Comments on: One on One: Apsara DiQuinzio on Bruce Conner’s LOOKING GLASS

By: johanna

johanna — Mon, 03 May 2010 20:06:36 +0000

Thank you for this lively and impassioned discussion on Conner. As someone who wrote a master’s thesis on BREAKAWAY, am currently writing on MARILYN TIMES FIVE, and am beginning research on a dissertation on Conner and found footage, I find the ideas and interpretations put forth here very engaging and sensitive. I hope to continue the debate through my own work!

I have also wondered about which films Conner was referring to in that interview reprinted in MacDonald’s book–I think COSMIC RAY is an obvious choice, though I think Conner would have liked it to remain a possibility for many of his films.

Looking forward to finally seeing the exhibition at the end of this week.

cheers, Johanna

By: adq

adq — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 15:56:25 +0000

This is a fun question. My vote is COSMIC RAY and MARILYN TIMES FIVE. His use of the word purient is key. I don’t think there is anything “purient” about BREAKAWAY. In fact, it’s the opposite. He shows you the cultural construct which is what makes it “purient,” and then he shows you the personal, subjective side, which is anything but. MARILYN shows the recumbant female nude, and BREAKAWAY shows Toni standing up, dancing no less! She represents the frenetic, uncontrollable side of female sexuality, which in this context is presented in terms of independence. It is impossible to circumscribe her body with the gaze (because of his amazing editing). It’s my favorite of his films (well, CROSSROADS just blows me away too.) Those of you who haven’t seen it yet, go see it again while you still can!

I’m looking forward to this interview. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.

By: Brecht Andersch

Brecht Andersch — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 12:47:58 +0000

I’m quite willing to concede MARILYN TIMES FIVE to the critique side of the equation, Apsara. In fact, I think you’re pretty dead on, except it’s possible Conner wasn’t referring in the interview to this film, which I, for one, find disappointing in the erotic dept. As a male fan of the real Marilyn, I’m always disturbed by the accuracy of Conner and his subject’s simulacrum: ultimately the synthetic nature of the enterprise is the predominant theme, and interestingly mirrors (or possibly meditates on?) MM’s story — after suffering an abusive childhood (at the hands of both women and men), she found power in manipulating the fantasies of men in life and on-screen before meeting her eventual tragic demise (whatever the nature of that really was). It’s one of the great American mythic tragedies. There is a tragic dimension, too, for men, in the whole genre of the peep show, or pornography in general. These play to the biologically-driven male tendency to intertwine objectification with romance. As in MARILYN TIMES FIVE, it’s all over in a moment, and emptiness ensues. But, yes, the wheels of commerce go on… (Francis Ford Coppola’s early film You’re a Big Boy Now deals with this explicitly and brilliantly.) Let me say also — I wouldn’t like to see these biological drives paved over or reformed in our social lives (as if this were possible) — they contribute directly to the continuance of the species. A big part of the work of the facilitation of society for both men and women is to make room and allowances for the gender-based characteristics and functioning of the opposite sex — the failure of members of either sex to deal with fellow humans as human (that is, sentient animals) is the cause of so much calamity…

So, the question is: which are the two (“designed to excite prurient interest”)?

My votes are BREAKAWAY and COSMIC RAY. Both of these enmesh eroticism with an ecstatic mystical dimension. COSMIC RAY, of course, also has a strong element of social critique, and you’ve made a strong case for this in BREAKAWAY, too, in how it serves as vessel for Toni Basil’s persona and voice. VIVIAN also mixes eroticism and critique (in this case, of the art world). From a perspective which is admittedly male, my take is that all these elements fuse, and are reconcilable in Conner’s incredibly complex work.

In other words, when you say “part of Conner’s brilliance is that he evades literal readings and makes you the viewer do the work”, again, you are dead on. My suspicion is that — however opposed our views are — we are both to some extent accurate. Conner’s work has that kind of inexhaustible Largeness.

I’ll be interested to hear your response to the interview in Canyon Cinema. What Conner has to say there definitely adds to the complexity and ambiguity one sees in his work — he has some scathing comments re. San Francisco PC culture, for example…

By: adq

adq — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 06:53:45 +0000

So, this is a very interesting quote that you leave us with Brecht, and although I am loathe to comment on it without reading the entire interview (which I will do stat) I have to believe that the quote is both true and not true. True in the sense that it is impossible to watch MARILYN TIMES FIVE without being excited “pruriently,” but untrue in that the film is a deliberate, exacerbated construct female sexuality. He makes it so pleasurable that after the third, fourth, and fifth time watching her roll around in front of the close-up, her objectification becomes uncomfortable to watch (at least it does for this feminist). He toys with the viewer, exciting him while also suggesting that this woman’s every gesture and pose is entirely constructed for the “male” gaze and for the camera. She is the classic commercial seductress who entices you to forget that she is also trying to sell you that bottle of coca-cola gingerly propped up in her cleavage. Moreoever, the “unreal” becomes hyperbolized. It is not Marilyn that we see, though she is a dead ringer; it is a Marilyn imposter who proffers one product after another. Thus the “unreal” gets multiplied and layered. She is an agent of American advertizing: unreal female figure + unreal marilyn = exaggerated form of American commerce. Two untruths equal a truth. I have to read that comment with irony, as I believe he would want you to read it. But again, part of Conner’s brilliance is that he evades literal readings and makes you the viewer do the work.

By: Brecht Andersch

Brecht Andersch — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 11:43:17 +0000

Thanks for affirming the value of affect in art, Rudolf! So important, and yet so often ignored in the realm of professional dialogue on art. Would anyone really take the time to create or partake of art without emotional investment? And if they would, is what results legitimate?

