LUX » Experimental Self-Portraits in the LUX collection

Experimental Self-Portraits in the LUX collection

Muriel Tinel-Temple

12 December, 2017

In January 2017, I was invited to explore the LUX collection in order to curate a programme for Birkbeck Institute for the Moving Image (BIMI) called “Experimental Self-Portraits in the LUX collection”. This screening followed a series of events about self-representation, which I co-organised with a recently co-founded research group (“Self-Representation in Visual Culture”) and BIMI.

In my thesis, L’autoportrait cinématographique (The Filmic Self-Portrait), and then my book, Le cinéaste au travail: autoportraits (The Filmmaker at Work: Self-Portrait), I mainly carried out research in the French context, notably at the Light Cone archives in Paris. Therefore, the challenge for this event was to explore a collection that, at the time, I did not know very well, and to test some of my preconceived expectations about self-portraiture in film. I was curious to see what kind of films I was going to discover, and also if new perspectives and discussions about self-portraiture in experimental cinema were going to emerge.

The programme I finally put together was as follows:

Part 1:

Portrait with Parents, 1974, Guy Sherwin, 3min, 16mm
Self-Portrait, Emina Kurtagic, 1977-78, 6min, 16mm
The Man with the Movie Camera, David Crosswaite, 1973, 9 min, 16mm
Relative Surfaces, 1974 David Hall, 8min video
Watching Paint Dry, Jo-Ann Kaplan, 2010, 17 min, video

Part 2:

Personal Cuts, Sanja Ivekovic, 1982, 4 min, video
A Phrenological Self-Portrait, Marianne Heske, 1976, 10min, video
Regression, John Smith, 1999, 17 min, video
Monolog, Laure Prouvost, 2009, 12min, video

In composing the programme, I had to take into account technical constraints, such as grouping together the films screened in 16mm, but beyond these, I tried to organise the screening around three points, which I found particularly relevant and representative, even if none of the chosen films necessarily fits neatly into just one or the other category:

The first point, ‘Faces’, focuses on the way self-portraiture is obviously linked but also diverges from such issues as identity and intimacy.
The second concerns ‘Reflexivity’, and more precisely how the self-portraitist experiments with the medium and explores its specificity.
The last point considers the idea of ‘Performance’ and the mode of address characteristic of the self-portrait.

Faces: from autobiography to self-portrait

The way I approach self-portraiture is first by making a distinction between autobiography and self-portrait. The autobiography is usually associated with literature and consists of sharing personal stories, whereas the self-portrait is a well-established genre in painting and photography and could be defined as follows: the portrait of the artist by him/herself, here and now, whilst reflecting on his/her creative process. In cinema, even if the boundaries between the different aspects of first-person films are blurred and difficult to define, one can nonetheless identify three main tendencies: diaristic (a day to day record of usually intimate events), autobiographical (memories and recollection of the past), and self-portraitist (portrait of the filmmaker as a filmmaker at a given moment).

As I began to explore the LUX archive, I started by looking at some diary films and compilations of home movies or memories, in order to better situate my specific topic within the collection. In the end, however, I decided not to include them in my programme, essentially because I wanted to stick with the definition of the self-portrait as such, even if some were very moving and fascinating in all sorts of way. For example, I was very impressed by Living Memory (Anne Rees-Mogg,1980), Duplicity I and II (Stan Brakhage, both 1978), Genome Chronicle (John Akomfrah, 2009) and Dad’s Stick (John Smith, 2012).

Instead, I chose to open the programme with Portrait with Parents (Guy Sherwin, 1974), because for me this film shows exactly when and how autobiography and self-portrait are part of the same gesture, but still differ significantly. Portrait with Parents is part of Sherwin’s short film series, which consists of 34 films. They are all black and white, silent, and roughly three minutes long (or 100 ft of 16mm film). Some of them are clearly autobiographical, as they include the presence of Sherwin’s wife and portraits of his children (Mei, Maya or and also the one called Guy and Kai about himself and his son). Some are about the act of filming and the filmic apparatus, like Hand/Shutter (1976) and Hand-crank-clock (1976), in which Sherwin is seen in front of a mirror, filming and experimenting with his camera. In the former he alternates putting his hand in front of the lens and in front of his eyes, and in latter he is seen hand-cranking the film unevenly to finally obtain superimpositions. I will return to the reflexive and ‘self-portrayal’ aspect of this later.

