One+One Filmmakers Journal

Issue 13: Occult, Magick, Evil and the magick and horror associated with its numerology. Divided into two parts, this volume delves into the alchemical transformations of cinema technique and form by embracing Powers of Horror. Volume 1. the excesses of the magickal formula and unleashing its hidden potential and transfigur- ing possibilities. The occult symbolises the excess towards which avant-garde cinema strives. We open with Diarmuid Hester’s “Screening”, an eloquent invocation of the oc- “Art is, like magic, the science of manipulating symbols, words and images to cult character of the screening. Diverging from the traditional essayistic format common achieve changes in consciousness.” in One+One and marshalling the literary through a poetic investigation of the screen, Alan Moore in The Mindscape of Alan Moore Diarmuid illuminates the visceral and the abject as they interweave with the cinema form. James Riley’s “Magick Lanterns: Night of the Demon, M. R. James and Projec- “However radical the conclusions, however heretical their theology, their escape- tion” likewise takes the screening, via its projection, as revealing occult qualities and new route from theology was theological...” meanings hidden from everyday view. Drawing upon Jacques Tourneur’s 1957 filmNight Christopher Hill, The World Turned Upside Down of the Demon, James Riley draws insights into the occult nature of the film’s projection Radical Ideas during the English Revolution and the potential transfiguration of the film and its meaning through avant-gardist and occult methods of film screening. By focusing on the projection of film Riley shows how “Fortunately we have learnt to combine these ideas, not in the mutual toleration of the magic of material reality can be illuminated by the screen. sub-contraries, but in the affirmation of contraries, that transcending of the laws of intellect which is madness in the ordinary man, genius in the Overman who hath Mark Goodell takes us further down the path of experimental magic in “Erotic Witchcraft: arrived to strike off more fetters from our understanding. The savage who cannot Mario Mercier’s Occult Sex Films” and finds a link between avant garde cinema and the conceive of the number six, the orthodox mathematician who cannot conceive of occult experiences. Focusing on the films of Mario Mercier such asLa Gouve (1971), and the fourth dimension, the philosopher who cannot conceive of the Absolute - all La Papesse (1975) and situating them in a tradition of avant-garde and surrealist interest these are one; all must be impregnated with the Divine Essence of the Phallic Yod in witchcraft, Mark Goodell explores cinema’s potential, through cinematic devises and of Macroprosopus, and give birth to their idea. True (we may agree with Balzac), psychedelic experiences, to create erotic rituals, provocative nightmares and intoxicat- the Absolute recedes; we never grasp it; but in the travelling there is joy. Am I no ing experiences. By exploring the surreal, erotic magic of Mercier’s cinema, Goodell better than a staphylococcus because my ideas still crowd in chains?” reveals films potential to the transport us into the realms of the senses. Aleister Crowley, 777 Revised Moving from the occult psychedelia of Mario Mercier to the queer pagan punk of Scott To the dogmatist the heretic is more dangerous than the secularist. The dogmatist Treleaven, Nick Hudson and Scott discuss their influence from occult icons such as would rather hear that the Christ was a fake, than that he was the one true god yet Crowley, Gysin and Burroughs, Scott’s friendship with Genesis P’orridge and their use of homosexual. Where the secularist and the dogmatist may find peaceful co-existence, occult collage and cut-ups as a tool for making and experimenting in differing art forms. the heretic and the dogmatist fight on the same retain. It is in this respect that sub- Amelia Ishmael’s “To Raise a Storm: Gast Bouschet and Nadine Hilbert’s Tempestarii and version often contains an element of what it seeks to transcend: The ranter’s theol- the sympathetic magic of Digital video” plunge us further into that alchemical dimension, ogy without sin, Nietzsche’s death of God, LaVey’s Church of Satan. History involves a where the technical collides with the magic and the mythic to produce both installation transubstantiation that defies specialisation. From alchemy comes chemistry, from the and expanded cinema. The experimental frame of digital video is the site upon which psychic come psychology. Invocation serves transcendence. Lynch transcends Hitch- the sorcery takes place. The technical colludes in the magician’s acts: A storm is raised. cock by becoming Hitchcockian, just as LaVey transcends the Christian idea of Satan Finally we end with James Riley’s “Cult Films for Cult Religions”, an interview with ex- by becoming satanic. This is the alchemy that breaks the repetition of the old dogmas perimental filmmaker Craig Baldwin about his filmMock up on Mu, a film which appropri- by rendering them of service to the future. It is this that Cagean silence, despite its ates footage from old cult films to tell the stories of cultists of American counter-cultural, radicalism, cannot achieve. Transcendence emerges through the combination of ideas. Jack Parson, Marjorie Cameron, the founder of Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard and the The manipulation of symbols, language and words in the service of the transformation British occultist, Aleister Crowley. Baldwin’s use of cut-ups has a transformative power of consciousness must retain, or reignite, something of the old in order to be truly new. that builds alternative histories with alternative meanings. The articles in this volume are The old symbols, used, but transcended, offer more radicalism than radical silence. linked by this overriding theme: Technical and aesthetic experimentation accompany the They signify the excess, while silence remains open, too open. What has gone before occult and mythic. Diarmuid Hester’s literary excesses, James Riley’s account of projec- is expressed in order to go beyond what was previously expressed. The old comes to tionism, Mercier’s surreal eroticism, the digital experimentalism of Tempestarii and the signify the excess of the new. The repetition of the old symbols are broken so that the cut up methods of Scott Treleavern and Craig Baldwin, they each, through technical and new meaning can manifest. All must be revitalised. The chains that crowd our feet are aesthetic subversion of symbols, words and images initiate an alchemical transformation transfigured; They become crowns. of consciousness.

2 This thirteenth issue of One+One embraces its fate and aligns itself with the occult, Bradley Tuck 3 One+One Filmmakers Journal

Contents

05 25 Screening Scott Treleaven: In Conversation Diarmuid Hester Nick Hudson 07 32 Magick Lanterns: Night of the To Raise a Storm: Gast Bouschet and Demon, M.R. James and Projection Nadine Hilbert’s Tempestarii and the James Riley sympathetic magic of digital video Amelia Ishmael 15 Erotic Witchcraft: Mario Mercier’s 42 Screening occult sex films Cult Films for Cult Religions: An interview Mark Goodall with Criag Baldwin James Riley Diarmuid Hester

He retraces his steps, setting right foot the foot of the bed. in front of left and slowly shuffling for- wards. Anxiously, he squeezes his hand Light from the window is cast into the into a fist and feels the blood tacky on his left corner of the room, outlining the fea- fingers and the familiar taste of metal in tures of an older man in a white shirt and Issue 13 Volume 1 his mouth. He feels cold and weak. Sigh- dinner jacket, sitting immobile in a high- Published 1st July 2014 Cover image by Melanie Mulholland ing, he pushes open the heavy red door. backed chair. A black bow-tie is fastened Logo and template design: Benoit Schmit, www.buenito.com Dim light from a streetlamp outside falls beneath his jutting chin and deep lines run Website Design: Mikolaj Holowko Layout: James Marcus Tucker through the window onto a form smudged up his neck and face, silhouetted in the Editors: Bradley Tuck, Greg Scorzo, Liz Soden, Frances Hatherley, James Marcus Tucker across the bed. A large dark stain sur- faint light. His right eye gleams in the dark- Search Facebook for One+One: Filmmakers Journal or tweet us @OnePlusOneUk Email: [email protected] rounds it, glistening softly on the crum- ness but expresses nothing. He does not pled sheets. Lank sweaty hair covers the appear to breathe. To his left, behind him One+One has been produced collaboratively by a group of Brighton-based filmmakers, with internationally based contributors and writers and is a not-for-profit project. Visit our website at www.oneplusonejournal.co.uk for back eyes but the jaw lies open, a slack “O”. His and slightly out of focus stands a young issues and our regularly updated blog. eyes shift across the body, down the de- boy in a light shirt and dark tie. Though he stroyed chest, the dull scrub of pubic hair too is motionless, underneath his severe and luminously pale thighs, coming to rest fringe his face is expectant; full wet lips 5 4 on a gnarled tether that binds an ankle to parted slightly, eyes fixed upon the bed. he One+One Filmmakers Journal

Bending down he picks up some torn, we understand it to be such?... this trampled pages from the floor. A soiled unfathomable longing of the soul paragraph, written in a hasty hand and to vex itself – to offer violence to its Magick Lanterns: Night just discernible in the half-light reads: own nature – to do wrong for wrong’s sake only.” Deleuze and Guattari: “the The actual is nothing to me – only body suffers from being organised in of the Demon, M.R. James the future-past of the virtual matters; this way, from not having some other it matters – is made matter – in the organization or no organization at all.” and Projection time-image. The virtual alone yields [illegible] speculum taken to the vir- the capacity for liberation, for free- tual through a bloody and triumphant dom from the death of the present: spectacularisation. The time of Aion is yes! freedom is indeed possible be- upon us: you must help me. Only you James Riley yond conditions as the fat Buddhists can do this. say, but not through meditation – a veritable disavowal of necessary ac- The film starts up again and he strides tion and corporeal immediacy – but into the room naked. The knife hang- through the time-image. Through ing from his left hand glimmers. Pairs of the visualisation of action and con- eyes around him here and there watch as, sequent virtualisation of the act-ual. through silent screams, the horror unfolds. Deleuze’s Bergsonism is [illegible]… He remembers it lasting longer than this A veritable cone of time coated in but now a mess of gore is held aloft, drip- blood. ping through his fingers, coursing down With all my love, his arms and it’s done. A beat and he’s S buried his face in the quickly cooling ca- daver, tonguing at the ragged bluish en- His eyes drift up from the pages held trails, blood and snot and tears together. in his hands to the scene before him. It’s He gathers the body to him, limp and flickering and fluid through his tears, but heavy in his arms and he’s rocking back nothing has changed: the three figures re- and forth. Turning toward the camera, main eerily still. He scans another sheet, eyes wild and unseeing, he mouths the and remembers the letter abandoned on words, “I did this for you.” his desk two weeks earlier. It was a Tues- day. Come, lover! dismantle this organ- ised body, butterfly it as once you did …the Sisters teach that only my heart. Unfold me onto the world; through a becoming-spectacle of be in me and through me. Abandon The British Museum Project all MacGinnis) a magician and cult leader the most reprehensible crimes can yourself to my anguish and ecstasy. with a dangerous and implicitly insecure the virtual be invoked. Transgres- In August 2013, the BFI mounted an command of demonic invocation.2 Hold- sive acts in which the plane of im- The impossibly bright lights come up outdoor screening of Jacques Tourneur’s en, a staunch rationalist attempts to de- manence resides as pure potentiality and he’s surrounded by dark, well-dressed Night of the Demon (1957) as part of their bunk the machinations of Karswell’s cult, induce a systematic derangement of figures thundering applause. He has never massive season Gothic: The Dark Heart of but following the progress of a number of the senses, which is simultaneously been so tired. Film.1 Projected in the grounds of the Brit- James’ protagonists, this rationalism is rearranged through the camera lens ish Museum the event marked something brought into question when Karswell re- – through its image. Murder and rape of a twofold ‘homecoming’ for this classic taliates: he passes Holden a runic parch- and suicide and cannibalism trace a of British horror cinema. ment that promises the recipient death by locus that becomes a line of flight in Based on M.R. James’ short story fire demon within four days. cinema’s crystal image. Poe: “Have ‘Casting the Runes’ (1909), Night of the Subject to extensive production and we not a perpetual inclination in the Demon focuses on the conflict between script disputes, particularly as regards the 6 teeth of our best judgement to violate John Holden (Dana Andrews), an Ameri- on-screen appearance of the titular de- 7 that which is Law, merely because Image: Bill Henson, Untitled 28/77, 1990-91 can psychologist and Julian Karswell (Ni- mon and currently available in two differ- One+One Filmmakers Journal

