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Preface
This is the first serious critical study to contextualize the films of Burroughs, Balch, and Gysin within the analytical framework of the "structural film" as defined by P. A. Sitney and the other structural film movements occurring seemingly simultaneously around Europe and America. Barry Miles, in his study of the period The Beat Hotel, notes the presence of an important and influential figure from the Fluxus group within the "Domain Poetique" events, Emmett Williams. Miles also notes that George Maciunas attended a performance in Paris and categorized Gysin's work as "expanded cinema." The fact that these disparate groups would have met and exchanged ideas is an important and often undervalued detail.
The presence of these notable figures clearly lays the foundations for such a critical study as this.
While there are other excellent studies of these films, most notably Genesis P-Orridge's fascinating account of how he saved the films from destruction in a rubbish skip (in Jack Sergeant's book Beat Cinema), they remain descriptive of the content. It is to the memory of William Burroughs, Brion Gysin, and Anthony Balch that I humbly dedicate this study.
Introduction
In this article I will examine the collaborative film work of William Burroughs and Anthony Balch, which brings to cinema an extension of Burroughs' literary cut-up technique. This will be explored in terms of the various critical and experimental approaches regarding "structural" theory, which reached an Arcadia throughout the 1950s and 60s in experimental cinema, literature, music, and art.
I will inaugurate this study with a broad introduction to avant-garde film practice. Secondly, I will be elaborating on trends and critiques made in 1960s America, Europe, and England regarding the structural approach to avant-garde cinema and art. The following section will describe the techniques of Burroughs' cut-up model, and introduce the films made with Anthony Balch, providing a section of illustrative analysis from the film The Cut Ups. In the final section I intend to use comparative critical frameworks offered by the theorists of the late 1960s to demonstrate the cut-up's heritage of structural shot relations and Dadaist confrontation.
The Avant-Garde Film Practice
Any discussion of the debates concerning "avant-garde" cinema must also revolve around those of a broad context of "mainstream film." These differences are many, and involve factors of industrial base, private-sector capitalism, and ideas of mainstream cinema as an "entertainment" and "narrative" medium. By a general gesture, the mainstream cinema is mainly dominant due to its reproduction of dominant ideologies within a social and economic framework. Cinema also works on the level of formal apparatus, and the hegemony of industrial and economic superiority in the mainstream is matched by a domination of formal and aesthetic "pleasures" in which the spectator is posited.
 Bunuel and Dali's Un Chien Andalou  |
The cinema of the avant-garde represents a number of different approaches to the mainstream and is informed by a contrasting set of ideological models. In terms of production, the avant-garde has a history of private sponsorship and state subsidy, as its relationship with the audience is usually one of artisanal self-expression rather than commodity-based economic exploitation. These forms of self-expression run from individualism (as championed by Maya Deren and Stan Brakhage) to collectivism (Surrealism to the various filmmakers' co-ops the world over) .
Yet both avant-garde and mainstream cinematic expression represent a whole array of different aesthetic and ideological imperatives. A useful analogy would be that "while mainstream cinema by and large perpetuates the realist imperatives of the nineteenth-century literary, dramatic, and visual traditions to which it is heir, the cinema of the avant-garde draws its inspiration from developments and tendencies within its newer context — modernism in the arts."3
Many of the experimental imperatives of avant-garde cinema are initiated or continued in other artforms, such as painting, photography, music, and literature. These often slowly gain "acceptance" and bleed into the various mainstreams of expression in each of these categories. The avant-garde is also often reactionary to the notion of a mainstream and very often represents an attack on the ideologies that this ostensibly middle-class mode of expression represents.
The first "avant-garde" in cinema, located in Paris in the 1910s, is known as the "Impressionist movement." This was concerned with cinema as an artisanal operative, instigated by Louis Delluc and Marcel L'Herbier via the publication Le Film. The films of this period were concerned with individual "artistic" imperatives over the emerging capitalist entertainment of cinema.
 Man Ray's Retour a la Raison |
Rather than completely destroying narrative, the avant-garde has had a variety of different approaches, from Godard's gestures of "counter cinema"4 through the feminist perspectives of Constance Penley5 to the various forms of Dada hostility. It is into this reconsideration of narrative that the recent "structural-materialist" films of the 50s and 60s fit. They operate in an arena of the "independent" and harbor a concern with the connection of an avant-garde cinema with similar gestures in other areas of the arts. In the case of William Burroughs, the cut-up technique is an extension of a literary concept, and in the case of the New York-based Fluxus group, cinema represents extensions of "concept art." Throughout this history of alternative cinema there is evident this spirit of extension and collaboration, from Surrealism and Dada, which also began as literary endeavors, through to the Fluxus group and the French Situationists who work throughout various mediums in the spirit of "expanded arts."
