ANDREW PEKLER HORROR SALVAGE (2010)

Director: Andrew Pekler

Year: 2010

Time: 6 mins

Music: Andrew Pekler

Eye of Sound: In his classic piece on screamscapes, Gregory Whitehead defined the scream as a primal outburst of the "pressures of the unspeakable" within an individual body. But the way this manifestation of the unfathomable has been represented in cinema follows a strictly codified language in which invention is replaced by convention, therefore stripping it of its potential for derangement. Andrew Pekler's Horror Salvage perhaps doesn't go as far as presenting an exhaustive "taxonomy of screams" in cinematic forms, but by editing a collection of such disruptive events out of context and sequencing them according to a rhythmical and "grammatical" design, it exposes both their syntagmatic void and part of their paradigmatic logic. Pekler thus divides his study in three short sections that reflect the internal organisation of the kino-scream: intensification and acceleration, followed by a "reflection punctuated by shocks" and concluded with deceleration and/or relief. The piece is accompanied by left-over fragments from Pekler's last album, craftily editing different electroacoustic soundscapes to great effect. While it is unlikely that Horror Salvage will prompt viewers to track down all the horror and sci-fi films from which it was made,  it will at least relieve them, as Pekler himself says, of the task of watching the 100 sub-B flicks it condenses. 

HORROR SALVAGE