{"id":985,"date":"2007-11-11T00:00:36","date_gmt":"2007-11-11T00:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/?p=985"},"modified":"2018-01-25T14:54:50","modified_gmt":"2018-01-25T14:54:50","slug":"hollis-framptons-magellan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/2007\/11\/11\/hollis-framptons-magellan\/","title":{"rendered":"Hollis Frampton’s “Magellan”"},"content":{"rendered":"

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HOLLIS FRAMPTON\u2019S “MAGELLAN”
\n11\u201418 November 2007
\nLondon National Maritime Museum<\/b><\/p>\n

A screening, over two consecutive Sundays, of Hollis Frampton\u2019s monumental film sequence Magellan, which uses Fernand Magellan\u2019s circumnavigatory voyage as a metaphor for a meditation on the history and language of cinema, and the phenomena of perception.<\/p>\n

\u201cA series of shaped observations that include portraits, cadaver footage, re-stagings of Lumi\u00e8re films, visits to slaughterhouses, double exposures, a field of peaceful dairy cattle, allusions to Muybridge, electronic imagery, industrial pictures, a state fair \u2013 a kind of capsule version of the twentieth century that might have been placed on the Voyager spacecraft as it soared out of the solar system to worlds unknown.\u201d \u2014Robert Haller, Anthology Film Archives<\/i><\/p>\n

In composing his metahistory of cinema, Frampton often refers to other films and filmic modes, quotes liberally from early cinema (specifically the paper print collection of the Library of Congress) and explores countless possibilities for montage and the relationship between sound and image.<\/p>\n

Originally intended as a 36-hour sequence in which individual titles would be shown on specific days in a calendar of one year and four days, it was left unfinished when Frampton died in 1984. The surviving 8 hours of material, comprising of almost 30 individual films, will be screened together for the first time in the UK.<\/p>\n

The schedule of four two-hour programmes, as structured by Michael Zryd and comprising of almost 30 individual films, is based on the artist\u2019s 1978 \u201cMagellan Calendar\u201d and his last work-in-progress screenings at the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York) in January 1980. It was first shown in this form at Anthology Film Archives (New York) in September 2003.<\/p>\n

Sunday 11 November 2007
\n12pm – 2pm     The Birth of Magellan<\/a> (introduced by Michael Zryd)
\n3pm – 5pm       The Straits of Magellan I<\/a><\/p>\n

Sunday 18 November 2007
\n12pm – 2pm     The Straits of Magellan II<\/a>
\n3pm – 5pm       The Death of Magellan<\/a><\/p>\n

Hollis Frampton, one of the key filmmakers of his generation, was also a noted photographer and theorist, whose remarkable writing was published frequently in Artforum and October.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrampton is generally understood, in his words, as an artist \u2018of the modernist persuasion,\u2019 not only for his aesthetics, but for his close personal association with such figures as Ezra Pound, Carl Andre, Frank Stella, and Stan Brakhage. Certainly, Frampton conceived of Magellan as a utopian artwork in the monumental tradition of James Joyce and Sergei Eisenstein. In a grant application, he hoped to realize the project as \u2018the notion of an hypothetically totally inclusive work of film art as epistemological model for the conscious human universe\u2019.\u201d
\n(Michael Zryd, York University, Toronto)<\/i><\/i><\/p>\n

The event at the National Maritime Museum is curated by Mark Webber. With thanks to Michael Zryd, Marion Faller, Wendy Dorsett, Lisa Le Feuvre, Helen Whiteoak, Benjamin Cook, M.M. Serra, Anthology Film Archives and The Film-Makers\u2019 Cooperative. Presented in association with LUX<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Hollis Frampton\u2019s book \u201cCircles of Confusion\u201d, which has been out-of-print for many years, has been published in an expanded edition by MIT Press<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Portrait of Hollis Frampton (directed by H.F.)<\/i> by Marion Faller. Courtesy Anthology Film Archives. \u00a9 1975 Estate of Hollis Frampton.<\/p>\nPROGRAMME NOTES<\/a>

<\/p>\n

HOLLIS FRAMPTON\u2019S “MAGELLAN”
\n<\/b>Sunday 11 & Sunday 18 November 2007
\nLondon National Maritime Museum<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the beginning of time, light drew out matter along itself into a mass as great as the fabric of the world.\u201d (11th century Latin text by Robert Grossteste, translated by Hollis Frampton) <\/i><\/p>\n

Hollis Frampton (1936-84) is acknowledged as a giant in American avant-garde cinema, but tends to be known mainly through two (admittedly fantastic) films, Zorns Lemma<\/i> (1970) Hapax Legomena I: (nostalgia)<\/i> (1971). Meanwhile, his most ambitious and complex film project, Magellan<\/i>, is generally less recognized.<\/p>\n

The omission is unfortunate. Keeping in mind that most of Frampton\u2019s remarkable writings (collected in the book Circles of Confusion, 1983) were written during the Magellan<\/i> period, and that Frampton was engaged in many tantalizing and prophetic projects, including computer design and video, at the time of his premature death of lung cancer, we lose much in ignoring the last 12 years of Frampton\u2019s work. The invisibility of Magellan<\/i> is also understandable.<\/p>\n

The contemporary spectator who approaches the unfinished Magellan<\/i> confronts only fragments; the 24 completed Magellan<\/i> films released by Frampton comprise only about 8 out of the 36 hours planned. Moreover, Frampton intended Magellan<\/i> to be a calendrical cycle, with specific films to be shown on each day of the year. Metaphorically modelled on Ferdinand Magellan\u2019s exploratory circumnavigation of the world, the film aspired to remarkable \u2018global\u2019 aesthetic, historiographic, and conceptual challenges to cinema and perception.<\/p>\n

Frampton is generally understood, in his words, as an artist \u201cof the modernist persuasion,\u201d not only for his aesthetics, but for his close personal association with such figures as Ezra Pound, Carl Andre, Frank Stella, and Stan Brakhage. Certainly, Frampton conceived of Magellan<\/i> as a utopian artwork in the monumental tradition of James Joyce and Sergei Eisenstein. In a grant application, he hoped to realize the project as \u201cthe notion of an hypothetically totally inclusive work of film art as epistemological model for the conscious human universe.\u201d<\/p>\n

The enterprise did not lack ambition. But Frampton was always ambivalent towards the Enlightenment project that drove hardcore Modernism. His playful and ironic sensibility, nurtured through his association with artists like Michael Snow, Twyla Tharp, and Joyce Wieland is distilled in his announcement that Magellan<\/i> was ultimately a comedy \u2013 insofar as \u201ccomic art resolves itself in favour of its protagonist.\u201d For Frampton, \u201cthe protagonist is the spectator of the work.\u201d<\/p>\n

Comparing Magellan<\/i> to Vadimir Tatlin\u2019s unrealized Monument to the Third International, Frampton said: \u201cThe Monument was not built. There are other ways to build monuments. The ways to build them are to build them immaterially, in the mind.\u201d Fittingly then, Magellan<\/i> is an edifice whose very incompletion invites us to participate and continue its infinite construction.<\/p>\n

\u2014Michael Zryd, York University, Toronto<\/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":[35],"tags":[36,37],"class_list":["post-985","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hollis-frampton-magellan","tag-hollis-frampton","tag-magellan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/985","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=985"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/985\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}