Encounter with the films of Larry Gottheim and the videos of Sérgio Taborda

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A streaming session followed by a conversation with Larry Gottheim and Sérgio Taborda, moderated by Rita Fabiana, curator of the Modern Collection

Encontro com os filmes de Larry Gottheim e os vídeos de Sérgio Taborda (Encounter with the films of Larry Gottheim and the videos of Sérgio Taborda) is the result of the conference session programmed by Taborda in 2018, Paisagem enquanto acontecimento.  Encontros com os filmes de Larry Gottheim e vídeos de Sérgio Taborda (Landscape as an event. Encounters with the films of Larry Gottheim and the videos of Sérgio Taborda), which took place at the Cinemateca Portuguesa in the context of the International Conference on Landscape and Cinema, organised by the Centre for Comparative Studies of the Faculty of Arts in collaboration with Susana Mouzinho.

Since then, Gottheim and Taborda have maintained a correspondence which has allowed them to bring their works closer together. Taborda found certain affinities between his video works and Gottheim’s films, especially FOG LINE (1970) and BARN RUSHES (1971), films Taborda came across in the experimental film archive of Arsenal – Institute for Film and Video Art (Berlin) during his period as a resident artist-researcher there. Having shared excerpts with Taborda from his as-yet-unpublished book, which recounts the artist’s creative path from its outset to the present day, Gottheim pointed out the similarities between his film HARMONICA (1971) and Taborda’s video Transfer Drawing with Olga (2016). Alongside the films BLUES (1970) and THE RED THREAD (1987), this session thus presents an early period of Gottheim’s work from between 1970 and 1987.

The order of the films presented here follows that found in Gottheim’s book and pays special attention to the affinities between Taborda’s Transfer Drawing with Olga (2016) and Gottheim’s HARMONICA (1971).  The session thus follows the initial gestures and intuitions explored by Gottheim in four of his initial films from the early 1970s.

Larry Gottheim, 'HARMONICA', 16 mm, colour, sound, USA, 1971, 1’00’’. Courtesy of the artist
Sérgio Taborda, 'Transfer Drawing with Olga', Digital Video, colour, 4:3, without dialogue, Berlin, 2016, 2’58’’. Courtesy of the artist

The events shown in this selection of Gottheim’s films are transformed into unique cinematographic experiences. In his way, Gottheim positions the spectator in a shared experience of intense concentration and discovery, similar to that which the director underwent during filming. This shared concentration in close relation to the director’s own experiences of making films is further manifested in Taborda’s Sequências 17-18 (Sequences 17-18, 2018-2019) in the manner in which the artist captures and links the events throughout the video, raising mutual resonances and affinities with the initial selection of Gottheim’s films.


PROGRAMME

17:00 Opening of the streamed session with the following order:

A bowl of milk and blueberries against a blue background, viewed from above and shot in close-up, filled almost entirely with a strong shadow that outlines one of its edges. Three concentric circles – the circle of the milk inside the bowl, the circle of the bowl’s edge and the circle of the shadow surrounding it.
A gesture by someone, only visible from their hand, who eats the contents of the bowl with a spoon, captured as they scoop up some more blueberries from the milk, entering the shot from the left; the rest of the action is left out of shot. With the action delimited by a fixed, high-angle shot, our attention is drawn to what is occurring inside the bowl full of milk, the light that shines on it and the gesture with the spoon, which changes every time some more blueberries are scooped up. The repetition of this gesture transforms our gaze every time we see it.

The double doors at the entrance to the study in Deborah’s atelier open and close to the right and left of the shot, conditioning what we can see looking out of the studio from within. Captured by a camera attached to a tripod next to the door, the movements influence what we see before us: fences around a field somewhere outside, cows grazing, a dark tree trunk. These countryside elements are obscured over and over again by the sliding doors, first the left door, then the right. They create a new relationship with what is happening outside, with what we can see nearby and in the distance, and with the edges and corners of the shot itself, until the dark left side of the door appears and moves slowly to erase the image.

In the context of Larry Gottheim’s 1970s films, HARMONICA is the first in which sound makes a sudden appearance, triggered by a car driven along a road, which takes on the role of ‘sound and image producer/instrument’. We hear the sound coming from the action and we follow it, as the driver steers the car along the road. At her side, with the window open, in such a way that it closely reflects the car’s route and speed, a harmonica is played alternately by the passenger sitting next to the driver, who blows into it, and by the wind, as the passenger holds it out of the window facing the direction of travel. The vibrations of the wind in the instrument give it a unique sound. The car, the people in it, the harmonica and the wind are all instruments, like the camera itself, which is presented as a device that captures all the action in one continuous take lasting the full length of the 16mm film roll.

