~ News and Views ~
Found videopoem?
A reporter tries to get out a simple report in what I presume is Urdu. The result struck me as an inadvertent videopoem. (Many thanks to Arvind for locating this for me on YouTube, based on a version that had been uploaded to Facebook.)
Morgan Downie on videopoetry and surrendering to time vampires
Scottish poet Morgan Downie shared some of his thoughts about videopoetry and his collaboration with Alastair Cook (see their two videos) in “time vampires,” a blog post from April 28 which I only just discovered. He includes some kind words about Moving Poems, which I appreciated, but I particularly liked his conclusion:
in computerland you can pretty much do what you want, pick a sound, an image, a stream of words and run with it. when alastair did the scene video he just picked it up and ran with it. what a surprise, what a treasure! not only that by indulging yourself in these collaborative efforts you get to meet new people who do things differently to you, who come from different and interesting backgrounds, countries, cultures and, more or less, there’s no publisher, deadline, competition, brief etc etc other than what you want there to be. so all of that is rendered superfluous. and that can only be a good thing.
so, time vampires. yes, staring at a screen can be a bad thing, but as a means to some form of creative expression, some interaction, something new you hadn’t even thought of? that’s a monkey on my back i’ll welcome. i could write more but i’m off to practise some guitar noise i want to use. i have no idea how to record it, what to do with it when i have done, but that’s all part of the joy.
i recommend it.
Film quotes with possible relevance to videopoetry
“A film is never really good unless the camera is an eye in the head of a poet.”
–Orson Welles
“Film is one of the three universal languages, the other two: mathematics and music.”
–Frank Capra
“A film is — or should be — more like music than like fiction. It should be a progression of moods and feelings. The theme, what’s behind the emotion, the meaning, all that comes later.”
–Stanley Kubrick
“Film as dream, film as music. No art passes our conscience in the way film does, and goes directly to our feelings, deep down into the dark rooms of our souls.”
–Ingrid Bergman
“My movie is born first in my head, dies on paper; is resuscitated by the living persons and real objects I use, which are killed on film but, placed in a certain order and projected on to a screen, come to life again like flowers in water.”
–Robert Bresson
“With a good script, a good director can produce a masterpiece. With the same script, a mediocre director can produce a passable film. But with a bad script even a good director can’t possibly make a good film. For truly cinematic expression, the camera and the microphone must be able to cross both fire and water. The script must be something that has the power to do this.”
–Akira Kurosawa
“Film music should have the same relationship to the film drama that somebody’s piano playing in my living room has on the book I am reading.”
–Igor Stravinsky
“Film will only became an art when its materials are as inexpensive as pencil and paper.”
–Jean Cocteau
“The film of tomorrow will not be directed by civil servants of the camera, but by artists for whom shooting a film constitutes a wonderful and thrilling adventure. … The film of tomorrow will be an act of love.”
–Francois Truffaut
Festivals with Videopoetry
Biannual festival Zebra in Germany http://www.literaturwerkstatt.org/
VideoBardo In Argentina http://www.videopoesia.com/
(I am having a difficult time finding annual or biannual festivals. Seems most are one-offs and it’s not always easy to find the year on the webpage. A lot of information out there is terribly outdated.)
Great to see all the discussion here this morning (well, afternoon for some of you). Minor housekeeping note: You’ll probably notice I just switched the default setting to show rather than hide comment threads. Though this might make the site initially more confusing to navigate for first-time visitors until they discover the global toggle button, I found I was getting annoyed by the fact that I had to toggle-on comments even on single-post views, and decided it would make for better usability if comment links in the sidebar worked by default. If you prefer things the way they were, though, let me know — I’m not wedded to this.
Towards Definitions of Genres and Art Forms?
I have just begun brainstorming with a Cuban actress for a project that will include her live performance, multimedia and poetry. It has me thinking about the characteristics of the various art forms on their own and how they will work together, can work together and whether they are “collaborating art forms” or elements from differing art forms that collaborate to create a single art form (in this case Performance).
Isn’t this the same kind of question we are asking about video technology and poetry?
Despite my own penchant for the written word and visual impression of the written word as intrinsic to some poems, I concede easily to the idea that poetry is also defined as the metaphoric use of language and can be an exclusively aural experience.
However, is it possible to have a “videopoem” that has no words or oral language whatsoever? Does it count as poetry if the words alone don’t convey a poem, but rely upon the visual elements to convey an idea? If so- is this poetry or is this “elements of poetry” (if so-which then??) collaborating with elements of film to create a new art form?
Isn’t perhaps videopoetry actually more like performance than poetry and therefore videoperformance?
(I am excluding documentation of performances here in my tentative genre).
What are your thoughts?
Subtitles drive me mad!
Why put English subtitles on an English poetry video??
I run Viral Verse (a website like Moving Poems) which features video poetry. I regularly crawl the net for new (and old) work. For some reason I cannot figure out, poetry videos often have the verse both spoken and written. It’s horribly distracting and a total waste of the poet’s (or actor’s) voice. We can’t help but read when we see words on a screen, but having 2 voices in my head – the actor’s and mine – becomes irritating .
I’m at the point now where if the subtitles start I turn off the video. English movies don’t have English subtitles. Is poetry so bloody special that it has to be drummed into the viewer?
Poetry + dance
Today’s post at Moving Poems, The Lovers by Dorianne Laux, is equally a testament to the imagination of the director, Bob Lockwood, as to the performers: great care has obviously been expended on both the filming and choreography. Lockwood says that the video is “an amalgam of takes of two rehearsal runs.” Having three female dancers take turns reciting the poem worked brilliantly to universalize the very personal, intimate subject-matter of the poem, I thought. The only way it might’ve been improved would have been to have made them wear masks.
“The Lovers” joins a small number of other very impressive offerings in Moving Poem’s Dance category, which several people have told me includes some of their favorite videos on the site. Perhaps the best-known of these poetry-dance videos are the ones for Anne Carson’s series of lectures in the form of sonnets, filmed by Sadie Wilcox, but the approaches to filming, choreography, and integration of text are diverse and also very multicultural, including Iranian, Burmese, Indian and Swedish poets. Together, these videos should serve to remind us that poetry has been a part of multi-media productions for millennia, as dance, drama, and/or musical performance. From this perspective, the merging of poetry with film or video is simply the latest manifestation of a very ancient impulse.
Self-registration off
An obvious spammer registered this morning, so unfortunately I’ve had to turn off self-registration already. I’ve deleted that contributor, plus one other I wasn’t sure of — if you are that other person, and you’re not in fact a spammer, please accept my apologies and email me to have your status reinstated. For anyone else who who would like to join — and the more, the merrier! — please do email me as well: bontasaurus (at) yahoo (dot) com. (Contact pages are more hassle than they’re worth, in my experience.)
Minor site-usability note: those Recent Comments links don’t always work, I find — the AJAX is a little screwy or something. When that happens, refresh the page, and hit “Toggle Comment Threads.” Then the links should work.
