Tuesday 19 November 2013

What is reality? Neuf: The Art of Experimental film in Cambridge


Neuf 3

I am no art critic, just a punter. My subject is Neuf, the experimental film group in Cambridge. It holds an annual showing of its work. Not in the formal setting of a gallery or cinema, but in people’s homes, projected on walls in bedrooms or kitchens. They are well attended events. This year’s, its third, was at Ernie’s.
You get a glass of wine. Negotiate your way round the house in semi-darkness. It’s deliberately haphazard and confusing, a process of physical and mental groping. Part drinks party, part murder in the dark. Bump into people, objects, ideas. In each room a short film is showing. Areas of chat and places of hush. The people watch in quiet reverence, their brains cranking almost audibly for explanation. The occasional tinkle of truth dropping into their cranial money boxes.
In the corridors between the show rooms, they smile knowingly but with a touch of nerves. What did the child say: “But the emperor has no clothes?”  What had they just witnessed? They had seen something, but what? A sip of wine. “Hello George, nice to see you again”.Relief. Re-enter reality. Brain back in autopilot. Move on.
It is impossible to take in everything in one tour - these films are fiercely experimental. They take time in their construction and are not always the quickest to give up their meanings, if meanings they have. Went round twice. Second time with the note book. Themes crystalise a little. Pleasantly enthused, bemused, confused, I promise next day to attempt an analysis, to try and place Neuf in context and see if I could decode its secrets…
So, here it is.
First – art – the context. My duffer’s history in 200 words.
Pre modern age: role was to reflect:
1.       copy and record  things  

2.       glorify - heroes, myths, gods

3.       empathise with the human condition, for good or for bad.
Progressed from crude cave paintings to the classical age. Emphasis on structure and the spiritual, natural and man-made order of things. A looking outwards.
Post modern age: role is to detect 
1.       probe, question, challenge  

2.       aid self-understanding   

3.       describe what things might mean, now - if anything.
Began with Turner and the Impressionists. Emphasis on disorder and instability, the abstract versus the “real”, on the inner, hidden and less palatable workings of the mind, on insecurity and lack of order and tangible truths. Experimental, subconscious emphasis and poetic.  A looking inwards.
Five events combined to stimulate the shift from the old to new: political revolution and the collapse of the old order; the waning of organised and enforced religion; Freud and psychoanalysis; the increasing use of mind-altering drugs ( to heighten the artist’s distance from “reality”); the invention of the camera ( who needed realistic presentation if the camera could provide it?)

In diagrammatic terms the first age could be seen as the tip of the iceberg and the second what lay beneath. 

