DISCREPANCY

series of videos, color and b/w, sound, each video 9½ minutes long, 2008–2009

 
DESCRIPTION

    Discrepancy is the generic title for a group of videos, potentially infinite in number, distinguished by parenthetical subtitles.  All works in the Discrepancy series have the same soundtrack (a manifesto of radical cinema “read” by a computer voice) and are of the same duration (9½ minues); only the image tracks vary.
    The words on the Discrepancy soundtrack are an extremely condensed version of the narration from Traité de bave et d’éternité (1951) by Isidore Isou.  In this film, an actor declaims his manifesto of cinéma discrepant, or discrepant cinema, to a skeptical audience.  The action, if it can be called that, occurs exclusively on the soundtrack.  The film’s images are only tangentially related to the sound, at times are almost random, and often are in a state of decay.  The fundamental principle of discrepant cinema is a disregard of the image in order to privilege written narration.  There is no attempt to illustrate or demonstrate the text.  The relation of sound and image can – indeed, should – be as opaque as possible.  Furthermore, the images are often “chiseled,” i. e., scratched, distressed, dirtied, and splattered with ink, beyond recognition.  Isou engages in a perverse iconoclasm in a medium conventionally understood to be primarily visual.  Isou argues that he does violence to the image to renew the film medium.  He reveals a utopian promise in this violence: “…tomorrow others will be able to tell any story at all by employing my method....  Any novelist will be able to make a film without spending a penny.”  Primarily a writer and literary theorist, Isidore Isou exhibited Traité de bave et d’éternité to much controversy and some acclaim, but made no more films.  He was unable (or unwilling) to realize the program endorsed by his manifesto.  The Discrepancy series explores what happens if cinéma discrepant is put into practice.

(Ecstasy)
    Discrepancy (Ecstasy) makes use of a video produced by the U. S. Drug Enforcement Administration on the occasion of its classification of MDMA as a schedule 1 controlled substance.  Ecstasy’s footage consists of one long camera setup, a medium shot of a bureaucrat at a press conference.  He is seen in front of a theatrical curtain, and he speaks into a large number of microphones.  In an instance of wildly inept “dubbing,” the speaker’s lips move in Discrepancy (Ecstasy), but what the audience hears is the computer voice intoning Isou’s text.

(D. P. R. K.)
    The source of Discrepancy (D. P. R. K.) is another “bureaucratic” film, this one a production of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, commonly known as North Korea.  This film, Young Men of Our Country, shows a mass calisthenics demonstration held in the USSR with Joseph Stalin in attendance.  The print of the film, captured by the American army during the Korean War, is in wretched shape.  Scratches, blotches of dust and dirt, and missing frames abound.  The film, without any intervention, is already ripe for use in a discrepant film.  In Discrepancy (D. P. R. K.), a black screen accompanies the words of the manifesto.  Only when there is a break between paragraphs and the voice takes a computer-simulated “breath” do images from Young Men of Our Country appear in brief flashes lasting approximately two seconds.

(Rewind)
    The image track of Discrepancy (Rewind) is a recording of patterns made while rewinding tapes in a Mini-DV deck.  The tapes rewound include scenes from vintage gay porn films.  This accidental digital effect makes a sort of Cubist patchwork quilt out of pornography, though it is virtually impossible for a spectator recognize anything specific or “obscene” without having been informed in advance.  With prolonged exposure, the hypnotic patterns can be painful to the eyes.

(Americans Will Die If They Don’t Give Up the Bombings)
    Discrepancy (Americans Will Die If They Don’t Give Up the Bombings) contains images of the Vietnam War from the point of view of the Vietnamese.  A film captured by the U. S. Army, it contrasts the destruction wrought by American bombers with the Communist war effort, including anti-aircraft guns in action.  Americans Will Die If They Don’t Give Up the Bombings (1965) suffers from advanced nitrate decomposition, which at times creates a psychedelic effect.

(A New All Around Leap Forward Situation Is Emerging)
    With images taken from a propaganda film in lurid I. B. Technicolor, Discrepancy (A New All Around Leap Forward Situation Is Emerging) presents nuclear tests made by China in the 1960s.  Though the source film was made a few years after the economic policies known as the Great Leap Forward were implemented, a reference to them occurs in a phrase from the film’s English language narration that has been adopted as this Discrepancy video’s subtitle.  Two sequences of the original film, edited in ever-quicker alternations, culminate in an apocalyptic, stroboscopic mushroom cloud.

(Countdown)
    With his characteristic combination of aggression and nostalgia, Isidore Isou expresses admiration for the marginalia of commercial cinema: “I want to make a film that hurts your eyes, just like during the screening of a very old print, cut up and shredded, when you see the numbers flashing upon the screen.  I’ve always loved the flashing numbers at the beginning of reels.”  Taking a direct cue from Isou’s narration, Discrepancy (Countdown) makes use of countdown leader footage, which, some years after Isou’s debut, became one of the most recognizable devices of experimental film.