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The idea of avant-garde film
Core
Argument: The Cutting edge work assimilated by commercial institutions
BLOW UP, PULL DOWN,
respect for art and mystique: expression, human emotion, and for the risks cinema dare to run
THE
AVANT GARDE FILM
Within the audio-visual sphere according to Dulac, the term avant-garde refers to “any film whose technique, employed with a view to a renewed expressiveness of image and sound, breaks with established traditions to search out in strictly visual and auditory realm, new emotional chords” (Dulac 1987;43). ...Nevertheless it results difficult to find a proper definition for this kind of cinema because, is a complex social expression that links and interconnects the fields of communication and technology in a aesthetic discourse. In the book ‘History of experimental film and video’ Al Rees suggests that any attempt to classify or define the avant-garde film is futile, since the term is always applied according to the context and historical moment (Rees 1999). The term avant-garde ‘was coined during the early 19th century by Saint-Simon to label the elite leadership of artist, scientist and industrialist’ (Rees 1999). Initially this term had mainly social connotations, rather than aesethic or stylistic and it was associated with the idea of modernism and its implications to the novelty. The emergence of a definition like the avant-garde is inseparable of a state of modernisation and the progressive ideals of liberty that opposed the status quo of the bourgeois culture based on the Neoclassicism of the 18th century. As Frampton declares; it was the first reaction against tradition, utilitarianism and the division of labour. (Frampton 1983)
In this vein we have to take for granted that the evolution and the development of visual image is the result of a process of research and development within the optical and mechanical fields, which responded to specific social conditions and conceptions of forms derived of research and discovery. The term avant-garde when used in the world of the audio-visual arts implies fundamentally the manners of creation that reflect on one side the tangible product (organised in images and sounds) and on the other the meaning prompted by the uses of a iconic language that subverts the traditional codes of cinematic communication. Dulac takes care in pointing out that the avant-garde film is concerned with the progress and the future forms of expression regardless of the way is perceived by the crowd. In fact is an egoistic form of expression that does not try to please a social conglomerate, but rather the point of view and the perception of the author... what Adams Sitney calls “the cinematic representation based on subjective interpretation” (Sitney 1987)
On the other hand film represents simultaneously a contradictory dichotomy, in which ‘art’ and ‘industry’ have their specific identity and forms of operation, but moreover social functions that have been principally moulded by the bourgeois society. In this fashion, according to Burger, “art projects the image of a better order and to that extent protests against the bad order that prevails in the world…... cultural industry brings the false elimination of the distance between art and life” (Burger 1984;50). The extensive stage of research and development of the moving image during the early 1900, contaminated the entertainment industry which evolved at great peace particularly in the United States after the First World War. Hollywood emerged and with it a structure that encouraged the development of commercial products that imitated the formulas attained by drama, the novel and the theatre plays of the times. Whilst, as Burger points out “the European avant-garde movements tried to attack the status of art in bourgeois society and to question the narrative tradition spread by the market and the American films”.(Burger 1984).
The Avant-garde film, since its beginning implicitly addressed the conception of a reality from a political stand which questioned the values society, and from a aesthetic perspective which questioned the values of art institutions and communication modes. Avant-garde film is mainly characterized for being reflective, analytical and self referential but in most cases non-sequential. Its form delves with detail the development of actions, and the features of objects, light, movement, time. From a political stand it depicts the opposition between capitalist and socialist activity. The best examples of the early development of the avant-garde film are embodied in the works by the Dadaist, Surrealist and Constructivist movements; which descended from the visual tradition attached to the experimentation with painting/graphics mechanic devises and photographic motion. In fact Burger in ‘Theory of the avant-garde’ argues that contemporary avant-garde is a continuation of this kind of movements and representations; points out that the contemporary avant-garde productions follow a process of development as a social expression which is first embraced by specialised social institutions (museums) and then simply assimilated by the dynamics of the mainstream and publicity.(Burger;1984) Although many a time from the mainstream perspective avant-garde films have been regarded as a set of abstract representations and absurd metaphors that approach the obtuse.
