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Skirmishes Along the Avant-Garde by Jonathan Slon
This is a video-rich article, created in tandem with "Aboriginal" (7 minutes, 1979-2013), also by Jonathan Slon, which can be viewed below.
AS FILM STUDENTS AT THE SAN FRANCISCO ART INSTITUTE IN THE 1970s, MY
fellow experimental filmmakers and I felt we were the latest in the grand tradition of abstraction. We had studied Abstract Expressionism; we had seen Maya Deren’s “Meshes of the Afternoon” (1943) and Francis Thompson’s “NY, NY” (1957); we had even sat through Ionesco!
But then in 1978, word came back from the front that film was dead; that our hero, the avant-garde filmmaker Stan Brakhage, was wrong; that the story—any story— was contrived; and that even non-linear films, which tried to say something about the human condition in their own lyrical way, were doomed, prohibited by the new religion in the famously faddy realms of film school: “Structuralism.”
Filmmaker Jonathan Slon at the San Francisco Art Institute, circa 1978. photo: courtesy J. Slon
To make matters worse for me personally, a New York friend, who was studying acting at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago, suddenly showed up. Ron Cantor arrived one wet Spring day with his girl friend and was surprised when I forced them back into their car and sped them northward towards Lummi Island, Washington, where some New York friends had loaned me their house. In the trunk were three cases of red wine and rolls and rolls of raw 16mm color stock.
I, in turn, was surprised when, the entire trip, Ron spoke of nothing but Jerzy Grotowski, the Polish Theater director (1933-99) who believed in emotional expression and mystical intoxication through theater—the very opposite of cool, calculating Structuralism.
Soon we were ensconced in a big house on Lummi and endless arguments about Structuralism, classical abstract film and Grotokski's "Poor Theater". When I took out the rolls of film, instead of letting me wander around with my Beaulieu camera, hoping to "shoot structurally," Ron, a typical actor, insisted we write a script for a film starring him!
How could I convince him that story telling was now strictly verboten. Indeed, if word of this script concept got out, it might preclude me getting my masters at the Art Institute back in SF!
One morning, in a fit of panic, I forced Ron into a skirt fashioned from skunk cabbage leaves and, before he could protest too loudly, dragged him down to three grass huts, propped up by sticks, that I had built hastily with the help of two townies in exchange for getting them stoned. We had also designed hunting gear out of sticks with metal barbs attached.
I then proceeded to dare, cajole, even threaten Ron into improvising a character from a tribal society in which everything always goes wrong. Working title: "Shanook of the North".
Hence, the hut collapses during a tribal dance; he's unable to catch a fish or master rowing a boat—all too complex and "modern." While this was an obvious spoof on the typical hippie fascination with tribalism, I realized after years of therapy, it also represented my attempt to purge myself of Structuralism.
Slon with a passel of Lummi Islanders that he roped into acting in his film 'Aboriginal' (1978-2013). photo: courtesy J. Slon
Needless to say, Ron and I fought the entire time we were on Lummi and the entire trip back: there is nothing like art wars to boil the blood. Upon return, Ron managed a quick staging of “Calling For Help”, by Peter Hanke, at this commune we knew, which had a gallery called Ancient Currents, casting me in a small roll. It actually earned him some good notices.
As he hastily packed his bags to head back to Chicago, however, I swore on a copy of “Waiting For Godot", which I saw sitting on the commune's bookshelf, that I would eventually piece together our filmic adventures into a work of art.
Unfortunately, it appeared hopeless. The "aboriginal" footage was an unmitigated disaster. There was not a shred of story, although, on the plus side, it thereby achieved Structuralism if only in default.
Sure, there were some great comic bits as Ron danced, preened and cavorted in his cabbage leaves in front of the stunned Islanders, or threatened farm animals with his spears, but I could not find a theme to string it together until I remembered the oft-used avant-garde technique of reprocessing.
I was friends with, and great admirer of, John Newton, a San Franciscan musician and, for a few semesters, Art Institute film student. Known locally as Johnny Nitro, he led a popular North Beach blues band, called The Door Slammers, until his premature death in 2011.
