TIFF 2011: Wavelengths 3: Serial Rhythms

The most enigmatically grouped programme in this year’s Wavelengths was the third showcase. Where Wavelengths 1 was modelled on the fading analogue medium of celluloid, and Wavelengths 4 interpreted the concept of ‘space’ in six radically different ways, the theme of Serial Rhythms seemed to evolve from one piece to the next. Links between each work showed hints of motifs or ideas from the previous film, but to look at any two random films in the programme, one would be hard-pressed to locate many discernible commonalities.

In truth, I think programmer Andréa Picard likes it best that way. In her introduction, she did not hesitate to mention the vagaries within this set’s curation. She’d initially toyed with a concept of death, but admitted (and this was evident) that that theme drifted further away in the compilation’s second half. There was still a concrete vision in the end – that being, to create a bedazzled narrative about process via an accumulation of rhythmic, visual repetitions – and she was anxious to hear back from the audience after the screening about whether or not it ‘worked.’ Despite some occasional torpidity, it did.

The highlight was Rose Lowder’s Bouquets 11-20 – a set of ten, one-minute films made between 2005 and 2009; a ‘sequel’ in a sense to her first ten (1-10) that brought her great acclaim in the mid-90s. Each of the ten segments appears to be constructed on a frame-by-frame basis, alternating between a stop-motion back-and-forth jitter and short, tranquil ‘normal’ shots that place us, ever so briefly, in real time. The best description of it might be to call it a parade of split-second visual haikus. I’m not entirely convinced that her exclusively floral and farmland imagery carries a Green message, but it does make one want to get the heck out of the city, stat.

Other notable works were John Price’s Sea Series #10, which is another of his dizzyingly hand-processed odes to an apocalypse as seen from the eyes of a small boy – this one alluding to the Fukushima disaster; Joyce Wieland’s vintage Sailboat (from 1969), an elementary and pedagogical learning tool that pits a three-minute shot of a sailboat with the literal word ‘sailboat’ constantly staring at us from atop the frame; and Kevin Jerome Everson’s Chevelle (see pic above), which in two cycles of car-smashing communicates a comedically stoic illustration of waste.

Special mention should also be made to T. Marie’s op-art homage Optra Field VII-IX, a triptych of moiré studies that hypnotize, but do little for the brain. After four consecutive years of ‘pixel paintings’ in Wavelengths (no one really knows what she means by that), one is again left with the impression that if Marie could functionally communicate her production process one of these days, her videos would become exponentially more valuable to viewers. As is, they’re merely pretty, computer-generated programming patterns that, for all we know, were spat out at random from Max/MSP.