I’ve had the great pleasure of seeing several versions of a simultaneous presentation of films from Madison Brookshire’s Color Series with Tashi Wada’s untitled composition, performed by Tashi Wada (organ) and Mark So (harmonium).
Each time was different: the performance of Wada’s piece was different, sometimes different films were shown (usually No. 6 alone, though once No. 5 alone, and once No. 4 and No. 5), the situation in which the work was presented—from a gallery to a former church/now living space to the theater at Redcat. The films, made without a camera by giving timing instructions for the lab, each present gradual changes of color.
The least successful presentation, though perhaps the most impressive, was at Redcat, where the work became overly cinematic. The film looked stunning to be sure, but it lost one of the key qualities that makes the work so fascinating, which is that in fact it is not a “film” in the sense that one comes to expect at all, but is an object occupying not static physical space, but an evolving duration. Later this month he’ll be showing the complete 70 minute Color Series at USC as part of the Cinematheque108 series.
At the Hammer right now, Paul Sietsema has a 16mm work entitled Anticultural Positions on loop in the gallery. Originally delivered in place of a lecture, the work shows a series of static overhead shots of the artists’ worktable, each one for a few seconds before fading to another image. These sequences are interspersed with a black screen that has text along the bottom, which is edited/reworked from a lecture by Jean Dubuffet. Over the course of the piece, the text has a profound impact upon the reception of the visual images, transforming the relationship one has to them, and how they are read. In a sort of interesting analogy, in a Redcat program called The Artist Theater Program curated by Erika Vogt (also including Brookshire’s film described above), a short 16mm film of Sietsema’s titled Analyse d’une Epave was shown twice, with several other works screened between the two viewings. It had the same sort of effect as the text in Anticultural Positions, where the experience of the other artists’ works transformed how the film was perceived the second screening.