of the characters-Weiner's daughter, characters on film and television, a promi- ceiling strips of white paper. Seated on the Kirsten-talks of her need to return and go to nent feature of Lunar Double Dogs last year. floor, Jonas manipulates the streamers, school, she is thrown overboard and killed . Jonas uses found stories as the grit neces- breaking up the image to underline its nature The characters have agreat deal ofcharm- sary to form her pearl-a structure filled with as synthetic or created reality. short cuts the Fellini-esque transvestite, Joop Vriend; her drawings, sculptures, and dances. He During the question period following Amy the serious older man, Beno Bremela, who in Saw Her Burning is an almost ritual enact- Greenfield's retrospective, she was asked real life is the head of the Dutch homosexual ment of two unrelated stories (both rewritten why she called herself a choreographer. The for these performances by Shawn Lawton). question reveals the problematic radical ele- Lawrence Weiner/Plowman's Lunch union; the two women murmuring together (Ingrid von Alphen and Eva Damave); or In one, a soldier inexplicably steals a tank in ments in Greenfield's "dances" for film and and Passage to the North, at theJames Agee Manheim, Germany. After taking it for a video. She eschews traditional notions of Room, Bleeker Street Cinema, April 9; Joan Alice Weiner (AZW Bentley in the credits) as in water. In the dance to concentrate on what often appear to JonaslHe Saw Her Buming, at the Whitney the sleazy prostitute/mother. joyride, he crashes it the his own other, a woman for no apparent reason be natural movements. With the exception of Museum, Feb. 22-March 13; Amy Green- Weiner's analyses of society and Using props and other two turn-of-the-century dance films Green- fieldlRetrospective, at the Museum of Mod- propositions are threaded throughout in a far bursts into flames. overwhelming form than toys, Jonas enacts both parts-wheeling a field showed as historic references, her em Art, March 21 ; Anita ThacherlAnteroom, less didactic or large cardboard drawing of a tank, dancing selection of her own tapes and films aban- at the Hirshhom Museum, Washington, usual. At one point a young girl (Kirsten) and flame death with a giant lacquered doned traditional choreography for a graphic March 10-May 15; Video and film of the six- a young man (Lorenz Van Der Mey) have a the and politics. Using fan and streamers, or imitating the action of celebration of the body and senses. ties, at P.S. 1, Jan. 16-March 13; Woody discussion about style fire with a sheet of black plastic. She uses She began her long Videotape for a VasulkalThe Commission, at The Kitchen style as a metaphor, Kirsten arguesthat con- only extend and deepen Woman and a Man, a nude pas-de-deux, at and Anthology Film Archives, Feb. 17; Jack servative-reactionary politics impose on the multi-media not to : Van Mey endorses her performance, butalsoto set up an oppos- the point where the man (Ben Dolphin) slaps WalworthlThe Point of Consumption, at The younger generation der rational and the irrational, the woman (Greenfield), galvanizing them Kitchen, February; and Nam June Paikl the conservative view. At another point, ition between the in one of her deliberately taw- between authority and the circumvention of into a violent wrestling match. Except for the Tricolor Video, at the Centre George Pom- Alice, dressed authority. lyric passages set outdoors (repeatedly pidou, Paris, Dec. 15,1982-April 10, 1983 dry outfits, states Weiner's propositions about film in a kind of Platonic dialogue with a Television becomes her weapon. She em- jumping off a cliff or rolling in the waves), the female companion in the kitchen. ploys its credibility to "swear" to the reality of nudity and the intimacy of the camera (an ex- her stories, to supply alter-egos, to extend cellent collaboration between the camera- ANN-SARGENT WOOSTER FILM IS NOT A METAPHOR ABOUT RELATION- her one-woman band, and in one sequence, men, Hilary Harris and Pat Saunders, and SHIPS in the OF HUMAN BEINGS TO OBJECTS & to provide on-the-spot animation of draw- the performer-director) puts viewers CONCEPTUAL ARTIST who also OBJECTS TO OBJECTS IN RELATION TO ings. TV becomes the voice of authority. position of voyeurs at a private sex act. Dis- makes films and videotapes, Law- HUMAN BEINGS Early in the performance Shawn Lawton