David Lamelas, Time is a Fiction Poster/Programme Notes
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David Lamelas is best known as one of the pioneers of the Conceptual Art practice that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s. Over the last thirty years, he has produced an extraordinary body of films and videos which consistently challenge our conventional understanding of how meaning is made and information is imparted. In this programme of some of his early films, Lamelas experiments with both the elliptical constructs of fiction which frame and contain meaning, and the vérité qualities of durational documentation and straight to camera testimony. Born in Argentina, Lamelas was originally a sculptor, but came to prominence when he represented his country at the Venice Biennale with a piece called Office of Information about the Vietnam war on Three Levels: The Visual Image,Text and Audio. It was here that he met Antwerp- based gallerists from Wide White Space and Marcel Broodthaers, and the contacts he made helped to precipitate his later move to Europe. After Venice he moved to London, where he studied on a scholarship at St Martins School of Art which was still in the grip of monolithic abstraction under the direction of Anthony Caro. But it was during his time in England, whilst using photographs and text as material, that Lamelas began working in film. Through a desire to “produce sculptural forms without any physical volume”, the core concerns of his work emerged: time, space and language. During the subsequent years Lamelas has lived and made work across Europe and the Americas, each location exerting its specific influence on his work. And it is this personal experience of dislocation and his efforts to understand and assimilate new cultures that gives his conceptualist concerns a warmth and humour. For Lamelas, location and place are primary: ”Space has a reality, it exists”. Yet about time he asserts, “Time doesn’t exist, our consciousness constructs it. Time is a fiction.” Curated by Jacqueline Holt www.lux.org.uk/lamelas TIME AS ACTIVITY (DÜSSELDORF) Germany, 1969, silent, B&W, 13 mins, 16mm Time as Activity (Düsseldorf), made in 1969, is comprised of three four-minute sequences that register real time from a fixed point, at three different places in the city (in the area surrounding the Kunsthalle, a fountain and the city’s commercial centre). Part of the Time As Activity series. A STUDY OF RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN INNER AND OUTER SPACE UK, 1969, sound, B&W, 20 mins, 16mm David Lamelas’ first film, A Study of Relationships between Inner and Outer Space, analyses the architectural, social, climatic, or sociological data that make up the exhibition’s spatial environment, that of the institution and its geographical location. Beginning with the empty exhibition hall, the description is neutral and analytical. It progresses in ever larger circles, placing emphasis on all the important functional elements, from the electronic devices in the exhibition space, to the city’s traffic regulation, to the communication and information media and, finally, to the climatic conditions of the London environment. The film concludes with six interviews regarding the big news item of the day: the future “landing” of the first men on the moon. THE DESERT PEOPLE USA, 1974, sound, colour, 48 mins, 16mm David Lamelas describes it as “a study on American film production”. The Desert People begins like a classic road-movie. The setting is completely familiar to us: a car crossing the desert with a group of people travelling on board. But as soon as the narration begins, it is interrupted by documentary-style interviews. Passing in this way from one film genre to another, Lamelas manages to blur the boundary between fact and fiction. The five passengers describe their experience on a North American native Indian reservation. Each member of the group has his or her own perspective on the Papago tribe. One offers an anthropological analysis while another TO POUR MILK INTO A GLASS UK, 1972, sound, colour, 8 mins, 16mm Many of David Lamelas’s works are exercises designed to test how meaning is constructed in film. “I wanted to find symbols for ‘container’ and ‘contents’ – to represent how the camera frames – and what is shown on screen. …I decided to use a glass and milk. The eight sequences end with… the glass being shattered and the milk splattering all over the table, which implies that there is no way to contain information”. READING OF AN EXTRACT FROM LABYRINTHS BY J. L. BORGES UK, 1970, silent, B&W, 5 mins, 16mm The film Reading of an Extract from Labyrinths by J. L. Borges shows a young woman reading an essay by Argentinean writer Jorge Luis Borges titled Nueva refutación del tiempo (New Refutation of Time) out loud. Her lips can be seen moving but her voice cannot be heard. The phrases pronounced are actually shown in subtitles, but the length of the presentation is too short to permit them to be read and comprehended. This displacement and the disorder it generates reveal different levels of information de-codification in the work. The film makes the limits of our perception manifest, and in this way echoes Borges’ rejection of both simultaneity and succession – in other words, of the concatenation of deeds which make a narrative. discusses writing a feature article for a women’s magazine. They each present their version of the ‘truth’ about how the Papago live. Whilst they examine the tribe’s social behaviour, there is little self-reflection on their own group dynamic. Ironically, numerous cuts to their car journey reveal a complete lack of interaction between the travellers. The final interviewee, Manny, a Papago Indian, comments on the way the American influence on Native Americans is leading to the loss of his own indigenous culture. His English drifts into Spanish and then Papago, as if the meaning of what he wishes to communicate would be lost in translation. For the English-speaking viewer this shift is confusing and demonstrates the difficulty of knowing another culture from the outside. The film ends unexpectedly with a jump cut back to the feature film scenario. Other films by David Lamelas are available individually from LUX, including his latest feature The Light at the Edge of a Nightmare A DVD of David Lamelas’ early films will be released by Bureau des Videos in summer 2005 www.bureaudesvideos.com David Lamelas is featured in Issue 11 of the journal Afterall. Out now! www.afterall.org Image overleaf : still from Desert People by David Lamelas. Design by Alex Czinczel TIME IS A FICTION DAVID LAMELAS
description
Poster/programme notes for LUX touring Film Programme David Lamelas, Time is a Fiction (2006). Including information on the Lamelas films 'Reading of an Extract from Labyrinths by J.L Borges', 'The Desert People' and 'A Study of Relationships between Inner and Outer Space' which are distributed by LUX
Transcript of David Lamelas, Time is a Fiction Poster/Programme Notes
David Lamelas is best known as one of the pioneers of the Conceptual Art practice that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s. Over the last thirty years, he has produced an extraordinary body of films and videos which consistently challenge our conventional understanding of how meaning is made and information is imparted. In this programme of some of his early films, Lamelas experiments with both the elliptical constructs of fiction which frame and contain meaning, and the vérité qualities of durational documentation and straight to camera testimony.