Now Neuf.
In French it means 9 but it also means new, in the sense generally of brand new. Neuf is certainly that. It takes us forward a stage in the artistic journey.
Individual artists and film makers reveal aspects of their (our?) subconscious via experimental and sometimes (literally) revolutionary film techniques. We float on streams of consciousness.
Actually wrote consciousmess first – the Freud in my keyboard.
Mess! Well, perhaps fortuitously that is the word.
The mind is not neat is the message. Life does not flow along straight lines. Reality is more about what we don’t care to admit than what we do. The respectable tip of the iceberg, in all its organisation and convention, is not reality. Just a useful façade for reality. It is the role of the artist to unearth this deeper reality even if at the end the message is that there’s nothing there.
This is Neuf in action.
To say it, Neuf shakes us out of convention. A process of disorientation. Confuses us, messes us about. Out of the confusion comes re-assessment, that’s the aim.
Two things are needed for this disorientation: an idea and the execution of the idea.
Content plus form.
The main content characteristically consists of dream or trip-like sequences. Illogical, free-flowing, past and present merging and flitting about like a needle jumping over an old record.
The main executional technique is that of filmic distortion – the manipulation of imagery, the collaging of separated thought, the mish-mashing of the apparently unconnected, the “wrong” framing of shots, the shaky camera. The camera is at the core of course. Just as the Impressionists actually used the advent of photographic realism as an opportunity to go the other way, away from realism, Neuf uses distortion of film - the exact opposite of its original purpose - to dig and reveal. In some ways the pervading style is like a pair of distressed jeans - carefully fucked up at the factory, gloss-free. For what is gloss but the tip of the iceberg?
To add to the alienation effect, Neuf adds an extra dimension – space. The films are screened in a domestic environment often on bare walls via unpredictable projectors. The screen may be flock wallpaper, a reflection off a mirror, a picture frame, someone’s face. Many of the films are shot in the house so the viewer is simultaneously in one while watching the other.
There are a number of constants. Most of the films are journeys, whether in time, space or mind. One of the “simplest” and most powerful is O Clock (or is it 0 Clock?) by Susanne Jasilek. It’s a jerky journey through an album of family memories  - elusive half glances of tatty photographs, an eye here, a smile there, growing up growing old - smoothed over by the moody Bill Callahan soundtrack and the refrain I really am a Lucky Man. It’s happy-sad. Poignant. The camera is shaky throughout, apart from one scene that shows a mother holding a new born child, full frame and rock steady. It talks of life as a series of fleeting and half-remembered images held clear in a book but stuttering in the mind, propelled forward by time, interspersed with occasional moments of clarity. And when you join them up what do you get? The clock still ticks even if you don’t: you may as well think yourself lucky.
Tricia McCrae’s Drive Over also featured a journey. This the most obviously aesthetic of the films, beautifully crafted. It was shown on a flat screen (albeit out  in the garden)  so the senses were less confused by the projection technique. Began with some pacey, psychedelic footage of a train journey through England accompanied by Elgar’s cello concerto. We knew we were going somewhere but not sure where. Perhaps France as there was a wrong-way-round Renault logo in some of the later footage. No matter. Music changes, before we get Elgar again. A series of American soundbites from a Beckett play. What looks like amoeba or plants playing, some sort of rebirth. The definitive words: “There I am .That’s all.”
The “trippiest” of the films, it would make a decent short in a cinema and could do well on Youtube. A poetic stream of consciousness overlaid with an evocative soundtrack.  Stimulating. Yes. Meaning? Perhaps the blur of a personal journey (physical and emotional) from the security of Elgar and England, to rebirth in a new country, all the time overlaid with the nihilism of Beckett. Is it better to travel than arrive?
Steve Russell’s “everyone reveals nocturnal indicators eventually” (note the acrostic) works via juxtaposition. A story of self-revelation presumably through a dream, it’s less tricksy technically than the previous ones as it relies on contrast not visual effect. The essence of the film is a side by side comparison. A group of Italian strictly-come- street-dancers… and Ernie.
The contrast is striking.
We see the dancers. They are shot in 50s black and white news film footage, clear and undistressed. Their moves are complicated and impeccable. Plenty of stylised “horizontal sex”. They live in a world of ritual, where it is the done thing to dance in the street, as the local vendors look on. Its point is that organisation and structure pervade these people’s lives and has probably done so for centuries. Order has been imposed, the moves are agreed and known. It takes practice but it feels natural, and it’s the way it is.
The music track more or less fits the rhythm of the dance but it is clearly not their music.It is bassy and plodding and closer to what’s going on in Ernie’s head on the neighbouring screen.
Here we see the leaden-footed Ernie. The footage is home movie. He is in a cavernous space, a warehouse say. It is industrial, depersonalised. There is a veil or sheet suspended between Ernie and us. He prods and pokes at it as if wanting to get out from behind it, making tentative gropes into an apparently empty, outside world. We see Ernie break partially free but the veil is now on his head and he shuffles around, half blind. Meanwhile, next to him, the dancers dance in their closed world, the world that Ernie has dreamed of. Envies?
