Presentation - Ideas and proposal

Here are the notes for my part of our group presentation. I hope they act to elucidate some of the ideas that I am developing and that are apparent in my recent experiments.

Editing offers avant-garde and experimental work the ability to play with space and time in such a way as to manipulate the norm of linearity and narrative. 

Like in post cinema, here too the editing itself is what can be the act of creation rather than the pre production or production of a video work. 

Montage, remix, datamoshing and found footage  manipulation are all examples of styles that experimental films use that have their birth in the software used for editing, without the manipulation by this medium there is no art. 

Instead of just a technical method of splicing clips together, the techniques of editing within experimental work are themselves the art. 

In Maya Deren's meshes of the afternoon for example, we see a scene repeated through the work. 

But, it isn't the filmed scene that is the art, but instead how Deren is able to change the course of linearity of this scene in each repetition, through editing. 

She is also able to distort space and narrative by adding new elements and cutting between images as if they are are to become each other and defy the laws of physics, e.g we see a knife suddenly become a key. 

In a film such as Trinh Minh-has First name Viet, given name Nam, she employs a montage of stock and found footage and text in order to communicate the story of vietnamese women. It is in her editing of these elements together that the storyline is created. 

This however creates an easy viewing experience for the viewer, and what I am quite interested in is how a lot of avant-garde editing styles employ techniques that throw off the viewers perception of space and time, and how this can allow for the creation of affect in the viewer. 

For instance, when we all watched Martin Arnold Passage a l’acte and Takeshi Murata’s Pink Dot in class he other week, i'm sure we pretty much all had very visceral reaction to these works. 

Manipulating video in a way that is not comfortable for the audience creates a jarring sense of space and time and I would like to be able to play with editing techniques myself in such a way as to manipulate and create affective pieces that distort space and time and storylines that become art through the software and the process of editing