I will concentrate on the areas of structural materialist cinema and its connections with other experiments in the expanded arts. I maintain this approach as the cut-up techniques championed by Burroughs are presaged and peered by various similar experiments in this arena.
Introduction to the Structural Film
This section is intended to delineate a general background to the underground film developments of the 1960s that maintain a concern with structure and consequently the materiality of the medium.
P. A Sitney, an American film critic for Film Culture, first identified the area of avant-garde filmmaking known as "structural film" in 19696. His basic definitions are a useful introduction to these concepts . Before this in America there only existed the catchall category of "underground film," which defined all independent cinema outside of the mainstream.
Mythopoetics: Maya Deren's
Meshes of the Afternoon
Prior to the emergence of the structural trend, the underground was dominated by a strain of filmmaking known loosely as "mythopoetic film," exemplified mainly by Kenneth Anger, Maya Deren, and Stan Brakhage. Sitney argued that the emergent structural trend, whereby the whole shape of the film is simplified and predetermined, was dependent on a governing mathematical/thematical structure that dictated the form and content of the film.
Sitney went on to actually attempt to define salient features of the structural film (a point of contention with many later English film critics)/ These were "a fixed camera position, the flicker effect, loop printing. and re-photography of the screen."7 Many of these categories are perfunctory, as processes such as "re-photography of the screen" appear in many nonstructural films as a purely aesthetic device.
Using a heuristic (rule-of-thumb) definition, the structural film has no narrative agents or poetic/symbolist content (if these exist, they are subservient to the domination of structure), and formal devices such as the cut or zoom are used as theme for the film.
"These works are basically exploring the whole reproduction process that underpins the medium, including the film material, and the optical, chemical, and perceptual processes."8
The medium is thus conceptualized as an exploration of a visual system analyzing the reproduction process itself. Mainstream film analysis overtly foregrounds the rendering of "reality," whereas "structural" film treats this approach as one of a plethora of possibilities. This allows for a broader definition, which Birgit Hein9 breaks down into three rough areas:
The film strip (This incorporates photographic processes and direct work on the film strip)Projection using intervening light (perceived motion and animation)
The perceived image (the perceptual process based on the separate frames of a film)
Many early antecedents to these definitions are evident, such as work directly onto the film strip. This can be seen in Man Ray's film Retour a la raison (1923), an extension of one of his "Rayogram" techniques in photography. (The film caused an uproar at a riotous Dada event — the coeur a barbe evening — by confronting the bourgeois audience with an abstract sequence rather than the expected feature film.)
 Vertov's Man with a Movie Camera |
The development of a theory of structural film cannot be dealt with in terms purely related to cinematic developments; rather it is necessary to examine structural film in terms of contemporary problems (and their contexts) within other arts, in the same way that Man Ray's film approaches can be paralleled with his techniques in photography.
American Structural Film
The structural film of America in the late 1960s was born out of, as previously mentioned, the mythopoetic underground cinema of the 40s and 50s (Deren, Anger, Markopoulos, et al.). These filmmakers were in turn inspired by the Surrealist/Dadaist cinema of Europe in the 1920s such as Bunuel and Dali's Un Chien Andalou and Cocteau's Le Sang d'un poet. These were screened for the first time in America during this period by Cinema 16, a film screening group dedicated to presenting "alternative" cinema. A major connecting point between these two "movements" was the radical and formal rejection of the established film industry, and along with this, the idea that filmmaking could be an autonomous artistic activity.
Stan Brakhage emerged
from this psychological/surrealist tradition in 50s America, and created
abstract "flicker" films such as Mothlight (1963) in which
dead leaves and various found material were glued to the film strip.
The film strip became as much the work as the projected film; however
it was a gesture to represent what a moth may perceive, rather than
a purely materialist gesture. This represents a shift important to the
American structural/materialist film. Also, in much of his earlier work,
Brakhage scratched onto the film surface, although again this was a
symbolic gesture in that the abstractions in his work were incorporated
to represent the phenomenon of closed-eye vision. Bruce Conner is also
an important forerunner to the emergence of the American "structural
film." He utilized "found footage" from feature films, newsreels, and
advertisements and edited them together under a unified film score soundtrack.
In A Movie (1958), these features are clearly seen, constructing
the film from footage which he did not shoot. Again, however, there
remains the problem of the symbolic gesture in Conner's film as it attempts
to show an apocalyptic end to the world.