ap- tanced by clothes and performed on stage BUT rence Weiner has historically used film and pears on the screen, commenting on current this improvisation would be interpreted differ- A REPRESENTATION OF EMPIRICAL EXIST- the tape shocks by its apparently videoto make his dry, ironic, theoretical texts ING FACT events: "Today a woman burst into flames. ently, but more accessible . Sex is often added as a An American stole a tank." He is paired with a graphic portrayal of sexual union in a context see a blue sweetener. In his two most recent films, Pas- Although Weiner's ship of fools has been woman (Y Sa Lo) on an adjacent monitor where you would not expect to sage to the North (1981) and the short fea- faulted for male chauvinism (Weiner would wearing a flame-colored dress and executing movie. To acertain extent the tape is atease, ture, Plowman's Lunch (1982), Weiner's argue this reflects the dominant culture) his a private, sultry fire dance. Later, both ap- promising climax but providing instead a tan- Green- analytical propositions take a back seat to success lies in his increasing skill in the craft pear on the screen as eyewitnesses to the tric ballet of tenderness and violence. the erotically charged action. Passage to the of moviemaking, the dynamism of the en- two crimes. Television is used interactively field protests (me thinks too much) that what forging North revolves around a reverse Ibsen counters between the characters, and the with the performance, especially in the sec- you see is pure and difficult dance, dialogue (Ibsen's people would have longed charged performances he is able to elicit . tion where the male character imitates a talk new ground in the historyof the pas-de-deux. the frontiers of for the south) about the necessity of the vari- Naked intimacy and the other contacts that show host, saying, "We would like to inter- Her pursuit of the portrayal of ous characters-including two hard-faced rage between these characters have great view our special correspondent on berserk ecstasy is limited not only by her denial of young women in black leather coats and a appeal in this world where casual remarks affairs." He then asks Jonas questions. real closeness with the male dancer, but also soft man-going to the north. Domestic can breed casual murder. With Plowman's Wearing a mesh mask with a mustache by the fact that this kind of performance can scenes of inquisition and conflict are intercut Lunch, Weiner comes closest to abandoning drawn on it, she mimes answers but doesn't only exist in private and cannot, by its very with black and white photographs and art film for real filmmaking. speak. Video and film are also used to posit nature, enter the language of dance at large. movies of a fire being put out on the black- In He Saw Her Burning, Joan Jonas re- an unlikely love interest between the twober- In Greenfield's other films and tapes the ened remains of a ship. Weiner inserts his turns to solitary performance, but a perfor- serkers. A Super-8 film showing them human body collides violently with the ele- newly to Structure texts more adroitly and humorously than mance embellished by the presence of other romantically intertwined is shown on floor to ments. In Dirt (1971), set usual: at one point, he sensuously sucks a by Glenn Branca, an anonymous faceless woman's toes while placing a telegram that woman (Greenfield) is dragged, thrown, and spells out various verbal "actions" or situa- lifted above rough earth-generally treated Still from Passage to the North (1981), by Lawrence Weiner. classic female victim. tions to take place in a Northern Art Center. like a limp rag or the Plowman's Lunch-with its allusions to Greenfield's intention appears to have been both a plowman's lunch (pickles and cheese) to treat the body as an earthwork or process carries an emotive and a "hot lunch" (sex for lunch)-is the ad- art, but the body always ventures of a group of deliberately casteless charge. Thus, instead of seeing a symbolic or people of various ages and sexual persua- abstract representation of the body's re- sions who embark on a voyage or quest sponse to matter, whatwe come away with is new wave which is taken to the point of failure. Class, an image of deliberate, almost nationality and personal relationships are (because of Branca's music) brutality. by Hilary kept ambiguous in the search for "the man In