But Ernie has now broken free and blown up a big balloon. In it is his breath, his words. The music of the dancers gives way as Ernie holds the balloon by the neck  to play out his own tune. A long blast on a farty bassoon. He will not be joining the dancers.
Some artists/people are doomed to bleat in the wilderness, perhaps against their will, while conventional life dances on. The outsider. Poor Ernie.
Parlour Game by Sally Todd had the most advanced presentational technique - the projector was mounted on a turntable and the film moved round the room. This was not only good for the neck muscles: it had the effect of demanding close attention, but it was difficult to watch. It suggested that life is itself fast, elusive and often difficult to grasp: like it or not you can’t stop the world when you want to get off. (That said, it was a challenge to watch and I would like to see it again, projected straight).
This is one of the films that interspersed objects in the room in the film itself, adding to its complexity, but binding the viewer firmly into the action. Again it was about time passing, and to an extent progress, or rather lack of it. The central story comes via a sequence of photo-animation. A hand draws a window on the “wall” Through it we see a peacock, a farmyard fowl, a carrier pigeon - the old world of nature? The real world. These are replaced by a tranquil harbour scene; from where we begin or end some sort of journey. But the window is ultimately rubbed out and superseded by a TV screen showing a moronic 50s US game show. Is this what we have come to in the complicated world of flux in which we live - the replacement of the real window onto  life and nature, however difficult that reality might be  -  with the box, with its ersatz reality and easy inanity? Is life most comfortable when we deny its reality and replace it with a parlour game? What does it say about us? Bruce Forsyth take note.
Jacobs Biscuits by Helen Judge was one of two exhibits that, while filmic, could be used as a picture replacement in any living room, and why not? It’s a little light show that reminded me of a child’s mobile, its centre piece being a tin of Jacobs Biscuits, I would guess from the 60s. The original tin features a gondolier on his gondola, and was adorned with red roses and raffia-clad Chianti bottles  that were all the rage back then and made attractive candlestick holders if you were that way inclined. In this case though the roses and bottles have detached themselves from the tin and are floating in apparent 3D around the gondolier, himself punting languorously. It was technically an interesting piece (shot with a revolving camera), a quiet statement on how tastes and marketing change. Aesthetically gently beguiling, but as for meaning, this one’s a struggle…the world goes round, you row your boat, you get drunk, someone sends you flowers, you make up over a snack of Jacobs crackers. Perhaps. But I think this technique might have commercial possibilities most of the others don’t.   
The Art of Devotion looks to me to be potentially the commercial winner in all this. Projected in a picture frame is a series of still works made up only of lines. Often of great intricacy, these images show webs, spirals, waves, circles and grids as the artist tries to make connections and create beauty and order out of confusion. In musical terms many of these are in a distinctly minor key but they are interspersed with the major key of hope.
Lunch at Ernie’s House by Helena Greene again mixed the viewer into the action by showing the inside of Ernie’s house (where we of course were). This, combined with familiar footage of the local station and neighbourhood, made it the closest to a fly-on- the-wall treatment in the show. It was the presentation technique that was novel. The film was projected widescreen into the corner of a wall, approximately two thirds to the left and the remaining third to the right of the angle. The effect was that the left hand part was out of focus and speeded everything up while the right hand part played normally. The execution is again shakyish camera, and overlaying of images, slightly muffled speech – the build-up, the arrival, the kitchen, little lapses into Ernie’s college days, his books, his objects, his work place. Oddly we don’t see the lunch itself, just the ingredients. Is this the point, that life often appears a prelude to something that doesn’t appear to happen? Whatever, this was a slice of life made interesting by the projection technique itself.
Finally, Ernie and Anna Thinking Aloud. This was the most intense and longest of the exhibits, needing  deep concentration for 12 minutes. The idea of the film was simple: two writers writing aloud. Their hands are shown on separate but similar writing pads, then combined on top of each other. Reminiscent of MC Escher’s artwork of him drawing his own hand.
The sound track was the spoken words of each, what they were writing, complete with coughs, clicks, sighs and wheezes. For one who struggles more than Gerald Ford to do two things at once this was not easy to digest, two soliloquies alternating in one speech. Quite masterfully recorded, it  showed the different paces and intensity of thought between the two, the one fast, at times urgent, eager to get the words down, the other slower and more reflective, less intense. To the mixed image was added mixed voice. It required a significant act of concentration to follow - in a way I would have liked to have had a transcript - but was often rewarding as the artist or writer’s thoughts, and their personal journeys and places in the world, emerged.
On the one hand you were left with an interesting conclusion of things being both in and out of tune, perhaps unified by “the unconscious connections between each other’s work”. On the other by the resounding question in this piece and the exhibition as a whole: “Have we all just become players to this technological customisation of reality?”
What is reality?
And then I stumbled down the corridor and into it, into the warm embrace of the night.
Normality.
What had I seen and felt?
The nothingness of the Emperor’s new clothes?
Or a cold glimpse of the hidden part of the iceberg?
Both. Neither?
This is what Neuf is all about.