The story of the avant-garde film can not be thought with out considering the story and development of mainstream cinema, which is united for the most part to the linear narrative tradition, but more importantly, reflects the necessities and mechanics of action of a complex industry of entertainment. It is interesting to notice the contradictions embedded in the construction-development of the term avant-garde; for instance, the abstract film makers Ruttman, Eggeling, Richter and Malevich, acknowledged and celebrated that art was freed by Cubism from dealing with ideological content and attacked Einsestain and Vertov for serving ideology. Ironically Eisenstain and Vertov lived in a continuous dispute about their approach to the subject matter. On the other hand the Surrealist group despised the works made by the impressionist and elaborated long lists of the films that one should see and the ones that should be avoided by all means, among the latter for example is possible to find Lumiere, Griffith, Vertov, Cocteau, Lean, Rossellini, Disney, Bresson, etc. (Hammond;1978).
After the second world war the interest in Dada and Surrealist cinema has been kept alive by experimental filmmakers in Europe and America. This kind of cinema provided not only cinematic vocabulary, but strategies of anti-commercial, art/anti-art cinema, rooted on improvisation, a spirit of spontaneity and chance, complete disregard of storytelling, profuse use of Juxtaposition/collage/montage and representation of oneiric activity.(Kuenzli, 1996). The development of Dada and surrealist film set the basis of the two narrative primal elements ‘content and form’ based on the syntax of contrasting relations of visual elements; a tradition that found continuity in the works of Moholy-Nagy, Klee the Bauhaus school, Murphy, Cornell, Whitney, Hammid among several others. The cinematic language that emerged from this approach questioned certainty and stability of optical vision but above all backed up the critique of cultural myths of fact and reality. As a social discourse based on the use of images, these movements found their points of divergence. Surrealism was “a new moral philosophy, something more than a mere aesthetic” (Hammond1978) that hold contempt and desdain for those works that cared and limited to technical novelty. Somehow the “early and socially tingled idea of avant-garde was reborn in the radical aspirations of this movement”(Rees1999;19) Surrealist held high antipathy for nationalism, in fact the principles of surrealist philosophy were based on revolutionary values that challenged the values established by the state as total ruling entity.
In an article written by the surrealist poet-philosopher Robert Desnos, avant-garde cinema is described as kind of activity whose main characteristics are: ‘technical processes not solicited by the action, conventional acting, and overall, the pretence of expressing the arbitrary and complicated movements of the soul’ (Hammond 1978). In fact –he continues- ‘avant-garde in cinema as in literature and theatre, is a fiction’. Despite Desnos statements the belief in the “avant-garde” expression has evolved, fostered and embraced by the gallery system, the development of techniques and technologies and the celebration of ideals by the advertisement world and the overwhelming evolution of the Society of Spectacle in all kind of manifestations.
Some examples of the most representative early Surrealist and
Dadaist films can help to identify some of its characteristics in an attempt to
sum up the general features or perhaps
the ways of operation of
message/production that seem to prevail till our days:
-Anemic Cinema (1924-26)
by Marcel Duchamp is one of the experimental films of the time that focused on
the use of language and on the optical impressions caused by movement. 'The
film stresses a critique of the aesthetic vision as a constitutive element of
the character of an art object' (Judovits1996;47). The piece is the result of a juxtaposition of spirals and
written messages mounted on a rotating wheel, in which the messages are the
reference to the very image and to the whole of the composition; addressing the
character of the objects and the sense of vision attached to the meaning.
-The Return to Reason
(1923) by Man Ray is the result of photographic experiments on film strip that
are combined with a collage of abstract and iconic images. The film is a tree
minutes parody that explores the possibilities of vision in which 'the
connections between images are obscured and sense and the meaning are
questioned' (Rees 1999; 43)
-Diagonal Shympony (1925)
by Viking Eggeling is a 10 minute
abstract film that depicts a variation of musical patterns based on the use of
lines and curves. The film results
very similar to the cubist art, on the control of the form, the repetition of
content, and its self referential character.
-Un Chien Andalou (1929) according to Bunuel was the result of a dream in which the only rule was to open all doors to the irrational, in this way any image or idea used would not lend itself to explanation of any kind. (Bunuel 1984). The essence of the film was based on the absurd; even about the filming the director-screenwriter comments: ' there were five or six involved, and most of the time no one quite knew what he was doing' (Bunuel; 1984, 104). According to Sitney Un Chien Andalou is full of metaphors and symbols that may find reference in a concrete social reality although in essence depicts a three-dimensional illusionism as the rational ground for irrational juxtapositions (Sitney 1978). It is possible to find multiple interpretations of the symbolic value of the film nevertheless one of its main social implications is its role as the precedent of 'subverting the conventions of traditional narrative cinema of utilising the conventions of montage against the traditional grain of traditional filmic continuity that betray the spectator's expectations of coherent narrative' (Kuenzli 1996). But the significance of the film was over all attached to the philosophy of the Surrealist group whose structure had the quality of a political party with theoretical positions and politically committed with Communism initially and then with Troskyism.
