Sunday, October 16, 2016

S:TREAM:S:S:ECTION:S:ECTION:S:S:ECTIONED
(Paul Sharits, 1971)



To speak of Sharits is generally to speak of the intensity of an experience.

S:TREAM:S:S:ECTION:S:ECTION:S:S:ECTIONED is pushed beyond everything else I've ever seen from the man and when the film ends, somewhat abruptly, there's a literal corporeal experience where I felt like I was recovering from being hit by a truck. A true sense of release. What precedes this release is not necessarily something you want to be released from--a relentless s(t/c)ream for 42 minutes, the pure linear verticality of the filmstrip itself. The reason this works is that the relentlessness is echoed in the linearity (infinite momentum) of the stream (and it could be said that I could watch running water photographed on 16mm or 8mm film for an eternity and never lose my desire for the beauty before me), a pure sense of movement, the film functions on every single operable level (the sound is what you never hear about here! the intensity of the sound!) pulsing pulsing pulsing inside the infinitude of the stream, ceaseless momentum, forces in motion stay in motion until something stops this motion and that is the violence of the stopg it's a wounding not merely a cut but simply a FULL STOP which, here, parallels can be drawn between the physicality of the page (consider Mallarme & Post-Mallarmean poetics) there's a full universe to be learned from and my god my god my god.

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