{"id":1036,"date":"2008-11-02T14:00:27","date_gmt":"2008-11-02T14:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/?p=1036"},"modified":"2018-01-25T14:54:04","modified_gmt":"2018-01-25T14:54:04","slug":"star-spangled-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/2008\/11\/02\/star-spangled-death\/","title":{"rendered":"Star Spangled to Death"},"content":{"rendered":"

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STAR SPANGLED TO DEATH
\nSunday 2 November 2008, 2pm-10pm
\nLondon Chisenhale Gallery<\/b><\/p>\n

A free screening of Star Spangled to Death<\/i>, Ken Jacobs\u2019 episodic indictment of American politics, religion, war, racism and stupidity, timed to coincide with the US election and the end of the Bush regime. Starring Richard Nixon, Nelson Rockefeller, Mickey Mouse, Al Jolson and a cast of thousands.<\/p>\n

Ken Jacobs, Star Spangled to Death,1957-59\/2004, USA, 400 min
\n<\/b>Jacobs\u2019 extraordinary epic combines whole found films, documentaries, newsreels, musicals and cartoons with improvised performances by the legendary Jack Smith and Jerry Sims. Together they picture a dangerously sold-out America where racial and religious prejudice, the monopolisation of wealth and an addiction to war are opposed by Beat generation irreverence.<\/p>\n

Star Spangled to Death<\/i> will be shown with several intermissions. Refreshments available, or bring a packed lunch and a cushion!<\/p>\n

Presented by Whitechapel at the Chisenhale, in collaboration with Mark Webber, tank.tv and Firefly. An online exhibition at www.tank.tv from 1 October to 30 November 2008 includes a selection of 20 complete or excerpted works by Ken Jacobs, dating from 1956 to the present.<\/p>\nPROGRAMME NOTES<\/a>

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STAR SPANGLED TO DEATH
\n<\/b>Sunday 2 November 2008, 2pm-10pm
\nLondon Chisenhale Gallery<\/p>\n

STAR SPANGLED TO DEATH
\nKen Jacobs, USA, 1957-59\/2004, video, b\/w & colour, sound, 400 min
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Star Spangled To Death <\/i>is an epic film costing hundreds of dollars! An antic collage combining found-films with my own more-or-less staged filming (I once said directing Jack and Jerry was like directing the wind). It is a social-critique picturing a stolen and dangerously sold-out America, allowing examples of popular culture to self-indict. Race and religion and monopolisation of wealth and the purposeful dumbing down of citizens and addiction to war become props for clowning. In whimsy we trusted. A handful of artists costumed and performing unconvincingly appeal to audience imagination and understanding to complete the picture. Jack Smith\u2019s pre-Flaming Creatures <\/i>performance is a cine-visitation of the divine (the movie has raggedly cosmic pretensions). His character, The Spirit Not Of Life But Of Living, celebrates Suffering, personified by poor rattled fierce Jerry Sims, as an inextricable essence of living.<\/p>\n

I was 24 when I began the film, Jack 25. Jerry in his mid-thirties seemed middle-aged to us. Jack later said, I think appreciatively, I taught him to hate America. We met 1954 and got to hanging around, broke most of the time, walking the streets \u201cshadow starved\u201d (Jack\u2019s expression) for movies a mind could fix on. Max Ophuls\u2019 Sins Of Lola Montez<\/i>, even in its producer-reassembled state, stood out in its love of the art, in showing what a camera could still do. Hollywood with some few exceptions had gone numb, frantic and numb in this time of fascist ascendance and cultural impoverishment. The enemy had been switched from Right to Left at the end of World War II and the owners had returned with a vengeance. Their message was simple: \u201cShut up and do what you\u2019re told.\u201d War had done the trick of loosening industry from its Depression fix and war would now be America\u2019s raison d\u2019\u00eatre. War would serve to rid the country of excess wealth, lest more equitable distribution shake its class structure. In light of how much bullshit it takes to win a war, consider the bullshit it takes to sell ongoing war-to-war-to-war; we were inundated. Only the Abstract-Expressionist painters had been left to proclaim the old radical hopes (because the liberties they took were<\/i> abstract). The Sixties were nowhere in sight.<\/p>\n