the film Elements (1973), shot without qualities." There are echoes of Harris, Greenfield appears as a primordial swamp monster or the 's films, as there are of Eric creature, perhaps a Rohmer's movies, but Weiner's characters symbolic enactment of the evolutionary path are particularly aimless and amoral. Their from water to land. Barely nude under her freedom from the responsibilities of daily life coating of mud, Greenfield interacts with a suggests they belong to the fringes of soci- slurping, semi-liquid plain of mud in a series attention ety, either the underworld (prostitution is of lifts, flops, and crawls . She calls evoked) or the artworld. Their freedom not not only to the limitations the mud imposes only makes them homogenous but leaves on movement, but to its extreme sensuous- them riddled with angstand ennui. When one ness. Although made before female-mud wrestling was a common male spectator sport, the film has that kind oftactile eroticism with a sense of strength and defile- ANN-SARGENT WOOSTER, an artist and critic, coupled teaches at the School of Visual Arts in New York. ment. AFTERIMAGE/Summer 1983 47

black an electron telescope, or watching a leopard Tides (1982), Greenfield's most recent ject of both works. This is not to deny their nini's hands, Vasulka creates a striking in altering positions change its spots. The visual splendor is tape (also shot by Hilary Harris) builds on the validity as art. The tilting planes, the blurred and white grid with hands somewhere between Muybridge's brought to earth by Ashley's mundane re- water section of a Videotape for a Woman vision, the sudden edits, and the generally that lies animating of a sign marks. If Vasulka's Commission proves any- and a Man. It is the most problematic of messy look (typical '60savant-garde) arefor- movement studies and details the diffi- thing, it is that evil is more exciting than good. Greenfield's film-video dances, in part be- mal devices that best express the inner con- language alphabet . When he Paganini's death, Vas- Jack Walworth's installation, PointofCon- cause it is the least abstract. Because tent of the Woodstock experience or Cage's culties surrounding ghost-like webforms sumption sets out to be a self-reflexive com- Greenfield's face is wholly revealed, we are Hudson River School, wild-man-of-the- ulka creates streaming, entangle- mentary on the structure, content, and pro- acutely aware of her individuality as she woods escapism. to suggest Paganini's postmortem vortexical camera move- cess of television production . It is shown plunges repeatedly into the zone where Woody Vasulka's abstract and difficult ments. A spiralling, into the action and within a simulacrum of a lower-middle-class waves break. Like the rictus often produced machine-based art is well-known for its for- ment draws the viewer This works domestic interior-the site of most TV view- climax, Greenfield's face reveals the con- malist purity of means. With The Commis- generates emotional excitement. at ing. The set is a one-room apartment with a and pleasure . Also, be- sion, Vasulka turns to narrative for the first extremely well both in the enactment of the flict between pain kitchen containing shelves filled with Tang, cause of the presence of her face and our Jollytime Popcorn, Skinner's Raisin Bran, of her as a mortal clear identification and Pepsi. It is further furnished with a bed woman-albeit a muscular and powerful dressed in orange sheets and a gray of mystery and universality one-the sense crocheted spread, miscellaneous beat-up is lost. Instead of seeing a foam-born god- furniture, and a TV set on aTV cartscattered woman almost masochisti- dess, we see a with back issues of Soap Opera Digest (a re- with the waves. Here, the cally struggling ference to Walworth's earlier work on soap war-like aspects of Greenfield's workfinds its operas). This drab interior provides the set- in the waves, which will ultimate adversary ting for its jewel, its raison d'etre-an inti- challenge and reas- soon forget Greenfield's mate view of actors shooting the tape ap- their hegemony over the shoreline. sert pearing on the TV set. Walworth emphasizes Anita Thacher's movie-like, Anteroom, the conditions of production in voiceovers slide installation set to music from the that announce, for example, "Scene two will David Bryne, was the Catharine Wheel by be shot at another