HTTP://WWW.LUXONLINE.ORG.UK/GALLERY_VIEWER/ARK_GV/IMAGE/8 43121/INDEX.HTML.
195
STRUCTURALISM
The term structuralism was used by P. Adams Sitney in relation to the condensed forms of films by filmmakers such as Paul Sharits, Hollis Frampton, Michael Snow and Tony Conrad that emerged in the sixties and early seventies. "Structural film" artists created simplified, sometimes even predetermined art. It was the shape of the film that was crucial while the content was often only of peripheral consideration. Sitney identified four formal characteristics common in Structural films:
1. a fixed camera position
2. a flicker effect (strobing due to the intermittent nature of film) 3. loop printing
4. Rephotography (of the film frame).2
These four characteristics may not all be present at once in the structuralist film but they are all strategies present in the Sherwin films under consideration in this chapter.
The structuralism of the American avant-garde took another more rigorous Marxist approach when it made its way to the shores of the United Kingdom. Peter Gidal, one of the most active members of the London Filmmaker‘s Co-Operative, set out the conditions of what he terms structuralist/materialist film in his 1976 essay ―Theory and Definition of Structural/Materialist Film.‖3
Gidal uses the term structural/materialist rather than Sitney‘s term structuralist to describe roughly the same body of films. Gidal is critical of what he saw as American structural film‘s romanticism and thinks that sound film must have a material function to operate usefully and equal emphasis must be put on both halves of the structuralist/materialist term.
According to Gidal the structural/materialist film attempts to be a non-illusionist form of film that ―deals with devices that result in the demystification or attempted demystification of the film process.‖4
These films do not represent or document anything but attempt to destroy illusion and decipher the structure of film and reconstruct, clarify and analyse it. In addition they have a dialectical function that works in opposition to dominant narrative cinema so they sought to eradicate any content with which identification could be made. Sherwin‘s films use geometric, abstract and non-figurative images. There are no people (intentionally) present in his optical sound films and if they are present, they serve the same function as the abstract images.
2
Sitney, op. cit. 3
Gidal, op. cit. 4
196 The process of film rather than the content was of the utmost importance of the structuralist/materialist filmmakers. Gidal and the members of the London Filmmakers‘ Co-Operative viewed each film as a record of its own making rather than a reproduction so essentially each film is a production rather than a reproduction. The viewer is both watching the film and also watching the film coming into being. This is clearly demonstrated in Sherwin‘s optical sound films such as Cycles #1 (1972) and Phase Loop (1971) as they both involve direct-to-film cameraless animation techniques.
The structuralist/materialist filmmakers used devices such as loops to minimise the content so that the film could function simply as a film. In addition the use of the loop steers the film past its content and brings back the film event again and again. The structural film also uses specific devices such as repetition within the duration of the film in an attempt to decipher the film‘s construction and decipher the transformations. Sherwin‘s most marked use of the loop is in Phase Loop, an entire film constructed out of a single loop. These are all devices also used by composers such as Steve Reich, composers of musique concrète and electronic composers like Delia Derbyshire.
The structuralist/materialists employed real-time single takes or segments in structuralist/materialist films for their actual duration. They eschewed the idea of the illusionistic time presented by the Eisensteinian theories of montage present in narrative film.5 Sherwin‘s optical sound films, reflecting their relationship to music, unfold in real- time.
The idea of self-reflexiveness is an important precept of structural-materialism. There is an inherent self-consciousness in their modes of filmmaking with film reflexiveness functioning to present a sense consciousness to the self. The process of production becomes interlinked with filmic practice of viewing a production. The filmmakers are constantly drawing attention to the existence of the film as a construct. Sherwin makes the viewer aware of the materiality of the film, both visually and sonically. Earlier in this chapter I drew attention to Gidal‘s assertion that technique and aesthetic are inseparable.6 Further to this he writes that ―access to involvement with technique is the basis of all arts that seek to ask question‖7
and states that involvement with technique has two results. The first is that inventions make the aesthetic possible but are also inseparable from the aesthetic. The second is that aesthetic usage is intimately linked
5
For a greater explanation of Eisenstein‘s theories of montage see Sergei Eisenstein, Film Form: Essays in Film Theory, 1949, London, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
6
Gidal, op. cit., p. 18. 7
197 to technical potential.8 This is certainly true in the case of Sherwin‘s optical sound films. His thorough exploration of the technical processes of film became the basis of his audio- visual aesthetic. Likewise his audio-visual aesthetic influenced the techniques that he developed. In a video interview with the Lux film archive Sherwin states:
I kind of like the idea of the sound being something that is integral right from the start and as it even comes out of the same processes as the picture. So the ones where I‘m using the, what I call optical sound films where I‘m taking, say, images of a pattern or it might be of a staircase or railings or something and those images fall into the soundtrack area and they are simultaneously making the soundtrack so that‘s one kind of way of sort of physical connection between the picture and sound.9
This echoes McLaren‘s intentions with his visualisation of the sonic material of the soundtrack on both the sound and visual tracks in Synchromy.
As the structuralist/materialists saw the need for a practice integrated with theory a problem arose over the question of continuing to make films without a distinct theory. Both Sherwin and Gidal admit that their films were created before a unifying theory was in place and that the theory came later. Essentially structuralist/materialist film theory is a retrospective history, which functioned as a basis for its own practice but even a retrograde work was a necessary step towards being equipped to deal with structuralist/materialist film. In spite of this contention Sherwin does seem to have an underlying cohesive strategy to his optical sound films that was conceived prior to making them. Each film is concerned with investigating the correlation between sound and image. According to Sherwin what links the films is:
... the physical correspondence between sound and image. In many of the films, sounds are produced directly by the images that we are seeing. The idea of optical sound may seem like a contradiction but in the analogue medium of cine-film, perhaps surprisingly, sound and image are both carried in visual form on the same filmstrip.10