INTERVENTION & PROCESSING
Sunday 19 May 2002, at 3:00pm
London Tate Modern

SLIDES
Annabel Nicolson, 1970, colour, silent, 12 min (18fps)
“Slides was made while I was still a student at St.Martins. Like the sewing machine piece, it was one that just happened. By that time I was immersed in film and I always seemed to have bits of film around in my room, on the table, everywhere, always little fragments. I had slides of my paintings and I cut up the slides and made them into a strip. Imagine a 16mm strip of celluloid with sprocket holes: Instead of that what I had was a strip – just slightly narrower – without the sprocket holes and the slides were just cut into bits, just little fragments and stuck in with other film as well, and also sewing (this was before Reel Time). There are bits sewn with thread and some bits with holes punched in. It was a very natural way of me to work, coming from painting, just working with something I could hold in my hand was somehow less threatening than working with equipment. I think I was much more confident working with something that I could grab hold of, so I made this strip and then the film was really created in the contact printer at the Co-op. Normally you would have your raw negative and your emulsion and its literally in contact, the light shines through it and you make a copy, but I had this very thin strip, which I held in the contact printer and I just manoeuvered it. I could see what I was doing because there’s a little peephole you can look into so that you can see each image. It amazes me now that I could have ever done anything like that, I couldn’t possibly go within a hundred yards of doing it now. But I did it then and Slides was what came out of it.” —Annabel Nicolson, interview with Mark Webber, 2002

“Slides develops a simple and elegant tension between stasis and apparent motion, between surface and depth, and between abstract colours / shapes and representational imagery. Ironically, the material pulled through the printer this time is not found-footage posing as original material which is utilized in the way found-footage had been used by others. The film thus engages the entire concept of – in David Curtis’ phrase – ‘the English rubbish tip aesthetic’ which embraces, in part, the theory that anything that can travel through a printer and/or projector is film material for a film and for cinematic projection. The valueless becomes valued. Nicolson asserts the preciousness not only of her original material but also that material in its transformations, and by extension the potential preciousness of all perception. In this respect the film moves away from the rigorous ascetic strategy and is more indulgent of the pleasure of vision…” —Deke Dusinberre, Perspectives on British Avant-Garde Film catalogue, 1977

SHOWER PROOF
Fred Drummond, 1968, b/w, silent, 10 min (18fps)
“SONF SOUND TRACK SYNC? SPASH BTHA BATH GURGLE WATER – how real – pure film – or a report – situation examined by camera – but false – contrived realism is not a true record of spontaneous actuality – this could never be? enough to contrive (the camera makes every situation an arrangement), then edit out as much obvious contrivance. It is only a FILM.” —Fred Drummond, original production notes for Shower Proof, 1968

“Fred Drummond has made a series of short single and double-screen films that explore visual rhythms and the potentials of the printing process. They are non-narrative, careful orchestrations of repeated loop footage. Shower Proof is printed on increasingly high-contrast negative. The image grows from the abstract, yet plainly anthropomorphic, steadily through to the personal, yet non-specific – we see neither the man’s nor the woman’s face in detail – and back. The film explores the relation between form and movement. The visual rhythm is so strong that despite the film being silent the viewer has a strong aural impression.” —Verina Glaessner, “Directory of UK Independent Film-Makers”, Cinema Rising No.1, April 1972

AT THE ACADEMY
Guy Sherwin, 1974, b/w, sound, 5 min
“In making films, I am not trying to say something, but to find out about something. But what one tries to find out, and how one tries to find it out, reveals what one is saying.” —Guy Sherwin, Arts Council Film-makers on Tour catalogue, 1980

“At the Academy was made during a period of raiding laboratory skips for junk film. It uses a very simple and highly unprofessional homemade printer. The found-footage was hand printed by winding it on a sprocketed wheel through a light beam. Because the light spills over the sound track area, the optical sound undergoes identical transformations to the image. I programmed the printing so that the image gradually builds up in layers superimposed, slightly out of phase, moving from one up to twelve layers. This has the effect of stretching or decelerating individual frames from 1/24 sec to 1/2 sec, causing them to fuse with adjacent frames. A separate concern in the film is the game it plays with the audience’s expectations.” —Guy Sherwin, A Perspective on English Avant-Garde Film catalogue, 1978