location . . . we are too crowning gem of the Hirshhorn's "Directions poor to finish [the tape]." Walworth alsocom- an exhibition that combined painting 1982," ments politically on this tape's content-the film and photography. and sculpture with work of independent producers. The tape as- work has consistently dealt with Thacher's serts: "We independent producers, solitary within ordinary cir- magic and transformation workers and technicians, rather than Hol- cumstances. Here she presents a lywood producers, in organization for free washed with deeply mov- metaphoric space speech . . . TV workers for free speech in sol- dissolving ing light. Anteroom consists of idarity with workers of the world. . ." And later, of a small room furnished with photographs °I just watched the organizations go crawling fan of dried grasses, a simple props-a giant back to PBS, with the independents whining pot, a mirror, and a chair. The room is coffee about all the money they don't make. . ." Wal- (a real door knob is placed entered by a door worth's not-so-hidden message is the the wall) on the back wall . A young on triumph of non-funded producers in creating performer-enters and woman-the solo their product. Yet, unlike Godard, the tape of- the space. The constant tides of her leaves fers little visceral satisfaction . Instead of giv- absence activate the space, presence or ing the viewer a new (or old) political art form, which is further enlivened by the poltergeist- we see a home movie hampered by poverty of objects. Freed from gravity, like movement commenting on making a home movie. the chair and coffee pot turn the space into a Like the Guggenheim Museum, the ar- three-dimensional collage. There are sug- chitecture of Paris's Centre George Pom- gestions of Robert Wilson's theater of im- pidou competes with anything placedwithin it ages, especially in the floating chair, but in- and usually wins. In this huge industrial barn stead of Wilson's icy stasis, Thacher's ob- of a space, the main floor is always jumping jects come alive and seem suspended in a with activity. Nam June Paik's mammoth fluid if viscous medium. Thacher's unique sculpture, Tricolor Video, placed in a sunken concept of space, time, and reality is pit in the floor, does gladiatorial combat with deepened by her use of colored shadows. the space and wins. She begins to treat her illusionary deep In his original proposal, Paikwanted 300 or space as if it were a three-dimensional paint- 400 TV sets arranged in a five-channel, ing, stripping the changing tableaux with three-color flag . The exact number of televi- free-form colored shadows, like strokes of sion sets in the final version is difficult to as- paint in a new wave painting . Thacher's certain, but the effect is abundance. The phantasmagoria go beyond sheer visual monitors were placed in four-part pinwheel pleasure to posit a particularly female dream clusters raised on cinder blocks, forming space enlivened by a sensuous appraisal of modules that gave the individual sets greater the beauty of domestic life. to Stephen Beck's 1971 Unlike the cool abstract paintings of the presence. Scored performance of Electronic American Flag period, the collection of '60s film and video this panoply of ricocheting images is sim- work curated by Bob Harris for P.S. 1 (with a ply a large-scale version of Global Groove. In catalogue essay by Davidson Gigliotti) is raw form of self-ancestor worship, Paik recy- and emotionally charged. The tapes seem a cles sections of that tape, Guadacanal Re- eons older than the 15 years that have quiem, Suite 212, and Olympic Games, as passed since they were made. The work work by Kit Fitzgerald and John San- ranged from Bruce Nauman's monotonous well as born, Shalom Gorewitz, Woody and Steina private performance, Lip Sync (1969) to the and others. The subject of the im- experiments with technology sponsored by Vasulka, ages is unimportant. They appear simply as Boston's WGBH in the Medium Is the hearth-like flicker of television sets seen Medium (Aldo Tambellini, Thomas Tadlock, the people's windows. Sequences Alan Kaprow, Otto Piene, James Seawright, through other of images seem to have been chosen be- Nam June Paik) or undertaken indepen- their predominant tone-nominally dently by Eric Siegel in The Symphony ofthe cause of the red, white, and blue of the American and Planets. Also included were Jud