Portrait with Parents is the first of the series, and shows Sherwin filming his parents: he is in front of a large mirror (so we see him in the shot with his camera), and his parents are in front of him, posing, looking at him seriously, then smiling, and finally a bit unsure of what to do. The title of the film makes it clear that it is more a portrait of the filmmaker at work than a portrait of his parents (it doesn’t say “My Parents” or “Portrait of my Parents”). Therefore, the autobiographical aspect is present and gives an intimate and moving context, but it is not the dominant topic of the dispositif used. Indeed, serving as an introduction to the series, this film presents the filmmaker and the way he works: on his own, with relatives around, yet focusing on the filmmaking process.

Even when the autobiographical aspect of self-representation becomes secondary, the question of identity and appearance, or rather the constantly transforming appearance of oneself, remains fundamental. Indeed, one of the first and obvious purposes of the self-portrait is to record and show the face (more than the whole body in terms of tradition) of the artist “as it is”, and sometimes “as it will be”, and therefore to keep a record of one’s appearance for eternity, i.e beyond death. Subsequently, some self-portraits explore these facial evolutions, either by observing them, or by playing at being old or being somebody else.

In Self-Portrait (1977-78), Emina Kurtagic is exploring this question by playing with her own appearance and using make-up, superimpositions, framing, and lighting. I chose this film because, as far as I knew, it had never been screened publicly before, but also because it questions some traditional aspects of the self-portrait, as seen in painting and photography. I am thinking of the way the filmmaker exposes herself as an image more than as a person, but also how she hides her ‘true’ identity by using duration and framing, close-ups and make-up, lighting and superimpositions. She briefly represents herself as an old woman using make-up, playing with time and therefore death. She then also uses a kind of mask to hide and be somebody else for a while . This gesture of the masquerade in self-portrait has been widely used by painters (James Ensor, Gustave Courbet) and photographers (Claude Cahun, Cindy Sherman), but here the duration of the shots and the editing explores further the tension between present and future, or ideal, ‘self’.

If Kurtagic uses 16mm film and make-up to question and accelerate the effect of time on her face, in Watching Paint Dry (2010) Jo-Ann Kaplan uses digital and extreme close-ups to slow down the process and observe in details her face and its apparent wrinkles. She shows her hands and a piece of paper as she uses watercolours to carefully draw details and lines of her face (around her mouth, nose, and eyes). When editing, she made jump-cuts (both with sound and image) and left only some part of the drawing process visible (and audible), hence creating a time-lapse effect. Toward the end, after having produced several self-portraits, details of her face are briefly visible in a mirror, undoubtedly the one she uses to portray herself. What I particularly like in this piece is the confrontation, or rather the interaction, of two media—watercolour and digital filmmaking—and how they are both part of the same gesture to explore and record the face at one given moment. Towards the end of the experience, both become indivisible. More than using digital filmmaking to record her activity as a (self-portraitist) painter, she uses a time-based medium to explore the process of ageing as if it were ‘instantaneous’, yet each brushstroke is there to show us the lengthy and irreversible actions of the time passing.

Interestingly, the face of the filmmaker is omnipresent in all the films I chose, even if we cannot see it. In Personal Cuts, A Phrenological Self-Portrait and to some extent in Regression, the face is the very material of the performance; in The Man with the Movie Camera and Relative Surfaces the face is the one behind the camera; and in Monolog, it is actually the absence of the face, which questions framing, distance and point of view. Questioning the representation of the face is then a way to observe the shift from first-person films, in which the attention is mainly focused on the subject matter (i.e the identity and life-story), and the self-portrait, in which the dispositif plays an important part.

Reflexivity: experimenting with the medium

I have argued that rather than telling a life-story, the main purpose of the self-portraitist is to explore a specific medium and at times invent his/her own tools in order to push and evaluate the limits of its possibility. Therefore, the filmic self-portrait is also a self-portrait of the ‘filmmaker at work’: showing the tools used (camera, editing suite, or anything else) and the way the filmmakers use and manipulate them.

Whilst watching films from the LUX collection, two related and recurrent dispositifs attracted my attention: (i) the presence of the mirror, and (ii) the use of play-back and live monitoring in video.

(i) Mirror films:

One of the easiest ways for the filmmaker to reflect upon and show the filmmaking process is, of course, to use a mirror. The mirror is widely employed in self-portraiture: for the painter, it is the essential tool to observe oneself, and in photography it is often used as a reflective surface to represent the photographer manipulating the camera. Historically, the self-portrait’s apparition is known to coincide with the development of the glass mirror in Venice during the 15th century, along with the status of the artist and the invention of perspective, both outcomes of the Italian Renaissance. The mirror symbolizes introspection (not to mention the narcissistic aspect), but it also allows the artist to reflect and represent his/her own image at work.

