Five Modernist Essays  (1998)

Single channel video
Stereo audio
2:55 exhibition loop    1:00 sample


     A temporal montage in video, animation and sound reconsidering Ivens' Rain (1929) and Ruttmann's Berlin: Symphony of a Great City (1927).  Via Vertov, the piece suggests again the idea of film as a means of perception and interpretation grounded in its own reality.

     I sometimes use narrative and visual materials as motifs or elements in time structures suggested by strategies in musical composition, a method of working that has existed in experimental film art since the 1920's.  The structure of the video and music in Five Modernist Essays proceeds according to practices encountered in serial or twelve-tone composition.  I composed the music using a tone row from Webern's Op. 24 Konzert (B-Bb-D; Eb-G-F#; G#-E-F; C-C#-A), taking advantage of the three-note clusters which structure the row.  In the video, visual motifs from Ivens' Rain and Ruttmann's Berlin: Symphony of a Great City likewise occur in groups of three, layered in clusters or overlapped in linear development.   Both the music and the video are structured by means of sequence, reiteration, and imitation--the most conservative of devices.