ent versions, the film has previously been ish Museum and not just its emblematic projected key scenes from Carol Reed’s regarded as a lesser entry in Tourneur’s function. 1949 film onto their relevant locations in genre canon, a body of work that includes Early on in Night of the Demon Holden Vienna. Filming the results, Baker pro- I Walked with a Zombie (1943) and The visits the British Museum’s reading room duced an uncanny montage featuring Cat People (1942).3 However, Night of to consult a rare volume, True Discoveries such images as Orson Welles looming the Demon has maintained an enduring of Witchcraft and Demons. It’s here that out of the Wiener Risenrad, Trevor How- cult appeal due to regular festival screen- he meets Karswell and where the parch- ard appearing amongst the bubbles of ings and a wave of enthusiastic scholar- ment is covertly passed over, an exchange a beer glass and a submersion of the fi- ship that emerged out of the widespread that’s signified by an immediate distor- nal chase in the churning waters of the critical re-evaluation of British horror; a tion of Holden’s vision. In narratological Viennese sewer system.7 Although the renaissance that’s been in progress since terms, this transition is a cardinal function, BFI’s Night of the Demon event was not the mid-1990s.4 The BFI Gothic season in an essential hinge point in the plot that subject to the same secondary level of part functions as a consolidation of this precipitates and permits further occur- recording that’s integral to projectionism attention and within such a field Night of rences.5 It’s essential for this exchange to proper, Baker’s manifesto nonetheless the Demon stands as an obvious canoni- take place in order for the battle of wits offers a framework for interpreting its cal choice. It combines the monochromat- between the two men to begin and the spatial significance. ic intensity and supernatural resonance demonic pursuit to take place. Similarly, In his book, The Art of Projectionism of The Innocents (1961) and The Haunt- it’s this scene in the reading room, when (2008), Baker traces the etymology of the screen all but disappears in ‘conventional’ ing (1963) with the giant monstrosity of Karswell and Holden meet for the first word ‘project’ to the Latin jacere mean- cinematic exhibition, for Baker, projection- Godzilla (1954) and a narrative structure time that most of the film’s main opposi- ing ‘to throw’. This root encapsulates the ism seeks to foreground the particularity that foreshadows the crushing doom of tions are brought together in something literal and figurative senses of expulsion and variability of a given surface and, in the Ring cycle (1998-2000) approaching equilibrium: occultism and that inhabit the current use of ‘project’. turn, the nature of the dialectic that occurs The screening at the British Museum psychology, belief and scepticism, textual The verb relates to the physical action of when such surfaces receive the projected symbolized this contemporary critical knowledge and practical magick. There throwing a body into space as well as to film. In particular, he states that one result status. Shown as a newly remastered are scenes in Night of the Demon that the psychological process of manifesting is ‘re-source projectionism’, the process complete print at a high profile venue, the are more spectacular, but few that offer an idea through planning or contrivance. whereby “film images are projected back event was both a crowd-pleasing revival such a matrix of narrative significance. As For Baker, the act of projection, specifical- onto an original location resulting in a “vis- and a celebratory projection of the film such, the decision to project Night of the ly “the means by which an image is made ual re-birth”.9 Another form of interaction directly into London’s main repository of Demon at the British Museum returns the visible on screen” maintain this duality. Im- is described as “symbolic projectionism”, received culture and artistic preservation. film to this central location. As well as be- age projection works as a means by which the process by which “the projection, At the same time it made manifest the dis- ing symbolically accommodated into the an idea can be the content tinct sense of site-specificity that ties the academy, the visual spectacle of Hold- made mani- of the im- film to the physical geography of the Brit- en, Karswell and the demon is replayed fest. Similarly, projectionism seeks to foreground age, and across the surface of its the curatorial “the particularity and variability of a the surface thematic and narratological decisions un- combine to point of origin. derpinning the given surface and, in turn, the nature suggest a For the filmmaker and choice of what of the dialectic that occurs when hidden real- writer Frederick Baker this to project, how such surfaces receive the projected ity”. Accord- type of intersection be- to project and, ing to Baker, tween place, space and cin- most impor- film ” this ‘reveal’ ematographic superimposi- tantly, where emerges as tion is a key element of what to project function as a further territory a result of the selected contact medium he terms projectionism: “an for the realization and communication of working to either strengthen ”the meaning artistic practice that uses a one’s own intentions. It is this “an inter- of the projected image” or instead initiat- film, video or slide projector esting dialogue” between an “original film ing a level of critique through the creation to create new images that and its reprojection” that informs the pro- of an “ironic comment”.10 are captured on film or by jectionist work. Baker suggests that the a stills camera”.6 In 2004, specificity of a given surface or “contact- As with the combination of tribute and 8 Baker made Shadowing the medium” can “add value to the images sly criticism that characterizes Shadowing 9 Third Man, a film essay that projected onto them”.8 Whereas the blank the Third Man, Night of the Demon at the One+One Filmmakers Journal

retary and his wife” are told of a sinister event staged by Karswell at his home, Luf- ford Abbey; a magic lantern show ostensi- bly presented for the Parish children. The account relates a display of frightening images that progressively becomes more disturbing and affective:

And then, if you please, he switched on another slide, which showed a great mass of snakes, centipedes, and disgusting creatures with wings and somehow or other he made it seem as if they were climbing out of the picture and getting in amongst the audience; and this was accompanied by a sort of dry rustling noise which sent the chil- these manifestations to the mechanism of carrying this label date from 1665 and British Museum realized both ‘re-source dren nearly mad, and of course they “capitalist modernity”. The runes are “Bad according to the Magic Lantern Society, projectionism’ and ‘symbolic projection- stampeded.12 Money”: “bits of paper” that tie demonic Walgensten’s branding reflected an inter- ism’. Certainly the “visual re-birth” of the invocation to depersonalised exchange.15 est in the lantern’s “technical and artistic film could be seen to emerge as a result In Night of the Demon this scene is It would be easy to see Karswell’s possibilities” as well as its “economic po- of the critical value added via the particu- recast as one in which Karswell demon- magic lantern as part of this “surprising” tential”, not just its use as scientific ap- larity of its projection context. As regards strates his power to Holden by conjuring fusion of the modern and the demonic, a paratus.16 the ‘hidden reality’ that it makes clear, this a windstorm during a Halloween party. It’s synthesis that is bridged by whatever dia- The most widely cited examples of this emerges from the synthesis achieved in an important moment in the film not least bolical process is occulted by the phrase ‘entertainment’ application came in the the event between public projection and because it makes clear Karswell’s ma- “somehow or other”. However, James is mid-to late 18th century. Johann Georg the focus the film places on demonic con- levolence but also because it gestures to- not so much inventing here as literalising Schropfer used a lantern to perform ‘sé- juration. Screening Night of the Demon wards a haunting back-story: somewhere the imaginative economy that surrounded ances’ in Leipzig between 1750 and 1774. in this form does not remix the film in a along the line Karswell has undergone a the device. Neither the process of realiza- His ‘invocations’ consisted of images manner similar to Baker’s Third Man, but transition from street magician to Black tion, nor the generation of terrifying im- of ghosts and devils projected in dark instead sheds light upon the technology Magus.13 In contrast, the ruined party of ages are alien rooms and of projection itself. What the event speaks the text works as an index not of character to the cultural upon clouds of is the occult significance of spectacular per se, but of the paradigmatic specific- and material what makes its climax so of smoke.17 projection. ity that underpins James’ articulation of history of the terrifying“ is the threat of a haptic In 1793, horror. Karswell’s magic lantern show is magic lantern Paul Phi- Projection: A Demonology a spectacular display but what makes its and projection visuality: the horror that the images lidor (Paul de climax so terrifying is the threat of a haptic as a whole. might reach out and touch you. Philipsthal) In ‘Casting the Runes’, Karswell is first visuality: the horror that the images might As with the ” presented introduced via a combination of corre- reach out and touch you. development of possibly the spondence and conversation. He is a bad Tactile horror is a recurrent motif in the cinematograph, lantern projection is most famous display of this kind, the seed, an outsider in relation to the typical James’ work. As China Miéville explains, tied to multiple points of origin. The Dutch Phantasmagoria. Using moving projec- Jamesian milieu of (seemingly) secure ac- the extent to which his protagonists touch scientist Christiaan Huygens is generally tors, superimposition, sound effects and ademic institutionalisation. The council of gaping mouths, membranous slime and credited with producing the device as an a variety of locations ranging from audi- an undefined scholarly association has re- feel insectoid movement just out of sight, extension of his wave theory of light. Huy- toriums to churches, Philidor conjured his jected his paper ‘The Truth of Alchemy’ on is expressive of “a new (Weird) hatpos, gens was said to have constructed a lan- ghosts (phantasma) in a self-consciously the recommendation of “Edward Dunning with little to do with human somaticism, tern in around 1659, although it was the theatrical format.18 Whereas Schropfer – almost the only man in England who and everything to do with the horror of Danish mathematician Thomas Rasmus- arguably used the lantern as a means knows about these things”, much to the matter”.14 For Miéville, what is remarkable sen Walgensten, working with the same for producing an illusion, Philidor’s dis- 10 epistolary indignation of its author.11 As about ‘Casting the Runes’ is the manner theoretical and practical principles who play was less an act of deception than a 11 further proof of his malcontent “the Sec- in which James binds the particularity of offered the name Laterna magica. Designs spectacle which revelled in the productive One+One Filmmakers Journal

capabilities of projection technology. As incantations in the Colosseum, causing Brother (1969) and Lucifer Rising (1970- with the footage of the arriving train at La the space to be filled with dense smoke 1981). Anger regards film Ciotat Station presented by the Lumière and “legions of demons”. Cellini and later Brothers in 1895, the work of both Phi- commentators such as Émile Grillot de […] as having the potential, when lidor and Schropfer is connected to apoc- Givry presented Romonli as a necroman- properly used, to invoke primal forc- ryphal stories of fear and belief amongst cer.21 For film-maker Richard Stanley, this es, perhaps even demons. Once re- their audience. Such assertions regarding display of “gigantic devils in fill armour” – leased, these demons can affect not the phenomenological specificity of early if it happened at all – represented a pro- only those involved in the film’s pro- cinema and particularly proto-cinema totypical use of “smoke and shadows”; a duction, but also, through a series of take little account of the suspension of ‘nocturnal appearance’ similar to the use occult circuits connecting physical disbelief that informs the consumption of of concave mirrors in ‘pagan’ rituals.22 with spiritual dimensions of exist- spectacular displays. By extension, this The flipside of this contrived conjuration ence, the film’s audience.23 analysis obscures a more pertinent line of was the optical work of Giovanbattista questioning relating to the particularity of Della Porta who experimented with the The medium carries this potential be- the visual language associated with the camera obscura; the dark room principle cause film is “the display of trapped light”. magic lantern. As with the immediate cin- of projecting an (inverted) external image Projection thus functions as a means by ematographic shift from the documentary onto an internal surface via a small shaft of which this Luciferean substance can be aesthetic of the Lumières to the ‘horror’ of light. Although different to the necroman- channelled, held and extended. Anger’s Méliès and The House of the Devil (1896), tic implications of Cellini, this exploration mythic discourse speaks volumes. Projec- one might ask, why does the operation of of natural magick attracted accusations of tion and its cinematographic development projection technology consistently gener- sorcery on account of its potentially he- chart a cultural narrative that finds a point ate a visual register of demonology and retical mimicry of the “illusion of life”. of crystallization in ‘Casting the Runes’. diabolism? This brief survey indicates that Huy- The frequency with which the technology Keeping in mind the psychological gens’ lantern and the spectacular culture coheres around the demonic signifies an implications of projection, one response it germinated, emerged out of a context imaginative economy in which manifesta- the style and appearance of ‘The Great might be that the medium permits the in which manifest projection, whether ar- tion is suspect. The uncanny effect of ex- Beast’, the magician Alesiter Crowley, who physical externalisation of that which is tificial or taken to be of unknown origin, ternalization brings with it a foundational regarded magick (as opposed to ‘magic’) archetypally problematic; an argument was regarded as transgressive: an occur- fear of realization; the fear of the double, as “the science and art of causing change that accounts for the persistence of horror rence at odds with the residual dogma the tulpa and the thought form: the horror to occur in conformity with the will”.24 If 19 across multiple media. However, there is surrounding the politics of mimesis and of matter. projection in the Freudian sense describes a formal particularity that connects the act the epistemological anxieties that con- an unconscious process of extension, of projection to conjuration both in terms structed and delimited the ‘supernatural’. New Light Crowley’s system of magick works as an of process and product. That’s to say, pri- The shift from demonic projection to the intentional and directed act of projection. or to the theatrics of the Phantasmagoria projection of demonic imagery nonethe- What light, then, does this shed on It’s this kind of imposition that we are ar- projection was posited as a system that less indicates the persistence of a particu- Night of the Demon? Is it possible to read guably presented with when Holden ex- permitted invocation as well as the artifice larized cathexis. What underpins each of from the ‘hidden reality’ of its screening amines / interrogates Rand Hobart (Brian that underwrote its illusion. these instances from 1420 onwards is a context to the events of the film’s narra- Wilde). At a psychology conference. Ho- One of the earliest references to the level of ambivalence towards manifesta- tive? Unlike ‘Casting the Runes’, Night of bart is one of Karswell’s followers who has process can be found in Giovanni de Fon- tion. Invocation, reproduction, the projec- the Demon contains no overt reference to apparently been party to or victim of the tana’s Liber instrumentorum from 1420. tion if images beyond their point of origin: projective or even cinematographic tech- cult’s demonic energies. Holden seeks to The text depicts “a nocturnal appearance all are processes that carry with them the nology. However, it can be seen as a film ‘decondition’ him in an attempt to debunk for terrifying viewers” as a man holds aloft shock of realization. An idea, thought or that places in tension two forms of psy- Karswell’s supernatural abilities. Using 20 a lantern that projects a leering devil. Al- concept; an aspect of one’s own internal chological projection. As stated, Karswell hypnotism, drugs and suggestion (ironi- though the passage carries no technical space or sphere of contemplation has, in and Holden are ostensibly positioned in a cally to no less disastrous effect) Holden description it resonates with another ac- the case of these contrivances, suddenly binary relationship of magic and science. essentially makes use of the same devic- count, that of sculptor Benvenuto Cellini, crossed over and taken form on the out- As this opposition develops what is em- es that permit the extension of the will in who in his La Vita (1558-1557) describes side. This is the theory and practice that phasised in Charles Bennett’s screenplay magickal practices. The film presents Ho- an encounter with Vincenzo Romoli in structures Kenneth Anger’s Magick Lan- is the shared mechanisms underpinning bart as a ‘contact-medium’ for Holden just 12 1540. Romoli was a Sicilian priest who, tern Cycle (1947-1981), a series of films these paradigms. MacGinnis’ perfor- as much as he is for Karswell. 13 according to Cellini performed a series of that include Invocation of My Demon mance of Karswell was loosely based on The ambiguity of Night of the Demon One+One Filmmakers Journal