It results unavoidable to find points of reference and to anchor the specific features of contemporary “avant-garde” film/ cinema to the development of these early movements. Till now we have not seen a radical o revolutionary form of expression but perhaps rather the development of evolutionary styles. The medium and the forms of production and distribution vary and change but the message and the visual content seems to be the same. The diversity of movements and groups that have embraced the ideals of the old avant-garde is noticeable vast. Nowadays the concepts: Experimental and Alternative' seem to be the right option to designate the kind of works that appear as indefinable and that go against the uses of a cinematic language. Within the production of contemporary visual narrative, according to one of its representatives; Malcolm Le Grice, ‘one of the experiences that opposed the reality of the medium to the dominant illusions of space and time behind the scene was ‘The Expanded Cinema’ (Le Griece; 1996). ‘This concept refers to a move by artist to break old artistic boundaries, explore cross media fusion, experiment with new technologies but most importantly to challenge the constraints of existing art discourses, the relationship between audience, the work and the artist’ (Le Griece 1996)… undoubtedly a concept that largely resembles the features of the Surrealist and Dadaist works. The evolution of the “Expanded or Experimental Cinema” opened various paths of visual exploration, it stressed the primacy of the work as material and as a process in which meaning is part of the medium or the medium it self. In tangible terms such evolution has been characterised by forms of representation based on juxtaposition, colour manipulation, time and space of projection, collage, light variation, etc; features that the Berlin Dadaist developed in collage and photomontage 'to produce simultaneous, disparate, multiple images that attempted to catch the dynamic of chaotic movement' (Kuenzli 1996)
In
the essay ‘Mapping the Multi-space’ Le Grice reviews and
sets the parameters of the historical development of Expanded Cinema and its
(possible) convergence with the emerging technologies of communication
reflecting over the differences of production and the forms of representation
in relation to the virtual and the
interactive features of these. The
essay closes reinforcing some of the questions addressed by a work of Grahame Weinbren called Sonata (1993) an early example of interactive cinema
in which the spectator becomes participant and the art work is a real experience
of collaboration in the production of meaning. Although Le Griece acknowledges
that the concept of Expanded Cinema ‘may not have any further use in the
digital context where the intersection of discourses defies continuity’
(Le Griece 1996) and in many cases coherence or logic… again old features
rejected by the early avant-garde movements.
The cinema as a form of expression of human desires, anxieties, values
and dreams; an audio-visual representation of the human mind, has become a
experimental lab in which the most recent discoveries in the creation of images
are applicable for the sake of illusion and the promise of new fantastic and
spectacular worlds. 'The dissolution of logic not only involves the development
and test of technology, but the psychological acceptance of the individual
(spectator/creator?) to a set of
tools-instruments that will allow
him/her to enter the dynamics of the social world' (Debord 1990). 'For its most history the avant-garde
has produced two kinds of film discourse: Short oblique films that set up
different space of viewing in which stable perception is interrupted and
non-identification of subject and image is aimed for. And those in which
elements of acting and narrative arouse the spectator's psychological
participation and consequently distance the viewer by disallowing empathy and
meaning' (Rees 1999; 46).
The raise of Digital technology has made possible the emergence of
diverse trends of image production-manipulation. The popularity of the forms of
media have produced ‘ a megamix of visual culture indiscriminately shared
with TV and popular culture’ (Rees
1999) Nevertheless the scenario and the abundance of electronic devises
and DIY apparatus have encouraged the development of ‘alternative’
forums of expression that prove as points of resistance; in which the figure of the media artisan
can still find the freedom to explore the social, cultural and economic
applications of high technology. A initial step on the evolution of the digital
system of production. (exploitation?).
The question now is, which is the next avant-garde? But before we could answer, we would have to consider factors that range from the impact of the communication industry and the technological rationality of consumption and market dominion spread by the economic system.
University of Westminster
Hypermedia Studies
Marco
Casado
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