A2F2 TOP 3, #2

A2F2 archivist Gerry Fialka intends to publish
"History of the Ann Arbor Film Festival"
in time for 5oth in 2012!!

The sessions he delivered were a real treat: Kick Out the Jams & AAFF Innovators. I found them both to be a great way to start out my day. Fialka presided (while claiming to not be a teacher, rather a moderator of an open-ended discussion) at the University of Michigan School of Art & Design Work Gallery, just around the corner from the Michigan Theater, posing many slippery, open-ended questions. The one which bent my mind the most:

If we were to begin the a2f2 today, should we be inclusive or exclusive?

The tip of a deeeep iceberg for me right now-- now being a moment of massive change in terms of the way capitialism has taken hold at the global level, the evolution of communications technologies, the myth of the starving artist and the breakdown of Modernism's ideals. But we artists must evolve in tandem with the evolution of our world. We deal our trade in creativity, and ought to be imagining our best reality... and building it.

"We must be guided only by what the situation requires."
(Beuys)

McLuhan's Tetrad
1) What does it enhance or intensify?
2) What does it render obsolete or replace?
3) What does it bring back that was previously obsolete?
4) What does it become when pressed to an extreme, what does it flip into?

Fialka led us through the McLuhan Tetrad on various subjects such as the use of compositing within the moving image, and the long take (Warhol, Snow, Tarkovsky). The resulting interactive brainstorms verged on a freeflow of associations rooted within our collective knowledge of film, causing our knowledge base to reform in new and interesting constellations.

McLuhan's Tetrad as applied to compositing
(answers offered up that I can remember):
1) What does it enhance or intensify?
multiplication of reality
2) What does it render obsolete or replace?
representational imagery
3) What does it bring back that was previously obsolete?
the Surrealist films of makers such as Buñuel and Cocteau
4) What does it become when pressed to an extreme, what does it flip into?
MTV, commercialization of moving image

McLuhan's Tetrad as applied to the long take
(answers offered up that I can remember):
1) What does it enhance or intensify?
inner dialogue, observation
2) What does it render obsolete or replace?
editing
3) What does it bring back that was previously obsolete?
early cinema
4) What does it become when pressed to an extreme, what does it flip into?
possibly enlightenment

"The user is the content."
(McLuhan quoted by Fialka)

This diagram popped into my mind in thinking about this idea. Where the artist produces the film (a), which is projected onto a screen (b), and the viewer (c) observes it, but the reality of what s/he experiences is a projection of her/his own mind. (Can we ever be truly objective?)


It is truly wonderful to know that a record of the Ann Arbor Film Festival is in the making, and it is being guided by someone who is deeply dedicated to the exploration of knowledge, holds an affinity for the A2F2, and is intimate with the language of experimental cinema and media philosophy. Thanks Gerry!