THE MAN WITH THE MOVIE CAMERA
David Crosswaite, 1973, b/w, silent, 8 min
“Crosswaite’s Man with the Movie Camera is a particularly elegant film. By mounting a circular mirror a little before the camera, so that it only occupies the central area of the screen, and another mirror to the side, the camera and the cameraman may be seen as the central image, with the other features of the room visible around the circumference. The film is complex in spite of the simplicity of the set-up, which is only slowly grasped. Particularly succinct is the way in which the effect of manipulating the camera, like changing focus, is seen in the image simultaneously with a view of how it is brought about. There is no other ‘content’ than the functioning of the camera itself, seen to be sufficient and even poetic.” —Malcolm Le Grice, Abstract Film and Beyond, 1977

SILVER SURFER
Mike Dunford, 1972, b/w, sound, 15 min
“A surfer, filmed and shown on tv, refilmed on 8mm, and refilmed again on 16mm. Simple loop structure preceded by four minutes of a still frame of the surfer. An image on the borders of apprehension, becoming more and more abstract. The surfer surfs, never surfs anywhere, an image suspended in the light of the projector lamp. A very quiet and undramatic film, not particularly didactic. Sound: the first four minutes consists of a fog-horn, used as the basic tone for a chord played on the organ, the rest of the film uses the sound of breakers with a two second pulse and occasional bursts of musical-like sounds.” —London Film-Makers Co-operative distribution catalogue supplement, 1972

“Scientific or objective reality is based on repetition or frequency of observed data. It has been postulated that any unusual event which occurs only once cannot be observed. Organisation of space is determined by a continuous reference to the relationships between the observer and the observed data. ‘Objectivity’ is a function of frequency, continued frequency implies permanence and therefore objectivity. Frequency is determined by the organism. The perceptual threshold of a human being is approximately 1/30th of a second. Perception is a product of frequency which is a product of perception.” —Mike Dunford, “Conjectures and Assertions”, Filmaktion programme notes, 1973

STILL LIFE
Jenny Okun, 1976, colour, silent, 6 min
“Still Life moves towards later stages of transformation than the earlier films and substitutes positive for negative camera stock in the conventional negative-positive process of filming and printing: the filmmaker then attempts to reinstate some sort of representation of reality by painting the fruit in front of the camera its negative colours; but the burnt-out shadows and black highlights consistently prevent any illusionistic interpretation of the space within the frame while also asserting the processes involved.” —Jeremy Spencer, “Films of Jenny Okun”, Readings No. 2, 1977

“My films, photographic constructions, and paintings all stem from similar concerns. They are attempts to integrate the structural aspects of an event/landscape with the structural aspects of the medium involved. This integration of structures is aimed at creating a balance with no one element overstated, no one part dominant. My own participation is emphasised in this process – just as scientists now acknowledge that their own existence cannot be ignored in the calculation of experimental data. The subjects that I choose are not those that most easily suggest a filmic structure but are subjects which cannot be verbalized. For me, film is a language with which we can study our own visual thought processes. Each new film can create its own language for this visual discussion and can be explored and contained within its own terms.” —Jenny Okun, Arts Council Film-Makers on Tour catalogue, 1980

DRESDEN DYNAMO
Lis Rhodes, 1971, colour, sound, 5 min 
“The enduring importance of Lis Rhodes as artist and film-maker is attributable to her quiet and powerful radicalism. Rhodes’ work juxtaposes an artistically and theoretically rigorous practice with passionate commitment. She has developed a mode of film-making inspired but not enslaved by feminism, which has sustained and grown regardless of fashionable trends in art and representation.” —Gill Henderson, A Directory of British Film and Video Artists, 1996

“Sounds are affective. Images are instructive. In reversing, turning over, the notation, or perhaps the connotation of images and words, it becomes alarmingly apparent that words (and not only in their relationship with sentences) are to be believed, or not, and are therefore emotional. This is why lots can be said and nothing happens, or nothing is said and a lot happens. One person’s word against another’s. The answer and the question occupy the same space. They are already familiar if not known to each other. Emotionally they live within the same political order, that is, of manipulation and persuasion. Images do not ‘say’. They are instructive. They are said to ‘speak for themselves’. And I think they do. Seeing sense is a rare occurrence, in itself. There is little space for reflexive meaning in reflection. The one is the other, if not in geometry, certainly in time. The values of a social system are continuously displayed and reproduced. Repetitive distribution re-enforces acceptance, protectionism masquerades as ‘free’ choice. But the explicit nature of images always remains implicit. You can look at them. They are made to look at you. Even chance cannot avoid recognition. Abstract or configured instruction is within the image. Even nothing much is something. Meanwhile the needle goes round and round the record irrespective of the recording. Tape wraps round the head and the disc spins. “Read my lips’, he said. Hopefully, we didn’t bother. Seeing is never believing, or lip sync a confirmation of authenticity. But the combination of instruction and affectivity is very effective. Anything can be sold in between, anything that necessitates the political construction of emotion. In a series of films and live works I have investigated the material connections between the film image and the optical sound track. In Dresden Dynamo, the one was the other. That is – what is heard is seen and what is seen is heard. One symbolic order creates the other. The film is the score is the sound.” —Lis Rhodes, “Flashback from a Partisan Filmmaker”, Filmwaves No. 6, 1998

VERSAILLES I & II
Chris Garratt, 1976, b/w, sound, 11 min 
“For this film I made a contact printing box, with a printing area 16mm x 185mm which enabled the printing of 24 frames of picture plus optical sound area at one time. The first part is a composition using 7 x one-second shots of the statues of Versailles. Palace of 1000 Beauties, with accompanying soundtrack, woven according to a pre-determined sequence. Because sound and picture were printed simultaneously, the minute inconsistencies in exposure times resulted in rhythmic fluctuations of picture density and levels of sound. Two of these shots comprise the second part of the film which is framed by abstract imagery printed across the entire width of the film surface: the visible image is also the sound image.” —Chris Garratt, London Film-Makers’ Co-operative distribution catalogue, 1977

“I was motivated originally by the prospect of being able to compose sound and visual images in units of fractions of seconds and by the tremendous ratio of magnification between the making and projection of sound and picture images. The content is not really the figurative subject matter as in some superimposed concept, but the here and now of the raw material, in making and in projection, and in the relationship between these two events in which nothing is hidden, propped up, decorated, representative or representable. (The choice of the material used was largely a matter of chance, but it is significant that (1) the original footage deals with ‘art’ and ‘culture’ in a very clichéd way, (2) we instantly relate to this whole genre of documentary rather than to the particular subject, (3) it contains virtually no subject or camera movement at all, and (4) there is an optical soundtrack, identifiable during editing only in the abstract, i.e. visually).” —Chris Garratt, “Directory of Independent British Cinema”, Independent Cinema No. 1, 1978

WINDOWFRAME
Roger Hewins, 1975, colour, sound, 6 min
“Windowframe is an investigation of the way in which we may perceive a specific image – that of two people, seen through a window, involved in some activity. This is the image seen at the opening of the film. Subsequent sections of the film present to the viewer differing juxtapositions of the four segments of this image which are created by the cross-bars of the window. Tensions are created between what we expect to see, and what we do see. We see the original image as a single whole. Do we perceive the manipulated sections in the same way, or are we drawn to investigate each pane separately? Can we make ourselves see the manipulated sections in the same way we see the original sequence? In the section in which the image is split simply horizontally or vertically are we able to re-establish/re-construct the original image in our minds so that the image we see differs from that on the screen? Perhaps this film answers some of these questions; perhaps it merely raises them.” —Roger Hewins, Derby Independent Film Awards catalogue, 1976

“For the best part of ten years Windowframe was exhibited as a silent film. I had, however, always ‘seen’ it as a film with sound. Indeed a magnetic stripe to facilitate this had been added to the original print of the film at the lab. However, I was unable to decide exactly what the soundtrack should be. A simple music track seemed inappropriate, too much like background music for its own sake with little relationship to the structure of the visuals, whilst attempts at a more constructed rhythmic track introduced extraneous ‘off-screen’ information taking the viewer outside of the experience of simply watching the film itself. I was looking for a soundtrack that provided an equivalence for the visuals themselves. The soundtrack on the existing print is the “Missa Pange Lingua’” by Josquin des Pres. It was combined with the visuals in 1982. This music was in fact recorded for a later film. During the editing of this film I became interested in the ‘out-takes’, where singers had made mistakes injecting sudden interruptions in the four-part medieval harmonies. Not only did the religious music resonate the stained glass quality of the images, but also the four-part structure and its interruptions provided the auditory equivalence for the overall structure of the film.” —Roger Hewins, 2002

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