I went to see the VanDerBeek Exhibit with Paul last Thursday. My observation was that VanDerBeek was interested in exploring different forms of media. He had paintings, collages, montages, woodwork and metal etchings. It all seemed to come together when he discovered film or video editing as a new media and started bringing all his work together in it.
We saw five short films made by VanDerBeek. These films have never been seen before. This was the first time that they were opening it to the public. So, this was something the curator told us not to miss out on. Of the five, two films really stood out to me. One of them was from 1965, called ‘See, Saw, Seams’. It was 9:06 mins long in black and white with sound. It was a very interesting composition of images, because they blended in with each other very subtly, but when they transformed into their full image it was something that you didn’t expect to see. For example, a face of a young man would transform into a landscape, a woman’s breasts who very slowly and subtly transform into a landscape of trees and her neck into a castle, an eye of a bird would transform into a bridge. The background music was composed of drums and that kept me quite engaged as well. I got the feeling that VanDerBeek really understood his medium of choice at this point. The flow of the video, even though it was over 9 mins long, kept me engrossed. It really displayed what he wrote:
“Juxtaposed to what we see, is what we think we see... that is, the memory of the dream is as real as the dream itself, but it is completely different from the dream. This film is an experiment in animation, in which the eye of the viewer travel deeper and deeper and deeper into each scene, finding new relationships and visual metaphors in what appears, at first sight, a simple scene. Symbolic intention is the mother of symbolic retention... that is, sight you are... if you think you are.”
The second video was titled “Spherical Space No.1”. This was made in 1967, it was 5 minutes long and this one was in color with sound. The video was made with a spherical lens which took 195 degrees of sight on film. The best I could describe it was like looking at a large view through a peep hole in a door. Only, the view moved along with the dancer in the nude. The dancer contoured her body to the trees and the walls. She did her ballet around on the grass and just seemed intertwined with nature.
I am not sure how many people in class follow Greek mythology. However, this particular video made me think of the Bacchae/Maenads. Bacchae women were a cult that celebrated and worshipped the god of wine, Dionysus. They were also known as Maenads. Part of this worship or celebration took place in the woods. The Maenads would dance and revel in a sort of a trance after they had much wine and following that they would they would kill a wild bull, tearing it apart from its limbs and eating its body parts, raw. A ritual called ‘Sparagmos’. So, its not so much the ritual, but the pre-cursor to that ritual, the dancing and being inter-twined with nature that this video captured, that really took me back to my classical mythology days in college. Overall, it was a great exhibit.
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