surface of chocolate-covered walls and the smell that emanates from them.

Because of my job, I have had the good fortune to visit the work in its current form many times over the past few weeks. It has changed remarkably in that time, the butter fats in the chocolate apparently coming out of their colloidal suspension to create crystalline structures most often described as floral.

This degradation, to me, is in some ways the subject of the work--not just the interrogation of print-making by using non-archival organic "ink" to produce not an image but a surface, but the rapid decay of the materials themselves hinting at the unsustainability inherent in the "American way of life." That the room is coated in industrial milk chocolate speaks to American-style excess, that it was created during the Vietnam War, to American Exceptionalism.

The smell begins before you can see the work. It calls to you. At first, it is wonderful: a room full of chocolate! But the smell is not just powerful, it's intense. What starts out as subtle can become overwhelming, even a little sickening. The longer you stay, the more you feel like you have eaten too much chocolate.

It is gorgeous. The work is not only a wry pop masterpiece--It's chocolate! Silkscreened!--but a precise, if flip, critique of American Exceptionalism. For what could be more American than a world covered in chocolate, an industrial product symbolic of the post-war plenitude engendered by American enterprise--as well as its hidden costs, such as the slave-labor used to harvest cocoa? And while America was busy carpet bombing North Vietnam, wouldn't a room papered with chocolate bring to mind that other air campaign against Communist encroachment, the "candy drops" that became famous during the Berlin airlift?

According to MOCA's website, curator Henry Hopkins invited Ruscha and others to make prints for the American Pavilion at the 1970 Venice Biennale, but many declined in protest of the Vietnam War.

During the Biennale, protesters etched anti-war slogans into the rich brown surfaces of Chocolate Room, leaving the work to stand as a spontaneous anti-war monument, which Ruscha ultimately considered more effective than non-participation in the Biennale. In the summer heat, the heady smell of chocolate was particularly overwhelming and attracted a swarm of Venetian ants, which ate away at the work.

But, of course, Chocolate Room is not a protest piece. It is too canny for that. It is also, like all the best pop-art, a work of existential realism, showing us "something so obvious no one had noticed it, something that therefore demanded acknowledgment." If America, or at least one twisted ideal version of it, is like a thin layer of chocolate covering everything, then much of what is great about it is also what is rotten about it.

Now, nearly 40 years later, we are escalating yet another war without apparent end, where victory is hard to define and our presence ever harder to defend. The wars have changed, but the chocolate smells the same.

Ken Jacobs: Sign of the Times

The Sunday edition of the New York Times had a great review of Ken Jacobs' work, including his newest piece for the Nervous Magic Lantern: Towards the Depths of the Even Greater Depression.

Did I mention that few are more gifted with titles than Jacobs? At his best--for instance, Ken Jacobs' Theater of Unconscionable Stupidity Presents Camera Thrills of the War--he is, arguably, second only to Mingus.

Ken Jacobs in Los Angeles

Ken Jacobs, best known for rending space and time in his cinematic performances, digital videos and 16mm films, will be in Los Angeles for a full week of screenings and performances. If you have never seen a Jacobs film or his truly-indescribable Nervous Magic Lantern, buy a ticket, grab a seat and strap in. If you're already an admirer, now's your chance to catch up on the recent outpouring from this prolific artist.

Scott Foundas has a great review of Jacobs' new work in the LA Weekly. My own writing on Jacobs' cinema can be found here.

Toward The Depths of The Even Greater Depression, a Nervous Magic Lantern performance at REDCAT on Monday, October 12, at 8:30 p.m.

An evening of Jacobs’ new and recent work screens at the UCLA Film & Television Archive at the Billy Wilder Theater on Thursday, October 15, at 7:30 p.m.

The Whirled screens together with Aza Jacobs’ The GoodTimesKid at Los Angeles Filmforum at the Egyptian Theater on Saturday, October 17, at 7:30 p.m.

Anaglyph Tom (Tom with Puffy Cheeks) screens at Los Angeles Filmforum at the Egyptian Theater on Sunday, October 17, at 7:30 p.m.

Photo: Ken and Flo Jacobs in their New York City home.