I agree with you about VHS, 8mm etc.
I think the question about 24 Hour Psycho is interesting, but difficult! It
would probably work in various forms; on film, DVD, VHS, projected, on a
monitor etc, but how it wuld be different in each case is hard to say. Some
reworkings/re-presentations, such as Martin Arnold's "Passage a L'Act", do
reinforce meanings in the work (a scene from To Kill a Mocking Bird). In 24
Hour Psycho, it is often random things, such as the movement of the mop-
head when Norman's cleaning up after the shower scene, that seem completely
strange and new. The way the VHS renders facial detail is also fascinating.
So for me that work constantly shifts one's attention between materiality
and signification, to use a crude distinction,
NIcky Hamlyn.
David Sorfa writes:
> Nicky
>
> You're right that there might be something about the specificity of film
> itself which will feed back into our understanding of a particular work
> (hence the structural work of Le Grice et al and your own view on artists'
> films). Similarly, there is a fetishising of the "grain" of VHS in certain
> artists' work (cf. Pixelvision and Sadie Benning) which would then posit no
> hierarchy of specificity (VHS is just as specific as 8mm which is just as
> specific as 35mm which is..etc...perhaps, this must then be reduced to the
> specificity of each individual print or tape itself - a reinstatement of the
> aura that Benjamin was worried about losing).
>
> Perhaps coming back to the topic at hand, a good example to think about
> would be Douglas Gordon's 24 Hour Psycho (does it matter which print of the
> film is slowed down? Would this work on DVD?). Slowing the film down so
> drastically foregrounds the film itself as an object rather than its
> functioning as a representation. This then, perhaps, takes us back to
> Bordwell and slowness as analysis (and where Bordwell meets up with Perkins
> in a celebration of "Film as Film" - in very different ways, of course)...
>
>
> David
>
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