Justin Remes
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- November 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780231169639
- eISBN:
- 9780231538909
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231169639.003.0002
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter analyzes furniture music and furniture films. Even though Erik Satie did not coin the term furniture music until 1917, it seems clear that the idea was already in its formative stages in ...
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This chapter analyzes furniture music and furniture films. Even though Erik Satie did not coin the term furniture music until 1917, it seems clear that the idea was already in its formative stages in 1893 when he composed Vexations, a delicate and haunting piece of music that would eventually be seen as his most radical composition. Satie was interested in music that was not meant to be closely listened to, but was instead designed to serve as a backdrop for other activities, such as conversing, eating, and drinking. Likewise, films by Andy Warhol such as Sleep (1963) and Empire (1964), are best understood as furniture films—works designed to be viewed partially and distractedly. One of the primary functions of Sleep and Empire is to direct the viewer's attention away from the screen, promoting a distracted, fragmentary, and unfocused mode of spectatorship.Less
This chapter analyzes furniture music and furniture films. Even though Erik Satie did not coin the term furniture music until 1917, it seems clear that the idea was already in its formative stages in 1893 when he composed Vexations, a delicate and haunting piece of music that would eventually be seen as his most radical composition. Satie was interested in music that was not meant to be closely listened to, but was instead designed to serve as a backdrop for other activities, such as conversing, eating, and drinking. Likewise, films by Andy Warhol such as Sleep (1963) and Empire (1964), are best understood as furniture films—works designed to be viewed partially and distractedly. One of the primary functions of Sleep and Empire is to direct the viewer's attention away from the screen, promoting a distracted, fragmentary, and unfocused mode of spectatorship.
Justin Remes
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- November 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780231169639
- eISBN:
- 9780231538909
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231169639.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Conducting a study of films that do not move, this book challenges the primacy of motion in cinema and tests the theoretical limits of film aesthetics and representation. Reading experimental films ...
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Conducting a study of films that do not move, this book challenges the primacy of motion in cinema and tests the theoretical limits of film aesthetics and representation. Reading experimental films such as Andy Warhol's Empire (1964), the Fluxus work Disappearing Music for Face (1965), Michael Snow's So Is This (1982), and Derek Jarman's Blue (1993), it shows how motionless films defiantly showcase the static while collapsing the boundaries between cinema, photography, painting, and literature. Analyzing four categories of static film: furniture films, designed to be viewed partially or distractedly; protracted films, which use extremely slow motion to impress stasis; textual films, which foreground the static display of letters and written words; and monochrome films, which display a field of monochrome color as their image—the book maps the interrelations between movement, stillness, and duration and their complication of cinema's conventional function and effects. Arguing all films unfold in time, it suggests duration is more fundamental to cinema than motion, initiating fresh inquiries into film's manipulation of temporality, from rigidly structured works to those with more ambiguous and open-ended frameworks. The text's discussion integrates the writings of Roland Barthes, Gilles Deleuze, Tom Gunning, Rudolf Arnheim, Raymond Bellour, and Noel Carroll.Less
Conducting a study of films that do not move, this book challenges the primacy of motion in cinema and tests the theoretical limits of film aesthetics and representation. Reading experimental films such as Andy Warhol's Empire (1964), the Fluxus work Disappearing Music for Face (1965), Michael Snow's So Is This (1982), and Derek Jarman's Blue (1993), it shows how motionless films defiantly showcase the static while collapsing the boundaries between cinema, photography, painting, and literature. Analyzing four categories of static film: furniture films, designed to be viewed partially or distractedly; protracted films, which use extremely slow motion to impress stasis; textual films, which foreground the static display of letters and written words; and monochrome films, which display a field of monochrome color as their image—the book maps the interrelations between movement, stillness, and duration and their complication of cinema's conventional function and effects. Arguing all films unfold in time, it suggests duration is more fundamental to cinema than motion, initiating fresh inquiries into film's manipulation of temporality, from rigidly structured works to those with more ambiguous and open-ended frameworks. The text's discussion integrates the writings of Roland Barthes, Gilles Deleuze, Tom Gunning, Rudolf Arnheim, Raymond Bellour, and Noel Carroll.