In The Man with the Movie Camera, shot in 16mm, David Crosswaite places himself and his camera in front of a mirror and films his reflection. During this experiment, he changes the size of the shot, from close-up to medium shot, and plays with focus, aperture, depth of field and therefore with light, framing and composition. Without moving his camera from its tripod, but by exploring the reflected image through the mirror, Crosswaite shows his great ability as a filmmaker, along with the beauty and precision of the black and white 16mm film. His presence is clear and important, as he mentions himself in the title (‘the man’), but the subject is undoubtedly the camera and its possibilities.

Other filmmakers have used a mirror in order to reflect on the filmmaking process. For example, in Lens and Mirror Film (part of Light Occupations series) (1973-4), Gill Eatherley places a mirror on a beach and films the reflection of the camera, but as she holds the camera, we briefly see her. In Mirror (1969), Robert Morris holds a mirror to the camera in a winter landscape, adding a frame within the frame, but also toying with the reflection of the camera when adjusting the angle. And in Mirror Films (1975) Steve Farrer uses two simultaneous cameras and a revolving two-sided mirror to film the seaside. The wind causes the mirror to rotate, and depending on its angle, the crew and people on the beach are made visible. In each case, the main purpose of the mirror is not to specifically portray the filmmakers and technicians, but to represent the 16mm camera in action.

Within the LUX collection, The Man with the Movie Camera is tagged under ‘Structure and Series’, along with films exploring the ‘materiality’ of film and the ‘structure’ of filmmaking. Mainly from the 1970s, and essentially filmed in 16mm, these films were a revelation for me, as they forced me to think clearly about the definition and boundaries of self-portraiture. I realised that the Structuralist/Materialist influence in the UK led to a large number of films dealing with the ‘representation’ of the filmmaking process, and in a sense those films harness the way I approach self-portraiture in my work. At the same time, I had to admit that a film exploring the material process of filmmaking is not necessarily a self-portrait, and that the explicit (if not intimate) presence of the filmmaker has to be the first condition. Hopefully, by including Crosswaite’s film in the programme, I managed to show the man behind the movie camera and raise the question of self-portraiture in this particular corpus. Indeed YYAA (Wojcieh Bruszewski, 1973), Footsteps (Marilyn Bailey, 1975), and some of Sherwin’s shorts already mentioned (Hand-Shutter and Hand-crank clock), to name but a few, could also be seen as a portrait of the filmmaker of him/herself at work.

(ii)Video play-back:

As a companion to The Man with the Movie Camera, I chose to screen Relative Surfaces by David Hall, as it gave me the opportunity to further develop the relationship between the exploration of the medium and the gesture of the self-portrait, but this time with video.

Early experiments with video constitute an important and incredibly rich part of the LUX collection, and these experiments often flirt with self-representation (largely because of the nature of the medium itself). The intimacy and immediacy of the technique allow artists to work on their own, and the use of play-back (i.e being able to re-film immediately a live or pre-recorded image from a monitor) enabled them to use and play with their own image whilst experimenting and performing.

Relative Surfaces was shot with an open-reel portapak. Hall plays with a mirrored image of himself behind the camera and another pre-recorded one, and he manages to make those images move all over the space, as if they were completely free from any rules of representation (perspective, composition, depth etc.). The image is black and white, grainy, layered, and the sound is the characteristic muffled and unclear ‘breath’ of the early videos. The ‘portrait’ of the filmmaker is obviously ‘blurred’ and unclear, but it is through his presence that Hall shows the materiality and texture of the image, as well as the specificities of the portapak. Until the very end I hesitated about choosing another piece by Hall, Vidicon Inscriptions (1973), in which he explores the way a video image could be ‘burnt’ into the surface of the vidicon tube if over-lighted. He filmed himself by stages (with a mirror) across the frame and he was able to materialize the trace of his passage as if ‘printed’ onto the screen. In both cases the appearances of the filmmaker are quite surreal and entirely dependent upon the technical qualities of early video.

In A Phrenological Self-Portrait (1976), Marianne Heske used play-back in order to be in interaction with her own image. The play-back and feedback techniques were widely used by video artists, as for the first time they were able to record and show an image at once, or with a slight delay. Here, Heske incorporates this ability in order to be ‘in conversation’ with her past self. The film presents a monitor showing a pre-recorded image of herself listing the categories of the phrenology chart. She then appears ‘live’ and starts to repeat the categories whilst drawing the corresponding zones directly on her past-self and therefore on the monitor. Beyond the critic of the phrenological system, this piece explores the apparent delay between her two images, as she seems to sometimes wait for her ‘pre-recorded-self’ to talk and sometimes she is struggling to keep up, making the whole piece quite funny.

