Associação Cultural Videobrasil

The Poetic Sensitivity

The American film-maker, Maya Deren defined two types of progressions in film, a narrative discourse which moves on a linear and horizontal axis and a poetic discourse which moves on a vertical axis. In this sense, a poetic text does not move an event forward, it explores the emotions and the moment to produce new connections and pleasures. Much of avant-garde film and video art can be safely said to belong to the poetic discourse, with links to non narrative structures such as music, painting and sculpture rather than with narrative or fiction. Within this context there are a myriad of different interpretations as to what is truly poetic in film and video, whether it is attached to a lyrical sensitivity or whether it contains a specific structural shape or form.

In this three part programme, I have compiled a selection of the strongest contemporary British works which either embrace the poetic in full swing or touch on it in more subtle and hybrid fashion. The emphasis I have put in this programme is on the subjective, the intimate and the singular voice, deliberately avoiding to limit my choice to a purely modernist interpretation of the poetic. The first programme The Poetic Landscape presents works which use a geographical environment as a reflection for interior states of mind, as a territory which can translate emotion. These are imaginary journeys through land, sea and city which weave together the subjective vision of the artists with lyrical and evocative imagery. Daniel Reeves Sombra a Sombra is a beautiful interpretation of the poetry of the Peruvian poet Cesar Vallejo, while Breda Beban and Hrvoje Horvatic Geography reminds us of the power of silence and the strength of the rarefied image. The Red Sea, inspired by Arthur Rimbaud's poem The Drunken Boat explores a private and tormented world through the depths of the sea, while The Citadel uses the city of London as the site for an allegorical journey.
Ever since Jean Genet seminal Champ D'Amour there has been a wealth of work which celebrates gay sexuality and the programme Beautiful Decadence presents contemporary pieces. Derek Jarman's work has been of great influence in Britain and Imagining October is a rarely seen film of extraordinary richness and depth. This poetic short is a reflection on Einsenstein's October, a revisiting of the revolutionary condition that celebrates both the male body and the political radicalism of the period. Both Cerith Wyn Evans and John Maybury have both worked with Jarman in the early eighties and although their works carry some of his influence, they are distinctive and original voices. Degrees of Blindness is simply a celebration of the visible, of the pleasure and pain of vision, while Remembrance of Things Fast offers a high tech critique of conventions of media. Both works are resonant and surreal pieces, visionary testaments to the chaotic and virtual world of perception.

Digital technology has liberated the artist from the shackles of linear thinking, particularly with the introduction of non linear editing modes and interactive systems. The programme Digital Dreams presents a range of state of the art pieces which reflects this shift in the creative process and gives us a glimpse of what could be a new and radically different electronic poetry. Julie Kusminska 's Chaos is a sensual fall from grace, a lyrical fall towards death, while George Snow's The Assignation translates the sombre world of Edgar Allen Poe into a mesmeric journey of the soul.

Last but not least, Videovoid by the veteran film and video maker David Larcher is quite simply the strongest video work I have seen to date. An intense metaphysical foray into the electronic medium, pushing its limits to the extreme, taking us to the heart of the electronic world, a hallucinogetic poetic void.

ASSOCIAÇÃO CULTURAL VIDEOBRASIL. "10th Videobrasil International Electronic Art Festival": 20th to 25th November 1994, São Paulo, Brazil, 1994.