“Bringing the Unseen out of the Shadows”: in Pursuit of Ciné-Trance and Film-Performance in Ben Russell’s the quarry (2002) and TRYPPS #7 (BADLANDS) (2010)

Authors

  • Kornelia Boczkowska

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.25038/am.v0i15.235

Keywords:

American experimental and avant-garde film, ciné-trance, film-performance, Ben Russell, the quarry, Benjamin, TRYPPS #7 (BADLANDS)

Abstract

This paper aims to present the ways in which Ben Russell’s films, the quarry and TRYPPS #7 (BADLANDS), tend to draw on conventions traditionally associated with ciné-trance (TRYPPS #7), as developed by Jean Rouch, and film-performance (TRYPPS #7 and the quarry). While both pictures invoke the presence of the sublime, the quarry transforms the featured landscape into an image-object and hence fails to represent the lived experience and instead provides the audience with a spectacle or a sensation simultaneously engaging them in the performance on their own terms. Meanwhile, TRYPPS #7’s reliance on ciné-trance becomes more evident in its attempt to expose the hypnotic and deceptive capabilities of moving-image media, which do not only distort the spectator’s rational sense of space and perspective, but also connote the phenomenon of possession itself through featuring the protagonist’s narcotic trance. To achieve the desired effect, Russell creates an atmosphere of sublimity and transcendence by means of structural and avant-garde film’s devices that transcend the realist–narrative paradigm of anthropological filmmaking, including static and kinetic montage, multiple perspectives, hand-held and rotating camera movements, intimate long takes or fixed shots of extended duration.

Article received: December 28, 2017; Article accepted: January 10, 2018; Published online: April 15, 2018; Original scholarly paper

 

How to cite this article: Boczkowska, Kornelia. "'Bringing the Unseen out of the Shadows': in Pursuit of Ciné-Trance and Film-Performance in Ben Russell’s the quarry (2002) and TRYPPS #7 (BADLANDS) (2010)." AM Journal of Art and Media Studies 15 (2018): 113–126. doi: 10.25038/am.v0i15.235

 

Author Biography

Kornelia Boczkowska

http://wa.amu.edu.pl/wa/boczkowska_kornelia

Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań
Poland

Kornelia Boczkowska (1986) is a Senior Lecturer in Department of Studies in Culture at the Faculty of English, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan. She holds a Ph.D. in English (2015) with a specialization in American culture studies, and an M.A. in Russian (2010) and English (2011). She has published on American and Russian space art and space documentary film as well as landscape and travelogue forms in American experimental and avant-garde cinema. She is the author of The Impact of American and Russian Cosmism on the Representation of Space Exploration in 20th century American and Soviet Space Art (2016) and the co-editor of Framing Fear, Horror and Terror through the Visible and Invisible (2016). Her current research is primarily on city symphony and road movie conventions in the postwar American film.

References

Allen, John L. “Horizons of the Sublime: The Invention of the Romantic West.” Journal of Historical Geography 18, 1 (1992): 27–40. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/0305-7488(92)90274-D

Balánz, Béla. Theory of the Film, translated by Edith Bonc. New York: Amo Press, New York Times, 1972.

Bruzzi, Stella. New Documentary: A Critical Introduction. London: Routledge, 2000.

Burke, Edmund. A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990.

Carmer, Carl. “The Hudson River School. The First New York School.” The Hudson River and Its Painters, edited by John K. Howat, 27–51. New York: Viking Press, 1972.

Cashell, Kieran. Aftershock: the Ethics of Contemporary Trangressive Art. London: I. B. Tauris, 2009. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5040/9780755604043

Driscoll, John. All That is Glorious Around Us. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997.

Feld, Steve. “Avant Propos: Jean Rouch.” Studies in Visual Communication 1, 1 (1974): 35–36. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/var.1974.1.1.35

Flanagan, Matthew. “Towards an Aesthetic of Slow in Contemporary Cinema.” 16:9 6, 20 (2008): http://www.16-9.dk/2008-11/side11_inenglish.htm. Accessed January 18, 2018.

Goldberg, Max. “Direct Address. IFFR 2011: Gianfranco Rosi’s El Sicario Room 164 and Ben Russell’s TRYPPS #7 (Badlands).” MUBI. https://mubi.com/notebook/posts/direct-address-iffr-2011-gianfranco-rosis-el-sicario-room-164-and-ben-russells-TRYPPS-7-badlands. Accessed January 18, 2018.

Green, Michael. “UBS 12 x 12: New Artists/New Work: BEN RUSSELL. Sep 4–27, 2010.” Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. https://mcachicago.org/Exhibitions/2010/Ben-Russell. Accessed October 3, 2017.

Gunning, Tom. “An Aesthetic of Astonishment: Early Film and the (In)credulous Spectator.” Art & Text 34 (1989): 31–45.