Then one day on the set (the rear courtyard of the W. 75 St. brownstone where I was janitor) Jack pushed a copy of \u2018On The Road\u2019 into my hands, saying, \u201cIt\u2019s about us.\u201d I\u2019d been reading Paul Bowles and H.P. Lovecraft and a smuggled in copy of \u2018Lolita\u2019 and the drop in writing level was too steep. \u201cYou\u2019ll be able to stay with it on your sixth attempt\u201d, Jack said, which proved to be true. It caught some things right, quirky ephemerals that hadn\u2019t registered as events. Of course it helped stir a social revolution (disowned by Kerouac) and maybe Star Spangled To Death<\/i> would\u2019ve participated in that great humanist eruption if I had completed it and got it out in its proper time. Over six hours then, there was no way I could pay final sound-joining and printing lab costs. I screened camera originals a few times to records and spoken commentary but money didn\u2019t happen and, pissed, in 1963 I put it aside to continue with affordable works (like near cost-free shadowplay). Its moment, I felt, had passed. Its invention, the very look of it, its texture was to a degree no longer unique. My pride was wounded. People were treating me as if I was normal. I got a measure of Jack\u2019s fame when I heard a girl address her dog as Flaming Creature, but he chose \u2013 at a time when patrons were available to him \u2013 not to help. Like maybe his movie might be seen as coming from somewhere<\/i>. I let it go and had another life, better I\u2019m sure than the one that would\u2019ve resulted from the release then of Star Spangled To Death<\/i>.<\/p>\n

I recall thinking when Kennedy took office there was less urgency to get it out. He looked like he had a sex life, had little kids that he surely wanted to raise above-ground, and indeed he did interfere with the Eisenhower plan to return Cuba to The Mob, costing him his life.<\/p>\n

Video makes its present release possible. Yeah, yeah, it ain\u2019t film, and I\u2019d already begun my quest with it into the actuality of film rather than film as transparency. Rising from my own abstract-expressionist mindset. Let me be. I so appreciate what video permits (although the work, with one sinful exception, the reprise of \u2018Are You Havin\u2019 Any Fun?\u2019, does not take off into electron free-play but stays respectful of film limits), and I appreciate the possibility of cheap DVD distribution. And if anyone has the passion and money and patience the video can guide final assembly of the film. At age 70 I have to attend to other cine-demands, like leaving something lasting of what Flo and I did in live performance with The Nervous System and Nervous Magic Lantern.<\/p>\n

\u201cSomething lasting\u201d? Habit of thought. I wonder if our masters (the hallowed image of The White House insists, to the subconscious, that The Old Plantation prevails) figure, in rationalising a way to live with their crimes, that \u201cnatural death\u201d is often no less painful than an accelerated conclusion, so what the hell, the little fuckers will replenish their numbers soon enough. From where they are we all look alike, excepting those of us that stand up. I don\u2019t<\/i> feel hopeful when Bush lies are exposed, implausible to begin with; followers elect to believe, and hold on to beliefs doggedly. Followers expect leaders to lie and believing an obvious lie is how they demonstrate their faith. Lying mostly offends professors and not all of them by a long shot. No, I think we\u2019re due to be interrupted, that history is about to come down through the roof on us this time<\/i>. Sorry, truly, but I believe my film-title. Perhaps that it arose to mind almost a half-century ago and so many of us are still here, in sight of scientific breakthroughs galore, is reason for confidence in ongoing life. We certainly can resist the bastards! They are taking our lives, what more can we lose? Jack fumbled the making of his last film but how meaningful a title is No President.<\/p>\n

Here, explaining, you get gravity. The movie achieves levity.<\/p>\n

Is this video the real thing? In the winter of 1959 editing facilities were two nails in a wall holding two film reels and an enlarging glass and in 2003 a G4 with Final Cut Pro. Better to figure the entirety as another entry in my found-film oeuvre. I did drop some found-films from the original collage, including all biographic elements (like my maybe-father\u2019s third-wedding home-movies), replacing with items more on track with central concerns of the work. Stuff gathered over the years with SSTD<\/i> in mind, only some that could be squeezed into its ultimate realisation. The Follies<\/i> entered sometime in the Sixties, the Micheaux entered my life with a bang in 1968 (Ten Minutes To Live<\/i> being up there with the greatest; the DVD of SSTD<\/i> should by rights be a double-feature with Ten Minutes To Live<\/i> seeing as the titles go so well together) but only infiltrated SSTD<\/i> during this latest editing. Ronald Reagan and the twerp presiding now, how ignore them? Perhaps with precisely the same pitch of outrage as my younger self I would not have made any concessions to audience capacity, only added things. There\u2019s friends, I know, that will be glum over what they will perceive as signs of an orderly mind. My head, inside, isn\u2019t all that different from what it was, I didn\u2019t become someone else, but I did get the work together and in a profound way that\u2019s the problem. It was supposed to lie in a jumbled heap, errant energies going nowhere, the talented viewer inferring form. A Frankenstein that fizzled but twitching and still dangerous to approach. Thoroughly star spangled but still kicking. \u2014Ken Jacobs<\/i><\/p>\n

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Alina Rudnitskaya\u2019s humanistic approach to documentary filmmaking often brings out the humour in her chosen subjects. As an introduction to her work, this programme depicts three diverse groups of contemporary Russian women.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[39,40],"class_list":["post-1036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ken-jacobs-tank-tv","tag-ken-jacobs","tag-tank-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1036"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1036\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}