Posted by: Levi Hanes
Props to PICA and the Cinema Project for this nugget. I hadn’t had much sleep the night before and this turned out to be a good thing: my tolerance for b.s. is striped and I find myself emotionally raw when tired and gangked out on coffee. McClure’s show was a brittle, searing experience. His bile colored overlayed screen projections fluttered images accompanied by a brutal, loud, grinding, deliciously painful soundtrack that simulated flying a small single prop plane into the sun.
More like being a co-pilot in a two-seater plane into the sun. I was able to sit back and trust the pilot to do the work while I watched the scenery. The overwhelming din of the engine throbs through your body and your vision resorts to those weird nebulous colorful blobs you see when you rub your eyes. After a while the sound fades (not literally but mentally) and I was feeling it, the experience fully enveloping me
The fourth and final presentation used the four projectors to create an image of a cross. McClure shifted colored gels displaying an image that riffed a mixture of Gerhard Richter’s cool play on visual themes (the cross), Richard Prince’s rough tape edged punk-ness and Marc Rothko’s color schemes. Forgive the painter references, The music was considerably softer on this installment, adding to the general break from the previous works.
I had just been to the John Singer Sargent show at the PAM and was having a bit of a crisis over the state of painting. Here was a painter (Sargent) that I felt was embellishing photographs. What is one to do as a painter when photos are so damn colorful and clear now? The tonic was McClure’s show. The presentation in an antiquating medium of film projectors that created a unique experience with the limited fields of sound and two dimensional space moving in time. This during a time of digital cinematography and computer editing. Lovely.
I had to leave Bruce McClure’s show at the Guild yesterday afternoon because the “film” was giving me an excruciating headache, dizziness and nausea. There really should have been a warning beforehand for people with epilepsy.
I hope, for the sake of the people that stayed in the theater, that the show changed after I left.
The “work” seemed entirely too self important. If this is what experimental film has come to, I want no part in it.
I agree with Annie. I could only hold out through the first 2 sections/40 minutes of this work. The first section of the McClure film got me into a thought loop of “Josef Albers is on poppers” followed by “in-vitro fertilization IS the armagedden of our world” while watching the 2nd section, then I had to go. Came back for the Weigand screening and couldn’t handle the pedestrianism at all. Walking out of two films, especially in one day is unprecedented but it just had to be done.
Barbot
Dear Mel, Levi, Annie,and Barbot:
Thank you for cutting a share of the retinal pie and then serving it up as leftovers. It’s true that sometimes the filling isn’t as sweet as all would like it but no one is obliged to finish their portion. Thank goodness for exits that are always open! The importance of something, if that exists at all, is what lingers and thank god it will eventually be subsumed by the equalized sustance. Initially, however, all there self importance which is where awareness and health and sickness originate. Warnings are useless to someone standing in the light of day or sitting in the near darkness. When will it come and how fast will it happen, really? In the gloom of the theater screen glow, a snooze, or the beckoning of an exit sign are some of the choices and I’m happy. People out there even if they are poised on the edge of their seat ready to flap off into the darkness are a joy. Auspices are observations or signs augured from the flight and feeding of birds – thank you for your kindly patronage and guidance.
Best
BM