is often said to lie with the creature’s own Mackay (Falmouth: Urbanomic, 2008), pp. 105-129 flickering state between reality and projec- (p.111). tion, the status of supernatural entity and 15. Ibid. Erotic Witchcraft: Mario 16. See http://www.magiclantern.org.uk/lantern- imagined construct. More specifically, one history.html for the source of this information and quo- could argue that the film does not pre- tations. sent an oscillating conflict between two 17. See Oliver Grau, ‘Remember the Phantasma- Mercier’s occult sex films opposed discourses but offers instead goria! Illusion Politics of the Eighteenth Century and its Multimedial Afterlife’ in Grau (ed.) Media Art Histories a narrative in which the boundaries that (Cambridge: MIT, 2007), pp.137-163, (p.144). separate them become increasingly indis- 18. See Kevin Heatherington, Capitalism’s Eye: Mark Goodall tinct. At the close of the film, magick and Cultural Spaces of the Commodity (New York: Rout- ledge, 2007), p. 62. psychology cease to be poles apart. Much P19. sychological projection is the (usually nega- the same can be said for the effect of po- tive) attribution of properties and intentions to others sitioning the screening of Night of the De- which reflect “the parts of oneself that one cannot deal mon within a context of projection’s occult with”. See Baker, (p. 36) and Sigmund Freud, Case Histories II ed. by Angela Richards, Penguin Freud history. We often speak about the ‘magic’ Library vol. 9. of cinema, as if to preserve its affective 20. See http://www.magiclantern.org.uk/lantern- qualities in order to obscure its material history.html for more on Fontana. The cited quote is translated by the Lantern scholar William Tebra. reality. By contrast, what the ‘hidden real- 21. Émile Grillot de Givry, The Illustrated Anthol- ity’ of the BFI’s screening points to is the ogy of Sorcery, Magic and Alchemy [1929] (London: magickal structure of this material reality. Zachary Kwintner, 1991), p.94. 22. Richard Stanley, Shadow of the Grail (UK: In- nervision, 2007), p.94. 23. Mikita Brottman, ‘Introduction: Force and Fire’ 1. At the time of writing, information about the in Jack Hunter (ed.), Moonchild: The Films of Kenneth season can be found here: http://www.bfi.org.uk/ Anger (London: Creation Books, 2002), pp.1-18 (p.2). gothic. For further details see James Bell (ed.) Gothic: 24. Aleister Crowley, Magick in Theory and Prac- The Dark Heart of Film (London: BFI, 2013). Night of tice [1929] (New York: Castle Books, 1992). His use of the Demon played as part of the BFI Monster Week- ‘magick’ is an attempt to distinguish his own practice ender at the British Museum, 29th-31st August 2013. 2. M.R. James, ‘Casting the Runes’, in The from that of stage magic or the magic ‘trick’. Haunted Dolls’ House and Other Stories (Harmonds- worth: Penguin, 2000), pp.93-114. All images are stills from Night of the Demon. 3. For a full account of the circumstances regard- ing the film’s production, see Tony Earnshaw, Beat- ing the Devil: The Making of Night of the Demon (UK: Still from La Papesse Tomahawk Press, 2005). The truncated US release of the film, running at 83 minutes rather than the original 95, is called Curse of the Demon. 4. See Steve Chibnall and Julian Petley (eds.) Brit- “Cinema will bear a greater and aim was to invoke “the rebirth of mysti- ish Horror Cinema (London: Routledge, 2002). greater resemblance to the fantas- cism decisively victorious over science, 5. See Roland Barthes ‘An Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narratives’ in Image Music Text tic...” (Antonin Artaud) materialism and the Revolution of modern ed. and translated by Stephen Heath (London: Fon- times.”1 The first Surrealist Manifesto was tana, 1977), pp. 79-125. 6. Frederick Baker, The Art of Projectionism A significant portion of the history of published in 1924 by Andre Breton where- (Wein: Czernin Verlag, 2008), p.19. French culture is devoted to the relation- in the author called for the “recuperation 7. Baker’s film is available on the Criterion edition of The Third Man. ship between art and occultism. In Paris, in of lost mental powers”. Although such 8. Baker, p. 67. 1884, Madame Helena Blavatsky founded Symbolist/Decadent/Occult activity was 9. Ibid, p. 98. her Theosophical Society aimed at form- viewed by some as sanitised, traces of 10. Ibid, p. 99. 11. James, ‘Casting the Runes’, p.93 ing myths and religions into a new order of the sensational imagery and conceptuali- 12. James, ‘Casting the Runes’, p.95. truth. In 1892 Joséphin Péladan opened sation of the ritualistic would find their way 13. See Earnshaw for more reflections on his first Salon de la Rose+Croix, an at- into the then new and exciting art form of Karswell. 14. China Miéville, ‘M. R. James and the Quan- tempt at unifying a system of occultism cinema. tum Vampire: Weird; Hauntological: Versus and/or and through music and ritual (Erik Satie was French cinema is impregnated with the 14 and/or or?’ in Collapse IV: Concept Horror, ed. Robin 15 an early member of the order). Péladan’s occult. Since the early days of film theory, One+One Filmmakers Journal

the impressionist/surrealist model of cin- toxication” the likes of which had not been chemy. Mercier realised only a handful ema extolled the virtues of the cinematic seen or experienced before, at least with of films but these faithfully realised the arts as a form of witchcraft. Jean Epstein, such intensity. The dream-like nature of promise of fantastic cinema that began one of the early masters in film art, be- the projected film is unprecedented in art, and virtually ended with magicians such lieved the cinema, a mass of synthetic im- for the first time “supreme in the enlarge- as Méliès and Feuillade. Mercier was that ages of existence, could do no less than ment of reality that is the marvellous, in rare thing: a film poet; less concerned reveal “the spirit’s that prolonga- with plot and narrative and, like the early appearance.”2 tion of psychol- impressionist film-makers, keen to reveal the cinema, a mass of For these French “ ogy that dream the thrill of rituals and incongruities, where writers, film was synthetic images of existence, is.”4 For Artaud, “reality and nightmares collide.”9 at last an art form could do no less than reveal ‘the more than any Mercier worked with that feverish which could ex- spirit’s appearance.’ other surreal- brand of Polish/French surrealism evident plore the magic ” ist film-maker, in the early works of Roman Polanski (no- of fantasy and film was more tably his collaborations with writer Gérard imagination with the same ferocity great akin to the trance, the dream, inner con- Brach), Roland Topor, Fernando Arrabal literature had –only better. sciousness and the alteration of received and Walerian Borowczyk. Their images of In 1928 Antonin Artaud wrote an essay meaning. It is clear then, that the earliest sex, death and the occult pervaded new entitled ‘Sorcery and the Cinema’. Written conceptions of film were essentially ‘su- wave cinema of the post-war period. Mer- in the early stages of film history and film pernatural’ and one would have naturally cier’s Jewish father was a doctor and bi- criticism, Artaud nevertheless argued that thought that these revelations would in- ologist fascinated by occultism (this figure the cinema was already at “an advanced spire a tranche of spectacularly occult ex- of the ‘part-time occultist’, and the ways stage of development within human periments in cinema. in which the supernatural can be located thought.”3 “Any image, even the slight- Despite the commercial cinema’s ob- just as easily in a sunny home as much est and most banal, is transfigured on the session with the occult in horror and fan- as a gloomy remote castle, is echoed in screen”, he wrote. The way in which film is tasy5, Artaud’s hoped-for procession of the pre-credit sequence of his first film La able to isolate (some would say fetishise) “sorcerers and saints”6 did not appear. But Goulve). Mercier excelled at school and objects “endows them with a second life.” Mario Mercier (b. 1945) is a figure who, as became a gang leader in his local village Film is capable of creating a “physical in- a painter, novelist, historian and alche- (a role also reprieved in the opening of La mist, seems to epitomise Goulve but this time reversed: Raymond Péladan’s infamous proc- is the victim of a gang of tearaways). Mer- lamation: cier is generally better known in France as a novelist and writer on the occult, with “Artist, thou art several disturbing works of fiction to his priest.”7 name, most of which were censored in some manner.10 Mercier is like the Mercier’s first feature,La Goulve (1971, ‘modern alchemist’ that English title: Erotic Witchcraft), a retelling writers Louis Pauwels of the Gorgon legend, is one of the most and Jacques Bergier met original works ever made. It is a film satu- in Paris in 1953 when re- rated with the horror of the occult and searching their classic eroticism. Many of the scenes in the film occult text The Morning are astonishing set-pieces demonstrating of the Magicians.8 He, a real understanding of the evil power of like Mercier, viewed gar- film and how to shock and surprise audi- 16 17 Mario Mercier, source: dune2.unblog.fr/ dening as a form of al- ences with its occult mysteries. La Goulve Poster and still from La Goulve One+One Filmmakers Journal

also draws on early masterpieces of Immediately he is transported back to magic, the drive which enables transpor- French fantasy such as Balzac’s La Peau a vivid abstract image of his mother. A tation into another realm of the senses... de Chagrin (1831) a study of a young man plaintive guitar plays lyrically. The screen In order to control Agnès, Raymond who misuses the magic powers granted bursts into a yellow mist. This is the first conducts an occult spell invoking the to him and Théophile Gautier’s Omphale of many alchemical moments in the film. image of her other lover Constant and of 1834 where a beautiful figure in a tap- Then, as Raymond surveys the bizarre the sacrifice of a chicken whose blood estry comes seductively to life. The most room, electronic music slowly seeps in. is cooked up with herbs and nails. Ray- startling scene in the film occurs when This is augmented with a sudden burst mond shuffles around the room and en- Raymond is of thunder and ters the magic circle barefoot. Swirling transformed into flashing lights, psychedelic organ fills the air. As Agnès is a female form, a “ an attempt at representing a as an icon of la awakened in her bed by the spell, pulsat- succubus, and visionary and revolutionary goulve, an an- ing synthesizer music kicks in. A power- captivates the cient goddess ful storm swirls all around, the fury of La girl. Mercier ex- potential of female sexuality” with magical Goulve expressed through nature. Trans- plored this no- powers, looms formed into a version of the spirit, in fe- tion in his first sensational novel Jeanne’s up before Raymond. Axel then gives him male form, Raymond then enters the room Journal (1969), when the heroine, pos- a tour of the occult paraphernalia littering Nadine’s is occupying in his house and sessed of a secret alchemy, fantasises the tiny apartment. He will teach him eve- hypnotizes her into stabbing herself with a that she may “split herself” so that she rything. Raymond’s frustrated sexual desires magic dagger. The Goulve then heals this “might make love to myself.”11 The ee- Years later, at Axel’s funeral the cack- are the cause of his murderous and sadis- wound. Agnès is lured back into the river rie electronic music pulsing through this ling heads of the village idiots torment tic uses of the occult. In Breton’s similarly (where she has earlier bathed seductively scene echoes the mutations and electro- Raymond again. Disturbing electronic or- incredible novel L’Amour Fou, he outlines for Raymond) but this time at the behest of magnetic inductions Jeanne is able to cre- gan accompanies this scene. The laugher the surrealist conception of how women magic powers. The dark woods hiss and ate. As Jeanne notes: of the gravediggers is also drenched in epitomise beings capable of conjuring buzz with the terrifying nocturnal sounds unsettling reverb. Another astonishing se- the occult via sex: “Beauty will be erotic- of birds and animals. The moon becomes “To be masochistic is to become the quence follows: the ghost of Axel appears veiled, explosive-fixed, magic circum- a dangerous, all-seeing orb. gap which welcomes the torrents of the in a withered tree, warning Raymond not stantial or will not be.” Both Agnès in La The beauty of the pastoral landscape is universe”12 to misuse the powers of La Goulve. How- Goulve and Aline in his second filmLa Pa- utilised in both of Mercier’s films as a site ever, in order to control the women of his pesse are made to rejoin the occult forces of mystery and danger. Agnès, deranged Set in the southern regions of France desires he cannot resist harnessing the which make them “everything and nothing by the erotic spell, masturbates against a where Mercier lived (a land with a particular grotesque power of the spirits. at the same time.”15 Mercier draws on the gnarled tree stump while a storm flashes kind of rural paganism13), the film follows Through Raymond’s subsequent fetish of the ‘alchemical woman’ outlined around her. The Goulve has entranced the the story of Raymond who, as a child, wit- doomed relationships with women, first by another French occultist writer Michel entire landscape and possessed its peo- nessed his father first kill his mother and Agnès and then his cousin Nadine, Mer- Leiris for Georges Bataille’s Documents ple. In Constant’s final dream/nightmare, then himself. He is subsequently bullied cier portrays women as evil spirits: de- magazine.16 On the one hand, this is a a gang of sexy witches drift through the by the village kids as a ‘demon’. Pitying ceivers and temptresses. Any opportunity deeply sexist version of eroticism, evident landscape bathed in a yellow glow. The Raymond’s plight, Axel, the old village sor- to see the women naked is taken. In this in most of Mercier’s novels and films. On music is the weird refrain heard earlier but cerer, takes him in and teaches Raymond Mercier is following the dictum presented the other, it is an attempt at representing now played on a single heavily-reverbed the powers of the occult. Every weird ele- in Jeanne’s Journal: a visionary and revolutionary potential of string bass, baleful and creepy. Death ment of Axel’s tiny house comes alive to female sexuality- according to Bataille: masks peek out of bales of straw. Sex and Raymond with mystery. The strange clock “In matters of eroticism, priority must “inseparable from the idea of transgres- death are entwined in the scene when the chimes; unknown liquids bubble and boil be give to the total application of its rules: sion.”17 The occult erotic in Mercier’s films Goulve slowly hypnotises and seduces on the table. Axel warns Raymond of an it excludes conventional morality which is not, however, that of the satanic horror Agnès while Nadine’s body, her throat evil vial of lemur’s spittle and instead en- would inevitably render it insipid.”14 film offering a sleazy tableau of witchcraft, slashed, lies nearby, snakes writhing near 18 19 courages Raymond to sniff a perfume. but rather he uses the erotic as part of her dead body. Only in the form of a pos- One+One Filmmakers Journal

