A Lecture on the Eyeball in Culture
Identifier
F.2005-08-0316
Date Of Production
1988
Abstract
Content Notice: This material contains depictions of hate speech at 6:11 - 7:29.
"A Lecture on the Eyeball (color, sound, c. 30 min., 1988) plays with various artworld postures. As the title hints, sound is played against vision, often undercutting it. A shot of midwestern landscape seen through a moving train window resembles a well known Brakhage piece (the regular 8mm Song 13) and mocks it by adding, against Brakhage's one time fanatical devotion to silent film, musical passages from that most middlebrow postmodernist, Phillip Glass. Many shots from tv, including Gone with the Wind and Reagan, reappropriate that always already audible medium for film. Orphaned outtake images from other Stamets' works appear, such as a drill team at a parade and a media standoff at Chicago Nazi headquarters. We see Stan Brakhage on a tv monitor and hear him discourse on memories and hypnagogic abstractions. A blackboard displays repeated writing: "I will make no more structuralist films."
Commemorating the local pro football team's success, we see a ceremony putting huge Bears helmets on the famous Art Institute sculptured lions. Sometimes the images are very beautiful in conventional terms, sometimes they are just too much, too long, too bizarre. The film always borders on having a significance for the maker, but not for others, as with shots of a courtyard while a phone rings. Is this a continuation of visual Beauty undercut by aural Reality, or does it have some other significance that we do not know?" – Chuck Kleinhans, "Documentary on the Margins: Bill Stamets' Super 8mm Ethnography," Cinematograph no. 4: “Non-fiction Cinema?” long version (v. 2.0c); 28 Sept 1990.
"A Lecture on the Eyeball (color, sound, c. 30 min., 1988) plays with various artworld postures. As the title hints, sound is played against vision, often undercutting it. A shot of midwestern landscape seen through a moving train window resembles a well known Brakhage piece (the regular 8mm Song 13) and mocks it by adding, against Brakhage's one time fanatical devotion to silent film, musical passages from that most middlebrow postmodernist, Phillip Glass. Many shots from tv, including Gone with the Wind and Reagan, reappropriate that always already audible medium for film. Orphaned outtake images from other Stamets' works appear, such as a drill team at a parade and a media standoff at Chicago Nazi headquarters. We see Stan Brakhage on a tv monitor and hear him discourse on memories and hypnagogic abstractions. A blackboard displays repeated writing: "I will make no more structuralist films."
Commemorating the local pro football team's success, we see a ceremony putting huge Bears helmets on the famous Art Institute sculptured lions. Sometimes the images are very beautiful in conventional terms, sometimes they are just too much, too long, too bizarre. The film always borders on having a significance for the maker, but not for others, as with shots of a courtyard while a phone rings. Is this a continuation of visual Beauty undercut by aural Reality, or does it have some other significance that we do not know?" – Chuck Kleinhans, "Documentary on the Margins: Bill Stamets' Super 8mm Ethnography," Cinematograph no. 4: “Non-fiction Cinema?” long version (v. 2.0c); 28 Sept 1990.
Description
A finished experimental film described by filmmaker Bill Stamets as "a diary of vision." Footage includes the following: Televised footage presents CBS News correspondent Terry Drinkwater’s coverage of actor Jay Silverheels’ death and legacy; pedestrian traffic visits various exhibits at Shedd Aquarium; a college professor conducts an outdoor class; a close-up pans across four nude torsos of individuals standing side-to-side while each holds a camera; tracking footage shot from an Amtrak passenger car scans the passing landscapes; a scene from Bill Stamets and Janice Finney’s Our Bamboo Gingerbread House depicts a group of children as they engage in a quasi-therapeutic performance; children march in a Christmas-themed parade; televised footage presents Stan Brakhage as he talks about seeing abstraction; televised footage presents ABC-7 reporter Frank Mathie’s coverage of cataract eye surgery performed on Maria the Moray eel at Chicago’s Shedd Aquarium on September 13, 1978; the press fills the entrance to Rockwell Hall, Nazi Party of America headquarters; a televised broadcast of Gone with the Wind plays the opening credits; televised footage shows Ronald Reagan as he delivers a speech; the repeatedly written line, “I will make no more structuralist film,” spans the length of a chalkboard; children get splashed by Lake Michigan while they sit on the ledge of Chicago’s Concrete Beach; workers install one of two Chicago Bears helmets designed by sculptor Dan Galemb for the Art Institute’s bronze lions in December 1985; pedestrians frequent a farmer’s market setup in Manhattan’s Foley Square; a single frame step-and-shoot sequence captures fan attendance for a Colorado Buffaloes game at Folsom Field; University of Colorado photography professor Alex Sweetman drives around Boulder; tracking footage shot from an Amtrak passenger car scans passing landscapes while audio from a Stan Brakhage lecture and music by Ludwig van Beethoven and Philip Glass play in the background; Stamets films his cutting room table; Stamets shoots out of his apartment window while a girl across an alley leaps around her back porch and Bruce Springsteen’s “Born to Run” plays in the background; a Super-8 projector operates from Stamets’ window ledge while a radio interview with an anthropologist plays in the background; Stamets shoots out of his apartment window while Ludwig van Beethoven plays in the background and a telephone begins to ring.
Format
Super 8
Extent
300 feet
Color
color and B&W
Sound
Mag Stripe
Reel/Tape Number
1/1
Has Been Digitized?
Yes
Language Of Materials
English
Element
Reversal Positives
Genre
Form
Subject
Art
Independent filmmakers
Transportation
Art Institute of Chicago
Experimental
Independent films
Lake Michigan
Neo-Nazism
Nudism
Racism
Teachers
Television
Universities and colleges
Independent filmmakers
Transportation
Art Institute of Chicago
Experimental
Independent films
Lake Michigan
Neo-Nazism
Nudism
Racism
Teachers
Television
Universities and colleges
Preservation Sponsor
Related Collections
Related Places
Main Credits
Stamets, Bill (is filmmaker)
Participants And Performers
Brakhage, Stan (is depicted in)
Brooks, Albert (is participant)
Peller, Clara (is participant)
Hoffman, Joh (is participant)
Sweetman, Alex (is participant)
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