Robert Breer perhaps represents a closer affiliation to "structural film," his work from 1954 onwards consisting of frame-by-frame collage and other techniques. His films do not belong to the poetic narratives of Conner and Brakhage and formally exclude literary content. His move into film was facilitated by his background as an abstract painter, and his interest as a filmmaker lay in investigating the threshold between cinematic and normal perception. He also makes a conceptual leap of regarding his films as "objects" and shows them often as loop installations.
Highly influential and important to the development of structural film were the works of the Fluxus group — headed by John Cage as a teacher of conceptual art practices, himself coming from an avant-garde music/composition background from Europe. George Maciunas has emphasized the importance of their work, expounding a theory against representationalism in art, semiotics, illusionism, and abstraction. In Maciunas' essay "Neo Dada in the USA" (1962), he asserts that Fluxus embraced concretism and art-nihilism, which champion the unity of form and content: "A plastic artist who is a concretist sees a rotten tomato for what it is and represents it as such, without transformation, i.e., it is a rotten tomato and not a pictorial or symbolic representation which is confused and illusionist." Films by the group include Nam June Paik's Zen for Film, in which clear film is intended to gather dust and scratches; also, George Maciunas' Ten Feet of Film with No Camera, which is rather self-explanatory. These precursors reflect structural film's concentration upon the elements of light projection and film material. Although the film activity was marginal to Fluxus' output, the films are still highly important in their conceptual position of using the film itself as theme.
Warhol's Sleep
Warhol's static frame films are identified by Sitney as an influence on the structural aesthetic (in that they appear minimal, and deconstruct narrative) and ideology. His films echo some of Fluxus' concerns in reducing film to single shots and emphasizing a purely mechanical reproduction process replacing the artist, as evidenced in Sleep (1964) and Empire (1967).
There is no dramatic action or narrative development, emphasizing again a conceptual break with the mythopoetic American underground. Various other filmmakers now became preoccupied with the materiality of film, exposed to the filmmakers previously mentioned through screenings in New York (via Cinema 16 and also Jonas Mekas' screenings via the New York Film-Makers Co-op) and theoretical debates raised in such journals as Film Culture George Landow's Film in which there appear sprocket holes, edge lettering and dirt particles etc. (1965) makes use of found film material, and a loop structure is used a la Breer.
Tony Conrad's film The Flicker (1966) investigates perception through use of stroboscopic effects (alternating black and white frames) at various frequencies , portraying a sensual — materialist film experience. This work is also echoed in the films of Paul Sharits. In Piece Mandala (1966), colors are introduced into the stroboscopic high-frequency image, giving the impression of movement to the retina. These flicker experiments continue the experimental move of film into the realm of sensual human experience, reflected in the 60s through use of drugs and technological developments such as Dolby and stereo equipment that heightened the sensual experience of arts such as music (although Dolby sound systems were not extended into the cinema until the early 70s).
The new aesthetic of image as reality became more widespread, and by 1965 a "New Cinema Festival" held in New York and organized by the Filmmakers' Cinematheque arranged "screenings" of dance and film material projections.
Austrian Developments
At this time, European developments in experimental "formal film" had been progressing along similar lines although independently of America. These developments were occurring foremost in Vienna, pioneered by Peter Kubelka's Adebar (1957), in which there is mathematically strict rhythmic variation of a single frame. Kurt Kren was also working on what were (retrospectively) to be recognized as structural films in Vienna at this time. Both Kren and Kubelka were influenced heavily by "structural" musical approaches in Vienna such as serialist Anton Webern and Schoenberg. Terms such as "expanded cinema," "object film," and "action film" are applied to these Austrian films.
 Kubelka's Adebar |
Otto Muehl's materialaktion was the basis for Kren's film Mama und Papa (1969), the re-edited footage employing some techniques identified by Sitney in terms of "structural film." These are loop printing and flicker effects achieved through frenetic re-editing of the material. An earlier Kren film, Anaaktionbrus (1964), employs similar techniques, black-and-white frames inserted into the filmed footage of Gunter Brus' self-mutilation and attaining the flicker/disorientation effect.
"Kren worked in the Osternechische National Bank until he was sacked for running a "shit in" at the University; he is a short, loveable, old-fashioned type of guy who loves his beer and his films. He wrote about one of his films, "Next week I'll finish a new film. It is very dirty being about eat-drink-piss-shitting. Many friends will hate me after having seen that film. Sorry, it had to be done."10
This demonstrates Kren and other Viennese aktionists as posited in the tradition of Dadaist confrontation with a bourgeois element. This was very much in the same way that Fluxus, and even before them, Deren and Anger found inspiration and kindred ideas in the works of Dada and Surrealism. I would argue that this desire to challenge is inherent in the structural film with its endurance-test-like, explicitly anti-coherent films that in many cases embody visual and auditory overload on the audience.
