1913issue6online

76 A Brief Statement On Some Current Works Black and white—I like the clarity of this phrase, and the absolutism it implies. There is no doubt in black and white. It is resolve and determined edges, a psychic space where tenuousness has no purchase on the order of things. It is moral certitude: shadow and light, right and wrong. Black and white requires few questions, because it has all the answers. I am, however, eluded by this comfort when I make art in black and white. I find this mode of working visually anything but simple. When I watch silent films from the early half of the twentieth century, for instance, I find a complexity of time, characterization, place and emotionality that contemporary film has mostly forgotten. Much of this complexity simply has to do with the effects of cinema in its infancy: the use of early movie-making technologies that tried to capture “life” via a particular mode of acting that hadn’t yet separated itself from the influence of theatrical drama and vaudeville. There is also the issue of dialogue within a silent film: mostly white words on black grounds, framed with light ornamentation. Very rarely is this dialogue smooth or poetic. This is because the dialogue’s purpose was more functional, like stage directions—it needed to push the plot forward, oftentimes quite rudimentarily. There is, nonetheless, something very beautiful in a silent film’s flatfooted language, something direct and voluptuous in its lack of finesse— something I find deeply attractive. I have made black and white silent films—at least, my versions of them. They are 35 mm slideshows, presented on slide projectors. These projectors have timers, so that each slide can advance automatically within five- to seven- second intervals. Virtually every slide functions as a dialogue card—any photographic images of people, settings or things have been absented, and any “filmic” form of movement within the slideshows is practically nonexistent. This is done intentionally, so that the language and subtle graphic elements within each slide can carry the imagistic, dynamistic power of the work—like a significantly slower, and more antediluvian,

1913issue6online

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