[Frameworks] Annette Michelson and Peter Gidal

[Jonathan Walley]

Interesting question. Keep in mind that Gidal also included and essay on Ken Jacobs’ Tom Tom... (by Lois Mendelson and Bill Simon, also from Artforum) that he (Gidal) expressly marked as “symptomatic of current misunderstanding” and “fetishization of process and idealization of the formal in its weak sense.” Vidal attributed the same “blindness” to the film itself. So he was open to polemically including “bad” essays.

He doesn’t include a similar note about the Michelson piece, though he only includes an excerpt. Perhaps he found that excerpt less “wrongheaded” than other passages in the essay. The entire Snow section of Structural Film Anthology is on the polemical side, including the rather pissy letter from Snow to Gidal in response to the latter’s comments about Back-Forth. 

Sort of an answer?

Dr. Jonathan Walley
Associate Professor and Chair
Department of Cinema
Denison University
walleyj at denison.edu


> On Feb 22, 2016, at 11:00 AM, John Muse <jmuse at sonic.net> wrote:
> 
> Can someone briefly explain--or point me to resources that explain--how it is that in 1976 Peter Gidal can include Annette Michelson's June 1971 Artforum piece "Towards Snow" in his Structural Film Anthology when in the September 1971 issue of Artforum he excoriates her and this piece in particular, beginning a letter to the editor, 
> 
>> In a remarkably wrongheaded piece, Annette Michelson, in the june Artforum asserts, with reference to Michael Snow's film, Wavelength, "Snow has redefined filmic space as that of action.
> 
> "… remarkably wrongheaded…" is certainly polemical, but there she is in the anthology.  What happened?  Was her response to him persuasive?   
> 
> I'll take my answer off the air.  
> 
> j/PrM
> 
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> 
> john muse
> visiting assistant professor of independent college programs
> haverford college
> http://www.finleymuse.com
> http://www.haverford.edu/faculty/jmuse
> http://haverford.academia.edu/JohnMuse
> 
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