[Frameworks] Annette Michelson and Peter Gidal

[Dave Tetzlaff]

> My notion of "including Ono and Ackerman [sic]" is, you're right, wrongheaded.

Sorry if the double-negative was unclear, but I was saying including those makers is NOT wrongheaded at all. The gag (I was going for a bot o' irony) was that your thinking that doing so 'went against the grain' was 'wrongheaded', in that there isn't really a genre grain to go against. Rather there are fiber strands going different directions, criss-crossing, bumping into each other, tangling contentiously. Thus, my thesis is that drawing boundaries defined by Gidal's polemical principles, or even his choices of what to argue against, is kind of against the grain of the larger 'thing' Gidal was partaking in, which I might guess he saw 'dialectically' (??). 

> Why Kubelka's "Arunulf Rainer" doesn't make the cut.  Compositional rather than algorithmic perhaps?  

Sounds right to me. I suppose you could argue that 'Arnulf Rainer' and 'Adebar' are 'materialist' but not 'structuralist'. 

> Ono's Four (Bottoms) and Akerman's La Chambre, would they please him at all?

Qua Mulvey, "please" might not be the right term… ;-)

> Or be infuriating because…

What? There are structuralist films that AREN'T infuriating? ;-)
At least to someone…
(Did Gidal ever have anything to say about 'Awful Backlash' or 'Bleu Shut'?)

> Once I've moved to "relevant to the debates" then we still need to either resurrect or have those debates.

Indeed. I didn't mean to suggest 'were relevant to the debates at the time'. Nor 'have been taken as relevant in the literature then to now.' If you think the Ono and Akerman are relevant, then they are. Regardless of what Gidal thinks of those works, I'm guessing he'd be pleased that someone is working through his ideas with work no one's considered before, testing film against theory, and theory against film - regardless of whether he agreed with your conclusions (not that you need to have anything but interesting questions…) 

> I say Ono and Akerman become more interesting when considered in relation to these debates…

'Nobody's explored that before' = 'publishable journal articles' = 'how to get rid of the "visiting" in front of your job title… Or better yet, a book contract. Not only may there be enough films by women (old and new) that haven't been been considered in light of these dabates, but AFAIK crunching Gidal-relevant theories of the politics of representation against feminist theory (new and old) is relatively unexplored territory as well..
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I can't speak to Gidal's standards, but as _I_ understand it, "unity of time and space" hardly disqualifies a work from any 'structural/structuralist' rubric I can imagine. ('Wavelength', after all, has a unity of filmic time and space, if not shot in real time.) I think 'algorithmic vs. compositional' is in the right directions, but I'm not comfortable calling some of the simpler "predetermined shapes/outlines" (Sitney) "algorithms", as to me that implies a somewhat more complex formula, and one that usually establishes some pattern of change over the running time (e.g. Critical Mass, Serene Velocity, Print Generation, etc.) It's more like the maker appears to give up some choices we'd see in other 'not-structural' films to that predetermined concept. Not that this giving-up alone makes a film 'structural/ist', but it seems to be a necessary condition. "Unity of time and space" can be some kind of 'not-editing where'd you expect there to be editing'. I'd put 'Highway Landscape' in the 'structural' bin, or at least not toss it out… The Fluxus slo-mo single-take films count too, IMHO, and while we're on all things Ono, I'd suggest Mieko/Chieko Shiomi's 'Disappearing Music for Face' might fit your search, if you haven't already included it.

I did think of one fairly recent (and likely not well known) work in light of your query: 'Summer Solstice' by Nina Yuen (one of Louise Borque's former students). It's a long take with the camera mounted in a car, pointed out the front windsheild. As the car (driven by Yuen's mother, whose voice is heard on the soundtrack) moves back and forth along the length of a driveway, Yuen enters and exits the frame performing a sort of ritual dance for the solstice. Louise showed it, among other works by young women makers, at a feminism and avant grade conference at the U. of Hartford back in the previous decade. I thought it was very cool…

Cheers, and thanks for the engaging dialog…

djt