At least two other examples could have been screened with Heske’s piece:

In Two Minds (1978-1981), where Kevin Atherton pushes the principle of the interaction between a pre-recorded and ‘live’ self quite far, as he films himself in conversation with himself with a gap of 3 years, playing with the burlesque of the situation and turning his performance into a humorous critique of himself and of the art world; or Meeting Point (1978) in which Sanja Ivekovic records herself dancing near a monitor showing a live image, and on which she has drawn a black point. Whilst dancing, she regularly places herself in front of the camera in order to be ‘framed’ by the monitor and to align the black point on the screen with the one she has also drawn on her forehead. Thus, her dancing presence makes visible the two simultaneous spaces: the camera and the monitor.

Lastly, by choosing Regression by John Smith I wanted to add that reflexivity could also mean the way the filmmaker reflects on his or her own practice. My point is that a self-portraitist will tend to talk about his or her past work, rather than his/her past life. In Regression Smith visits his past work by making a remake of 7P (1978), and at the same time he explains the differences between film and digital, and how the medium is related to his practice. But it is also because of the performative aspect and the way Smith addresses the audience that this film was included.

Performance: addressing the audience

Performance is present in different ways in all the films I chose, as the presence of the filmmaker ‘at work’ could be considered the essential and performative aspect of self-portraiture. It is apparent in a more obvious and playful way in Regression and in Laure Prouvost’s Monolog, and in a more political way in Sanja Ivekovic’s film, Personal Cuts.

Humour, and even burlesque, could be at the heart of a self-portrait: how a body is always shown out of phase to make it more visible (one only needs to think of the great burlesque actor-directors like Chaplin, Keaton or Harold Lloyd to make the connection). Clumsiness, pastiche, parody, masquerade and even re-enactments are common performative ingredients of self-representation.

In Regression, the performance consists of Smith filming himself every day from Christmas Day onwards whilst singing ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’.

The days and his ‘changing’ self are marked by the differences in the setting, his shirts and his growing beard, and are repeated following the song lyrics, making visible the editing process and the time.

In Monolog, Laure Prouvost plays with the limits and characteristics of the medium, especially the framing, the importance of the setting, and the power of editing over the representation of time. Her face is always out of frame, making her body even more visible and present by using the ‘wrong’ size shot and the ‘wrong’ distance. Again, by playing with her presence and her voice through her monologue, she experiments with basic elements of filmmaking.

With Personal Cuts by Sanja Ivekovic I wanted to address another type and tone of performance, but also the technique of found footage. Ivekovic records herself in front of a camera, her face covered by a stocking, and every time she cuts a piece of the material with a pair of scissors, part of her face is revealed and the ‘cut’ cuts to archive footage drawn from Yugoslav everyday life and history. The link between her ‘imprisoned’ body and the lack of freedom and gender inequality represented through the found footage is obvious, and shows how live performance and filmed self-portrait often connect. At first, the technique of found footage seems rather remote to the self-portrait, but actually if we think of the self-portrait as it has been defined in literature, it could be seen as a collection of quotations that show a kind of portrait en creux of the artist (see especially Poetics of the Literary Self-Portrait by Michel Beaujour). Instead of being the story of one’s life, the self-portrait consists of a collage of thoughts and fragments, forming a sort of ‘profile’, to use a social media related term.

Finally, I would like to insist on a last key aspect of self-portraiture present in all the films I chose, namely the way the filmmaker directly addresses the audience, even briefly. The gaze into the camera is the most common dispositif in a self-portrait, as it represents the place of the mirror. Indeed, if you were to look at a series of painted self-portraits, you would be faced with lots of painters actually looking at you. Filmmakers often use the camera as a mirror, when they do not use a mirror to reflect the camera (and themselves), and therefore they create a unique space for the spectator.

In conclusion, I would say that being able to do this research considerably enlarged the approach I have to self-portrait films. Even if my pre-conceived ideas were not entirely challenged, I was able to widen my corpus and therefore to put the films I already knew into a new context. As I said before, I was particularly interested by the Materialist/Structuralist activity in British experimental practices, but also by the early video pieces of work, which formed an extraordinary corpus within the LUX collection (in comparison with the Light Cone collection, for example). Looking into future, I am currently writing a chapter about “Self-Portraiture in Experimental Cinema and Video” for a collective book (Self-Portrait in the Moving Image, Peter Lang, forthcoming), in which I develop further the research started here.

Dr Muriel Tinel-Temple, October 2017