Stills from La Papesse

sessed woman can Raymond seduce. sound and image using the ancient tricks lence.”20 The film opens with the camera of sadistic imagery. Leaving his wife Aline In addition to the bizarre and striking of the cinema: original and striking mis- panning again across the harsh rural land- he meets a mysterious woman (Iltra) on a imagery, Mercier uses Guy Boulanger’s en-scene, simple shifts of focus and an scape of Southern France (”somewhere in bleak hillside. He allows her to chain him shimmering music throughout to convey intense, relentless musical score. The kind the world but outside of it” we are told). to a cross and be whipped by a psycho- occult powers. In the haunting pre-credit of ‘psychic transport’19 Mercier wishes to La Papesse is Geziale (supposedly a real path in a leather jacket (Borg). Laurent sequence, the soundtrack for Raymond’s use to take his audience on requires that witch) and we see one of the men who grimly surveys that bleak countryside. He torment is a demented arpeggio piano riff conventional notions of narrative and con- desire to be initiated into her cult. As with is whipped and faints with pain. When he which recurs throughout. tinuity be disregarded. Mercier is updating La Goulve, the specific nature of these comes back to consciousness, he seems In their book Immoral Tales, Tohill and the practices of the early French impres- occult groups is unclear; the rituals and a vision of a gang of hooded men whose Tombs, despite claiming that: “watching sionists, deploying photogenie and magic rites more folkloric than sensational and gowns are marked with red crosses. We Erotic Witchcraft is like having the top of to create the fantastique. The vignettes satanic. In Mercier’s films we lurch from see that this is actually Aline’s POV and your skull taken off and blown into”18, criti- are at times cruel and savage, erotic but the medieval into the present-day. A band now she too is to be whipped. As the cise the film for its low budget and cheap always entrancing. Mercier, before our of bearded counter-culture types mark monks pray and the moon glows in the effects (in actual fact, I found the optical eyes, transfigures actors into spirits. out a circle of fire inside which a man is twilight, she suddenly becomes old and effects, by Paul Soulignac-Thomas, en- Mercier’s second feature, La Papesse buried up to his neck. A basket of snakes withered (playing with the mystical con- trancing and terrifying). But that is to miss (1975), a more lurid and vivid horror work, is tipped over him. One has a deadly poi- nections between lunar powers and the what Mercier was trying to achieve; name- introduced the dark aesthetics of late sonous bite. Suddenly, it attacks and the female principle). She wakes with start ly: to convey the incredible powers of the 1960s counter-culture to the occult film. camera pans upwards to the perfect blue from a dream. But when she looks the occult through a series of striking rituals It is an unflinching and surreal account of sky... marks are still on her back; the pain from of cinematic expression. There is no need the sexuality of witchcraft, described by The head in the circle of fire belongs to Laurent’s whipping had been telepathi- for fine acting, a deep story and elaborate Michel Guy, the Minister of Culture at the Laurent, a young man on a masochistic cally conveyed by Iltra. special effects when you can conjure up time, as being “an uninterrupted succes- quest for pure liberation of the mind and The music again is significant. A groovy 20 21 the spirits in simple but effective use of sion of scenes of sadism, torture and vio- body that results in an astonishing array mix of psychedelic organ and bass gui- One+One Filmmakers Journal

and films, and Mandiargues was one of Magick Lantern Cycle, or Benjamin Chris- the few to praise Mercier. The cover notes tensen’s Haxan) because, like those writ- for the English edition of Jeanne’s Journal ers Mercier perhaps has more in common boast that “Mercier’s entire artistic per- with the dark erotcism of Emily Brontë, the sonality is dedicated to the occult and the decadence of Huysmans, the pronounced fantastic.”26 sense of evil found in Heinrich Von Kleist, Artaud noted that “the cinema reveals the strange gloom of Poe, and the erot- a whole occult life, one with which it puts ic nightmares of de Mandiargues and us directly in contact with. But we have Michaux. They draw on extreme psycho- to know how to divine this occult life.” logical terror in order to amplify the senso- The films of Mario Mercier go some way ry experience. The Black Mass becomes to help us achieve this divination. Merci- a vehicle for delirium and ecstasy in the er tried to use the cinema, its iconic and form of a cinematic moment. Jeanne, like abstract imagery, subliminal content and Raymond, Axel and Mercier himself is a visual effects to affect our mind state- to magician with a life directed by occult and transcend the ordinary world of the com- Still from La Papesse alchemical erotic rituals. Jeanne and Ray- mercial film space and to take us into mond become masochistic figures capa- mental landscapes that are dream-like. tar-driven rock, it makes the film seem sion. Mercier’s films were issued at a time ble at any moment of a cruel and sadistic De Mandiargues claimed that Mercier’s both ancient and modern. The central when the French cinema, via a heady form of eroticism. novels were important examples of “raw rituals are again cruel and surreal. Aline’s mix of sexual and political liberation, was The films of Mercier also explore the literature”. It is clear from La Goulve and initiation, presided over by Geziale as a “possessed by the demon of sex”22 with psychedelia and surrealism of modern La Papesse that his films are continua- medium for Laurent’s transcendence, is directors such as Jean Rollin making hor- witchcraft. The adepts in La Papesse are tions of this other potential medium: raw held in a primitive stone setting. Flamed ror films saturated with an erotic content. young funkily-attired devil-worshippers, cinema. Provocative artists exploring the torches light the proceedings. Tribal music Artaud spoke of the film-maker as be- the flipside to the peace-and-love coun- links between horror, the oneiric, the erotic and chanting sets an unworldly, ominous ing capable of revealing the inner self that ter-culture beloved of the media. They are and the occult will always be feared and scene. Geziale explains that her mission is had previously been the domain of the “Il- dark figures more akin to the disturbed dismissed by the mainstream or worse; to create “the reign of women of all ages luminati.”23 The modern film-maker could followers of Charles Manson, and Anton treated to “death by silence.”27 in the ‘Age of Aquarius.” She explains that use the tools of cinematic art to gain ac- LaVey. Mercier’s films and books are con- because of ‘traditional’ religion women cess to secret knowledge and to reveal it nected to the fantasy world of Claude Yet, as Mercier himself noted: have lost their original powers and must, to the world. This is not the world how- Seignolle’s Contes Sorciers (1974) as his through ritual, recover love’s initiatory and ever, of the dead brought back to life or stories are concerned with creating horror “Whoever dies such a death can al- sacred power. The adepts kiss Gaziele’s of satanic ghouls, nor of documentary figures with a disturbing element of real- ways place his hopes in resurrection.”28 kinky high-heeled boots. The blood-red records of taboo rites. Mercier described ity. These figures are driven by destructive moon is bathed in fluid and the Sabbat his work as a project called “witch cine- sexual impulses and exist in creepy rural commences; an orgy of naked revelry. Af- ma”24, an attempt at using the art of film locations like those of La Papesse. The 1.Nadia Choucha, Surrealism and the Occult, ter a series of violent abuses, Aline even- to create occult rituals on screen.25 His folklorist nature of Mercier’s films contrib- 1991, pp. 24 tually dies a gruesome death when hiding films are exciting supernatural records of utes to that particular form of occult hor- 2. Jean Epstein, ‘Photogénie and the Imponder- in a tree she falls. Xavos, Borg’s vicious the psychological processes of the rites of ror cinema. The sex rituals are invocations able’ in Richard Abel, ed., French Film Theory and dog, rips her neck. As she dies she stares the dream. They do not explain anything carried out as initiations into the kind of Criticism 1907-1939 Vol. 2, 1988, pp.192 up at the branches of the tree, looming about witchcraft but instead try to conjure modified kinky magic rituals of Masoch, 3. Antonin Artaud, ‘Sorcery and Cinema’ in Philip ominously above her. up some form of erotic magic ritual on the De Sade and Crowley. The writing of An- Hammond, ed., The Shadow and its Shadow: Surre- Mercier’s films are thus designed, like two-dimensional plane. His films bear lit- dre Pieyre de Mandiargues is concerned alist Writings on the Cinema’, San Francisco, 2000, his literary works, to be exercises in the tle resemblance to other acknowledged with Eros and Thanatos (love and death). pp.103 22 23 “provocative powers”21 of artistic expres- works of occult cinema (Kenneth Anger’s It was an influence on Mercier’s novels 4. Jacques Brunis, ‘Crossing the Bridge’ in Philip One+One Filmmakers Journal

Hammond, ed., The Shadow and its Shadow: Surre- Sex and Horror Cinema in Europe 1956-1984, pp. 60 alist Writings on the Cinema’, San Francisco, 2000, 19. Mario Mercier, Jeanne’s Journal, London, pp.102 1972, pp. 65 Scott Treleaven: In 5. See Carrol L.Fry’s book Cinema of the Occult 20. Cathal Tohill and Pete Tombs, Immoral Tales: (Cranbury: 2008) for a study of the more infantile ex- Sex and Horror Cinema in Europe 1956-1984, pp. 61 Conversation amples of this. 21. Mario Mercier, Jeanne’s Journal, London, 6. Antonin Artaud, ‘Sorcery and Cinema’ in Philip 1972, pp. 9 Nick Hudson Hammond, ed., The Shadow and its Shadow: Surre- 22. Cathal Tohill and Pete Tombs, Immoral Tales: alist Writings on the Cinema’, San Francisco, 2000, Sex and Horror Cinema in Europe 1956-1984, pp. 53 pp.104 23. Antonin Artaud, ‘Sorcery and Cinema’ in Philip 7. Robert Pincus-Witten, Occult Symbolism in Hammond, ed., The Shadow and its Shadow: Surre- France: Joséphin Péladan and the Salon de la Rose+ alist Writings on the Cinema’, San Francisco, 2000, Croix, 1976, pp.105 pp.104 8. This meeting is echoed in Frédérick Durand’s 24. Communication with the author, 23/9/13 strange meeting with Mercier in the Café de Flore in 25. Mercier employed Claude Déplace, an expert 1999 on the occult as an advisor on his films would know 9. Roy Armes, French Film, London, 1970, pp. 23 of Jules Michelet’s classic 1963 study Satanism and 10. The publisher of Le Journal de Jeanne, Eric Witchcraft. Losfeld, was fined several million francs, La Cuvée 26. Mario Mercier, Jeanne’s Journal, London, 1972 des Singes was pulped and Le Nécrophile (1970) was 27. Studies such as Jill Forbes The Cinema in prohibited. France and Hayward and Vincendeau’s French Film: 11. Mario Mercier, Jeanne’s Journal, London, Texts and Contexts for example, contain no mention 1972, pp. 12 at all of any aspect of the French horror film. 12. Mario Mercier, Jeanne’s Journal, London, 28. Mario Mercier, Jeanne’s Journal, London, 1972, pp. 16 1972, pp. 9 13. For example, in 1931 the French mystic and historian Antonin Gadal investigated the Cathar Grail mystery in the pyrneees reguion of southern France, where La Goulve was shot. The ruined fortresses of this area continue to hold an occult fascination. Fit- tingly, the Marquis de Sade’s ruined chateau at La- coste (now owned by fashion designer Pierre Cardin) is nearby. 14. Mario Mercier, Jeanne’s Journal, London, 1972, pp. 32 Scott Treleaven is a Toronto-born visual Scott’s collages, paintings, photography 15. Mario Mercier, Jeanne’s Journal, London, artist, filmmaker and writer. He initially and films are exhibited widely internation- 1972, pp. 70 came to prominence with his queer pagan ally. 16. Leiris discusses the erotic occult appeal of punk zine This Is The Salivation Army (1996 some photographs of a woman in a black leather - 1999), which attracted the attention of – *** mask sent to him by William Seabrook. These disturb- amongst many others – performance art- ist and cultural engineer Genesis Breyer Nick Hudson: In terms of ritual informing ing images are some of the first photographic images P-Orridge, whose exploration of principles the creative act, I often think of Genesis combining the occult with the erotic. developed by William Burroughs and Bry- P-’Orridge’s splinter test - this idea of a 17. Nadia Choucha, Surrealism and the Occult, on Gysin I used as a springboard for this holographic approach to the universe, 1991, pp. 83 24 dialogue, which occurred via Facebook whereby whatever connotations, histori- 25 18. Cathal Tohill and Pete Tombs, Immoral Tales: messenger over a two-month period. cally, spiritually, whatever - any element One+One Filmmakers Journal