Yalkut, flags. These strong hues have been whose film work looks like image processed French by light. The colors are ar- video, and personal and documentary video radically pasteiled ranged in twinkling, ever-changing patterns, by the Videofreex, Global Village, Les rippling across the giant field in diagonal Levine, and Nancy Holt and Robert and other configurations, at one mo- Smithson. stripes ment speeding like a bobsled, at others The Videofreex collective produced the Middle: Anteroom Top: Joan Jonas performing in He Saw Her Burning . (Photo: Francene Keery) . slowed to the geometry of a courtly dance. most sophisticated and engaging workabout (1982), a slide installation by Anita Thacher. Bottom left: Tricolor Video, by Nam June Paik. (Photo: Like many of the pieces stemming from the world of the '60s, especially that inhab- Adam Rzepka.) Bottom right: The Point of Consumption, an installation by Jack Walworth . Global Groove, Tricolor Video is a commen- ited by videomakers when to be involved with the world phenomenon of television, independent video was like being a member time, partially-as he revealed in remarks delivery of the commission and in a scene tary on sinister, must which has become even more diverse and of a special race capable of living on the made after the screening at Anthology Film where Paganini, dying and universal with the advent of satellites and moon. Although limited to simple black and Archives-because he wanted to produce whisper into the ear of his innocent looking movement cable. I agree with Jean Paul Fargier, who white equipment, their work went well more accessible work. The tape is based on son. Here the spiralling camera the states in his poetic catalogue essay that beyond home movies to capture raw truth. an imaginary commission the violinist Count generates a cocoon of intimacy between Tricolor Video becomes a dissolving specta- An interview with a poet-convict who in turn Niccolo Paganini gave Hector Berlioz; Paga- boy and his father. cle, paradigmatic of the phenomenon of tele- interviews the interviewer about his ambiva- nini is played by Ernest Gusella, Berlioz by The scenes with Ashley/Berlioz lack the vision-seductive, glittering movement, lent sexuality is particularly striking. In look- Robert Ashley. Each man essentially defined verve of those with Gusella/Paganini, but in often appreciated without careful attention to ing at early video, I am repeatedly struck by his character and wrote his own material, the final Ashley/Berlioz section, Vasulka's content. how much it came out of the hippie move- which accounts for the radical differences in visual pyrotechnics transform Ashely's laid- believes that it is possible to enter ment, psychedelic drugs, and the concept of style and content in the sections featuring back character. Berlioz/Ashley is shown, Fargier into Palk's dance of images and strike to the world-love-peace that engendered. This is each of the musicians. dressed in a white suit and seated out of mystical experience based on the especially true in Jud Yalkut's Aquarian The parts with Paganini/Gusella are the doors, fitfullyplaying a harmonica and talking heart of a visual splendor of television . But to me, it Rushes (1969, film transferred to video) and most interesting, for Vasulka responded about breakfasts at the Holiday Inn. He as if the viewer was left on the out- his black and white, silent film of John Cage magnificently to Gusella's portrayal of the seems to occupy the kind of earthly paradise seemed difficult-to-see images. The piece mushroom hunting. In both, a hand-held demon violinist who was both a popular per- the Impressionists excelled in. Digital pro- side of the has the presence of a half-time spectacle in a camera, as well as sweeps and tilts of the former and a pariah. Vasulka invents and cessing is used to fracture his image into tiny but ultimately lacks the ground, create visual equivalents to the dis- processes images that enhance and embel- squares that resemble Seurat's pointillism. football stadium, sense of purposethatgives it a deeper reality orientation and euphoria produced by drugs lish Gusella's character. In the opening sec- Watching the squares alter and change is that of radiant kinetic spectacle. and breaking societal conventions-the sub- tion, to symbolize the importance of Paga- like staring at the movement of molecules in than