Hansen, James. “On View: Ben Russell’s TRYPPS #7 (Badlands).” Out 1 Film Journal. http://www.out1filmjournal.com/2011/01/on-view-ben-russells-TRYPPS-7-badlands.html. Accessed January 18, 2018.

Henley, Paul. The Adventure of the Real: Jean Rouch and the Craft of Ethnographic Cinema. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226327167.001.0001

Kramer, Michael J. “trypping the badlands fantastic.” michaeljkramer. http://www.michaeljkramer.net/cr/the-sixties-in-the-mirror-part-i/. Accessed January 2018.

Leiris, Michel. La Possession et ses aspects théâtraux chez les Éthiopiens de Gondar. Paris: Plon, 1958.

MacDonald, Scott. “American Avant-Garde Cinema from 1970 to the Present.” American Film History: Selected Readings, 1960 to the Present, edited by Cynthia Lucia, Roy Grundmann and Art Simon, 241–58. Chichester: Wiley, 2016.

Marie, Michel. “Direct.” In Anthropology-Reality-Cinema: Films of Jean Rouch, edited by Mick Eaton, 35–9. London: British Film Institute, 1979.

Moore, Rachel. Savage Theory: Cinema as Modern Magic. Durham: Duke University Press, 2000.

Nash, Roderick. Wilderness and the American Mind. Haven: Yale University Press, 1982.

“RIVER RITES – Interview with BEN RUSSELL.” Bucharest International Experimental Film Festival. https://bieff.wordpress.com/2013/12/12/river-rites-interview-with-ben-russell/. Accessed January 18, 2018.

Rosenthal, Alan. “Emile de Antonio: An Interview.” Film Quarterly 31, 1 (1978): 4–17. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/1211895

Rosinsky, Andrew. “7 Question Interview with Ben Russell, Artist & Filmmaker.” Dinca. http://dinca.org/interview-ben-russell-chicago-based-filmmaker-artist/6256.htm. Accessed January 18, 2018.

Rouch, Jean. “On the Vicissitudes of the Self: The Possessed Dancer, the Magician, the Sorcerer, the Filmmaker, and the Ethnographer.” Studies in the Anthropology of Visual Communication 5, 1 (1978): 87–101. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/var.1978.5.1.2

Rouch, Jean. “The Camera and Man.” Studies in Visual Communication 1, 1 (1974): 37–44. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/var.1974.1.1.37

Russell, Ben. “Cinema is Not the World.” INCITE: Journal of Experimental Media 2 (2010): http://www.incite-online.net/russell2.html. Accessed January 18, 2018.

Russell, Ben. “the quarry (preview only*).” Ben Russell on Vimeo. https://vimeo.com/6790577. Accessed September 20, 2017.

Russell, Ben. “TRYPPS #6 (MALOBI) (preview only*).” Ben Russell on Vimeo. https://vimeo.com/6975261. Accessed January 22, 2018.

Russell, Catherine. Experimental Ethnography: The Work of Film in the Age of Video. Durham: Duke University Press, 1999. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9780822396680

Schechner, Richard. Between Theater and Anthropology. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985. DOI: https://doi.org/10.9783/9780812200928

Schneider, Arnd and Caterina Pasqualino. “Experimental Film and Anthropology.” In Experimental Film and Anthropology, edited by Arnd Schneider and Caterina Pasqualino, 1–23. London: Bloomsbury, 2014.

Sitney, Paul. Visionary Film: The American Avant-garde, 1943–2000. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.

Taussig, Michael. Mimesis and Alterity: A Particular History of the Senses. London: Routledge, 1993.

“TRYPPS #7 (Badlands).” Fandor. https://www.fandor.com/films/TRYPPS_vii. Accessed October 8, 2017.

“TRYPPS #7 (Badlands),” Wexner Center for the Arts. https://wexarts.org/film-video/TRYPPS-7-badlands. Accessed October, 2017.

Yakir, Dan. “Ciné-trance: The Vision of Jean Rouch.” Film Quarterly 31 (1978): 2–11. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/1211721

Yue, Genevieve. “Magnetic Disorientation: Navigating Ben Russell’s TRYPPS.” Presentation at the Society for Cinema and Media Studies conference, Chicago, IL, March 6–10, 2013.

Zimmerman, Christopher. “TRYPPS 1–7 & River Rites. Eight Films by Ben Russell–IVAC 2012.” cmzimmermann. http://cmzimmermann.blogspot.rs/2012/07/trypps-1-7-river-rites-eight-films-by.html. Accessed January 18, 2018.

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.25038/am.v0i15.235 DOI: https://doi.org/10.25038/am.v0i15.235

Downloads

Published

15.04.2018

How to Cite

Boczkowska, K. (2018). “Bringing the Unseen out of the Shadows”: in Pursuit of Ciné-Trance and Film-Performance in Ben Russell’s the quarry (2002) and TRYPPS #7 (BADLANDS) (2010). AM Journal of Art and Media Studies, (15), 113–126. https://doi.org/10.25038/am.v0i15.235