somehow, by definition, pure and free of such faults. I doubt if that would ever stand up to analysis. Any filming or photographing of anyone or anything, by a man or woman, is an attempt to exert power and to gain control.
The natural act of looking and seeing is an assertion of power and the desire for control. That is why we see in the first place, why we have eyes. It didn't happen by accident. Power and force in their many disguises rule this world absolutely. It is not a charm school. All human motivation and behavior is about power and control. This is not necessarily bad or undesirable. Every living thing has its own version of what is and what should be, and all of these versions are usually in conflict. The stronger ones survive and prevail. It's not difficult to imagine a better world than this one, but that does seem be what obtains here, at this time.
Filming by its nature is voyeuristicso is natural looking and seeingboth unavoidably involve a privileged spectator observing an 'other.' There's no way around this. You are no less voyeuristic looking out from inside the camera obscura of your own skull than you are peeping through a viewfinder or keyhole or watching a film or any other visual spectacle. Any seeing of another person, or seeing of anything, automatically makes that person or thing 'exotic' simply because they are 'other'not 'you.'' The entire world and everything in it is 'exotic,' except for 'you.'
There was no real planned interaction. I made some notes about questions and chose a few texts I was interested in. The professorial tone at the beginning, which I meant to maintain throughout the film, but didn't, was a mocking of the 'authority' behind the camera. In general there is a rather elaborate mockery going on in the entire film as it's being made. There are moments of what I still think are good poetry: one of them is when the actress/ghost on screen tells what will happen to her when she dies.
Much was made of the moment when she comes forward to touch the lens of the camera, but no one has ever noted that it was one of the very first instances in experimental, avant-garde films, of the self-reflection that became so prevalent in the seventies.
A minor question. What is that moaning sound during the early part of
? It certainly gives the film an eerie feel, almost a horror-film feel.
The moaning sound came from some defect in the camera magazine . . . I think the drive belt on the take-up reel was out of alignment, or something like that. But you're quite right. It is a horror film, and also a sit-com, melodrama, documentary, and poetry of a strange sort.
is your only sound film so far as I know.
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From Noren's
(1987).
No,
was a sound film and all of the early one-take films I mentioned were sound on film. Also, I'm working on one right now.
I'm interested in how the mind manufactures pictures in response to sound, how it converts sound into imaginary light, so to speak, imaginary images. What exactly are these images, what are they made of, how are they made, where do they come from? A curious thing is that I always have a strong sense of a 'projected' image, and of a 'spectator.' So where, exactly, is this image being projected, who is the spectator, who is the projectionist, and Where and what is the screen? Of course, the mind does this all the time, even without sound stimulus, as in memory and in dream images. And, as every child knows, sit in the dark with your eyes closed and you will be presented with an automatic 'movie' of considerable vividness and detail.
We don't really 'see' anyway, so much as 'imagine.' Our sight is imaginary, as R. L. Gregory demonstrated some twenty years ago. Each eye is separately informed, and the information supplied to each eye is constantly being synthesized and interpreted and processed into imaginary constructs. This is the continuous natural movie of the world, which each of us is busily engaged in creating all the time, even in sleep.
was the first of your films I ever saw. I was at the Whitney Museum screening room, with a small audi-
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ence from the Museum. Within a few minutes, there was an argument between those who were annoyed by the pace of the film and those whowhatever their reaction to the filmwere annoyed by the arrogance of the others. There was almost a fight. Through all of this, I found the film long, but gorgeous, beautifully meditative. Do you remember early reactions to that film?
I remember a fistfight. It was at the Modern [Museum of Modern Art], where the audience was sometimes unruly. Someone was talking during the film, and the person in front of him stood up and hit him. Somehow, several other people got involved, and it turned into quite a brawl, a hot-blooded, two-fisted dukeroo in defense of meditative silence and beauty.
I assume you were in a period of experimenting with color. Was this your first color film?
No, the first color shooting I did was the bathing series I mentioned.
was made while I was working on
