[Frameworks] Annette Michelson and Peter Gidal

[Deke Dusinberre]

Hello John (and Frameworkers),

On 23 Feb 2016, at 12:00, frameworks-request at jonasmekasfilms.com wrote:
> -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…”
That was Peter, through and through. And perhaps still is, if he hasn’t changed over the years. Our paths haven’t crossed much in recent decades, so the comments below pertain to the time and place in question (1970s, London).
Gidal’s favorite rhetorical trope was the oxymoron: assert something and then immediately contradict it (often in parentheses). This tactic regularly featured in his writings of the day and could also be seen in his films in so far as one shot was often sabotaged by the following shot, either through seemingly pointless repetition or through a troubling tentativeness. The reader/beholder couldn’t help but wonder, “What’s this guy really trying to say?”
His strategy was partly inspired, as Gidal himself acknowledged, by the structural contradictions in Beckett’s fiction (blurring of tense, place, and narrator), and it certainly had artistic ramifications. But it was also a personality trait, and an infuriatingly charming one at that. Peter loved a polemic, and could make outrageous assertions about things and people, but never with malice; his gibes were always delivered with a big “gee, folks” grin and an uplifting American intonation that implicitly conveyed, “This all just for fun, right, guys? Hey, let’s go get a beer.” 
Since he behaved this way in general, Michelson is not particularly relevant here, except that she was a high-profile target at the time: he could take a public pot-shot or two while simultaneously striking up an alliance. 
In short, Peter never “excoriated” anyone, he ran Gidalian rings around them.

Fans should note that the anthology of Gidal’s essays edited by Mark Webber will soon be hitting the bookshelves ("Flare Out: Aesthetics 1966–2016").

HTH,

Deke Dusinberre
Paris 

DekeD at orange.fr
Tel: (33-1) 42.54.38.05

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