[silence] Video/film work with similar outlook to Cage's...

Tue Mar 3 03:13:38 EST 2009

Please take a look below(and attached) program at REDCAT, Los Angeles on 
March 9th, that is dedicated to John Cage unofficially, Also the DVD ("ON 
TIME IN FILM, 1970s" ) is available.Taka iimura

   MesREDCAT and LOS ANGELES FILMFORUM PRESENT:
  Takahiko Iimura:
  Monday March 9, 2009, 8:00 pm
  REDCAT

  In person: Takahiko Iimura
  "To review all of Iimura's work is an important occasion for all who are 
concerned with the development and pleasures of cinema as an art." -- Jonas 
Mekas (Director, Anthology Film Archives, New York)

  Takahiko Iimura is considered one of the most influential and important 
experimental filmmakers of our time. In an era of the explosion of 
Underground Film in the States, Iimura, almost alone in Tokyo, began making 
experimental film just reading the news from abroad without actually seeing 
them. His work explores wide range of experiments from poetic cinema with 
Dadaist and Surrealist influence and Absurdist filmic play in the 1960's 
through more formal and conceptual investigations in the 1970's and later. 
He is also a widely established international artist, having numerous 
exhibitions including installation and performance in Japan, the USA, and 
Europe.

  One of his early films, "Onan" was awarded Special Prize at the legendary 
Brussels International Experimental Film Festival, l964.  He has continued 
working, creating a fruitful and far-ranging oeuvre exploring light, space, 
time, nature, semiology, philosophy, and technology with the background of 
Japanese arts in multiple manifestations.  Recently he has been involved in 
using the computer, publishing multimedia CD-ROMs/DVDs combining film, 
video, graphics, text, and animation.  http://www.takaiimura.com/

  Tonight concludes of a ten-day multi-venue retrospective celebration of 
Iimura's work.  Takahiko Iimura will be in person at ALL screenings.  The 
series was organized by Adam Hyman of Los Angeles Filmforum.

  These programs made possible by a grant from the Japan Foundation.

  Tonight we'll be screening:

  "ON TIME IN FILM, 1970s"
  "Time is, as it has been said by John Cage on music, is the most important 
issue in film as well." -- Takahiko iimura

  "In concentrating on this set of problems, often wrongly seen as 
'minimalist', Iimura went much, much further than any other film artist in 
exploring a kind of art-science. This concern with the experience of time, 
its measured passage and the analogy between time and space, has been the 
main recurring theme at the centre of his work."-- Malcolm Le Grice(The 
author of "Abstract Film and Beyond", MIT Press)

  "Iimura, who is Japan's most important filmmaker, was involved in the New 
American Cinema developments in the early sixties. His work has continued to 
open up new ground in a way which few of his contemporaries from that period 
managed to sustain." - Malcolm LeGrice, Time Out

  "The achievements of Iimura's recent films, particularly when combined 
with his many videotapes (themselves an interesting topic for extended 
discussion) and his numerous film and video installation pieces, make him 
one of the most interesting and prolific artists around. Like Carl Andre and 
Richard Serra in sculpture, Emmett Williams and Richard Kostelanetz in 
poetry, and Frank Stella and Josef Albers in painting, Iimura is able to 
refresh our ability to perceive and understand all film by reducing the 
variables vying for our attention so fully that we can concentrate 
completely on crucial elements of the film experience we often ignore." - 
Scott MacDonald, Afterimage

  2 Min. 46 Sec. 16 Frames (100feet) (from Model, Reel 1, 1972, 9 min., 
16mm, black and white, sound)
  By using simple systems of counting and measuring in film, Iimura has 
drawn attention to the complexities of our time perception - memory, rhythm, 
phase - and the interaction between coucious conception of time, and the 
physical perception of its passing. Iimura is a significant and singular 
filmmaker, but also one of the most important 'conceptual' artist working in 
any medium. (Malcolm Le Grice, Time Out, April 1975, London)

  24 Frames Per Second (1975, 10:35,  16mm, b/w, sound)
  "Both in terms of its examination of time and space, of light and 
darkness, of visuals and sounds; and in terms of its demands and potential 
rewards for an audience, 24 Frames Per second is a quintessential Iimura 
film. The film alternates between one-second passages during which the 
viewer sees one of a series of fractions and [with] one-second segments of 
black and clear leader. As the film progress, the fractions grow from 1/24 
to 24/24. "1/24," for example, is followed by one second of film in which 
one frame is clear and 23 are black or[then] one is black, 23 clear." --  
Scott MacDonald

  Timed 1,2,3 (from Models, Reel 1, 1972, 11 min., 16mm, b/w, sound)
  "My favorite section of Models - "Timed 1, 2, 3" - is a particularly 
effective interweaving of visuals and sounds. Visually, each section of the 
film is composed of 10-second spans of clear and dark leader, arranged in a 
progressive fashion so that at first there is more and more light and less 
darkness, then vice versa. During "Timed 1" a sound "bip" scratched directly 
onto the soundtrack is audible each second; in "Timed 2" the sounds are 
audible every 10 seconds; and in "Timed 3" we hear them every 100 seconds, 
or at the halfway point and at the end. ..All in all, the number of 
interesting filmic explorations in the eight section of Models makes it one 
of Iimura's most impressive films." -- Scott MacDonald

  One Frame Duration (1977, 11 min., 16mm, b/w, 12 min.)

  + & - (Plus and Minus) (1973, 26 min., 16mm, b/w, sound)

  I Am (Not) Seen (2003, 5 min., DVD, color, Music; Makoto Sato)
  This video deals with the perception of "seeing" including the words as "I 
see you," "I am seen," and "I am not seen." These words are superimposed 
over the pictures of a face, eyes, and a face in the frame. The video 
changes in quite rapid motion framewise with the occasional stills inserted.

  Total 75 min.

  Just published! A book and DVD of Takahiko Iimura:
  The Collected Writings of Takahiko iimura:
  https://wildsidebooks.3dcartstores.com/IIMURA-Takahiko_c_621.html
  The Collected Films of Takahiko Iimura No. 1:
  http://www.microcinemadvd.com/product/DVD/847/Collected_Films_of_Takahiko_Iimura_No_1_The.html
  -----------------------------------------------------
  sage ----- 
  From: lmw0336@aol.com
  To: silence@list.mail.virginia.edu
  Sent: Tuesday, March 03, 2009 1:15 AM
  Subject: [silence] Video/film work with similar outlook to Cage's...

  I am wondering if anyone knows of video work/film work that has the same 
outlook as Cage's music. I am familair with Nam June Paik of course; Bill 
Viola, Brakage, Deren..that whole slew of brilliant individuals..but I can 
really only think of Jim Crutchfield's work with autonomy and complex sytems 
and similar computer/digital patch programming like Joost Rekveld etc..I was 
wondering what you all have come across!

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