PIERRE HÉBERT THE TECHNOLOGY OF TEARS (2005)

Director: Pierre Hébert

Year: 2005

Time: 14 mins

Music

Fred Frith

Tenko & John Zorn

Eye of Sound: Fred Frith once lamented that the dancers for Rosalind Newman's 1987 choreography The Technology of Tears complained about the music he had written for the piece: it was thought to be too rigid and mechanical for the fluidity of movements the dancers aimed at. Nevertheless, Frith's homonymous piece survived its original setting as one of his most beautiful scores, presenting an uncanny blend of musicianship, rhythmical accent, virtuosity, timbrical vigour, and emotional spunk that distinguishes it from most of its contemporaries. It was perhaps as an act of justice that Pierre Hébert decided to revisit Technology, for which he had designed the video sections (and the LP cover) and offer an overtly choreographed reinterpretation of the piece, one in which the fluidity of movements does not seem hindered by the invasive pulse of Frith's score. This decision was all the more justified as the project was originally conceived as an intimate collaboration between the three artists, in which the three artists would make their contributions evolve along with the others' and none would be condemned to be foreground or a mere scenic servant of the remaining elements. Hébert's Technology uses animations produced much later "to fill in the black hole in the continuity that had served the scenography for the dance piece", not being, therefore, a simple transposition of the choreography into animated drawings. For some sections, Hébert had Newman repeat the main solo dance of the piece in a studio and repeatedly drew it on film (as he often does in live performances), creating a visual "explosion of the solo itself" by means of a technique that bears the obvious influence of Len Lye, quoted by Hébert as the founding father of the relationship between animation and body movement. 

THE TECHNOLOGY OF TEARS

MARIA BEATTY THE BLACK GLOVE (1997)

Director: Maria Beatty

Year: 1997

Time: 27 mins

Music: John Zorn

Eye of Sound: No kinds of love are better than others. I suppose that most true BDSM enthusiasts may feel that Beatty's films are too arty, too slow, too glamorous and too soft for their own onanistic or viewing taste. And I bet that they appeal more to a sexually conservative crowd than to the average SM porn consumer. Beatty herself is a legend in "the field" as a performance artist, and is known to be an enthusiastic submissive practitioner. The Black Glove focuses precisely on the submissive end of the relationship, acted out by a character/actress named TV Sabrina, while the dominant character, known as Mistress Morgana, is far less explored by Beatty's camera. The film benefits from an insider's knowledge of techniques and fantasies and, despite its general "softness", may shock some viewers for its explicit shots. The gorgeous black and white footage is comparable to the finest noir movies, and part of the film's glamorous aura owes much to it. Despite this general glamor, also supported by model-like performers, I believe that The Black Glove is also an intentionally disturbing film that proposes a not so peaceful gaze at the world of domination, submissiveness, and the dark forces behind human sexuality. John Zorn's score is certainly responsible for much of this unsettling result: a sober, fireworks-free concrète collage of single-note tones and hi-fi field recordings that range from humming voice arrangements and snippets to fiery and watery soundscapes. On their own, perhaps, the images and the music could be more psychologically neutral, but their combination results in an unsettling, however fascinating, experience.

 

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=KVWJWLIZ

KEN JACOBS CELESTIAL SUBWAY LINES/SALVAGING NOISE (2004)

Director: Ken Jacobs

Year: 2004

Time: 67 mins

Music: John Zorn & Ikue Mori

Eye of Sound: Ken Jacobs flows with a sense of history. As a septuagenarian artist, Jacobs is himself a human inscription of history. But it is through his works that this temporal depth goes beyond a youngster's banal recognition of a veteran's memory of things past. Many of his latest films have been exploring the memory of cinema, that insidious instrument that single-handedly defined the 20th century and forever changed our cognitive and mnemonic habits. There is thus something simultaneously paradoxical and redundant in exploring the history of cinema as an art in itself; the memory of memory is more than a meta-exercise in remembering, it is a thrust as twisted and potentially deranging as the tale of the woman who gave birth to herself. Jacobs has been making extensive use of found-footage, but with an unique approach that somehow leaves the integrity of his materials untouched: rarely there's a juxtaposition of sources, and the used footage is given he privilege of standing on its own, distortion and corrosion coming from within the film itself. Another approach has been the use and reinvention of projection machinery that cinema history forgot. The magic lantern, which Jacobs has been developing in the past few years, is a precursor to the slide projector and represents nothing less than the essence of cinema and photography: the capture and projection of light for the creation of visual illusion. With the addition of a hallucinatory stroboscopic effect, Jacobs "invented" the Nervous Magic Lantern, a device which allows him to further complicate our notions of cinema: film here becomes an improvisational material, and the session is indeed a performance as irrepeatable as any other. Celestial Subway Lines/Salvaging Noise, selected from four performances, is Jacobs' most notorious exercise with the Lantern simply because it's been released through the renowned NY label Tzadik. John Zorn and Ikue Mori provide a suitable soundtrack for the Lantern's unreal visuals. Dreamy but haunting, these electronic soundscapes add different layers of intensity to an otherwise stable visual input, ranging from destructive industrial noise to distorted vocal samples, concrète recordings and abstract electronic tones. In such circumstances, of course, the soundtrack is highly intrusive and determines much of the understanding of the visual projections. The final result is a tremendously disturbing hallucinatory experience in which the illusion of tridimensional depth is a constant challenge to perception and the eerie soundtrack adds an element of danger and nightmare to what could well be a psychologically neutral event. Watch this at your own risk, but do watch it.

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EBBA JAHN RISING TONES CROSS (1984)

Director: Ebba Jahn

Year: 1984

Time: 112 mins

Music

Peter Kowald Quintet

Peter Kowald Trio

John Zorn & Wayne Horvitz

Billy Bang's Forbidden Planet

William Parker & Patricia Nicholson Ensemble

Charles Tyler Quintet

Don Cherry & The Sound Unity Orchestra

Jemeel Moondoc Sextet

Irène Schweizer Trio

Peter Brotzman Ensemble

[see comments for details]

Eye of Sound: It may sound difficult to believe it, but most of the artists listed above were once striving for recognition in the jazz scene and fighting for sheer survival. Ebba Jahn's Rising Tone Cross captures a moment when these artists were just starting to create a "scene", when their sparkling creativity was not yet comforted by certainty and success. More interestingly, perhaps, the film deals with issues of class and race and with the differences between the social contexts of improvised music in Europe and America, challenging many assumptions about musicianship, career building, and the possibilities for an artistic livelihood. What really distinguishes this from other "jazz films", however, is the visual and narrative focus on New York as the metaphorical force behind the musician's creative burst, portraying it as a dirty, poor, rough and lively city not yet tamed by shinny images of  success and bourgeois comfort.

- links removed by request -

JOSEPH CORNELL:BY NIGHT WITH TORCH AND SPEAR (1942)

Director: Joseph Cornell
Music: John Zorn, Marc Ribot, Carol Emmanuel,  Shanir Blumenkranz
Year: 1942
Time: 8 mins
Eye of Sound: Found-footage upside-down, backwards spinning. Industrialization reversed, or the charm of the noble savage.

see comments for download links