Non siting the site

 

Non-Siting the Site: A Summer home

©By Abdel Hernandez San Juan

Havana

Written and composed in English 

by Abdel Hernandez San Juan

  Brian Deutzman a young Anglo-American filmmaker from New York has recently finished his short movie A Summer Home. The film itself is one of the best films I has seen in many years. 

  It suggests certain relations between how the eye worked in the aesthetic of surrealism earlier films and Posmodern figures explored, however, in a form that seems to move beyond such figures, even when probably still some very subtle almost evanescent echoes or clues of remedos, pastiches and parodies may be perceived yet behind, it is not only less than usually in Posmodern works but almost diluted inside a more spiritual and metaphysical artistic whole that suggest to be a previous form to a concept he is actually exploring in his current new film, that one of metafiction.

  In A Summer Home the concept of metafiction is not as focused yet, but the way Brian explored the relation between site and non-site suggest an ambivalent effacing play between fiction and nonfiction grow up from a question about what is it a site and what is it a non-site from the moment a real place basis the film but non-sites it through all the film toward imagination and evocations of the film around. The film itself was made possible thank to a grant Brian winner discussed to be performed and based around an specific site, a real hotel somewhere in Florida Brian choiced to do it. 

  The preminence of the concept and spatial dimension of a site in the basis of a work of art research, major to define the current so-called site specific art installation in plastic and visual art, may be here probably related with a certain motivation to efface boundaries, both aesthetics and visuals, but also institutionals, between film and plastic art through a sense of the visual arts in general, usually institutionally divided. However, beyond such an effacing wishes, the way Brian has explored this relation between site and non-site around his choiced site-hotel contribute a point of view on the matter only possible from a filmmaker perspective. 

  A few of the things I discussed with Brian as soon as seen his film may be developed here. One of these things regarded the experience of the viewer with a film as A Summer Home in terms of physical memory, on how to remember and reconstruct the scenes of a film as such when frame by frame there is not a linear drama mimesis experience as in narrative fictional films in a level the body may look for or call out inside experience to reconstruct it part by part or by analogies?. My accent on this physical concept of memory directly regarded how a viewer, who usually have to memorize from a present one frame a previous already out of presence one, may memorize a previous unpresent from a present frame in a film as such. 

  In contrast I pointed how in plastic arts the viewer can tour the whole canvas with all the elements simultaneously presence and presents to the eye in a same surface or space presence all the time. Another of these things I discussed in a first critique conversation start from the point his films basis in anticipation a site specific located place as the reason and basis to it, even to get the grant choosing here a hotel, and on how from the moment a choiced site prestaablish the work to be done he was obviously in front of questions and under the challenges of deciding about how to represent such a site as a matter, the site itself and his relation as filmmaker to it. 

  Given that obviously Brian decided to commit himself with moving outside any purposiveness for representing it, but instead, to explore other possibilities, the question on such alternatives possibilities comes to the front. I pointed on how the challenge to make references to a site specific reality is being an equal one to art as to anthropology from the moment beyond just meeting or knowing it, something about it should be or need to be also communicated, reference, denoted, described, storytelling, narrated, registered through reproduction medias as photography or film, documented, reported or simply represented in any of the symbolic forms a languages, a writing or any other medias, supposes to inscribe the experience it means as a site. 

  On a first side, to contrast this challenge, in plastic arts the idea of site specific installation presents in the following form: while certainly any art exhibit space sited may be seen as a site specific from the moment it supposes to be placed any were, only when the work of art in question transform such a site in the motive, object, basis and reason of the piece contents issuing it as a site, we can properly speaks about generically a site specific installation. 

 In a few words a conventional exhibit of framed canvases, volume sculptures or even spatially installed objects maybe called site specific but in a form metaphorical because only when the site become the object of the exhibit contents it is generically a site specific installation. Now, certainly to make it happen and speaks the artist has to deal with how to reference the site in any of the forms previously explained, on how to references site located issues and experiences, from a gallery room, or some institutionally recognized exhibit space, to any outside or inside architectural, urban, community or natural readymade space usually not recognized to exhibit but an artist may choice and design to it.

  In fact, since lands art this issue itself become complex because it evolved nor only an exhibit or a work related from reasons, motives and contents with an specific located site space, but also the moving and transportation of it between several well differentiated and usually far sites, so ending to become referenced, performed, presented, transported and documented, a multisited one experience. 

 From moving something happening in nature to the art museum through documentary material to moving things evolved to be community sited to an audience context and to another audience context of the exhibits displays documentary materials to be a multisited issue complex phenomena itself.

 To end this critique after seen his film I suggested to him to think about the concept of memory now considered in terms of the body memories, on how the body itself which experienced it as a located placed maybe a first vehicle to collect things from a site specific instead of reflecting it so considered by the body as experience. However, it seems to be obvious how Brian choiced all his ways the opposite to represent and decided instead to evoque something that’s starts to move effacing the boundaries between site and non-site. 

  Speaking on the issue I pointed Brian argued to be interested about memory front the inside of the art work, meaning his point of view from his creative process, on how memory works inside his own experience as filmmaker to conceive and do his work.

  He also mentions how dreams he experienced during the months he stablished living in the hotel, helps him to solution relations between the textual and the visual level arguing that sometimes a dream may suggest a solution to relate aspects of reason and intuition when a directional method can’t provide a response and explained to be nor only interested but truly motivated and attentive as a dimension of his explorations on the relation between film and psychoanalysis. 