that goes into the make-up of the whole through re-framing earlier songs via col- piece - are contained within every ‘cell’ of lage and even direct audio sampling in an it. So, for instance, if I adopt a meter or attempt to ‘break the form’. When you’re rhyme structure from a long-established constructing your collages, is there a song, then the historical data of that me- sense of ritual beyond itself the act of se- ter/rhyme structure is present. The first lecting which components are to be com- work I ever saw of yours was collage, bined? I’m seeing the scalpel as a wand which I guess is a pretty direct deploy- here... I know we’ve both spent time in the ment of this theory. company of the works of Aleister Crowley - to what extent do the ideas and strate- Scott Treleaven: I’ve talked with Gen- gies of Uncle Al still inform your work? esis a lot about this, though mostly in the context of Brion Gysin’s and William ST: The thing about the cut-ups - whether Burroughs’ seminal cut-up experiments. they’re applied to text, music, film or what- The idea that after scything through texts ever, even one’s body - is that they’re ex- somehow the ‘voice’ of the author would ercises that provoke uncontrolled change: survive. It would mutate, but survive. In the they’re an anarchic gesture, and they’re collages I was turning my present experi- intensely valuable because of that. You do ence - friends of mine who who seemed them when you don’t know which direc- to represent certain physical or political tion to turn. But as Burroughs pointed out, ideals for me - into statuary by xeroxing they’re a project for “disastrous success”. I’ve read described as ‘A psychedelic ly after Lady Jaye died, was the perfected their portraits. I’d embellish the pictures A sort of updated Rimbaudian derange- meditation on the alchemical ideal of the articulation of what I was trying to get at. with historical imagery to situate them in ment of the senses. That said, I haven’t hermaphrodite.’ Can you elaborate on the a wider con- made the col- thinking/intentions behind the trilogy? NH: So I just watched Last7words and was mesmerised. I could see it looping text. Maybe I wanted to see if something un- lages for about it’s more ac- “ five years, and ST: Silver, Gold and Lustre were an at- for hours and could see myself sitting in a curate to say expected would happen...to see if The Salivation tempt to use film as a sketching medium. gallery watching it for hours, the same way that I dragged there would be any reverberations Army will be I just wanted to show up with my super8 I sit in the Rothko room of the Tate Modern camera and see what would evolve out of for hours letting the colour field textures these histori- outside of the picture frame twelve years cal references ” old this year. I what was available to me at the time. I like lap over each other. It’s gorgeous, Scott. into my par- learned what I to think of it as ‘Zen cinema’ in a way, but I also - and this may be a strange inter- allel world to see if they still functioned. needed to from them. Crowley sort of fits I suppose it could be a deep laziness on pretation - came to think half-way through I wanted to see if something unexpected into that category for me. He was tremen- my part. I’m much more interested in just that the camera somehow was Lady Jaye would happen, you know, to see if there dously formative, but I have a different re- letting things happen around me rather looking over Gen, and that the dissolves to would be any reverberations outside of lationship to his work now. I see him more than laying out white were her the picture frame. Both my zines and my as a bohemian eccentric, and maybe as storyboards. I I just wanted to show up with blinking... Yeah. films tend to function in the same way. Al- an early queer-rights pioneer. He seldom can’t imagine an- “ Storyboards, though with The Salivation Army all of the gets credit for this, but he also helped ything more dull my super8 camera and see what I’ve never used footage is my own. None of the visuals are bring yoga to the west. than mapping out would evolve...I like to think of it them. The films every shot and I’ve been making sampled. I cut-up my own history for that as ‘Zen cinema’ one. NH: Yes, I feel similarly re; Crowley now plot point and ” with Chris Purdie - recently I re-read his ‘Autohagiography’ then filming it. My have been huge- NH: Re: The Salivation Army and the idea and enjoyed it as a kind of histrionic Boys’ films are so heavily connected to place ly improvised - I have an essence of a of cutting up one’s own history - you’re Own Story, or as a well-spun tale of an ex- and time because of that, I often don’t script, and essentially we and the cast go one of the few who’ve heard my very early traordinary life a la Leni Riefenstahl’s The promote them afterwards. The “trilogy” for a walk and improvise sequences under musical works, and that whole sequence Sieve of Time. also came from an impulse to make work lighting conditions that resonate with us, of seven albums was an exercise in cut- that was more open ended and ambient, in locations that resonate with us and edit ting up my own history - molecular re- I haven’t yet seen your film trilogy Lus- something that would work in a gallery. it into something semi-coherent. Moving photographs... In a way, Last- 26 constitution of adolescent programming tre, Gold and Silver - the former featuring 27 that was in desperate need of re-wiring, Genesis P-Orridge and Lady Jaye - which 7Words, which I made with Genesis short- ST: Last7Words was a bit of a shock for One+One Filmmakers Journal

me. I hadn’t seen Genesis since Jaye had that film, or rather not making it, I started fectionate, and very truthful, portrait of as its central conceit. The natural strobing died. I brought my super8 along to her to wonder why I’d bother making another Genesis. And it says a lot about our re- of film really comes through, as do all of hotel and we were hanging out while she one at all. lationship. I’ve known her for about four- the gaps between frames. It’s interesting was getting dressed that morning. The teen years now, and I always used to stay that digital editing is allowing me to show filmmaker Marie Losier was there as well. I NH: Wow. That’s amazing, Scott. Are with Gen and Jaye at their apartment in off qualities inherent in film that aren’t ex- was filming Gen blow drying her hair when there edits in the piece? And...have you Ridgewood. Gen has always been incred- tant in digital video…Erik Davis’ work trig- all of sudden my camera started to break worked on any films since then? I’m re- ibly kind, and really supportive of me over gered my thinking about the razor-precise down. For the first time in fifteen years. I minded of (American avant-garde thea- the years. She’s one of the few people to Apollonian light of digital bringing out that ended up with less then a minute of foot- tre-maker) Robert Wilson talking about disprove the “never meet your idols” aph- dark, unexpected Mercurial aspect of film. age, but once my camera stopped Gen psychoanalyst Daniel Stern and how his orism. They’re two entirely different ways of see- and I looked at each other as if to say, hugely slowed footage of a mother leaning ing and recording the world; one of which “wow, something happened there.” I got in to calm her agitated infant had a pro- As for the films I’ve made since then - my we’re in danger of losing for good. the film transferred and watching the mi- found influence on his theatre - essentially friend Bruno Ceschel runs the indie zine nuscule little snippet of footage I caught, the idea that if you slow actions down you and publishing site Self-Publish, Be Hap- NH: Yeah, absolutely. I was reminded of I thought: fuck, I missed it, I screwed up can manipulate people’s perception of the py and asks me each year to put together that with Rose Lowder’s work too - where that beautiful shot. Now, while I was look- passage of time in a way that transmits these little mini-movies for New Year’s film is treated purely as what it is - a spool- ing at the footage I was also listening to a information in microscopic minutiae. The Day. I’m not very social, so I make them ing sequence of frames, and where her track Terence Hannum (of Chicago noise moment in Last7words where Gen’s eye on New Year’s Eve instead of going out. shots of, say, flowers, alternate frame by band Locrian fame) had sent me called meets the camera has a quality of unme- They’re spontaneously assembled clips frame, and the materiality of film itself is Visible/Invisible. It’s a stunning piece of diated, beautiful ‘truthfulness’ that’s mas- from super8 I’ve shot over the years, set emphasised - with shades of strobing. I music. The tempo of it compelled me to sively powerful. How did you and Gen first to Psychic TV’s music. Quick and pain- guess, in turn, the capacity for ‘accidents’ slow the footage of Gen right down. When come to know each other? less. They’re the only films I’ve made and chance ‘errors’ will increasingly be I did, all of those little places where the since Last7Words, but I don’t really think explored in digital film too. I’m currently light flooded the film just took on a whole ST: There are a couple of edits in the vid- of them in the same vein. But back to what enjoying playing with pixel glitches, mul- new aspect. Not only that, the music eo - one to make the loop, another insert you said about slow motion. tiple generations of filmed image so the seemed made for it. I sent it to Terence to designate the end of the clip. The loop subject becomes inscrutable and in fact straight away and we realized something is obviously a manufactured detail, so I Noah Cowan, the artistic director of the you just have this painterly field of colour *had* happened there. When it’s installed didn’t feel any compunctions about mak- Toronto Film Festival commissioned me to through re-filming (generally on my phone, 28 properly, it’s pretty glorious. But the film ing it more obvious. The film is also really make a new short film that I’ll be showing for extra low-resolution) over and over 29 stumped me. I mean, literally. After making important to me because it’s a deeply af- in June of this year. It uses slow motion again. Also, deliberately abusing a media One+One Filmmakers Journal

tro, and of course, that book - which your 15 and 18. Hopefully we’ll get to spend gift thereof constituted one of our earliest some time together if I can make it over correpondences! Yeah, I think you can for the screening. readily detect that a director was trained in painting and then moved into film - cer- Further reading - tainly people like Greenaway express that trajectory quite vociferously. And then, http://www.scotttreleaven.com/ - artist’s own site. I’ve been reading a lot on Tarkovsky re- http://www.genesisbreyerporridge.com/genesisbrey- cently, who wasn’t trained as a painter, but erporridge.com/Genesis_BREYER_P-ORRIDGE_ regarded cinema as a new art such that he Home.html – Official website of Genesis Breyer P- considered the best way to ensure that it Orridge embody the rigour of ‘high art’ were to di- rectly quote from established signifiers of high art - hence his films are soundtracked with Bach and littered with visual quotes from Breughel etc.

We probably ought to draw this to a close now. Thanks so much, Scott, what a pleasure to throw ideas back and forth in player that’s playing back a sequence so question, is at least partly attributable to this manner. that you get a visual drag as the codec my friendship with Genesis. Time, and fails to keep up. mistrust of the perception of time, were ST: Funny you should mention Tarkovsky. recurring topics whenever I’d stay with I sent Terence Hannum some footage to Have you and Gen collaborated on much her and Jaye. look at recently and responded saying by the way of visual art beyond the film that I’d probably enjoy rereading some of work? We’ve collaborated in a few different Tarkovsky’s writing. I agree with that senti- ways. We curated some film and perfor- ment you described, the “high art” route, ST: Lowder’s especially interesting to mance events in Toronto, as well as here integrating and studying those signifiers... me. Her trajectory’s like Jarman’s, from in New York, and San Francisco, with Ter- but then again the arbiters of established painting to filmmaking. As I try to make ence Hannum. Early on though - and Gen taste would’ve never allowed punk into sense of my has made no the citadel. I’m endlessly trying to find a shift from film secret of this - I seem to have lost interest in balance; too much conservation versus back to paint I “ she and Jaye too much progress. find I’m looking portraying sequenced events were trying to at artists like in time...which is at least partly get me into This little conversation has been a real Lowder to see the sack, so pleasure for me, too, Nick. I’ll end by men- what kind of attributable to my friendship that lead to tioning that there’s upcoming screening elements carry with Genesis me being in- for anyone who might be interested: the back and forth ” vited to do a BFI has christened a beautifully curated across that threshold. The curator Bill performance with them in Montreal. It was cycle of Jarman (and Jarman-related) Arning recently said that my paintings the initial Breaking Sex ritual and, true to screenings and events ‘Queer Pagan contained “edits”, which I thought was an it’s name, we never actually got around to Punk’ after the slogan from my old zine, interesting thing to notice. I was thinking the sex. It was a great experience though. which was deeply indebted to Derek’s about what you said about low-resolution Gen also wrote a beautiful introduction to influence (...in fact I’m trying to make a imagery and re-filming to create a more the compendium of my zine - The Saliva- short film at the moment about the day I painterly impression on the screen: I like tion Army Black Book. met him in Soho, back in 1992). As part of that approach, but I seem to have lost in- the program the BFI is screening The Sali- 30 terest in portraying sequenced events in vation Army alongside Derek’s Glitterbug, 31 time...which, to bring this around to your NH: Haha, amazing. Yeah, I love that in- which is a great honour for me on March One+One Filmmakers Journal

by water, air, solar radiation, and geological shifts and filled with the vast potential of man’s will in alliance with Nature. To Raise a Storm: As an omen, Gast Bouschet and Nadine Hilbert’s the tempestarii signals profound change in both physical and metaphysical realms.

Tempestarii and the sympathetic magic Presented as both a live performance and an installation, Tempestarii is an immersive of digital video experience of video and sound. By recasting contemporary art as meteorological sor- cery and political activism, the duo Gast Bouschet and Nadine Hilbert raise a storm and blacken the air. Amelia Ishmael

