Ken Jacobs’ Nervous System: 6

Date: 10 November 2000 | Season: Ken Jacobs Nervous System

KEN JACOBS’ NERVOUS SYSTEM
Nottingham Broadway Media Centre
Friday 10 November 2000, at 7pm

CRYSTAL PALACE
Ken Jacobs, USA, 1997, Nervous Magic Lantern, b/w, sound, c.25 min
Impossible movements … impossible spaces … issue forth from a single, somewhat unusual slide projector (of British manufacture) employed in an unexpected way. Cinema without film or electronics. And, as with The Nervous System (utilising pairs of projectors), depth phenomena is produced that can be seen as such without special viewing spectacles, and even by a single eye. (Ken Jacobs)

DISORIENT EXPRESS
Ken Jacobs, USA, 1996, 35mm, b/w, silent, 30 min
1906 – Original cinematographer unknown. 1996 – New arrangement by Ken Jacobs. Shots shown as found in “A Trip Down Mount Tamalpais”, the Paper Print Collection, Library of Congress. Optically copied by Sam Bush, Western Cine Lab., Denver, from 16mm to 35mm letterbox format to allow double-image mirroring in 1:85 ratio projection.
The same string of shots, in their entirety, is repeated in various placement and directional permutations. But this film is not a lately arrived example of ‘‘Structural Cinema”, where methods of ordering film materials often came to take on paramount value. (The viewer at some point grasped the method and that could be pretty much it.) I’m for order only to the extent it provides possibilities of fresh experience. For instance, kaleidoscopic symmetry in Disorient Express is not an end in itself. The radiant patterning that affirms the screen plane serves also to provide visual events of an entirely other magnitude. Flat transmutes repeatedly to massive depth illusion; yet that which appears so forcefully, convincingly in depth is patently unreal – an irrational space. The obvious filmic flips and turns (method is always evident) of the scenic trip provide perceptual challenges to our understanding of reality, and we are often unable to see things as we know they are.
With light-source shifted from heaven-sent to infernal, we see a landscape that could never be, except via cinema. A very early recording of a train trip through mountainous terrain, enthusiasm of the adventurous passengers on boisterous display, lends itself to us for a ride into each our own Rorschach wilderness. This careening trip also demands some hanging on, some output of viewer energy. The rightness of the closure (as I see it) was made possible by copying the film, for the last pass, in reverse motion.
Disorient Express takes you someplace else. A spin lasting 30 minutes, you really need to tap into your own reserves of energy. Hang on, please, this is not formalist cinema; order interests me only to the extent that it can provide experience. Watch the flat screen give way to some kind of 3D thrust, look for impossible depth inversions, for jewelled splendour, for CATscans of the brain. I’m banking on this film reviving a yen for expanded consciousness. (Ken Jacobs)

PHONOGRAPH
Ken Jacobs, USA, 1990, audiotape, 15 min
One-take unedited audiotape. 15 minutes of loud black surround sound. (Ken Jacobs)
“Most ferocious sound I’ve ever heard”. (John Zorn)

SLOWSCAN
Ralph Hocking, USA, 1981, videotape, b/w, silent, 4 min (excerpt)
This is an ingenuous and astonishing work made by s happily reclusive artist who has created many marvels in photography and video, often featuring his wife Sherry (often undressed), but who makes no effort to exhibit. A champion of the possibilities of “low res” video, he remains free of addiction to the technically latest and the most. For me, his brusque and unfussy video art remains the latest and the most. It’s an honour to present even this small example. (Ken Jacobs)

JACOB’S LADDER
James Otis, USA, 16mm, b/w, silent, 4 min
Jacob’s Ladder is a black and white spiralling, swirling computer-generated abstract animation. It combines its technological origin and its imagery (reminiscent of natural processes and objects – fractals, polyps, branching plants, crystal growth) seamlessly and beautifully.” (Patrick Friel)

UN PETIT TRAIN DE PLAISIR
Ken Jacobs, USA, 1999, Nervous System, b/w, sound, c.25 min
25 minutes to traverse, by train, (perpendicular view of) a single open Paris street. Remember the smooth rubber “spaldeen” (Spaulding), high bouncer that – sometimes in a stickball game on the once streets of Brooklyn – would split evenly along its circling seam? And then as pink twin hemispheres made possible further fun. What had been the secret interior was revealed to be so much cleaner and fleshy smooth than the exterior. Suggestively libidinal before one knew what was what. There was no point attempting to fling a half-ball; irresistible was the impulse to invert it ! Pop, inside out. The optical implausibilities of Un Petit Train de Plaisir inverts mentalities like pink half-spaldeens. (Ken Jacobs)

This performance was made possible by the generosity and co-operation of Frank Abbott and Nottingham Trent University. Thanks also Caroline Hennigan and Laraine Porter at the Broadway.

FURTHER NOTES