A re-enactment of Dennis Oppenheim’s film 2 Stage Transfer Drawing Retreating to a Past State, 1971, made in 2016 with my daughter Olga when she was 6 years old.
Olga drew on my back while I simultaneously transferred the drawing I ‘received’ onto a sheet of paper attached to the wall opposite me.
It was filmed as a fixed shot, framing us with our bare backs to the camera from the waist up.

THOUGHT encompasses a multitude of experiences and explores small movements in a continuous take, although the central theme of the film is the sudden change in focus. With the context for the various movements omitted, we are presented with something that is more like a ‘thought in itself’ than the act of ‘thinking about something’.

This film has a parodic dimension, adopting a structure ironically divided into ‘acts’. Modelled on a romantic episode between Larry Gottheim and a weaver and textile designer, which occurred during his stay as a guest artist at the San Francisco Art Institute, the artist appears here as an ironic ‘avatar of himself’. In this context, the red thread is somewhat related to the idea of assembly as a mesh, thread or fabric, echoing the idea explored by Maya Deren in Meshes of the Afternoon in particular. 

 
Synopses by Sérgio Taborda
 

19:00 Conversation with Larry Gottheim and Sérgio Taborda

Moderated by Rita Fabiana
In English


BIOGRAPHIES

Larry Gottheim, born in 1936 in New York, studied music and then literature, receiving a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Yale University. He began teaching film classes in the English Department at Binghamton University. He was able to start a separate Cinema Department there in the late 1960’s where he taught film-making and cinema aesthetics until 1998. He was Chair of the Department for most of that time. This was the first regular undergraduate program dealing with film as a personal art. Many of the major personal filmmakers from around the world taught there or visited.

His early silent films such as FOG LINE (1970), DOORWAY (1970) and BARN RUSHES (1971) are widely known. In the 1970’s Gottheim made ELECTIVE AFFINITIES, a set of four long films that explore complex relationships between sound and image. While still formal and concerned with sound and image, some later films include material that would ordinarily be seen in a documentary mode (MACHETE GILETTE.... MAMA, 1989). His many years’ involvement with Vodou in Haiti led to a video work CHANTS AND DANCES FOR HAND (1991-2017). His most recent film KNOT/NOT (2019) is a complex web of material tied together by repetition and superimposition. His works have been included in numerous museums, festivals and other venues throughout the world.

Sérgio Taborda (Vila Nova de Poiares, 1958) currently lives and works in Lisbon and Berlin. After completing the sculpture course at Ar.Co and attending the Cinema course at the Lisbon Conservatory, he graduated in Communication Sciences at the Universidade Nova de Lisboa, where he also completed his master's and doctorate. He taught Sculpture and Drawing at Ar.Co (Lisbon) and Project, Drawing and Master's Seminar classes at ESAD-CR (Caldas da Rainha).

Solo exhibitions of his work have been held since 1985. From 1992, together with musician and composer Luís Bragança Gil, he began to develop site-specific installations, work which resulted in the audio and video installations imersão(immersion) and travelling in 1997 and 1998, respectively.

Between 2010 and 2016, he was resident artist-researcher at Arsenal - Institute for Film and Video Art (Berlin), supported by an individual post-doctoral research grant from FCT. He has organised experimental film and video cycles at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation Modern Art Centre (2012), the Cinemateca Portuguesa (2013, 2016, 2018) and Culturgest (2014, 2015).

In 2016, his exhibition Ações Desenhos (Action Drawings) was held at the Carmona e Costa Foundation, curated by Maria do Mar Fazenda. In 2018, he organised the conference session Paisagem enquanto acontecimento. Encontros com os filmes de Larry Gottheim e vídeos de Sérgio Taborda (Landscape as an event. Encounters with the films of Larry Gottheim and the videos of Sérgio Taborda), which took place at the Cinemateca Portuguesa in the context of the International Conference on Landscape and Cinema, organised by the Centre for Comparative Studies (CEC) of the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Lisbon in collaboration with Susana Mouzinho.

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