Earlier this year, the artists Gast and temporain, Luxembourg; and Camouflage Nadine invited me to write the above in- Johannesburg, South Africa, to name just troductory text and curate a short video a few. Moreover, in 2009 they represented program that would accompany the world Luxembourg at the Venice Biennale.1 premier of Tempestarii, their most recent Their work enchants me, and not only video, which screened on 25 October 2013 with its intellectual richness; Gast and as part of the Touch of Noir Festival at the Nadine’s incorporation of alchemical aes- CCR Opderschmelz in Dudelange, Lux- thetics are absolutely gorgeous, and their embourg. I have been working with Gast collaborations with noise musicians add and Nadine for about two years, during intense layers of somatic and psychologi- which time they have worked extensively cal stimulation. within the Icelandic landscape to create Gast and Nadine’s Tempestarii presen- both Tempestarii and the multi-screen in- tation at CCR Opderschmelz comprised stallation Unground (which exhibited from three events, which spanned ten days December 2012 to January 2013 at Casi- (from 25 October–3 November). Through- Still from Tempestarii no Luxembourg and will be reimagined for out this span of time, the artists present- CubeSpace, Taiwan, in September 2014). ed alchemical bursts of light, sound, and Additionally, they are currently developing space to enliven and empower the night Dawn spreads its luminous rays across the coast of Iceland, an artists’ book of photographic images air and charge it with dynamic meaning. revealing a sorcerer taken in Iceland that will be published in The opening performance event on 25 standing between wine-dark sea and mountainous black rock. Spring 2014 as Transcendental Geology. October introduced the Tempestarii video It is tempestarii, Gast and Nadine were both born in and was accompanied by a live musical a figure of medieval lore, Luxembourg and are currently based in performance by Stephen O’Malley that undertaking a primitive rite manifested to conjure a storm. Brussels, Belgium. They have worked to- included piano feedback, guitar, and field gether since the 1990s and use a combi- recordings. This premier was preceded The tides of the deep ocean breathe heavily, nation of photography, video, and sound by Prelude: The Breath of Charybdis, a rising and falling across the cinema screen with amplifying power to create potent social, political, and insti- program of videos by the artists Semi- as the weather-maker beats a mysterious sack against the monolithic cliffs with powerful tutional critiques that they have exhibited conductor, Jon Cates, and Aldo Tambel- repetition. at major international venues including lini that I selected especially for this event. the Muzeum Sztuki Lodz, Poland; Philhar- Together, the artists focused and directed As a magical tool, monie, Luxembourg; Trienal de Luanda, our ideas, spirit, and energy on the com- this sack contains forceful winds pulled from each corner of world. Angola; Busan Biennale of Contemporary plex potentiality and creativity of the dark- As an analogy, Art, South-Korea; Domaine de Chama- er months to come. In the days following 32 33 it is aligned with the revolutionary transformations of nature rande, France; Casino Forum d’Art Con- the performance, Gast and Nadine’s video One+One Filmmakers Journal

her exhalations and inhalations cause the lungs pushed and the sac inflated, up according to the rhythm of another tides to rise and fall. When she took her and when released out came the one, giving rise to an effect commonly first gulp, the sea drew back and exposed croak. The air was modulated by frog known as “gating.” A voice, for exam- the earth. Charybdis captures and releas- tissues, sampled briefly and repack- ple, can break up into the scattered es: revealing and concealing perceivable aged, returning to the ambient atmos- patter of hi-hat beats or snare drum worlds. This mythical figure also appears phere as a low rasp with high harmon- shots, so that a smooth-seeming “Ah” in Homer’s Odyssey, where she takes ics. The sound was made of myriad can become “A-a-a-a-a-ah.” the form of a whirlpool located within the waves crisscrossing in the air. Think of a straight line. Then break Strait of Messina and threatens to swallow it into two pieces by chopping the Odysseus’s ship whole. Later, Edgar Allen And then, his recording: middle third out. Now you have a Poe encounters a similar phenomenon off beat, the space between the lines; the Norwegian coast in A Descent into the Fingers switched on an MP3 re- and two beats, the lines. Then chop Maelström: a terrific spinning funnel of corder outside the suburban house. the middle thirds out of those lines. smooth, shining, jet-black water that de- The wave front entered the micro- You have some more beats. And more scends at a forty-five degree angle to an phone along with countless of its son- beats-as-lines. […] unperceivable depth; its edges are lined in ic cousins. A software-driven sampler The amalgam of beats and no- a gleaming vaporous spray; the teeth of its took 44,000 tiny impressions of the beats is also what happens at a tempest winds emit a shrieking roar.3 sound per second and stored it in the smaller physical scale. Single waves Prelude: The Breath of Charybdis device’s memory. break into and are broken by others. and sound installation DISintegration con- draws upon the accounts of these poets Sound cuts into silence. Silence cuts tinued until the final night of the exhibi- and philosophers to evoke a dynamic en- And then, at length: into sound. We have arrived at a very tion. When these events ran their course, vironment. It is not the embodied Charyb- strange place. In order for a frog croak the galleries were dark and silent, yet the dis that this program seeks to present, but Let’s analyze [an] MP3 recording of to arise at all, something must be air around them seemed potently trans- rather a manifestation of her inspiration. the croaking frogs. It’s a translation of there, yet missing! Some continuous formed. My decision to focus on the inspira- the frog sound as much as the word flow, say of frog breath inside a frog’s In December 2013 I joined up with The tion, or breath, was roused by Timothy “croak” […]. First we select two sec- mouth, must be interrupted some- Weight of Mountains filmmaker’s residen- Morton’s description of listening to and onds of the croak. A computer termi- how, to produce a beat. There must cy at Nes Artist Residency in Skagaströd, recording a frog’s croak in the chapter, nal translates the sound into a visual always be at least one extra sound or Iceland, where I delivered an early version “Magic Birth”, of his book Realist Magic: image of a wave. A special software non-sound that the beat cuts into.4 of this essay and screened Prelude: The Objects, Ontology, Causality. Morton is a application introduces zeroes into Breath of Charybdis and Tempestarii at British professor whose writing explores the wave so that each little piece of I would like to propose here, then, that the University of Iceland Research Centre. the intersection of object-oriented phi- the wave become visible between in- the breath of Charybdis is a terrain within Nes provided me with an opportunity to losophy and ecological studies. In “Magic creasingly stretched out sequences of which tempestarii might dwell. The breath regroup, proffer, and expand upon some Birth,” he wrote about sound wave fronts, space. A tiny piece of the wave that is not the storm, per se, but the potential of the concepts that Gast, Nadine, and I the forms that sounds take, and the (less is two seconds of frog croak is a se- space that the storm emerges from; it is had spent many months developing. This often considered) interferences of a media quence of clicks. Speed up the clicks the calmness around the storm that de- article is an extension of that presentation. format (in this case, an MP3 file) on the and we have a croak. At a very small fines the space or atmosphere interrupt- forms of the sound presented. To describe scale, the wave is a series of beats, ed. By concentrating on the breath, Prel- Prelude: The Breath of Charybdis these concepts, he offered the example like the beats of a drum. These beats ude seeks to draw a perimeter around the of a frog’s breath. Here, it is necessary occur when one sound interrupts an- area of focus—the coast of Iceland, or the There is a tale from Aristotle’s Mete- to slow down and consider step-by-step other. Think of a line. Now introduce dimensions of the cinema screen—and to orologica that recounts the origin of the what happened during this event: a gap into the line—interrupt it: you preemptively “bind” this space or location mountains.2 It begins with Charybdis, the have two lines. The space between with light and sound, in anticipation that daughter of Poseidon “God of the Sea.” Air was forced into an elastic sac them is a beat. In music composition it will be broken into by the Tempestarii 34 35 Charybdis lives within the ocean, where at the bottom of a frog’s mouth. The software, one sample can be broken video. One+One Filmmakers Journal

radiate electromagnetic cur- rents to create a dense texture of static, glitch, and feedback, which the artist’s image appears to drift in and out of. And then, finally, an excerpt of Aldo Tambellini’s CLONE (14’ of 40’, 1976). Aldo Tambellini is an Italian-American intermedia artist (and one of the earliest pioneers of video art), based in Boston, Massachusetts.8 The video I selected for Prelude is Still from Aldo Tambellini’s CLONE an excerpt that features Tambel- Still from 20Hz lini’s experiments with in-camera video water that spread across the camera lens editing and electromagnetic noise manip- like thick layers of chiffon. Within the dark The storm of Charybdis exists for the visual and auditory patterns emerge and ulations, interfused with television broad- space below the screen, the sound of breath. The breath can be interpreted as create interference phenomena.6 casts. Within the broadcasts, we witness waves is joined with currents of electronic “an excess that might be experienced as Then, there is an excerpt of Jon the first images transmitted from the sur- feedback, humming from three amplifiers a distortion, gap, or void,”5 or what we Cates’s ERRORRUNNINGWWWATER- face of Mars (by the Viking 1 spacecraft) spreads across stage-right and one more call “silence.” (Although it’s never really NOISES (6’45” of 26’, 2012). Jon Cates and routines by the uneven-bar gymnasts amplifier positioned beneath a piano on silence, is it?) In the three cinema works is a new-media artist based in Chicago, and high divers (from the 1976 Olympics stage-left, where O’Malley works.9 This presented by Prelude: The Breathe of Illinois.7 His practice largely consists of in Montreal) who suspend themselves in opening scene stretches out considerably Charybdis—the videos by Semiconductor, performances conducted via the internet air like cosmonauts. into a cinematic long-take, immersing its Jon Cates, and Aldo Tambellini—Charyb- (through programs such as Skype) that are Charybdis’s breath is a vortex of cur- audience in a hypnotic landscape that dis’s breathe is imaged as fluid conscious- transmitted across the world wherever he rents, expanding profoundly—down into pulls us into a dream-like consciousness. nesses, watery glitches, and mountainous is invited. ERRORRUNNINGWWWATER- the spaces between earth and water and Then the camera pans a barren landscape waves of electromagnetic energy. NOISES is a remix that Cates made of a up into the spaces between water and to show a single figure in a long dark cloak First, there is Semiconductor’s 20Hz new media performance where the artist sky—blurring the boundaries between standing alongside a mountainous cliff. (5’, 2011). Semiconductor is the artist duo conjures data streams as water. Ocean each element of matter. Prelude creates a The tempestarii has a sack that it swings Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt, based in waves overlap with electronic noise and setting for Tempestarii, where currents be- aggressively against the cliff wall… again, the U.K., who often work with space tween potential and actual, spectral and again, again, again. We cannot hear the observatories to glean images and material, dark and light, and sonic and impact, on account of the powerful sounds sounds for their videos. Their 20Hz silent are raised to mountainous heights. of the waves and drones; yet we see the observes a geomagnetic storm oc- blow’s effect when the cliff hits the sack, curring in the Earth’s upper atmos- Tempestarii and the camera (watching intently from a phere. Collections of frequencies from distance) is momentarily jolted. Through- incoming solar winds are interpreted Gast and Nadine’s Tempestarii (39’, out the duration of the video, scenes of through tweeting and rumbling audio, 2013) begins with the golden sun rising the tempestarii’s ritual fade into scenes of which is directly transformed into ab- slowly over an isolated stretch of coast- the mountainous seascape, the sky, and stract sculptural visualizations. These line. Above the low sun, black seabirds the oceanic waves—rock, air, water, tem- take the forms of torrential data waves stream back and forth (flickering across pestarii, water, wind, rock, wind, water, and toothed concentric rings, spin- the seven-meter wide cinema screen) as fire, rock… the over-layering scenes and ning at various speeds and volumes. ocean waves crash upon a treacherous encompassing soundscapes blur the dis- 36 37 As different waves interact, complex Still from Jon Cates’s ERRORRUNNINGWWWATERNOISES spread of black rocks, casting sprays of tinctions between these different forms of One+One Filmmakers Journal

matter. Boundaries shift, appearing ethe- demon. Because if an image of a god us on our face from arctic winds and performance of natural elements. real and obscure. is a god, then in some sense the im- pulls us into ice caves and lava fields Tempestarii aims to initiate a process By reaching within the realms of magic age of a demon is a demon.14 amidst snow blizzards and 100km/hr of alliance with the daemonic other- and mythology, the artists implore us to It follows then that an image of a tem- winds. You must respect Mother Na- ness of storms, blizzards, air and sea delve into human history and the uncon- pestarii is a tempestarii, and an image of ture here, as she sure as hell does not currents, solar radiation, and geologi- scious and to activate forces of renewal a storm is a storm that could change the respect you.16 cal formations. The idea is to partici- that simmer under the surfaces of life. In world. pate in a play of forces outside the its embodied state, the form of the tem- The location of Tempestarii, Iceland, It is evident that humans are causing rational, human paradigm. pestarii (and Charybdis before it) may ap- may seem at times to be isolated from vast changes to the geological landscape. At a time of unnatural changes in pear as an otherworldly demon, yet it is the rest of the world, but let us not forget It increasingly seems as if a war has climate and weather, becoming re- indeed a concept that has sprung from that the geographic events here have his- been declared against Nature. And Na- ceptive to the subconscious drives of attributes of humanity that are necessary torically reached across the globe. Most ture fights back. Beyond the volcanoes, our planet seems to be an essential to confront, navigate, and digest. Edgar recently, we know of the volcanic erup- earthquakes, hurricanes, and maelstroms requirement to revive a deeply fun- Allan Poe described this process of tran- tions of Eyjafjallajökull, from April to Oc- already mentioned, there are also the con- damental sorcery that intends to un- scending through danger in the short story tober 2010, which shut down the airways sequences of geomagnetic solar storms— chain the forces of nature.19 A Descent into the Maelström. His narra- throughout Europe. However, if we reach which, in March 1989, jammed radio tor was caught up in the maws of that ter- back to the 18th century, the eight-month- signals across Europe and Russia and Here, the mountains, the wind, the rific whirlpool when he declared: “It was long volcanic eruptions of Laki, from 1783 caused an electrical black-out across the water, and the electromagnetic radiation not a new terror that thus affected me, to 1784, are believed by scholars to have provenance of Quebec.17 This same year, appear to carry information from beyond. but the dawn of a more exciting hope.”10 created conditions that contributed to only months later, the storms returned and Of course, there is a level of disbelief that Similarly, the raising of the storm present- the French Revolution—the dust and sul- caused an electrical current surge that ef- Tempestarii asks its audience to suspend. ed in Tempestarii represents the need to phur emitted from the volcano devastated fectively shut down the Toronto Stock Ex- It is healthy to be skeptical. Perhaps it is integrate disorder into the evolutionary crops and livestock, causing a vast fam- change computers (seemingly targeting not so easy to believe that Gast and Na- process. The aim is not to destroy us but, ine, which led, in 1789, to one of the most the seventh largest stock exchange in the dine could raise a storm by filming a ritual rather, to introduce motivations that will significant events in the history of democ- world by market capitalization).18 These in Iceland where a sack (which looks sus- inspire us to co-exist in our surroundings racy.15 Moreover, many of the political events were joined by some of the most piciously like one used to store regular more intimately.11 As the French revolu- writings that emerged from the Revolution spectacular “northern lights,” which could potatoes) is struck against the side of a tionary Jean-Paul Marat wrote: “the air is are thick with references to natural disas- be seen as far south as Florida and Cuba. mountain to simulate raising waters and purified only by storms.”12 Within these ters as analogies or impetuses for social Within this context, we might imagine the crashing of waves upon rocks? storms come surges of new ideas that ef- and political changes. The People were the wide-spreading effects of the mete- Earlier this year, I raised this question to fectively propose to change our views of characterized as Nature’s agents, and orological magic activated by the tempe- Gast and Nadine when they were filming the world around us. Let us not forget the violence was naturalized as part of the starii’s ritual. As Gast and Nadine write of in Vik, and I received the response: radical power of perspective: By altering regeneration process and portrayed as an Tempestarii: the character of your participation, you unstoppable force of renewal. We tried to work as well as we can alter the world around you. And that, The acclimation of the individual within Meteorological magic is a way of could with the forces of nature... the as the contemporary British writer Alan Nature was similarly expressed by Melody connecting with the turbulent flows snow, the wind, the movements of Moore describes: Woodnutt in her curatorial statement for that shape our climate and weather the sea and the slippery stones... re- The Weight of Mountains filmmaker’s resi- patterns. Tempestarii is based on a peating our sorcerous ritual to pull the Magic and art tend to share a lot dency at Nes: multiplicity of interferences. Various weather system into a chaotic state. of the same language. They both systems exert their power and mutu- I read a bit on nonlinear dynamics talk about evocation, invocation, and Our key focus for Iceland is the ally influence one another. Through when we were there, beating a rock/ conjuring. If you’re trying to conjure character of landscape: the treachery, the perception of slow fluctuations sack against the rocks could theo- a character, then maybe you should the drama, the control it has over us. and a constant shifting of form and retically put the wind into an excited treat that with the respect that you This is no landscape painting, this is content, we invite the viewer to en- state and ultimately raise a storm (cf. 38 39 would if you were trying to conjure a 360° immersive space that pushes gage in an inner experience with the butterfly effect). Raising a storm is One+One Filmmakers Journal

