Caspar Stracke (Ed.)
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Caspar Stracke (Ed.) GODARD BOOMERANG Godardian Conceptialism and the Moving Image Francois Bucher Chto Delat Lee Ellickson Irmgard Emmelhainz Mike Hoolboom Gareth James Constanze Ruhm David Rych Gabriële Schleijpen Amie Siegel Jason Simon Caspar Stracke Maija Timonen Kari Yli-Annala Florian Zeyfang CONTENT: 1 Caspar Stracke (ed.) Artists on Godardian Conceptualism Caspar Stracke | Introduction 13 precursors Jason Simon | Review 25 Gabriëlle Schleijpen | Cinema Clash Continuum 31 counterparts Gareth James | Not Late. Detained 41 Florian Zeyfang | Dear Aaton 35-8 61 Francois Bucher | I am your Fan 73 succeeding militant cinema Chto Delat | What Does It Mean to Make Films Politically Today? 83 Irmgard Emmelhainz | Militant Cinema: From Internationalism to Neoliberal Sensible Politics 89 David Rych | Militant Fiction 113 jlg affects Mike Hoolboom | The Rule and the Exception 121 Caspar Stracke I Intertitles, Subtitles, Text-images: Godard and Other Godards 129 Nimetöna Nolla | Funky Forest 145 Lee Ellickson | Segue to Seguestration: The Antiphonal Modes that Produce the G.E. 155 contemporaries Amie Siegel | Genealogies 175 Constanze Ruhm | La difficulté d‘une perspective - A Life of Renewal 185 Maija Timonen | Someone To Talk To 195 Kari Yli-Annala | The Death of Porthos 205 biographies 220 previous page: ‘Aceuil livre d’image’ at Hotel Atlanta, Rotterdam, colophon curated by Edwin Carels, IFFR 2019. Photo: Edwin Carels 225 CASPAR STRACKE INTRODUCTION “Pourquoi encore Godard? A question I was asked many times in the course of producing this edited volume. And further: “Wouldn’t this be an appropriate moment in history to pass the torch?” 13 Most likely there is no more torch to pass. If there is a thing to pass writing, which inspires artists to produce new works, which, in turn, are (a merit, a philosophy, an attitude), the questions would still remain: engaged in new writings, and so on. Passing it on to whom? To an individual? A collective? An entire move- But reaction shots are not limited to cinema. Adventurous trans-disciplin- ment? The latter would fit so much better into a time that has begun to ary migrations of Godard’s work can also be found in other areas, as dem- successfully diversify and cross-reference contemporary thought, refus- onstrated, for instance, by Yvonne Rainer’s legendary 1963 dance score ing to follow isolated key thinkers by de-magnetizing their rocky islands Diagonals, which was based on distinctive movements from A bout de of ideology. Needless to mention, contemporary efforts to contest gen- Souffle (most prominently dying Belmondo’s run down Rue Champagne- der and geopolitical dominances also complicate any attempt to “re- Première), which in turn became the subject of an essay by movement turn” to Godard. researcher John Cranahan.1 This perpetual exchange and metamorphosis between theory and artistic And yet, many contemporary artists are still talking of (and to) Godard. production was the topic of a small symposium I organized at the Finnish Arguably, those of us who continue to advocate for the production of Academy of Fine Art in Helsinki in 2013, to which I invited an interna- a contemporary cinema grounded in critical reflexivity can neither deny tional group of artists to discuss how Godardian pedagogy (to cite Serge nor escape a certain boomerang effect of Godardian thought, aesthet- Daney’s phrase, discussed below) has expanded into what one could now ics, and pedagogy, especially when we are haunted by the late sixties as call Godardian conceptualism. This volume extends the original idea of many accounts in this book demonstrate. that symposium into a collection of artist writings. The authors featured in this book are not concerned with mere Godard- Wherever a work of art or cinema includes a Godard reference, its author ian influences. Nor are their contributions fully dedicated to particular is drawn via rhetorical gravity into the proliferating research on Godard. aspects of Godard’s oeuvre. Rather, they focus on investigating work by While these types of inquiries might range from working with Godard to other contemporary (and historical) artists, and the ways in which this working against and beyond him, they are all destined to succumb to work relates to concepts developed by Godard. And here, the hope is the aforementioned boomerang effect – an acknowledgement that the to gently bypass all canonical appraisals of this “most influential film- mechanisms of particular cinematic concepts so often lead us back to maker and thinker of our times” and similar bolstering eulogies that the gigantic warehouse of conceptual methodologies unified under the decorate the introductory paragraphs of countless writings on Godard. brand