7/10/09
SUBJUGATIONS 3
by Eli Elliott with music by Valerie Opielski. Featuring found answering machine recordings.
2/20/09
1/25/09
eSSay : Art : Current Day Dilemnas : Personal Ruminations on the Film World Toilet Swirl and Ego Satisfactions - by eli elliott
(I'm learning) There comes a point in one's "whatever endeavor" where one desires, almost expects, for things to jack up at least a notch, or two or three, in the noticeability realm of things. Whether this takes the form of monetary rewardings, or a bit of meager recognition in some established form, the ego begins whispering aloud in bewilderment "uh, i am alive and have been doin some shit, ya know?" After one does something for a continual period, even under the auguise of "pure", non recongnition caring, monetary-flomatary I don't care, there still seems an itch that even the purist ego feels the need to be scratched, if by nothing else than a goddamn hangnail; it's not so much the need, but maybe the surprise, that "it" hasn't "happened", in the even slightest of ways. The "it" and the "happening" are of course abstract, unable to define formwise; but you sorta expect there to be some sorta form of an "it" unfolding and a "happening", happening.
You can blame it on the current culture, and the state of art - And because it's true - the culture accepting crap as art; all the massive energies and monies going into promoting and supporting it; the whole act is akin to a herculean mindless monster, whom you can't even begin fathoming trying to share the same room with let along finding a way around - and because it's evident makes it all the more frustrating. Especially when thinking where to go from here. "If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" Making films now it seems is like going deep, deep into a forest and chop chop chopping, turning and walking back; satisfied, but did you make a film? Ultimately the artist is one fucked up number anyway, and it don't matter; he knows he'll be trekking back out there to execute another chop.
Perhaps another part of the frustration is the current technological whiz bang of access and output now being easier and stronger than ever; yet the result is the traditional outsider outlets now ignoring, the outside, while the new technological outlets i.e the net, awards the ultra mundane and mainstream. The shit that gets attention in the online world (which then in turn get's attention in the old print world) is so goddamn vomit inducing----yet these "pioneers" are awarded the revenue, the aforementioned print media nods, and etc. etc. My friend, artist SteveX who himself battles it out in the "who you know" art gallery world, sent me a link to this front page LA Weekly feature story, a supposed internet phenom called "Cute with Chris"...yeah your finger is already forced halfway down your throat with the name alone; my first glance of 20 seconds of video had my fist out of my throat and instead swinging for the screen. Steve recommended I do one of my characters and perform a mock up on the clown -- that seems all there is left to do really; mocking the already propped up clownery created crap culture. Hence the popularity with HOT CHICKS WITH DOUCHEBAGS dot Com.
It's not just me wondering where to go from here, and why, but established long time filmmakers, who when they were coming up had access to Euro TV outlets, festival acceptance, and grants for $$; now those avenues, all dried up, they are finally raising the "why bother" question. A recent blog entry by Jon Jost, who's American film tours now days draws in only handfuls of people, yet his work is way ahead of the pack, some, his best ever, writes --
Jon continues:
So, my own trip. A few years ago, seeing the trend, i said fuck it and just dug in with doing my own little auto bio essay/travel films, different variations from lo-fi cut up abstracts - Tales of Ordinary Madness - to a more complete series, trilogy of sorts - Grey Areas North -- Beginnings: On the Brink of Collapse -- and from a month ago or so In the Meantime. And many little sidetrack vignettes in between. I'll likely continue on with these, some other ideas to tinker around with, ponder on, etc.. Meanwhile Ruby says "Write a script!" ie do something grand.. but I don't know. I think i will start sketching a bigger something, tho keeping it in the lo fi realm...i have a neato little cheapo cam that Clause brought me.. i'll start shooting with that..
And in the same realm, tho somewhat different plane, is Recovery House, my starring feature movie role and film collaboration, coming out soon.. Something i have acknowledged as a recognitionary/complimentary nod not measured in press rewardings or monetary measures, something much better, a gift i'd been waiting for, for a dozen years; collaborating with like minded fellars, and getting a role within it all...(while someone else holds the camera for a change!) A huge thing to me. For many recent previous months i found myself waiting for the completion of RH to fulfill the ego's needs..like this would be the "it" leading to some sort of "happening". But with delays, completion setbacks, i caught myself, feeding the ego w/abstracts, realizing i needed to get back into my own Vid noirs. Push Recovery hard when it gets completed, but not bank my non bankability on it.