theoretically possible in chaos theory. More and more of the illuminated pixels December 2013, http://editionsmego.com/release/ Even if it’s very unlikely and far be- went missing, turning black. The loss of DEMEGO-027. The Tempestarii composition included yond consensual reality […] image definition as well as the interferenc- field recordings from Iceland by Nadine Hilbert. All this made me also think of es, gradually resulted in a disorganization 10. Edgar Allan Poe, A Descent into the Maelström rhythmic patterns, cascades of feed- and darkening of the entire projection. In a (1841), emphasis added. back, resonance and amplification... seeming reversal of the creative process, 11. For example, see also Aengus Anderson’s small perturbations propagating from the tempestarii’s form was loosening and audio interview “Episode 10: Timothy Morton,” The smaller up into larger systems... The disintegrating, unraveling from the pixeled Conversation: in Search of the New Normal (11 June sorcerer’s spell is basically a process fabric whence it came. This change was 2012), http://www.findtheconversation.com/episode- of synchronization and alliance with spiritual and metaphorical, yet also physi- ten-dr-timothy-morton/ natural currents and demonic energy. cal and technical. 12. Mary Ashburn Miller, A Natural History of Revo- At a very small scale, “the wave is This extended process of DISintegra- lution: Violence and Nature in the French Revolution- a series of beats, like the beats of a tion draws attention to the pixel’s sympa- ary Imagination, 1789-1794, (Cornell University Press, drum.” Beat/No-Beat...20 thetic participation within the entire ritual: 2011), 13. Was it ever tempestarii, mountains, winds, 13. Arthur Zajonc, Catching the Light: The En- A deeper question that is coated in a or waters that we experienced… or was twined History of Light and Mind (Oxford University deep ambiguity stretches throughout the it instead pixelized impressions of “shape, Press, 1995). video: Is the tempestarii acting of its own volume, light, and air,” a display of digital 14. Peter Bebergal, “Interview with Alan Moore,” accord to effect a sort of sympathetic cinematic witchcraft?21 By the final day of The Believer (June 2013), http://www.believermag. magic upon nature, or is the tempes- the exhibition, the dark winter air trem- com/issues/201306/?read=interview_moore tarii only a messenger of Nature’s whim? bled, charged with a vibrating “whirlwind,” 15. Greg Neale, “How an Icelandic volcano helped Would the sea react to what the tempes- the DISintegration video spanned the en- a “primordial din.”22 The tempestarii re- spark the French Revolution,” The Guardian, 15 April tarii does, or is the sea telling the tempe- tire length of the exhibition, over which it leased. 2010, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/ starii what to do? It is not clear. Neither underwent continual change. Allow me to apr/15/iceland-volcano-weather-french-revolution is it clear whether a storm is raised at all, explain. 1. Gast Bouschet and Nadine Hilbert, http://www. 16. Melody Woodnutt, “The Weight of Mountains: for near the end of the video the tempes- When the artists exported the Tempe- bouschet-hilbert.org/ Applications Open Now,” 27 May 2013, http://neslist. tarii seems to dissolve into the face of the starii video file from their editing software 2. Aristotle, Meteorology, Part 3, Book II (350 BCE), is/2013/05/the-weight-of-mountains/ mountain—a transfiguration foretold by for the opening night’s performance, the translated by E. W. Webster, Internet Classics Archive, 17. Sten Odenwald, “The Day the Sun Brought the numerous mountain silhouettes and file underwent alterations (“corruptions”) http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/meteorology.2.ii.html Darkness,” NASA, 13 March 2009, http://www.nasa. shadows which appear to assume the caused by technical interferences of the 3. Aristotle (c 340 BC) referencing gov/topics/earth/features/sun_darkness.html form of the tempestarii, and by flexibility digital media. In the making of DISintegra- Aesop (c 620-560 BCE) 18. Kenneth Chang, “Storm Forecast: Tiny Chance of matter demonstrated by ocean waters tion, this newly exported video file was im- Homer (c 750-650 B.C.) of Havoc,” The New York Times, 18 March 2013, which frequently morph into flames or ported into the editing software and then Poe (1841 CE) http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/19/science/space/ clouds. In the final moments of the video, exported, the new file was imported and 4. Timothy Morton, Realist Magic: Objects, On- on-the-watch-for-a-solar-storm.html?_r=0 it is not clear whether the white dust falling exported, the newest file was taken in and tology, Causality (Open Humanities Press, University 19. Gast Bouschet and Nadine Hilbert, email to is snow, or ash, or stars. out of the software...and so on. This pro- of Michigan Library, 2013), emphasis added, http:// author, 21 May 2013. cess of digital inhalations and exhalations openhumanitiespress.org/realist-magic.html 20. Gast Bouschet and Nadine Hilbert, email to DISintegration continued countless times over, in a digital 5. Ibid. author, 16 April 2013. process simulating inspiration. When the 6. Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt, “20Hz,” Semi- 21. See Antonin Artaud’s “Witchcraft and the Cin- The spirit of the tempestarii was ignited numerous files where played progressive- conductor Films, http://semiconductorfilms.com/ ema” in Collected Works: Volume Three Translated by by the opening night’s activities, and for ly from the computer at CCR Opderschm- art/20hz/ Alastair Hamilton (Calder & Boyars, 1972), 65-67. the next nine days it continued to dwell elz, Tempestarii sustained by looping (in a 7. Jon Cates, http://systemsapproach.net/ 22. Emil Cioran, “The Return to Chaos” in On The within the CCR Opderschmelz in the form way), yet because each iteration was par- 8. Aldo Tambellini, http://www.aldotambellini.com/ Heights Of Despair, translated by Ilinca Zarifopol- of DISintegration, an exhibition of video asitically copied from the preceding ver- 9. Stephen O’Malley’s composition for Tempestarii Johnston (University of Chicago Press: 1992), 90. 40 41 and sound projection. The duration of sion, the video files were disintegrating. and DISintegration was released by Editions Mego in One+One Filmmakers Journal Cult Films for Cult Religions: An interview with Craig Baldwin

James Riley

like his first long-form conspiracy project tigate the occult matrix” that connected Tribulation 99: Alien Anomalies under rocket propulsion scientist and occultist America (1991) and the dissection of tel- Jack Parsons, Scientology founder L.Ron ecommunications history Spectres of the Hubbard, artist and actress Marjorie Spectrum (1994) created an obsessive b- Cameron and the ‘Great Beast’ himself, movie aesthetic that worked to challenge British magician, Aleister Crowley. These established media narratives. Think Guy historical figures stood at the centre of a Debord meets Roger Corman. strange cultural intersection of scientific Craig Baldwin research, fringe religion, avant-garde art In this interview I spoke to Baldwin and esoterism. As Baldwin explains in about his most recent film, Mock-Up on the interview, this fertile territory is an “The cult of experimental film is of the San Francisco underground. He is Mu (2008). Mock-Up is a head-spinning, established aspect of Southern Cali- alive and well and if you go to any micro- not only a practitioner but also an active conspiratorial treatise looking at the en- fornian lore. To date, the best source of cinema you’ll see it: it’s like a church in networker as evidenced through his work tangled narratives and resonant myths information on the activities of this nu- many many ways.” as a curator, exhibitor and programmer connected to “California’s post-War sub- cleus is John Carter’s Sex and Rockets: for the long-running micro-cinema and cultures of rocket pioneers, alternative The Occult World of Jack Parsons (1999). Craig Baldwin is the subversive DVD label, Other Cinema. As a film-mak- religions, and Beat lifestyles.”2 It uses Interested readers should also seek out grandmaster of assemblage film and cin- er Baldwin draws upon the detrital history re-created scenes and a complex col- Spencer Kansa’s Wormwood Star: The ematic collage.1 His work is deeply root- of cinema to create self-conscious nar- lage of b-movie clips, public information Magikal Life of Marjorie Cameron (2010). 42 43 ed in the Beat and subcultural aesthetics ratives of myth and counter-myth. Films films and other archive footage to inves- In Baldwin’s film however, the empha- One+One Filmmakers Journal

that severe but still based on archival the same level as them; I didn’t have to material as a way almost to get outside take the high road (or low road) and try of myself. In other words, that’s why I to dismiss them and marginalise them don’t claim to make personal documen- but, rather, through an equally perverse, taries, though they are personal because sick and paranoid style I was able to work they carry the stamp of my own nervous through their own content and their own system, of course, in the editing. But the history. point is that I’m not trying to excavate my angst or whatever. I’ve always looked out JR: That’s what I thought when rather than in and when I look out, I use seeing the film: your style is a perfect fit archival material. Not only archival, (that for something like Scientology. is to say historical or newsreel) but also ‘found footage’ because those also are CB: Yes, I’d say so. It’s true. traces and artefacts from our collective There’s another film which I just saw history. So this called The Mas- idea of alterna- ter [Paul Thomas Everyone can of course tive history, then, “ Anderson, 2012]. indicates the use critique the CIA as agents of They add a char- of alternative imperialism but no one actually acter and you means – collage gave them any credit for being could say it’s a and found foot- roman a clef. It’s great fantasy writers age – to tell the ” loosely based kind of stories on real facts but that aren’t taught in the schools and text- they dramatise it. That’s ok: I see that books. These are the stories that are true, as part of a spectrum of possible styles. (in a way) and they are they stories that I embrace that and encourage that and come from the subculture itself. That’s of course I recognise the importance of sis is not just upon biographical fidelity that all my films are about alternative his- my expression of individual presence realising the difference between the rep- but upon the use of these narratives as tories and so I guess you could say I’m and placement. I’m positioned within the resentation and so-called reality (not that an instrument of critique; the creation of a kind of a documentary film-maker, an subculture rather than within ‘my’ sub- we could ever know what the reality is) a “a speculative farce” directed at “the experimental documentary film-maker; urban, bourgeois home, see? As such, I but they’re just interpretations of it, right? militarization of space, and the corpo- not so much a personal documentary approached those subcultural tales in a So Hollywood did it their own way. But, rate take-over of spiritual fulfilment and film-maker – though I certainly know marginalised, specialized and idiosyn- there’s a lot of Scientology content there, leisure-time.” what that is and it’s a big movement here cratic style. I can tell you because I did the research in the United States, especially on the myself for my own film. But let me also *** West coast – but I came a little but later The earlier films I made were a lit- say that there’s a lot of kook religions than that in terms of generation. A lot tle but more overtly political, certainly around, like the Mormons: they’re an James Riley: There’s a neat syn- of that has to do with identity politics of as regards imperialism, neo-colonialism American religion and I claim them. I have chronicity in Mock-Up on Mu between its the 1980s. My thing was a little bit more and the control of the publishing indus- the right to talk about them, because a lot subject matter and formal methodology, along the lines of Emile De Antonio …. try, the music recording industry, private of them are from the West coast, where in that it seems to use cult film in order to intellectual property and telecommunica- I’m from, which is completely different talk about a ‘cult’. JR: The Director of Rush to Judge- tions and so and so fourth. In the case of from the East of the country. So these are ment [1967]? Mock-Up, one part of it is the religious really regional groups. They’re essentially Craig Baldwin: Yes, I agree with thing, the story of this so-called ‘cult’, subcultures. 44 45 you totally, it’s a nice fit but I should say CB: Right, that kind of stuff. Not Scientology. And I thought that I was on One+One Filmmakers Journal

JR: So this is a say I’m over to the left. theme you’ve working with But we do both inhabit this before, even in your films free-form anti-gravitational that were not exclusively space where you don’t dealing with Scientology? have to play by the rules.

