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the aesthetics of decay
I can't wait until June 27, when this film Decasia, composed of decaying archival footage, comes to the Facets Cinematheque.
From the Village Voice review:
"[Over the course of the film] the calligraphy of decay grows increasingly hallucinatory and catastrophic. The sea buckles. Flesh melts. A boxer struggles against the disintegration of the image. Wall Street is half consumed in flames. A dozen little parachutes dot the cracked sky. ... Decasia seems ... Hindu in its awesome spectacle of violent flux. The film is a fierce dance of destruction. Its flame-like, roiling black-and-white inspires trembling and gratitude."
This description reminds me of William Basinski's recent CD The Disintegration Loops:
"The Disintegration Loops is comprised of elegantly beautiful orchestral tape loops that [Basinski] had recorded in the mid-'80s and recently rediscovered. However, as the tapes were being transferred to a digital master, the analogue spool began to disintegrate which ended up further enhancing the already spectral quality of the music. These events unfolded concurrently to the destruction of the World Trade Center. Basinski witnessed the Twin Towers' decimation from his home and decided to release this music as an elegy to that moment, and indeed, he succeeded in creating a very fitting pastoral landscape that admirably does not diminish or trivialize that tragic event in any way. The music uncannily transcends time as the loops swell and fray into seeming infinity."
--Michael Klausman, from the Other Music New Release Update of September 12, 2002
Possible parallel: Yve-Alain Bois' Formless : A User's Guide? |
Friday, April 25, 2003
3:19 PM
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