 

Hugh Kellett  Cambridge Nov 2013

 

Monday 14 October 2013

When the Tribe gets going the Individual stands no chance


 

Banker, Traitor, Scapegoat, Spy?

 

I have recently taken a short break from all this “commentary on advertising” stuff, and have spread the net a little wider with a view to seeing how humans behave in the real world as opposed to their reactions to the relative puffery of marketing communications. By way of a start, I review below  a book that I have recently had the pleasure of reading about the life and times of Sir Edgar Speyer by Antony Lentin - Banker, Traitor, Scapegoat, Spy?

It mirrored many of the elements of the underlying psychological theory of communication that I explore in this blog and on my web site at www.cambridgecomms.com , in that it shows the full power of the tribe over the individual, prejudice over consideration, emotion over reason, nature over civilisation. And it shows, too, how, particularly in times of acute stress, the mob can be readily induced to frenzy and reduced to primeval brutality.
As in any good book, Lentin holds up the mirror to the reader: one reflection that might be glimpsed is that we are all, whether we care to admit it or not, part of that mob and unwittingly shackled to such behaviour, even if in times of peace and prosperity we manage, at least superficially, to rise above it. 
Before developing this, a word of introduction.
If you have not heard of Speyer you are by no means alone, for his name has all but been erased from history.
He was born in 1862 in the USA of German Jewish decent and worked in Germany in the family banking business until moving to this country and becoming by choice a naturalised British citizen at the age of 30. He was both immensely wealthy and  industriously innovative, financing a wide range of major infrastructure projects critical to Britain at the turn of the century, most notably the development of, indeed the saving of, the London Underground.
By contrast, he was also a noted patron of the musical arts, aesthete and philanthropist, pouring very large sums of money into amongst other things the Proms – the cradle of Land of Hope and Glory - and numerous charities. The book suggests this was done with a high degree of modesty, even anonymity - Lentin portrays him as being both a private and proud man - and is in stark contrast to the showier displays of public giving that we are more familiar with today.
He counted royalty, Prime Ministers and a range of eminent composers, including Elgar, Debussy and  Richard Strauss (who dedicated Salome “to my friend, Sir Edgar Speyer”),  not to mention the explorer Scott of the Antarctic (whose expedition he financed) amongst his close friends. His outstanding commercial and industrial vision, financial risk-taking and demonstrable achievements were clearly recognised by Britain and he was rewarded not only with a baronetcy but with membership of the Privy Council for services to his (adopted) country. It is fair to say that you couldn’t climb much higher on the ladder than Sir Edgar Speyer, neither in finance nor the arts. Not that he would necessarily have quite seen it as a ladder.   
The situation changes, however, the Wendepunkt occurs, with the outbreak of war, when tribal hostilities surface and the opportunity to create and settle scores presents itself; for it is the lot of mankind that we are programmed to seek security in both gods and scapegoats, the one to be worshipped and the other to be blamed, a lot that finds most obvious intensity in times of unease.
The charges against him ranged from outright treachery to “trading with the enemy”, but the basis for such charges, notwithstanding ambiguities that emerge in the narrative, seemed often to owe more to imagination than reality.
The rest of the story is a relentless stripping of Edgar Speyer - as Privy Councillor, as citizen, as man. Much as his enemies desired, they couldn’t in fact strip him of his baronetcy -as the BBC says “for legal reasons”- but, as the privy Councillor most hell-bent on his destruction -Sir Almeric Fitzroy - consoled himself, at least Speyer  had no sons to inherit it. That Speyer did not always present himself in the best possible light is not contested and he allowed himself to play into his enemies hands on many occasions where his own pride and occasional indiscretion perhaps took his brinkmanship too far. But this was in the face of an appalling witch-hunt, whipped up by various politicians, the judiciary and elements of the press, and subsequently by the nation as a whole, who seized upon the rather convenient ambiguity of his name (pronounced Spy-er) and his origins - which was “worse” German? (openly reviled) or Jew ? (more secretly reviled) - and it is in many ways not surprising that he sometimes failed to dignify certain allegations hurled at him by the Establishment with a response.
The final denouement sees him in exile back in the land of his birth, his contribution to Britain denied, his reputation reviled, even his daughters stripped of British nationality, despite having been born and bred in England. A case of the “sins” of the father being visited on the children in another major miscarriage of justice.
It’s a pretty good story, full of ambiguity, pathos and fatal flaws.
I came away thinking that the ingredients constituted a scenario almost too perfect not to be considered material for a stage play or film - a psychological drama or modern tragedy in the Shakespearean mould. Indeed, it seemed a case of history virtually writing its own screenplay.
The dramatis personae as follows:
Sir Edgar Speyer: German, Jew, naturalised Brit - a fatal, paradoxical, combustible triangle combining accident of birth and free choice - the change of tribal nationality - that would explode  in the right (wrong?) circumstances.
 
David Suchet

Sir Edgar Speyer
Were I to be the casting director of such a drama I would select David Suchet to be my lead.