You can blame it on the current culture, and the state of art - And because it's true - the culture accepting crap as art; all the massive energies and monies going into promoting and supporting it; the whole act is akin to a herculean mindless monster, whom you can't even begin fathoming trying to share the same room with let along finding a way around - and because it's evident makes it all the more frustrating. Especially when thinking where to go from here. "If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" Making films now it seems is like going deep, deep into a forest and chop chop chopping, turning and walking back; satisfied, but did you make a film? Ultimately the artist is one fucked up number anyway, and it don't matter; he knows he'll be trekking back out there to execute another chop.
Perhaps another part of the frustration is the current technological whiz bang of access and output now being easier and stronger than ever; yet the result is the traditional outsider outlets now ignoring, the outside, while the new technological outlets i.e the net, awards the ultra mundane and mainstream. The shit that gets attention in the online world (which then in turn get's attention in the old print world) is so goddamn vomit inducing----yet these "pioneers" are awarded the revenue, the aforementioned print media nods, and etc. etc. My friend, artist SteveX who himself battles it out in the "who you know" art gallery world, sent me a link to this front page LA Weekly feature story, a supposed internet phenom called "Cute with Chris"...yeah your finger is already forced halfway down your throat with the name alone; my first glance of 20 seconds of video had my fist out of my throat and instead swinging for the screen. Steve recommended I do one of my characters and perform a mock up on the clown -- that seems all there is left to do really; mocking the already propped up clownery created crap culture. Hence the popularity with HOT CHICKS WITH DOUCHEBAGS dot Com.
It's not just me wondering where to go from here, and why, but established long time filmmakers, who when they were coming up had access to Euro TV outlets, festival acceptance, and grants for $$; now those avenues, all dried up, they are finally raising the "why bother" question. A recent blog entry by Jon Jost, who's American film tours now days draws in only handfuls of people, yet his work is way ahead of the pack, some, his best ever, writes --
And then, more pointedly, one might ask in these days, just what might the point be at all? This past week a little e-mail came in from Jim Stark, long ago early producer for Jim Jarmusch, who I wanted to have meet a very young and very good Korean filmmaker friend, Dahci Ma, who was in New York to pick up her first prize at the Dance Film Festival held at Lincoln Center. Her film, Mysteries of Nature, is a wonderful work. As is another I saw, Nevertheless. She’s 21 ! Jim wrote me that he wasn’t taking anything new on, and that the market for his kind of independent film (like Factotum with Matt Dillon) had completely disappeared. I had to respond that mine had evaporated a decade and a half back…. Thus, faced with this reality - that there’s not a dime to be made with all this work, and likewise it seems even festivals are bending toward the more commercial, to fill their seats with warm paying butts - why bother? Or perhaps less philosophically and more pragmatically, how can you afford to bother?And again, as mentioned the real artists being the real 'fucked up numbers' anyway, and would have it no other way...
Jon continues:
The films I’m working on now all were time-and-a-hundred-bucks films, as have been most of the things I’ve done since DV arrived in 1996. For me digital video was an opening to expand the range of what I do, to do more of it, to practice my craft and art as one ought to be able to do, rather than sitting or running around, looking for the money to work. Counterpoised though has been the cultural change in which such concerns as mine have been devalued to nothing, while blatant commercialism has been elevated into the sine qua non of our existences. No money-making, no point. So we plow ahead, apparently pointlessly.
So, my own trip. A few years ago, seeing the trend, i said fuck it and just dug in with doing my own little auto bio essay/travel films, different variations from lo-fi cut up abstracts - Tales of Ordinary Madness - to a more complete series, trilogy of sorts - Grey Areas North -- Beginnings: On the Brink of Collapse -- and from a month ago or so In the Meantime. And many little sidetrack vignettes in between. I'll likely continue on with these, some other ideas to tinker around with, ponder on, etc.. Meanwhile Ruby says "Write a script!" ie do something grand.. but I don't know. I think i will start sketching a bigger something, tho keeping it in the lo fi realm...i have a neato little cheapo cam that Clause brought me.. i'll start shooting with that..