The European materialaktion is a basis for many Austrian films that form part of the Film Co-op; however, Peter Kubelka is not in this group, his similarities existing only in terms of his approach to editing. The Austrian Co-op's destruction themes arguably are a response to the conservativism of Austrian society.
In the 1960s, destruction (Viennese aktionists towards themselves and the audience, at the actions, and through frenetic editing practices) and deconstruction themes are applicable to the films in terms of narrative polemics and foregrounding the films' techniques and the narratives' visceral content.
English Structural Film
Another major influence on the evolution of the structural cinema came from the London Filmmaker's Co-op in England. This was set up in October 1966, and began primarily from an interest in film rather than a need to expose indigenous filmmaker's work. This Co-operative movement was part of the many liberating facets of "swinging London" in the mid-60s. Such venues as the UFO club in Tottenham Court Road were host to 24-hour events of live music, film, and light shows. The Co-operative really began out of the Better Books store, owned by concrete poet Bob Cobbing (who would undoubtedly have been familiar with Gysin's work within sound poetry). This was the venue for poetry readings and dedicated underground film screenings. The Co-op's film library was mainly composed of films from the new American Cinema (already mentioned in the previous section), but among the British filmmakers who supported the Co-op were Steve Dwoskin, Jeff Keen, Simon Hartog, Peter Gidal, Malcolm Le Grice, and Fred Drummond. The majority of people involved in the project were not from a primarily film background, rather from a literary tradition of poetry, writing, and criticism.
 Peter Gidal's Flare Out |
The critics Gidal, Le Grice, et al. developed their theories and subsequently (as a result of their theories) their films. Gidal and Le Grice were particularly concerned with the structural film and dedicated much of the Co-op's criticism, screening, and filmmaking activities in this direction. Many of these criticisms developed in a political sense: "Activities were aimed against the capitalist, bourgeois' film industry itself, which was alleged to put forward a false reality in order to uphold its own consumer ideologies, and to work as a closed capitalist system for making money."11
Ascetic structuralism was a major line of enquiry in the London-based structural movement. Films by Gidal such as Condition of Illusion (1975) and Room Film (1973) serve as suitable examples. These works vacate the content of the film and seek to eliminate the "illusionistic" nature of the image.
Another element of the English structural approach lay in "light play films," which examined the nature of the projector, projection beam, and projection surface. This is essentially a three-dimensional cinema acknowledging sculpture and performance art. An example of this would be Tony Hill's Source Point (1974), in which he holds a high-intensity light bulb between himself and the screen and places objects over and around the light source, projecting on the screen, walls, and ceiling. A third area of specialization are the "landscape films," in which the shape and content are determined by factors occurring in the landscape. In Chris Welby's Park Film, for example, the shutter is only released when a person walking through the park passes in front of the lens, structuring the editing around "natural" occurrences in that particular landscape. These areas of film asceticism are clearly anticipated in much of the work described by the Fluxus group around ten years previously. However, the critical faculties of the London Co-op are more highly focused in an ontological sense, criticizing and defining their own pure "structural" aesthetic as Sitney had previously done.
Notes
1. Burch, Noel. "How We Got into Pictures: Notes Accompanying Correction Please," Afterimage #8/9, Winter 1980/81.
2. Bordwell, David. Classical Hollywood Cinema: Narrational Principles and Procedures. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985.
3. Drummond, Philip. "Notions of Avant-Garde Cinema" in Drummond, Philip, ed. Film as Film: Formal Experiment in Film 1910-1975. Arts Council of Great Britain.
4. Wollen, Peter. "Counter cinema: vent d'est," Afterimage #4, 1972.
5. Penley, Constance. "The Avant-garde and Its Imaginary." An expanded version of a paper presented during the avant-garde event at the Edinburgh Film Festival, August 1970, from Camera Obscura.
6. Sitney, P.A. "Structural Film," Film Culture, #47, Summer 1969.
7. Ibid.
8. Hein, Birgit, "The Structural Film," from Drummond, Film as Film.
9. Ibid.
10. Dwoskin, Stephen. "Film Is: The International Free Cinema," London: Overlook Press, 1975.
11. Dwoskin, Stephen. "Film Is: Britain." Extract from Dwoskin, Stephen "Film Is..'.Ibid.
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