Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Book in excellent unread/unused condition. See images. Fantastic book.

About the book >.>.> In a 1971 issue of Artforum the American photographer and filmmaker Hollis Frampton put matters into historical perspective by asserting that an activity only becomes an art once its era is over and its role as an aid to mere survival is totally obsolete. This sweeping assertion was prescient with respect to the history of cinema: Today numerous contemporary artists adhering to what is termed the “cine- ma effect” uphold the end of cinema as foreseen by Frampton thirty years ago; the end that is of cinema as an art of the masses and almost exclusively responsible for entertaining the general public during over half a century. Mark Lewis turned from photography to filmmaking dur- ing the mid-’90s. He has since been producing film works in the “cinema effect” line that turns its back on Frampton’s metahistorical outlook and focuses instead on cinema as the instrument of a collective mnemonic process of sedi- mentation. Having studied with both Victor Burgin and Laura Mulvey Lewis is familiar with the latter theoreti- cian’s shrewd transgression of the boundaries between various fringe film ideologies. However his own approach goes beyond such categories bequeathed to us by mod- ernism under the headings “commercial” or “avant- gardist.” His chosen modus operandi is to avail himself of the resources of professional filmmaking (35-mm film pro- fessional cast camera crew and production team) entailing a collective effort where the film director stands witness to his own takeover. In this way Lewis reintroduces the ran- dom element which someone like Man Ray sought out instead through experiments in improvisation. (LL)