And in the same realm, tho somewhat different plane, is Recovery House, my starring feature movie role and film collaboration, coming out soon.. Something i have acknowledged as a recognitionary/complimentary nod not measured in press rewardings or monetary measures, something much better, a gift i'd been waiting for, for a dozen years; collaborating with like minded fellars, and getting a role within it all...(while someone else holds the camera for a change!) A huge thing to me. For many recent previous months i found myself waiting for the completion of RH to fulfill the ego's needs..like this would be the "it" leading to some sort of "happening". But with delays, completion setbacks, i caught myself, feeding the ego w/abstracts, realizing i needed to get back into my own Vid noirs. Push Recovery hard when it gets completed, but not bank my non bankability on it.
1/14/09
Here Tomorrow Gone Today
Kelly said "sad how life passes by so fast", goddamn..that's it aint it. Sad. You put off thinking that you will get to that point of looking back and having to face the usual variety look back elements ; regret, regurgitations, realizations -- weren't you suppossed to be a fill in the blank by now -- and then you, seemingly suddenly, get there and kick yourself for pretending not to see it coming.
All i think i really wanted to be was a first baseman. A first baseman steps about 5 feet away from first base and has that specific area to take care of. I loved the specificity of the task. I wanted to be a damn good, solid first baseman. Somewhere my athleticism got lost, abandoned. And instead of having a specific goal to be the good at, a specific task to train over and over and master, I ended up in the abstract..floating around abstractly unable to even define some of the things i'm apparantly decent at. Krist..
Every now and then I'll see an old dude with big white beard, long hair, leathered up, riding a Harley Davidson. For some reason that goddamn image gives me hope. Like i look forward to getting to that point of just scooting around on a bike with a big white beard. Everything will have passed, and then it'll be just about the ride. And the irony then realized will probably be that it always has just been about the ride.
OR.........................
All i think i really wanted to be was a first baseman. A first baseman steps about 5 feet away from first base and has that specific area to take care of. I loved the specificity of the task. I wanted to be a damn good, solid first baseman. Somewhere my athleticism got lost, abandoned. And instead of having a specific goal to be the good at, a specific task to train over and over and master, I ended up in the abstract..floating around abstractly unable to even define some of the things i'm apparantly decent at. Krist..
Every now and then I'll see an old dude with big white beard, long hair, leathered up, riding a Harley Davidson. For some reason that goddamn image gives me hope. Like i look forward to getting to that point of just scooting around on a bike with a big white beard. Everything will have passed, and then it'll be just about the ride. And the irony then realized will probably be that it always has just been about the ride.
OR.........................
12/12/08
12/3/08
NORTH COAST RAMBLES 12/3
Humboldt, back, after a santa crUz stretch, via the (grey)Hound..still the characters abound, tho this was more the college fare, HSU'ers on their holiday break seeing bay area families.. Commenting as the college fare crowd does; majors, ambitions; young naive plans that want to make sense but ignore current day realities - caught up in the nostalgia of college life and labels; pieces of paper meaning nothing. The illusion. the blue pill.
But balanced out from the college fare was a madman seated behind on the ride down to frisCO. 21 and already a rich empty life of meandering, fathering, fighting, drugging, and photographin... i dug it juxtaposed to the rest of the crew on board, especially the typical college slack he was engaged in conversation with, who seemed enthralled somewhat with the madman and his mixed martial art cage fighting hobby and a seconds later you learn he's a nude photographist "couples stuff, not porn or anything"...and had actually come up to try and be part of the college fare, but it didn't work out money wise but really it didn't work out because it didn't work out... he had already graduated in different ways and ready to move forward not backwards into school, but likely he was going to move diagonal into jail with all the missteps, mistakes, and excess energy to GO..
And so it go - some Hound grime under the nails nearing the years end.. got my fix in for the year; i return and work on a bop jazz visual summation in brief of the year prior - while pondering the zero nine ahead..
But balanced out from the college fare was a madman seated behind on the ride down to frisCO. 21 and already a rich empty life of meandering, fathering, fighting, drugging, and photographin... i dug it juxtaposed to the rest of the crew on board, especially the typical college slack he was engaged in conversation with, who seemed enthralled somewhat with the madman and his mixed martial art cage fighting hobby and a seconds later you learn he's a nude photographist "couples stuff, not porn or anything"...and had actually come up to try and be part of the college fare, but it didn't work out money wise but really it didn't work out because it didn't work out... he had already graduated in different ways and ready to move forward not backwards into school, but likely he was going to move diagonal into jail with all the missteps, mistakes, and excess energy to GO..
And so it go - some Hound grime under the nails nearing the years end.. got my fix in for the year; i return and work on a bop jazz visual summation in brief of the year prior - while pondering the zero nine ahead..
11/8/08
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