The modesty of the avant-garde’s demands has economic grounds of whose existence they themselves are only partly aware. Great apparati like the opera, the stage, the press, etc,. impose their views as it were incognito. For a long time now they have taken the handiwork (music, writing, criticism, etc.) of intellectuals who share in their profits—that is, of men who are economically committed to the prevailing system but are socially near-proletarian—and processed it to make fodder for their public entertainment machine, judging it by their own standards and guiding it into their own channels; meanwhile the intellectuals themselves have gone on supposing that the whole business is concerned only with the presentation of their work, is a secondary process which has no influence over their work but merely wins influence for it. This muddled thinking which overtakes musicians, writers and critics as soon as they consider their own situation has tremendous consequences to which far too little attention is paid. For by imagining that they have got hold of an apparatus which in fact has got hold of them they are supporting an apparatus which is out of their control, which is no longer (as they believe) a means of furthering output but has become an obstacle to output, and specifically to their own output as soon as it follows a new and original course which the apparatus finds awkward or opposed to its own aims. Their output then becomes a matter of delivering the goods. Values evolve which are based on the fodder principle. And this leads to a general habit of judging works of art by their suitability for the apparatus without ever judging the apparatus by its suitability for the work. People say, this or that is a good work; and they mean (but do not say) good for the apparatus. Yet this apparatus is conditioned by the society of the day and only accepts what can keep it going in that society. We are free to discuss any innovation which doesn’t threaten its social function—that of providing an evening’s entertainment. We are not free to discuss those which threaten to change its function, possibly by fusing it with the educational system or with the organs of mass communication. Society absorbs via the apparatus whatever it needs in order to reproduce itself. This means that an innovation will pass if it is calculated to rejuvenate existing society, but not if it is going to change it—irrespective whether the form of the society in question is good or bad.
Category Archives: Re-search
Excerpt from Brecht’s Short Description of a New Technique for Actors; The A-Effect as a Procedure in Everyday Life
A common use of the A-effect is when someone says: “Have you ever really looked carefully at your watch?” The questioner knows that I’ve looked at it often enough, and now his question deprives me of the sight which I’ve grown used to and which accordingly has nothing more to say to me. I used to look at it to see the time, and now when he asks me in this importunate way I realize that I have given up seeing the watch itself … Similarly it is an alienation effect of the simplest sort if a business discussion starts off with the sentence: “Have you ever thought what happens to to the waste from your factory which is pumped into the river twenty-four hours a day?” This waste wasn’t just swept down the river unobserved; it was carefully channeled into the river; men and machines have worked on it; the river has changed color, the waste has flowed away most conspicuously, but just as waste. It was superfluous to the process of manufacture, and now it is to become material for manufacture; our eye turns to it with interest.
British Sounds, by Jean-Luc Godard
Duration: 50 minutes
Director: Jean-Luc Godard & Jean-Henri Roger
The Dziga Vertov Group put out several Maoist/Marxist films, including this one. The main idea of British Sounds is exactly the soundtrack; the images are primarily still, with minimal camera movement: mostly tracks and pans.
British Sounds is didactic and academic, but not without artistic merit, particularly the use of red and the jump-cutting fists that punch through the British flag repeatedly. The film has six parts, including the famous ten-minute track through an auto assembly line and a four-minute shot of a woman’s nude torso; it is also filled with speech, whether it’s a text from Engels read aloud or a newscaster talking about the necessities of burning women and children. A real agit-prop film, but, as Godard said about the later Vladimir and Rosa, also “a time piece.”
Underground, by Emile de Antonio
Underground is a 1976 documentary film about the Weathermen, the militant faction of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) who fought to overthrow the U.S. government during the 1960’s and 1970’s. The film consists of interviews with members of the group after they went underground and footage of the anti-war and civil rights protests during this time period. It was directed by Emile de Antonio, Haskell Wexler and Mary Lampson, who were subpoenaed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in an attempt to confiscate the film footage in order to gain information that would help them arrest the Weathermen. Read More
New Life for Verizon Building
The Verizon building at 375 Pearl Street, which had plan for a complete redesign of its characteristic stone facade, will have a new life as one of the world’s tallest datacenters. More at NYT. http://www.lancewakeling.com/?s=verizon
Little Midtown
Little Midtown is a short video about the “Queens West” neighborhood in Long Island City, New York. The informal commentary focuses on Center Boulevard, a four-block street on the west point of the Borough.
A Trailer for Research Materials from LEO Rising
A Trailer for Research Materials from LEO Rising is a short video from and about a research project that may or may not lead up to an actual project. The future possible project draws its text from law enforcement discussion boards and develops a vocabulary of dance moves inspired by LE training videos.
Panasonic TM700 Test Video Compilation Film
Panasonic TM700 Test Video Compilation Film is a video based on an amateur genre of online videos, in which the content is an expression of the user’s interaction with the product. The “test video” is often compiled from footage recorded at or near the camera owner’s home or workplace. The genre differs from the home video in that the subject of the test video is not the family environment but the user himself establishing a relationship with the camera. There is an unintentional surrealist aspect inherent to the genre, where one shot does not follow the next, and a sometimes humorous dissonance between music and visuals.