In re-reading Bruce Conner’s interview in Scott MacDonald’s Canyon Cinema: The Life and Times of an Independent Film Distributor, I found the comment by Bruce below, re. Canyon Cinema issues, which bears some relation to the discussion:

“At the last meeting I went to… Elizabeth Sher and some other people were talking about the content of films and pornography, and Elizabeth said something like, ‘I can’t believe that there’s any film at Canyon Cinema designed to excite prurient interest.’ I said “I disagree! I’ve made at least two of them!”

By: Rudolf Frieling

Rudolf Frieling — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 06:15:48 +0000

What a wonderful conversation on art and its emotions! Absolutely fantastic! Just a reminder: “Breakaway” is still on view for one more week, starting on May 1, “Mea Culpa” will replace it accompanied by bonus tracks from Bay Area artists Anne Colvin, John Davis, Kota Ezawa, and Anne McGuire.

By: Brecht Andersch

Brecht Andersch — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 21:19:00 +0000

Thanks for the clarification. I’d agree to some extent with most of what you’ve said, but to me, the majority of Conner’s work is about an inner realm — his. Whatever references he makes to outer political and social reality are all about how they effect HIS psyche, as in REPORT (he’s providing a report on how those events, as portrayed on television, are affecting him, compounded by his contemplation of both how the media is disseminating this material to the country as a whole, and what effect this will have on its collective psyche). While on a certain level, yes, BREAKAWAY and THE WHITE ROSE represent “a complicated celebration of female subjectivity”, they are less about their apparent subjects than Conner’s own inner feminine, expressions of, and embodiments of — especially in the case of BREAKAWAY — his anima (which in Conner’s case, should be written ANIMA). I can’t imagine anyone (even Conner) spending the number of artisanal hours required to make something like BREAKAWAY on a project he considered a mere “portrait” (I’m sure it took far longer to edit than any painted portrait in history ever took to create, at least in terms of manhours put in) This film, perhaps more than any of his works, is a profound expression of Self. To do some clarification myself, my earlier remarks re. the girlie mag imagery (to which I’d also add the found stag film shots) aren’t meant to say that Conner is just endorsing some kind of simplistic, surface level vision of male heterosexuality — tho that layer is there (and as someone who enjoys this level of the work, I find it sad to see it devalued). These images, too, though far less complex than those of BREAKAWAY, are anima images, lures for both artist and viewer to the contemplation of the inner rose — the soul (understood either literally or as a metaphor for an inherent part of the psychic structure). “Unreal female figure” is by no means equivalent to “debased stereotype” (stereotype of what, exactly? The women photographed, or the corresponding male sexuality to which they’re presumably supposed to engage?) Although Conner’s work registers the social, it is largely concerned with inner psychological and spiritual issues.

But — whatever disagreement I’d have with you about the contents of Conner’s work, this is my favorite blog post of any kind, any time, anywhere. The reproduction of the back of LOOKING GLASS is something I’ve waited many years to see, and is just stunning, and I find much of what you have to say about it, and Conner’s work in general, very enriching — I guess that’s why I’m so engaged. THANK YOU!

By: adq

adq — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 17:30:30 +0000

Let me clarify, I do not think that all of Conner’s work can be summarily boiled down to a critique of American mass culture (though much of it is) and certainly I do not mean to suggest that desire and his comments on culture at large should or can be extricated from one another–much of it is deeply enmeshed and conflicted, as it is in the world around us. I do think, however, Conner is most critical when he is using found footage (or materials). This is the point I tried to make above. When he is shooting the films himself, as he is in BREAKAWAY and THE ROSE, what manifests is more of a complicated celebration of female subjectivity. Both films are very poignant, almost touching portraits of his (female) friends. He presents them as empowered subjects, not as the debased stereotypes he finds proliferated in girlie magazines and movies. This is an important distinction. Tony Basil’s lyrics are telling in BREAKAWAY, her song about female independence: “I want to breakaway from all these chains that bind…” And it is her voice, her own words, to which she dances. In the WHITE ROSE, it is also very telling that we never really get a clear, frontal view of Jay DeFeo’s face, it is always seen from oblique angles. Rather her work, her painting, receives lavish close-up attention with the camera. These celebratory portraits are striking contrasts from the, as Conner himself describes, “unreal female figure,” seen in the found footage films. And, yes, it is Conner’s unique and wonderful ability to imbue everything with mystery.

By: Brecht Andersch

Brecht Andersch — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 08:35:52 +0000

@Vance: You’ve an excellent eye for fetish gear; a wonderful thing to bracket…

@Apsara: I concede much of the work to the “critique” side of the equation, but where’s the critique in BREAKAWAY and LOOKING FOR MUSHROOMS? Also, given that the Rat Bastard Protective Association would imply (to some extent) identification and complicity with a Rat Bastard mind-state, it would seem that a lot of Conner’s critique-oriented work is deeply ambiguous. It’s overcharged with superabundant emotion, which (in my view) can’t ultimately be dissected, and must finally be understood as an amalgamated mass of psycho-sexual/spiritual/social meditation and expression which can’t be comprehended rationally or summed up in words. BLACK DAHLIA, for example, comes to mind… Like the work of David Lynch, much of Conner is about mystery.

By: Vance Maverick

Vance Maverick — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 06:14:38 +0000

Bracketing the question of whether Conner was doing anything more here than anthologizing pornography (maybe so!), I’d like to observe that the hands in black gloves are a wonderful touch. Is the rubber protecting the artwork from damage, or the curators from contamination?