Born in Argentina, Lamelas was originally a sculptor, but came to prominence when he represented his country at the Venice Biennale with a piece called Office of Information about the Vietnam war on Three Levels: The Visual Image, Text and Audio. It was here that he met Antwerp-based gallerists from Wide White Space and Marcel Broodthaers, and the contacts he made helped to precipitate his later move to Europe. After Venice he moved to London, where he studied on a scholarship at St Martins School of Art which was still in the grip of monolithic abstraction under the direction of Anthony Caro. But it was during his time in England, whilst using photographs and text as material, that Lamelas began working in film. Through a desire to “produce sculptural forms without any physical volume”, the core concerns of his work emerged : time, space and language.
During the subsequent years Lamelas has lived and made work across Europe and the Americas, each location exerting its specific influence on his work. And it is this personal experience of dislocation and his efforts to understand and assimilate new cultures that gives his conceptualist concerns a warmth and humour. For Lamelas, location and place are primary: ”Space has a reality, it exists”. Yet about time he asserts, “Time doesn’t exist, our consciousness constructs it. Time is a fiction.”
Curated by Jacqueline Holt
www.lux.org.uk/lamelas
TIME AS ACTIVITY (DÜSSELDORF)Germany, 1969, silent, B&W, 13 mins, 16mm
Time as Activity (Düsseldorf), made in 1969, is comprised of three four-minute sequences that register real time from a fixed point, at three different places in the city (in the area surrounding the Kunsthalle, a fountain and the city’s commercial centre).
Part of the Time As Activity series.
A STUDY OF RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN INNER AND OUTER SPACEUK, 1969, sound, B&W, 20 mins, 16mm
David Lamelas’ first film, A Study of Relationships between Inner and Outer Space, analyses the architectural, social, climatic, or sociological data that make up the exhibition’s spatial environment, that of the institution and its geographical location. Beginning with the empty exhibition hall, the description is neutral and analytical. It progresses in ever larger circles, placing emphasis on all the important functional elements, from the electronic devices in the exhibition space, to the city’s traffic regulation, to the communication and information media and, finally, to the climatic conditions of the London environment. The film concludes with six interviews regarding the big news item of the day: the future “landing” of the first men on the moon.
THE DESERT PEOPLEUSA, 1974, sound, colour, 48 mins, 16mm
David Lamelas describes it as “a study on American film production”. The Desert People begins like a classic road-movie. The setting is completely familiar to us: a car crossing the desert with a group of people travelling on board. But as soon as the narration begins, it is interrupted by documentary-style interviews. Passing in this way from one film genre to another, Lamelas manages to blur the boundary between fact and fiction.
The five passengers describe their experience on a North American native Indian reservation. Each member of the group has his or her own perspective on the Papago tribe. One offers an anthropological analysis while another
TO POUR MILK INTO A GLASSUK, 1972, sound, colour, 8 mins, 16mm
Many of David Lamelas’s works are exercises designed to test how meaning is constructed in film. “I wanted to find symbols for ‘container’ and ‘contents’ – to represent how the camera frames – and what is shown on screen. …I decided to use a glass and milk. The eight sequences end with… the glass being shattered and the milk splattering all over the table, which implies that there is no way to contain information”.
READING OF AN EXTRACT FROM LABYRINTHS BY J. L. BORGESUK, 1970, silent, B&W, 5 mins, 16mm
The film Reading of an Extract from Labyrinths by J. L. Borges shows a young woman reading an essay by Argentinean writer Jorge Luis Borges titled Nueva refutación del tiempo (New Refutation of Time) out loud. Her lips can be seen moving but her voice cannot be heard. The phrases pronounced are actually shown in subtitles, but the length of the presentation is too short to permit them to be read and comprehended. This displacement and the disorder it generates reveal different levels of information de-codification in the work. The film makes the limits of our perception manifest, and in this way echoes Borges’ rejection of both simultaneity and succession – in other words, of the concatenation of deeds which make a narrative.
discusses writing a feature article for a women’s magazine. They each present their version of the ‘truth’ about how the Papago live. Whilst they examine the tribe’s social behaviour, there is little self-reflection on their own group dynamic. Ironically, numerous cuts to their car journey reveal a complete lack of interaction between the travellers.
The final interviewee, Manny, a Papago Indian, comments on the way the American influence on Native Americans is leading to the loss of his own indigenous culture. His English drifts into Spanish and then Papago, as if the meaning of what he wishes to communicate would be lost in translation. For the English-speaking viewer this shift is confusing and demonstrates the difficulty of knowing another culture from the outside. The film ends unexpectedly with a jump cut back to the feature film scenario.
Other films by David Lamelas are available individually from LUX, including his latest feature The Light at the Edge of a Nightmare
A DVD of David Lamelas’ early films will be released by Bureau des Videos in summer 2005 www.bureaudesvideos.com
David Lamelas is featured in Issue 11 of the journal Afterall. Out now! www.afterall.org
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TIME IS A FICTION
DAVID LAMELAS
DAVID LAMELAS: TIME IS A FICTION
