Cinema is often seen as a passively received art form; a film is projected on a screen, and an audience absorbs the image and the sound. Many mainstream films treat viewers in precisely this way, demanding and expecting little from them. But there are also works that actively encourage engagement by making viewers aware of their viewing and listening patterns. This is precisely what most of the best avant-garde and experimental films do. With his series Feedback part 2Anthology Film Archives presents a range of titles that specifically fold image, sound, or both in on themselves, turning the feedback loop of an audiovisual phenomenon into its own art.
Anthology sees this as sort of a sequel to its series. Documentary return from the beginning of this year. This program has brought to the fore the relationship between documentaries and their subjects, featuring films whose participants are not simply observed by filmmakers, but push back the way they are portrayed or otherwise shape the films around them. Works by Lizzie Borden and Jean Rouch were part of the series, as well as an episode of Michael Apted At the top series and the seminal of William Greaves Symbiopsychotaxiplasm, Take One.
While this follow-up series, co-presented with the Media Art Archive Electronic Arts Intermix, approaches the concept of feedback more literally, it is useful to keep in mind the artistic context of the first program which is directly shaped by its own medium in the process of its creation. Rather than a simple act of capturing and displaying material, filmmaking is a deeply reactive process. By demonstrating this quality through works that experiment with cinema put in abyss or other methods of superimposing images and/or sounds, Feedback encourages curious viewers to think more deeply about everything they watch.
The techniques exhibited are impressive in variety. A screening features films made by re-developing and reprinting the same strips of celluloid multiple times, creating arresting experiences in visual grain. Another features shorts that use an “analog” type of visual feedback by pointing cameras at mirrors. In Robert Morris’s “Mirror” (1971), for example, the artist walks backwards through the snow while holding a mirror, the reflection accentuating the infinite whiteness.
The most obvious example of cinematic feedback comes from video – a format often overlooked in discussions of film history, situated between the classic standard of celluloid and the dramatic upheaval of digital. The malleable nature of television signals and video tapes has long made them fertile media for artists. The series features several programs featuring video feedback experiences. “Strobe Ode” by Stan VanDerBeek (1977) uses a flashing strobe effect to alter an otherwise placid central abstract image. In “Einstine” (1968), Eric Siegel increasingly distorts a still image of Albert Einstein until it turns into a restless, static pool of color and distortion.
Experiments with television broadcasting are equally fascinating. “Video Tape Study No. 3” by Nam June Paik and Jud Yalkut is described by the AFA as an “intervention”, featuring footage of press conferences held by Lyndon Johnson and former New York Mayor John Lindsay. The projection is also a collective project from 1969 which included Paik, The medium is the mediumone of the earliest examples of video art to premiere on public television.
One of the most intriguing programs in the series highlights work that attempts to capture commentary via celluloid film itself. In 1974’s “Film Feedback,” Tony Conrad engineered a near-real-time experience by setting up a mechanism where the film would be shot, immediately processed, and then screened. Takashi Ito’s “Spacy” (1981) is a disorienting experience that places a gymnasium inside a Droste effect, the camera dipping endlessly into portraits of the gym, in the gym, in the gym, seemingly endlessly. The short film defamiliarizes a mundane space, transforming it from a functional room into a canvas.
The extent of Feedback part 2 is impressive. In addition to those discussed here, it features films by Andy Warhol, Richard Serra, Charles and Ray Eames, and many more. The program even includes avant-garde touches unlikely to be found in mainstream television, such as the kaleidoscopic and psychedelic opening sequences from the venerable British science fiction series Doctor Who. It’s one of the boldest and most innovative repertoire programs to hit New York this year, and it shouldn’t be missed.
Feedback part 2 screens to Anthology Film Archive (32 Second Avenue, East Village, Manhattan) from July 21 to August 2.