But back in the late-'70s, John had discovered a process wherein he took raw footage and sprayed it with developer out in the broad sunlight, no camera, no lens, no lab—talk about Structuralism!
A scene from 'Aboriginal'. photo: courtesy J. Slon
He then washed the film with a garden hose leaving splotches of clear undeveloped film along side big, black dots in different sizes of developed film. Depending on how he manipulated the spray bottle nozzle, he got different sized and shaped dots. It produced fabulous structural film.
John got me thinking about how one might manipulate the image down to the chemistry of the emulsion. I thought of these dots as a type of film grain and envisioned solid images fragmenting into dots, with image still visible, before reforming into new dots with new images.
It was very Abstract Expressionism, a mix of Jackson Pollack and Ad Reinhardt. Reinhardt mixed paint so finely he essentially arranged different molecules of color side by side and a painting that appeared to be without color, or black, was filled with color "hidden within."
I wanted to do something similar but with film. I also thought I might make the ultimate non-linear film by taking the train off the rails, so to speak, by literally running the film at angles.
So I took my Lummi Island rolls, already developed, into the darkroom, spooled them onto four take up reels and slowly unspooled them across a piece of raw stock, exposing each new section with a Vivitar flash.
The raw stock had to be kept in a black bag, as did the newly exposed footage, but the hard part was exposing it with the right amount of light. Through a combination ND filters, and pointing the flash in particular way, I found a balance. I also used theatre gels to get rich colors, a tribute to the theatre and my dear friend and collaborator, Ron Cantor.
I spent weeks re-shooting the Lummi Island footage in this off-kilter way. The film seems to slide in and out of the frame when the angle is larger and the film jumps and flashes when the angle is at 90 degrees. You see the edge numbers and sprocket holes too. I thought to myself, this has a story, but it is also non-linear, AND it is structural!
John Newton, leader of renown San Francisco band, Johnny Nitro and the Doorslammers, and developer of some avant-garde cinema techniques in his youth at the Art Institute, died of heart disease in 2011: RIP, brother. photo: courtesy J. Newton
The movie came to 18 minutes and incorporated the abstracted bits along with selected scenes of Ron in his skunk cabbage skirt and the Lummi Islanders.
A success all around? I don’t think so...
The previous semester, I had made a straight drama, “Knock It Off”, shot in black and white. Starring Billy Bastiani (the singer in another popular band, The Ultra Sheens) as a car thief, Babeth (the queen bee of the film students at that time, now a doc maker in Holland) as the cheating girlfriend and Howard Petrick (a San Francisco artist) as the ship captain, I thought it was pretty good—at least the cast was compelling.
But when I showed it to my Art Institute advisors, they stood up and walked out before it was half over. In light of that experience, the prospect of screening my new film, tentatively called “Aboriginal”, gave me the jitters.
The good news: they sat through the screening of “Aboriginal” without walking out! Alas, it was only because they felt so embarrassed for me. Evidently, I had not learned a single iota about Structuralism, I was behaving with incredible silliness and Structuralism is nothing if not unfunny.
In fact, they dismissed “Aboriginal” without so much as a comment and I graduated quietly, as it were.
Slon did ultimately extract a Masters from the Art Institute despite the disdain of his advisors. photo: courtesy J. Slon
Nevertheless, I retained a secret fondness for “Aboriginal". After sitting in a can for over thirty years, I had the film master transferred to digital format and edited it on Final Cut, making several versions, one of which I have included above.
The colors held up nicely and I was happy to see Ron Cantor again in his skunk cabbage regalia. Moreover, I was happy some of us were willing to take chances, to risk ridicule, instead of imitating our advisors, copying their cinematic style as if we were apprentices.
So, for all the “advisors” who’s films of home movies (the Mekas brothers), of penises (Al Wong), of sexual confusion (George Kuchar) and even closeups of assholes (Joel Singer) that we patiently sat through, I have this to say:
Avant-garde does not have to be painful, unfunny and cold, it can be humorous, colorful and hot.
Jonathan Slon lives in New York with his family working on various video projects from gallery installations with four projectors to webdocs about local artists. He can be reached .