"..." Reel Collection

Reel #5 of (...) is composed of scratch-imagery edited to music by James Tenney. The music starts accompanied only by black leader: then there is a sudden flare of pure white which begins to flicker with negative-colored ephemeral shapes, until finally the music and a fulsome mass of scratched images are accompanying each other. At times a distinctly different quality of colored image appears and continues for awhile (non-orange negative photography of painted film as well as picture images).

This work is in five reels (numbered, but called "reels" so that they don't take on the connotations of "Parts" - thus each simply a part of the "trail" of colored scratches, white scratches ((on black & white leader) which suggest, to me, a passage). The third "reel" combines these scratches with some motion picture film, mostly of the ocean. The fifth reel is the only one which has a sound track; but of course that makes the whole work a "SOUND film" because the audio track must be turned-on from the beginning.

"A second 20-minute reel is more staccato mad chicken-scratch calligraphy fluttering out of a yellow void, sketchy lightning bolts or fireworks interrupted by a sudden field of turquoise." - J. Hoberman

Reel #4 of (...) is a recapitulation of the primary variations of scratched (on black leader) shapes and additive colors (i.e. those which are composed of toned light in the step printing process) as well as the solarizations (i.e. the combination of negative and positive images of the scratches) and the negative imagery itself (with its almost phosphorescent negative coloration): these visual themes (forms, textures and tones) eventually resolve themselves into an amalgam, as it were - something that seems "new", a "breakthrough", so to speak, but is actually combos of earlier variants.

"The third and shortest section reintroduces camera-derived imagery and, minimal as it may be (sunlight shimmering on water, seagull wheeling in the sky), it's still a shock to see "something." Brakhage continues to play with surfaces, layering the image with scratch bursts and soft-focus superimpositions; sentiment arrives with representation." - J. Hoberman, The Village Voice