Godard. The evolution of such branding in cinema is the central We, as a group, will rather follow the concept of theoretical companion- subject of Lee Ellickson’s contribution in this volume. ship in order to further open up the field and give voice to critical posi- tions in contemporary art. The boomerang effect contributes particularly to the fact that Godard is known to be the omnipresent critic and commentator – a problem that has The writings in this collection have – with the exception of one – been strongly concerned film theorists and their assertion that Godard scholars produced by practicing artists who encounter Godard from very diverse too often take up the master’s voice and thereby “run the risk of becoming positions. Cinéasts and especially those with a special interest in Go- meta-discourses on Godard’s own discourse about his films.”2 However, it is dard scholarship should therefore be advised that they will find here precisely this sort of meta-discourse that enables a stimulating metamorpho- a very heterogeneous collection of academic and unacademic writing, sis for those who translate the presented arguments back into images. The which also includes personal accounts – some of which came to life outcome is a type of “ciné-philosophy” that relies on this co-dependence of as byproducts of research for a film project, while others relate to a two distinctive disciplines in endless dialectical exchange. particular artistic practice. Nevertheless, the body of existing scholar- ship on Godard functions as a frequent reference point for the featured 1 John Cranahan, Jean-Luc Godard and Contemporary Dance: ”The Judson Dance Theater Across artists, revealing how these parallel activities often create a fascinating Breathless” in: The Legacies of Jean-Luc Godard. Douglas Morrey, Christina Stojanova, and Nicole Coté evolution, one propelled by the complex interplay between art and cor- (Eds.) WIlfried Lurier University Press, 2014 2 Katerina Loukopoulou, “Godard Alone?” Film Philosophy 10.1, 2006, see also Tom Coneley and T. Jef- responding theory. Godardian material becomes subject to theoretical ferson Kline (2014). 14 15 As early as 1973, Serge Daney identified Godard’s strategy of offsetting that occurs in alliance with artistic expression, while also demonstrating the discourses he incorporates into his films with their dialectical coun- the magnitude of a century’s worth of artistic work invested in this topic. terparts, or even with their true antagonists – manufacturing arguments But the contemporary interest in Godard’s later work must ultimately be as a way of presenting his viewers/listeners/readers with a more objective understood as an outgrowth of Godard’s own return, some forty years terrain on which to form their own opinion about a given subject. after he began as a filmmaker, to political topics that remain prevalent Daney outlined Godard’s methodology in the following way: “More than today: Palestine; the fate of a divided Arab world; the role of the image ‘who is right? who is wrong?’, the real question is ‘what can we oppose in the imperial imagination; the failure of cinema to prevent war crimes to that?’ Hence the malaise and ‘confusion’ with which Godard is often and genocide. reproached. He always replies to what the other says (asserts, proclaims The recent chain of power shifts, uprisings, migration movements and or recommends) by what another other says…”3 wars all over the world have brought forth new moving-image practices that have drawn from Godard’s militant filmmaking period. In recent years, In this strategy lies the crux of the radical juxtapositions that are so prev- the latter has been rediscovered and analyzed more thoroughly than ever alent in contemporary artistic practices, including those conducted by before. Nick Denes, Mohanad Yaqubi and Reem Shilleh conducted ex- this volume’s contributors. Indeed, the followig essays should be seen as tensive research on Militant Cinema (as the collective Subversive Films), extensions of Godardian pedagogy. In the course of bringing their own focusing on the state and region of Palestine. Similar research has been works into dialogue with Godard, the authors are at the same time dia- done by artists and researchers such as Ayreen Anastas and Rene Gabri, loguing with other others. Eric Baudelaire, the Otolith Group, Tariq Teguia, Irmgard Emmelhainz, The difference between film theory and artist’s approach is that some- David Rych, Ros Gray, Nicole Brenez, among many others. (Emmelhainz times the latter suggests a triangular relationship: the inclusion of the and Rych both have contributions in this book). individual artistic practice forms a third pole; observations on Godard In some cases, the extensive inquiries conducted by these artists and are developed in a