Manhattan Short Cuts
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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, Manhattan 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 red 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 Robert Altman'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 .