AND... by Barbara Sternberg
This
is a collaboration (interactive). Together we're making this piece (I almost
said film). I'm putting forward some thoughts, images, sensations, and, off to
one side, influences that form a larger context. You might decide to stop here.
Flip forward. Inject some commentary. How will I know?
I
read a book (well, parts of a book) called The
Hero: Myth, Image, Symbol. It was a period when I
was having a hard time getting out of bed. Afraid, I just wanted to sleep. I
realized then that the real heroes are you and I, Everyman, who get up and live
each day, who face the uncertainties and struggles of life, the paradoxes...
life and death,
living with the knowledge of death, knowing that we can't know.
The mystery that is in the everyday. No, the
mystery that is the everyday. The awesome/awfulness of
life.
All
of your past, is it more than a dream to you right now? Sri Sri
Possum, ergo sum. (I can, therefore I am.) Simone Weil
Reason's
last step is that there are a number of things beyond it. Pascal
Filming
the daily, what's around. Observing the play of life,
its rhythms, patterns. Feel the wind. Noticing the similarities in seeming differences. Everything
is related. The multitudinous — manyness
and relatedness. Where are the boundaries between you and me?
Earth
Air Fire Water
Light Energy transmutes.
Repetition
is a principle in life. The sun rises everyday. Habit, ritual, identity. And yet, there is no repetition
possible! The third tap differs from the first by virtue of being third not
first. (Gertrude Stein's insistence versus repetition.) You can't step into the same stream twice.
Repetition as a principle in film. And time. And motion. In
other words, film is like life. Is inherently involved with
the same basic principles. Is fleeting, ephemeral — just as you and I are. Needs repetition (but with slight
differences) for meaning and for structure to be apparent. Has past (memory) and future (anticipation). Can I or a film
be solely in the present? Film is in time and of light. Exists in a tension
between what is real and what is illusion. (There is no motion in a motion
picture.) Is change the reality and permanence the illusion or vice versa?
Your
life is like a candle burning. Whether you are aware of it or not, it is
burning. Sri Sri
The
more real a thing is, the more mysterious it becomes. Jack Chambers
Film's
emulsion is analogous to the 'stuff' of life. Images appear and disappear; we
have our time upon the stage. The movement of construction and destruction,
form and formlessness, shadow and light. Layers of images
accumulating meaning over time. And time cannot be held.
Picture:
leaves fluttering, flames flickering, water splashing a child's face shocking
him, waves hitting the shore, a hand groping blindly forward, a rocking chair
rocking...
I
work with images bodily, suggestively between representation and abstraction,
between blurred and distinct. Beyond naming is being.
How
many colours are there in a field of grass to a
crawling baby unaware of the word 'green'... Stan Brakhage
Our
movies are extensions of our own pulse, of our heartbeat, of our eyes, our
fingertips... Jonas Mekas
Film
is a medium of endless play — discrete bits of time/space set next to each other;
the orange of tungsten (inner), the blue of daylight (outer); sound as foil,
context, content — and the silence of stillness (being). Creating
an experience in film. Wow! How was it for you?
Art
is to embrace others — whether to convey something difficult or talk about
light. Joyce Wieland
What
is meant by reality? ...now to be found in a dusty road, now
in a scrap of newspaper in the street, now in a daffodil in the sun. It
lights up a group in a room and stamps some casual saying... But whatever it
touches, it fixes and makes permanent. That is what is left of past time and of
our loves and hates. Virginia Woolf
I
find that raising my eyes slightly above what I am regarding so that the thing
is a little out of focus seems to bring the spiritual into clearer vision...
Emily Carr
It
was enough to exist, preferably still and silent, in order to feel its
mark...the mark of existence. Clarice Lispector
Originally
published in Lux ed. Steve Reinke
and Tom Taylor, YYZ Books: