[Frameworks] Annette Michelson and Peter Gidal

Tue Feb 23 19:12:45 UTC 2016

Thanks so much for this, Mark.  You've given us so much delicious food for thought!

On Feb 23, 2016, at 7:28 AM, Mark Webber <mark at markwebber.org.uk> wrote:

> The Visible Press is about to publish a collection of writings by Peter Gidal titled “Flare Out: Aesthetics 1966–2016”, which I have also edited. Please see below for further information. The book does include Gidal’s letter to Artforum, alongside many other texts from the past 50 years. The full table of contents - and the possibility to order online (since we don’t have distribution) - are at http://www.thevisiblepress.com/flare-out/
> 
> I do know that Gidal and Michelson are on good terms and have been for many years since this exchange, and I’m quite sure that the decision of what to include, or to not include, in the “Structural Film Anthology” would have been his. I asked him about John Muse’s question over the inclusion of Annette’s piece on Michael Snow and his response was as follows :- 
> 
> “because it was the most appropriate, and dominant, and wrongheaded american formalist (ps: the very opposite of say schklovskian formalism) response to mike snow's film, and the anthology, like e.g.the co-op cinema,wasn't there to impose one position but to problematize, in the case of the co-op, film, in the case of the anthology, film theory and criticism. i knew i could've written a far more appropriate and radical piece on wavelength, but chose not to. my "reply" in a sense was my piece on his films back and forth and standard time. 
> 
> “and this is not to ignite some old battles with annette as i have no intention of not getting along with her famously, same goes for her i am sure.” 
> 
> The book will be published on 11 April 2016 but is now available to pre-order. I will post further information, including details of related events, on Frameworks at a later date. 
> 
> Mark Webber
> 
> ...
> 
> PETER GIDAL / FLARE OUT: AESTHETICS1966–2016
> Edited by Mark Webber and Peter Gidal
> The Visible Press, April 2016
> 
> “Flare Out: Aesthetics 1966–2016” is a collection of essays by Peter Gidal that includes “Theory and Definition of Structural/Materialist Film” and other texts on metaphor, narrative, and against sexual representation. Also discussed in their specificity are works by Samuel Beckett, Thérèse Oulton, Gerhard Richter and Andy Warhol. Throughout, Gidal’s writing attempts a political aesthetics, polemical as well as theoretical. One of the foremost experimental film-makers in Britain since the late 1960s, Peter Gidal was a central figure at the London Film-Makers’ Co-operative, and taught advanced film theory at the Royal College of Art. His previous books include "Andy Warhol: Films and Paintings (1971)”, “Understanding Beckett” (1986) and “Materialist Film” (1989).
> 
> “An essential point of access to the questions and considerations through which Peter Gidal has consistently fought for film – and vision itself – as a process of interrogation. This collection renews the agency of his primary question: ‘What is it to view, how to view the unknown?’”
>  (Stuart Comer, Museum of Modern Art, New York)
> 
> “Radical, spirited, provocative … Inspiring and invaluable, really. In here we find a welcome voice, singularly unpatronising, nuanced yet fearless in the face of the mind-narrowing opacity of ‘everyday life’.”
>  (Cerith Wyn Evans)
> 
> ISBN 978-0-9928377-1-6 
> Hardcover, 288 pages including 16pp images
> Square-backed case, debossed cover and spine, ribbon marker, h/t bands
> Price: £18 plus shipping
> 
> www.thevisiblepress.com
> www.facebook.com/thevisiblepress
> @thevisiblepress
> 
>> On 23 Feb 2016, at 12:00, frameworks-request at jonasmekasfilms.com wrote:
>> 
>> Date: Mon, 22 Feb 2016 11:00:15 -0500
>> From: John Muse <jmuse at sonic.net>
>> To: Experimental Film Discussion List <frameworks at jonasmekasfilms.com>
>> Subject: [Frameworks] Annette Michelson and Peter Gidal
>> Message-ID: <166D25F7-8DD8-4BE7-A6E0-1D42D832C561 at sonic.net>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252
>> 
>> 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
> 
> _______________________________________________
> FrameWorks mailing list
> FrameWorks at jonasmekasfilms.com
> https://mailman-mail5.webfaction.com/listinfo/frameworks
> 

j/PrM

*************************************************

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

*************************************************