S:TREAM:S:S:ECTION:S:ECTION:S:S:ECTIONED

1968
Country: USA
Duration: 42 mins
Colour,
Sound: sound
Available Format/s: 16mm

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A conceptual lap dissolve from ‘water currents’ to ‘film strip current’. Dedicated to my son, Christopher. – P.S.
‘Yes. S:S:S:S:S:S is beautiful. The successive scratchings of the stream-image film is very powerful vandalism. The film is a very complete organism with all the possible levels really recognised.’ – Michael Snow.
‘I really liked the film – the idea is very good and the film has a very strong physical presence. The wholeness of the film really impressed me – a lot of film and video I have seen seems to be just a series of fragments strung together without any organic unity…it is one of the very few things I have experiences on the art scene last season that had the power to challenge and impress.’ – Klaus Kertess, Bykert Gallery.
‘A scratch is generally considered a negative factor which distracts from and eliminates the illusion by cutting away at the emulsion base of the film itself. But in S:S:S:S:S:S, Sharits makes a scratch a positive factor in its additive and subtractive relationship to the recorded film illusion. And, at the same time, he uses the scratch to emphasise the linearity of the film material and its passage through the projector… Here as in Sharits’ flicker works, there is a conscious concern with space… As Ray Gun Virus creates the space and illusions out of the film materials, in a very different way, S:S:S:S:S:S modulates and transmutes its space through the illusions carved out of the strip of film itself.’ – Regina Cornwall, Art Forum.
‘Christ, what an exquisite thing! I am honoured, sir, to have your acquaintance.’ – Hollis Frampton.

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