Rodney Graham : Phonokinetoscope PDF
Preview Rodney Graham : Phonokinetoscope
First published in 2013 by Afterall Books Afterall Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, University of the Arts London Granary Building 1 Granary Square London N1C 4AA www.afterall.org © Afterall, Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, University of the Arts London, the artists and the authors. eISBN: 978–1–84638–123–2 eISBN: 978–1–84638–124–9 eISBN: 978–1–84638–125–6 Distribution by The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts and London www.mitpress.mit.edu Art Direction and Typeface Design A2/SW/HK cover: Rodney Graham, Phonokinetoscope, 2001, installation with modified turntable, 33 rpm vinyl LP, speakers, film projector, 16mm colour film, still All works by Rodney Graham © and courtesy the artist An Afterall Book Distributed by The MIT Press O ne Work is a unique series of books published by Afterall, based at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London. Each book presents a single work of art considered in detail by a single author. The focus of the series is on contemporary art and its aim is to provoke debate about significant moments in art’s recent development. Over the course of more than one hundred books, important works will be presented in a meticulous and generous manner by writers who believe passionately in the originality and significance of the works about which they have chosen to write. Each book contains a comprehensive and detailed formal description of the work, followed by a critical mapping of the aesthetic and cultural context in which it was made and has gone on to shape. The changing presentation and reception of the work throughout its existence is also discussed, and each writer stakes a claim on the influence ‘their’ work has on the making and understanding of other works of art. The books insist that a single contemporary work of art (in all of its different manifestations), through a unique and radical aesthetic articulation or invention, can affect our understanding of art in general. More than that, these books suggest that a single work of art can literally transform, however modestly, the way we look at and understand the world. In this sense the One Work series, while by no means exhaustive, will eventually become a veritable library of works of art that have made a difference. Special thanks to Rodney Graham, Shannon Oksanen, Patrik Andersson, Robert Linsley, Grant Arnold, Robin Bone and Martin Woehrl. The editors would also like to thank Rodney Graham for his generosity and support during the production of this book and Scott Livingstone for his patience and assistance in providing mate- rials from the artist’s studio archive. Shepherd Steiner is the co-editor of Cork Caucus: on art, possibil- ity & democracy (Revolver, 2007) and is currently editing The New Criticism: Formalist Literary Theory in America and Abroad (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014). Projective Politics and the Mnemotechnics of Support: High Modernist Painting, Sculpture and Criticism, 1945–1968 is forthcoming. He is Assistant Profes- sor of Contemporary Art History and Theory in the School of Art at the University of Manitoba. For Elle-Anouk Rodney Graham, Phonokinetoscope, 2001, installation view, ‘Rodney Graham: A Little Thought’, Vancouver Art Gallery, 2005 Photograph: Vancouver Art Gallery Contents Preface Tupoi From Topoi to Topologies Primordial Encounters Cinema as Pharmakon ‘Pre–positional By–play’ ‘How does it feel… How does it feel…’, or Getting Around Husserl’s ‘Temporal Object’ Appendix I Appendix II Plates Endnotes Preface The paradigmatic encounter with the Phonokinetoscope (2001, fig.1) is to enter a dimly lit gallery filled with the sound of a needle having come to the end of a record. The dusty, slightly scratchy sound repeats. Its source becomes apparent: a turntable is positioned within the space, some distance away from a 16mm film projector, with hidden speakers situated in all corners. Naturally enough, one walks over to have a look at the source of the sound. The phonograph is placed on a clean, waist-high pedestal, and its needle set in the final groove of a circling twelve-inch vinyl record; on its label one reads Phonokinetoscope … Rodney Graham … 33 1/3 rpm … Phonokinetoscope … Rodney Graham … 33 1/3 rpm … etc. Whether or not one should actually touch the phonograph in order to move the needle to the begin- ning of the record is a major question. On my first encounter, preferring not to act rashly, I hesitated and bided my time by pretending to be interested in reading the label’s recording and copyright information. Eventually, I did reset the needle and, despite a modicum of care, managed to start things off with a scratch. It turns out that the turntable is connected to the projector that automatically plays a five-minute film loop when the needle is placed at any point on the record. The film is of Graham riding his bicycle, a Fischer Original, through various locations in the Berlin Tiergarten. Close-ups of the bike show the front wheel has a clothes peg attached that holds a Queen of Diamonds playing card, which strikes the spokes (fig.2–3 and 8); these shots contrast with long views of Graham pausing before a monument framed by tulips (fig.22), Graham thinking (fig.4 and 9) and Graham dropping a tab of acid (fig.11–13). Subsequently, in a serene pastoral setting, he is seen espying the playing card and clothes peg lying in the grass at his feet (fig.14) as he puts two and two together in a modest moment of creativity (fig.16). All of this while we listen to a soundtrack of the artist-songwriter singing one of his most captivating songs — part lyric ballad and Phonokinetoscope | 1 part psychedelic rock anthem. Its poetic lyrics, melancholic chorus and gentle acoustic guitar build to an electric crescendo only to soften, and then repeat twice more. The song, slightly shorter in duration than the film’s length (4min 55sec vs. 4min 58sec respectively) repeats three times on one side of the LP. The film loops until Graham’s psychedelic rock epic comes to an end — or whenever one chooses to lift the needle off the record. 2 | Rodney Graham Tupoi Let us begin by stopping the flow of images that strike us upon looking at Phonokinetoscope. In spite of the work’s being com- posed of a film loop and musical recording, and hence in posses- sion of both cinematographic and phonographic momentum, the act of stilling the film is warranted. It defers the necessary discussion of Phonokinetoscope’s asynchronous relationship between film and music, and of analysing the experience of the temporal object itself, the foundational moment of memory associated with tupoi.1 Further, it militates against construing the work as simply a music video — in fact, asynchrony trans- forms it into multiple music videos — while also affording us a little elbow room before tackling the disjointed flow of montage sequences that, on first viewing, seem to go nowhere other than circling back on themselves. Most importantly, it instances a process of remembering that we viewers perform quite naturally in the face of the work, as a number of these images constitute a recurrent set of topoi or tropes that have populated Graham’s work since the late 1970s. The shots that stand out as particularly memorable include the close-up of the Fischer Original’s front wheel with playing card, to which the film gives frequent recourse; the extended view of Graham pausing before the monument; and a long view of a bridge where Graham ultimately performs the trick of riding the bicycle backwards (fig.23). There are a series of equally arresting briefer shots with Graham sitting amidst luxuriant growth near a small lake, pouring himself a drink from a thermos (fig.5), dropping the tab of acid and studying the clothes peg and playing card; the peg and card appear again, attached to the front wheel of Graham’s bicycle as a lead-in to riding backwards, and to the beginning of the loop. Last but not least, there is the motif of Graham’s face (fig.15), a touchstone for his practice since 1992 and increasingly thereafter. Attending to such images through a Phonokinetoscope | 3
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