CB: When I made JR: Jack Parsons, Tribulation 99, I felt the Aleister Crowley, Marjorie same about the CIA; they Cameron and L Ron Hub- were subverting sovereign bard. It’s as if these people governments like Nicara- already had these kind of gua by using all these in- mythic auras even before sanely complicated plots you got to them… and subsystems. In other words they were very CB: Yes, Yes, myth- creative. Everyone can of ic. They are urban myths course critique the CIA as and I approached them at agents of imperialism but no one actu- of real inventors. The whole discussion ing to be about. In other words, it wasn’t that level. It wasn’t journalism in the fac- ally gave them any credit for being great was really about [Nikolai] Tesla and [Filo] a reasoned decision to make the film; it tual sense. There are plenty of facts in my fantasy writers. So I thought that would Farnsworth who were really great art- was more like an irrational decision be- movies, but really it’s more about a spec- be great angle. Of course, I do critique ists and whose ideas were more or less cause they had tired to intimidate me at tacle, a meditated presence or a symbol imperialism but I also suggest that if you exploited by large institutions. In the this other level, the level of a horror movie that means a lot more than just their petty take a look at any one of their scenarios course of producing this film, I had to or science fiction movie. They were, in a human lives. about overthrowing Castro or whatever generate a back-story because I didn’t way, outside the law and were part of the you’ll see that this is not just politics but situate the whole thing in an objective, cult world and had elected to come into JR: This is very much the sense psychopolitics: kind of a weird dramati- journalistic way but in a particular kind of my world, the outlaw world, the trans- I got from your use of clips from Curtis sation of the political scenario. So I took mis-en-scene. I created for the film and gressive world. So you see, this is anoth- Harrington’s Night Tide [1961], a film that the idea and I thought “the CIA can’t beat the ‘characters’ a kind of mythic ‘family- er example of the cult /cult thing. If they features Cameron as a strange kind of me in terms of coming up with a wild, life’ using a little piece of California lore, were some massive corporation, they’d spirit. paranoid way of writing history!” It was something that everyone in California be a lot less interesting and a lot lesssexy not coming from this so-called ‘neutrality’ knows: the story of Jack Parsons and L. and a lot less juicy than if they were this CB: Oh, I just adore that film. That or centre, what you could call a reasoned Ron Hubbard. kind of insane out of control wild, irration- was Curtis Harrington’s first feature. I discourse. My discourse about the CIA in al organisation. We were levelled. love Harrington. Harrington was a totally Tribulation was intentionally wilder and When I put this in Spectres as a underground filmmaker just like Kenneth more way-out in order to enact a critique back-story, what happened was that the So, I picked up the gauntlet and I Anger and he got Dennis Hopper, also an through exaggeration. This was the kind film got into a few theatres and the Sci- knew we were both outside of the ring unknown and then shot it on the Santa of subversive amplification you could find entology people saw it. It was only about and so the approach of the film was ap- Monica pier which is just such a classic in a political cartoon. 30 seconds, it wasn’t even the core of propriate. I’d never win in the ring. I have Southern Californian location. It’s a con- the argument, (which was about RCA no money for international travel to get ventional film in a way but the concept Now, to take that idea and relate and NBC and the like), but they came exclusive interviews. No, my stuff is all behind it is so strong that he could place it to Mock-Up; well the fact was I had to my show. They intimidated me; they just made up from scraps of things. And it out there with the mermaids. It is myth- made this earlier film called Spectres of sent me e-mails and they sent me a let- by the way so is Scientology: it’s com- ic. It’s a lot like Mu in many ways, a magi- the Spectrum and that dealt mostly with ter. So, when they sent me that letter on pletely ripped off, mostly from Freud. cal kind of film. telecommunications. But it grounded the this beautiful paper with the Scientology They’re just as way out as I am. Maybe 46 47 whole development at the human level logo I knew what my next movie was go- they’re over to the right and you could JR: Your earlier film Tribulation 99 One+One Filmmakers Journal

was based around conspiracy theory and CB: It’s something that grew out of that seems to be consistent with Mock- tremendous mythmaking power of south- Up. In fact, Mock-Up seems to invite a ern California and specifically Hollywood kind of conspiratorial reading. We’re led in the post-war period. The financial and to connect its various resonances and economic centre of the world moved to references in lots of different ways, to the the United States and Hollywood became extent that a whole matrix or spiral of in- the imaginative centre. The myth was al- terconnections is established by the end ready there and people just stepped into of the film. those roles. There was a need, almost for a good guy and a bad guy, a sexy chick CB: You nailed it. First of all there and a mass murderer. It didn’t take much are real conspiracies in real social histo- and Manson didn’t kill anybody (appar- ries, of course but also (especially in Hol- ently) but it didn’t take much for him to lywood) and cliques and cults and things be in the centre of this thing. Not that he like that. Harrington (who was gay, by the isn’t guilty, of course, but the point is, the way) was in a subculture and had various world and the western imagination was connections. Anger’s a better example hungry for it. Right after the post-war pe- because he was totally into a coven or riod, things were rationalised for a while tasy life. The Cold War and the whole re- into the practice of this religion to such whatever. So yes, that works for my kind particularly in ’55, and 56 with Eisenhow- pressive thing hadn’t come down too far an extent, that’s technophilia, West coast of film-making because my strength in er. But the point is it became this big anti- at the time. There was a gap, and in this style technophilia. the montage or collage. It works as a way communist thing. This was already hap- void these free thinkers came through. of enacting these connections by literally pening within Parsons’ life. He died in ‘52 That’s Parsons. And there was also the JR: In terms of the mirroring be- placing one shot against the other which – but at this point the culture wasn’t all birth of these alternate religions. Sci- tween Scientology and your methodol- normally wouldn’t be there. You’ve got dominated by the Cold War. That’s why entology was an idea whose time had ogy, the line that stands out for me is to make the connection. It’s perfect. I’m in Parsons’ case he could hang out with come. Science: what won the war? With when the Cameron figure says “all the conspiratorially minded anyway as an in- science fiction writers, rocket scientists L. Ron Hubbard you’ve got a guy who bad movies have been erased”. dividual and I would be even if I wasn’t an and avowed communists. They could all bases his religion on the power of sci- artist so that sensibility gets into my mov- come to a party at his house. This couldn’t ence and American technology and calls CB: The idea of the Engram; the ies. But the way that I cut when working have happened in 1960 because by then it Scientology. How dare he? idea that there’s basically a material in the collage mode works as a way of the lines had already been drawn and manifestation of a trauma. An interest- developing that these worlds JR: Scientology acts as a good ing theory. It’s a reification of a trauma. networking. I’m had become psychological index of post-war period. To literally materialize it as an Engram, actively creat- With L. Ron Hubbard you’ve profession- As you suggest there was a desire to as a kind of blockage, well that is for ing webs or as got“ a guy who bases his religion alizd. How- wipe the slate clean, an idea that could me the same kind of thing as a movie. you say, that ard Hughes correspond to the Scientological concern A movie is a kind of materialization of an ‘spiralling’ sen- on the power of science and wouldn’t with ‘clearing’. entire world. Yes, so ‘all the bad movies sibility. American technology and calls it hang out with are erased’ is a line that makes a point Scientology. How dare he? a bunch of CB: Yes it suggests that we can be a about the connection between visual cul- JR: It ” beatniks. But new people now: we won the war, we’re ture and popular culture and this idea of seems that right after the wealthiest and all we need is to get materialized personal trauma. there are certain cultural figures, certain the war was a weird period in American ourselves a new kind of religion. Not only American post-war figures who just seem history. We weren’t all about reconstruc- that, but US technology works as an ap- JR: Mock-Up, with all of your as- to inhabit and generate these matrices. tion because there was no damage here. pliance and a means to that end. Think semblage work really puts a lot of em- Charles Manson would be another one. There was so much wealth and everyone about the E-meter It’s just a lie detector, phasis on the idea of film as an actual 48 49 was getting cars and living out a big fan- but to have that sat there and integrated material substance, something that must One+One

be assembled. Is this important to you? the beautiful. This idea, which was a re- My roommate worked for Google. But I jection of the modern art, the abstract ex- didn’t do that. Instead, I remained out- CB: Ok, yes. Let me place this. pressionism of the 1940s, was not about side of the professional world, outside Currently, on YouTube, there’s plenty the creation of a gestural canvas but was of the place where cinematic speech of people who are doing mash-ups. It’s about finding something that already had is normalised. I entered, you could say, bound to happen due to the media satu- paint on it – a train wreck, a ruined can- a more tribal world (again, back to cult) ration and the easy access of ‘hands-on’ vas – and turning it into something else. where I made totem poles and worked software. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing This was the subculture that surrounded with bricolage. It’s like a cargo cult. Think but the thing is, those clips don’t have and, to an extent, fed into the work of of the New Guinean tribes coming upon the substance or materiality of celluloid Parsons and Cameron. the remains of a plane and re-imagining a film. We’re in a transitional phase. There’ll propeller as a scared object. That is kind be a lot more YouTube work and a lot less The point is, I’m a child of this of what I’m trying to do. I’m trying to pro- of what I’m doing with actual film matter. scene. I’m older than the guys who are ject new meanings onto old shit and get My work harks back to and continues the doing mash-ups on YouTube. Where they them to carry a new purpose. In terms of resonance of the west coast Beat move- have a right to use their surrounding me- film, we’re surrounded with material from ment. This is, in part, the milieu depicted dia, I’m more into this scarcity model. In Hollywood. Who wants to know these in Mock-Up. The West coast Beats were the midst of this surplus, I’m trying to em- stories? I can redeem this material and the regional artists who worked with brace the physicality of the material world make use of it. Y’know, I don’t have the found material. West coast Beat, or Funk and its residue rather than attempting to resources to create an explosion but I art is huge here, for good reason. It forms elevate myself above it via the internet can appropriate an explosion from else- the very centre of the San Francisco Art and social networking. where that I can use in my movie. At the Institute (where I taught for 8 years). The same time I can get double use out of it Institute was founded on this art move- Junk art would be another term because I’ll be able to critique the original ment. Bruce Connor was my teacher for this process. It was recognition that source through my re-purposing. there and he was part of the scene that whilst things were being remade across included Robert Nelson, Wally Hedrick, the world in the post-war period, the old 1. I previously interviewed Baldwin in and Wallace Berman (who is mentioned material carried lots of interesting stories. 2008. This text, along with a link to a Shelly Roby’s in the film).3 And of course Cameron her- The stress of the material, its defects and short film about his work and methodologies can be self was a visual artist. What made these blemishes all come to the fore in the bea- found on my blog, http://residual-noise.blogspot. artists famous is that they took found ar- tific and redemptive part of the process. co.uk tefacts, material that is very much ‘post- So the self-conscious materiality in my 2. This description is taken from www. war’. This is the stuff that was being films is part of a methodology that’s more othercinemadvd.com. Here you can order a copy of thrown out because there was such mas- like sculpture than what’s conventionally the film as well as other works by Baldwin and as- sive production during the period (think recognised as filmmaking. sociated artists. of the post-war levels of car production) 3. For more on this scene, see Rebecca that material objects and manufactured JR: Was the development of this Solnit, The Secret Exhibition: Six California Artists of items were subject to an almost imme- methodology linked to the influence of the Cold War Era (San Francisco: City Lights, 1990). diate state of obsolescence. Within this Bruce Connor?4 4. Bruce Connor was an influential as- zone, it’s the artists, not the corporations semblage artist. His most famous work was A MOVIE who are picking up and embracing ‘last CB: He was my teacher, yes but I (1958). year’s model’. It’s the outsider, the loser, had always done this, it just so happened For more on Craig Baldwin and his films the beat, the poor guy who is looking for that I became a filmmaker. But also, I as well as information relating to the Other Cinema something in the gutter and redeems it. turned out to be an impoverished guy. I screenings see www.othercinema.org It’s an alchemical idea of dross into gold know many people here who could get a 50 and the transformation of the ugly into job working for a company like Google. All images are stills from Mock-Up on Mu Filmmakers Journal

One+One Filmmakers Journal is in an exciting period of development. Sadly we will be saying goodbye to some of the editing team, the fantastic, creative and talented James Marcus Tucker, and Nick Hudson. They have promised to still contribute with their wonderful writing, but have had to step down from their voluntary editing roles to concentrate on other work, in order to earn a liv- ing. Part two of our Occult, Magick, Evil and the Powers of Horror issues (which will be published shortly) will be the last One+One in the present format. With this change, comes new challenges and a new direction for the remaining team. We are in the process of becoming a co-operative. We want to make the venture more sustainable and less reliant on unpaid voluntary staff, who have given inordinate amounts of their own time to keep this as an exciting innovative platform for our readers and writers over the last 5 years.

The One+One Filmmakers Journal will become “One+One - Film and Culture on the Offensive”.

The new website will be changing format and becoming more of a rolling blog, to take on-going articles, vlogs and experimental writing, which are about film and culture but are saying things in a new, interesting, and thought provoking manner. This will enable new material to be posted regularly with no deadline. That in turn will will provide more opportunities for writers and articles as we can increase the volume.

We want to combine theoretical discussions and philosophical journalism about film, culture, and politics with more humorous and light-hearted pieces of social commentary. Discussions will con- tinue to be deeper than your average web chatter about film and culture while also being more controversial than your average theory about film and culture.

We will be selling books (compilations of articles) and undertaking more talks, panel discussions and in the long-term, courses, conferences and summer schools. In addition we will be offering membership, with all sorts of perks, and requesting donations so that we can keep things going in terms of the running costs and development of the magazine.

We are currently looking to broaden our team/co-operative members, particularly in terms of web- site building and development skills, Social Media Marketing, SEO knowledge, and illustration and design.

We will be based in Leicester, UK, but are still also working from Brighton, and location is not a problem as we currently do a lot of our work/meetings through social media and SKYPE.

If you are interested in getting involved please contact : [email protected] Or Lizzie on 07841-342952