Shelley Green: Radical Juxtaposition: The Films of Yvonne Rainer (1994)

“This volume examines the work of one of the central figures of the avant-garde from her first feature-length film in 1972, Lives of Performers, through Film About a Woman Who… (1974), Kristina Talking Pictures (1976), Journeys from Berlin/1971 (1980), The Man Who Envied Women (1985), to Privilege (1990). The comprehensive study surveys critical reaction and includes Rainer’s critical writings, photos, full biographical information, a complete filmography and bibliography.

The book also investigates dominant structural elements which enliven Rainer’s filmic texts: her complex and disjunctive use of language, speech, repetition, interpolated texts, fragmentation, self-conscious camera movement, autobiography and the formulation of alternative narrative codes. A focal point is the unique relationship established between the filmmaker and the spectator.

Rainer’s narrative strategies have been considered in a radical political context; the author specifically analyzes Rainer’s aggressive reexamination of form as it contributes to the politics of the personal and the political. Resonances created in complex construction of sound, image, editing, characterization, camera movement, and the obliteration and calculated reevaluation of these techniques often directly lead to a new construction of the female subject as well as the female spectator. By creating a cinema that may both construct and include its audience, Rainer’s work has vast implications. The author develops this significant aspect and addresses issues of race, age, and class, especially in later films.” (from the back cover)

Publisher Scarecrow Press, Metuchen, N.J., 1994
The Scarecrow Filmmakers Series, 41
ISBN 0810828634, 9780810828636
174 pages

Commentary: Strictly Film School (2005).

WorldCat

PDF (20 MB, no OCR)

See also Rainer’s films on UbuWeb.

The Anthropocene Review, 2(2): When and How Did the Anthropocene Begin? (2015)

“In March of this year, Nature published a stimulating article by Simon Lewis and Mark Maslin entitled Defining the Anthropocene (Lewis and Maslin, 2015). In it, they proposed criteria for determining the formal onset of the Anthropocene Epoch and from these, derived new starting dates. They proposed two alternatives, ad 1610 and ad 1964. The former date lies some two centuries before the date proposed by Crutzen and Stoermer (2000) in their paper introducing and providing both a definition and a starting point for the Anthropocene. The latter date is over a decade later than an alternative and increasingly discussed onset date arising from Steffen et al.’s paper (2007) identifying a ‘Great Acceleration’ in detectable human impact on the Earth System beginning in the mid 20th century. These new proposals have provoked a great deal of interest and debate.

In this issue of The Anthropocene Review, we have tried to provide a timely account of this debate. The first four papers comprise contrasted ‘comments’ on the Nature article, followed by ‘replies’ from its authors. The issues raised are far from forming a sterile debate on starting dates. They are full of, and indeed go well beyond, the engaging scientific basis upon which the contrasted points of view rest.” (from the Editorial)

Editor: Mike Oldfield
Publisher Sage, August 2015
ISSN 20530196
91 pages

Publisher

PDF (2 MB)

Guy Debord, Asger Jorn: Mémoires (1958–) [French, English]

Mémoires [Memories] is the second of their two collaborative books made by Asger Jorn and Guy Debord whilst they were both members of the Situationist International.

“The pages consist of phrases, photos, drawings and cartoons that Debord cut out of other works, and then pasted up in a randomly suggestive manner. Debord then had Jorn taint these ‘prefabricated elements’ with paint. The colors suggest possible readings of the phrases or simply lend a mood to the images. These plates were then bound in sand-paper to destroy any other books it came into contact with–Debord calls them an anti-book. The book was published at Jorn’s expense and given away as a sumptuous gift to friends.” (adapted from L. Bracken, Guy Debord, 1997, pp 34-35)

The second issue of the book, in slightly different format, appeared in Copenhagen in 1959.

Publisher L’Internationale situationniste, 1958
[64] pages

Commentaries:
Books of Warfare: The Collaboration between Guy Debord & Asger Jorn from 1957-1959 (Christian Nolle, Virose, 2005)
The Making of Fin de Copenhagen & Mémoires (Bart Lans, TU Delft, 2008)
En ukendt og berygtet celebrity? Guy Debord, potlatch og myten om Mémoires (Thomas Hvid Kromann, 2016, Danish)

English translator
Footnotes and sources of detournements (compiled by Ian Thompson, 2015)
Wikipedia

Mémoires (French, 2nd ed., Copenhagen, 1959, 254 MB, added on 2017-10-7 via Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library)
Mémoires (French, 1993 reprint by Jean-Jacques Pauvert aux Belles Lettres of 1959 Copenhagen edition, low res PDF, 2 MB, via AVANT)
Mémoires (English, facsimile trans. Ian Thompson, 2015, PDF, 16 MB)

See also Fin de Copenhague, 1957.