File spoon-archives/seminar-11.archive/collage_1994-96/seminar-11.Oct94-Nov94, message 35


Date: Thu, 03 Nov 94 10:17 PDT
From: Judith Frederika Rodenbeck <jfr10-AT-columbia.edu>
Subject: Re:  what is collage?


On Tue, 1 Nov 1994, Malgosia Askanas wrote:

[....] 
> It seems to me that much of the interest of collage in precisely in
> how the components both do and do not matter.  Collage, I would say,
> has the tendency to _degrade_ the components in some manner; perhaps 
> this connects to what Benjamin calls the distracted mode of reception 
> (does it?).

YES. Also w/allegory and the world in ruins, crumbling. Of course you're 
working the film angle (where's Prouty, f'gdsake!), questions of speed, 
flashing lights and so on. The Paris essay is in some sense a collage, 
and of course (what we have of) the Passagenwerk.

The question that keeps popping up has to do with synechdoche, reading 
part for whole. But I'm not going to answer it, just name it, leaving it 
the part/object that it is (for now). Something we haven't raised 
adequately is the use of readymade material, unless I slept through some 
posts. And the physical cut interests me--not, mind you, in the Ron Athey 
sense, although maybe, in a weird way, they're related.

> It is truly fascinating that putting two different things 
> together and presenting the result as a single object forces a completely 
> different mode of perception than if each thing was presented separately.
> There is immediately an estrangement, as if the things were quoted --
> even if they were not pre-existing.

[....]
> Now I am curious what happens in art that, so to speak, single-threads
> the viewer's attention -- like film, radio and theater. 
[....]
> But what about works that do not have any aspect of simultaneity and
> yet consist of heterogeneous pieces strung together?  Here, the
> attention is totally concentrated on each piece in succession; and
> yet their togetherness does something to the way they -- and the work
> as a whole -- are received.

You mentioned distraction at the beginning of your post. One question I 
would ask of single-threading is: assuming there is some kind of 
attention to each piece in succession, what is the focus of that 
attention? Sort of diegetic, no? But then I think of something like, oh, 
I dunno, The Conformist, a film which carries me away with its shadows, 
the scratching of dry leaves, the limpid glances, anything but 
Trintignant's mission. (Well, this is part of the power of the film, 
but you know what I'm driving at.)

> Textual collage seems to straddle
[....] 
> - malgosia 

-fido

   

Driftline Main Page

 

Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005