Argument for the Immediate Sensuous: Notes on "Stately Mansions Did Decree and Coupling"

Abstract

Brakhage's films delight and incite with a restless, unadulterated visual magnificence. Expanding the language of light, color, and visual rhythm, he takes film far beyond its usual bondage to representation and story telling. From his stomach-turning yet vital film document of autopsies, The Act of Seeing with one's own eyes (1971) to his abstract and sumptuous hand-painted Persian Series (1990s), Brakhage's works uproot established and comfortable ways of seeing. In all their manifestations, Brakhage's films call for active participation and openness from viewers, and in turn they teach us about our relation to time and perception, and introduce us to new forms of pleasure. A few years ago Brakhage put it this way: Much of my life's work constitutes an attempt to subvert the representational photography IS by creating a sense of present tense in each film's every instant of viewing (EB, 210). Brakhage's hand-painted films are a case in point, in that they demand to be experienced in a of immediate visual moments. In a five-minute film he paints and projects thousands of 16mm film frames, and though each film has its own palette and a predominant texture (inspiration), every frame is distinct, abstract and separate. Brakhage hints at solid forms, but no particular image is ever animated into coherent motion as in traditional animation. Each painting flies by at a fraction of a second, so the viewer can never up with seeing and holding all the enlarged single frames Brakhage projects to us from the screen. This multitude of disappearing paintings creates an immediate sensual experience for viewers. In Immediate Stages of the Erotic, a study of music and the sensuous erotic in human nature, Kierkegaard inadvertently illuminates an essential quality of Brakhage's hand-painted films when describing Mozart's opera Don Giovanni: The genius of sensuousness is hence the absolute subject of music. In its very essence sensuousness is absolutely lyrical, and in music it breaks forth in all its lyrical impatience. It is, namely, spiritually determined, and is, therefore, force, life, movement, unrest, succession; but this unrest, this succession, does not enrich it, it remains always the same, it does not unfold itself, but it storms uninterruptedly as if in a single breath. If I desired to characterize this lyrical quality by a single predicate, I should say: it sounds; and this brings me back again to sensuous genius as that which in its immediacy manifests itself in music. (1) Kierkegaard declared that sensuous-erotic genius demands expression in all its immediacy; and he concluded that music was the only medium appropriate for the purpose (and Mozart's Don Giovanni the most perfect rendering). But many years later Film was born, stepchild of Song and Light, and today Stan Brakhage is making films which storm uninterruptedly forward in lush luminescent music. It is the orchestration of colors, painted textures, composition, and visual tempo that constitutes the life of each work. And, though Brakhage's films are technically silent, indeed they sound in their perpetual succession and constant unrest. For all the pleasure Brakhage's painted films can deliver, they also arouse a heightened awareness of color, texture, and detail, and compel the viewer to reflect on her own thought processes. Viewers can become so hyper-aware watching that they can catch themselves spectatoring--watching the self watch (even at the cost of true engagement with) the film. The films' multi-layered effects can be so overwhelming that viewers, unable to hold onto anything familiar, might seek control through objectifying the process, guessing at technique or content: Do I see bodies? Thighs? Was that double-exposed or just layers upon layers of paint? First-time viewers may rebel in frustration. Even seasoned avant-garde film goers can find themselves in that unfortunate place of seeking something know-able to affirm that one's abilities to perceive can contend with the dominant beauty of the film's unfolding. …