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Themesicon: navigation pathArt and Cinematographyicon: navigation pathWieland
 
1933 (Wieland, Joyce), 1968
 
 
 

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process of signification is key in both cases – but to radically different ends. Regarding Godard's «Demoiselles d'Avignon» Wollen writes, «it dislocates signifier from signified, asserting – as such a dislocation must – the primacy of the first, without in any way dissolving the second.« [9] But what are the means of such a dislocation? In how many ways may it be brought about? At the close of his text, Wollen yearns for a convergence between these ostensibly so different methodologies, never suspecting he may have overlooked it. Although Wollen underscores the fact that the division between the two avant-gardes is not simply drawn along the lines of the absence or presence of political commitment, it is clear that divergent relationships to the referential qualities of filmic images are at issue here – and by extension, their divergent potential to affect political enlightenment. What is lacking for Wollen is a film that combines an investigation of the filmic dispositif in both the most mechanical and the most social sense, and at the same time does not disdain the attention of a mass audience. I would like to offer the example of several of Wieland's films as a corrective to this divide, in the

 

hope that it will be a first step towards more detailed analytical investigation of her oeuvre.

»1933»

The film «1933» made between 1967 and 1968 offers a street scene shot in New York City in the late 1960s from a loft window on the second floor. This shot, filmed mostly in fast motion but occasionally slowed to normal speed, is repeated in its entirety 10 times and is accompanied by dissonant raucous music, evoking the silent-film-like humour in fast motion human movement. Clear leader is inserted between these individual shots: its whiteness is twice obscured, each time by a frame or two of blackness, or more rarely of pinkness, suggesting something more to come, which never materializes. Onto this image the Arabic numerals 1933 (or 1 - 9 - 3 - 3) are superimposed, hinting at a wealth of combinatory possibilities between image and text and pointing out the inclination of the viewer to historicize and contextualize even on the basis of the most minimal of signifiers. Does 1933 refer to a moment of particular relevance in modern European history? Does it instruct the viewer to apply this particular

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