His supporters:
The King, George V ( who, famously referring to his own German origins, offered himself for internment ahead of Speyer). Timothy West.
Speyer’s wife, herself a concert violinist, Keira Knightley or Cate Blanchett.
An assemblage of politicians, leading composers, conductors, playwrights and patrons of the arts including Churchill,  Asquith, George Bernard Shaw, Elgar, Grieg, Debussy and  Richard Strauss.
His enemies:

Other high ranking members of the Establishment tribe including politicians and press barons, often openly anti-Semitic, perhaps more understandably anti-German, including Horatio Bottomley (who demanded that naturalised Germans be made to wear a badge of recognition), Lord Northcliffe, magnate of the tabloid press of the day,  Noel Pemberton Billing MP, and the aforementioned Sir Almeric Fitzroy.
Readers can play casting director themselves on this, but I imagine Robert Hardy, Richard Chamberlain and possibly Colin Firth would fit the bill as supporters and Ralph Fiennes, Alan Rickman and Timothy Spall would be worthy candidates for enemies.
Below all this, the mob, frightened, confused, easily  led, needing to be assuaged, baying for the fall-guy.
As we head towards the centenary of WW1 I believe such a production would lie somewhere between Elizabeth and The Kings Speech and exceed both in tension and drama. It would be an opportunity to restore, or at least re-examine, a reputation that few knew had ever been lost, and provide a counterpoint to the flood of trenches and gasmarks to which we are no doubt going to be subjected.
This may be wishful thinking and the BBC and Hollywood may have other plans. At a more pragmatic level, Lentin suggests in the book that Speyer’s home address in central London be marked with a blue plaque. I might go further: that he be commemorated fully in a prominent station of the London Underground or, perhaps more appropriately still, in the Royal Albert Hall.

 

 

Sunday 5 May 2013

The Political Football

The recent local elections have coincided with the end of the football season. There are interesting parallels to be drawn, as success in one is similar to success in the other.
The formula is as follows:
·         Charismatic manager
·         Good players
·         Money
·         Clear strategy
·         Game plan
Taking the manager first, five things are critical:
Does he/she have sufficient charisma?                                     
DC: Yes. NC: Did. EM: No. NF: Yes
Is this sufficient to appeal to a wide base?
DC: Yes-ish. NC: No. EM: No. NF: No-ish
Can he/she control the dressing room?                                    
DC: Just. NC: Yes-ish. EM: Yes. NF: Yes
Is there a clear, attractive message?                
DC: No. NC: No. EM: Yes. NF: Yes
Can he/she be considered a potential Prime Minister?       
                DC: Yes. NC: No. EM: Poss. NF: No
Now to the question of players.         
Cons: some on form at the top but an ageing Southern based squad
Lib Dem: good in local leagues. Own goals a problem. No strength on the bench
Labour: some proven scorers but Northern based and lack style/bezazz
UKIP: unknown
Money.
Cons: well backed but lost key sponsor
Lib Dem: underfunded
Labour: well backed but currently over-reliant on Union United 
single source
UKIP: big backers could follow
What does all this show and how might this affect game plans?
Traditional strategies have been to assume that, because the goal is in the centre that is the place to be, with attacks often starting down one of the two wings. How is this currently being played out?
Cons: emphasis on indecisive right winger moving inside too
much
Lib Dem: a lot of dribbling, mainly in the centre of the park
Labour: emphasis on left winger moving inside too much, accompanied by traditional long heavy hoof upfield from the back. Lacking in panache ( cf TB and his Cool Britannia approach)
UKIP: decent wing play but haven’t yet found the net.
As can be seen, no side currently uses both wingers, making for an over-predictable game that is too easy to read, and bored ( younger) spectators.
Conclusions and recommendations:
No current side has the successful formula. Their tactics are either bogged down in the middle or are too predictable in terms of wing play. The aforementioned TB was the last to have the magic combination, possessing all the necessary managerial characteristics and playing successfully from both wings. If DC and his side are to survive another season he might do well to play a crowd pleasing combination of right and left wingers, but needs to be more careful in their selection. It is probable that he has left this too late as things stand, and a sell-out of Lib Dem Wanderers to Labour City looks almost certain.
The interesting one on the subs bench is obviously BJ, who has the egregious knack of being right and left simultaneously. He has all the essentials in place and may be the Special One. How long before the owners of Conservative United look to change their manager?