  The conversation then developed around this two aspects of memory, the physical one, I pointed, regarding the viewer, and the creative one he pointed on his attention to the building process. The film as a whole is visually and poetically beautiful from the first scene to the last one with as general prevalent effect the impression of the eye in surrealism films environments and images. 

  It communicates a sense of harmony, with a very good photography frames by frame from the beginning to the end. A significant level of experimentalism with atmospheric and environmental music is also obvious and work along the movie structurally, and the cellular phones electronically effects the sound of a voice of the main character young woman Karin and her mom usually ear in off. The conversation between both stay the whole movie as the only main narrative and dramaturgic textual level of the film. 

  It starts from the very first image of the film as a conversation between both taking place at the same time when the film run but in off so with sometimes an effect of tape recording late hear and sometimes an effect of real time happening. 

  The relation between this text level and the visual frames one is not a didactic, anecdotic or directional one, the image some time run free while the text free too out of frame, but the general conversation provide all the film need to stablish common sense readings and it maintain certain order of chronology with the frames. 

  In a synthesis whole the young girl is being curious to visit a hotel she knows by family references, but she has never visited. She then realizes to finally visit that hotel. 

  The film begins with a first image in front of the hotel and with a first question of the young girl to her mom through the cellular phone.

  

  Are they bombing here too?, she ask?

  No, bombing is bad to tourism, in America they dismantle everything brick by brick and no one notice.

  

Fig 1- Image of the external door façade, Brian Deutzman, A Summer Home

Fig 2- Image of the bricks lobby, Brian Deutzman, A Summer Home

  The conversation stay running all the film, sometimes it reference very objective things, sometimes its frees in a form letting open that evoques without knowing if it happens as an effect of the film director sound editions, or as a dimension of the communication this two persons have in between. 

  The common sense conversation of the film takes places and decurse around the site which supposes to be builded by her grandfather something reinforced in the movie with two sequences images one about a shopping show case exhibiting the architectural draws of the hotel in the same hotel, external drawings and photos of it.

Fig 4- Shopping show case exhibiting the architectural draws of the hotel in the same hotel, Brian Deutzman, A Summer Home

  But also with a series of photography’s exhibited at one of the hotel halls about a day a country club of the hotel was created. The site and non-site relation with the hotel Brian choiced as a place in Florida stay through all the film as a dimension to be visually explored. 

  In several of the scenes, additionally to a few inside living rooms scene of the girl alone, the viewer may have a certain objective image of the hotel according to which the hotel looks to be under rebuilding, a presentation of the site become experimental itself through the movie including various images. 

 A first nearly external façade one already discussed shows a door from outside with an inside lovy full of bricks suggesting to be a corrosive and or under construction site something confirmed late in the movie when such a place lobby repit now with an small cart man moving construction materials. 

 A second one general external image seen from the streets shows a whole building under construction in an street area undersigned to side walkers and cars. Finally, there is also the hotel halls image, the living rooms scenes and a landscape view seen through a hotel internal window that shows the girl main character far away in the sea coast so suggesting to be a hotel near to a beach.

Fig 5- Internal window view shows the girl far away in the sea coast, Brian Deutzman, A Summer Home

  The subjective position of the camera through the film is a major point here to be discussed, it resolves around as a free independent eye showing everything the hotel sites, halls, rooms, places, windows, landscapes and the girl main character scenes, but it is far to be just or simply a panoramic objective point of view showing a reality. 

 From the visual point of view the camera eye seems to move also looking for something else or to be a part in the main character curiosity between the know and the unknow relates her situation visiting something she knows from the family and her grandfather builded.

  An image scene I consider one of the best if not the best one scene of the movie references the hotel surround construction situation when the woman character stay strait long time creating a symbolic body metaphor. In such an scene she is in front of a background natural landscapes with all her face extremely turned up looking to the sky for long time and in the background between the sky and her, the viewer may see an imponent image of several cranes, while her mom voice in off say something like a poetry:

Sky Machinery of the Death

The spirit of the damnes

They congregate in places like this

Let them to be in peace

 Ending with a dissolve from the sky to abstraction this scene finish with a flashing image of a travel postcard and an screen television effect, the symbolic scene itself departure from a previous disolvence near images of Karin face and her thoughts monologues phrases or also a poetry:

Distant points of Light......

Who’s Awake this night?......

Buzzing far lights …………

Is shelling to begin? or are just the stars?........OR …….

Fig 6- External image of the girl and the imponent image of several cranes, Brian Deutzman, A Summer Home

A few scenes before Karin mom cell voice said: 

 

Karin, Karin

Did you hear me?

Is everything Ok?

I need to give you instructions, 

We have to pick up the pieces

 

  With such a mom phrase the film transition from Karin objective situation to Karin extremely subjective situation (accent with a near image of her face in a film dissolvenses with sounds), moving from her room to such a long static first subjective state and body position. 

 The three main internal rooms hotel images shows Karin in three different forms. 

 The first one shows the moment when she first time entrance to her hotel living room after walking from the hall with her handsbacks and open the door to be surprised when she see the television on with an screen visual and a sound effect but with nothing to be washed. 

Karin Mom: We have a family story here, cellular voice entrance

Fig 7- Image of Karin entrance the room with the Television on, Brian Deutzman, A Summer Home

Karin: Shady Place, Shady people, Karin expresses.

Karin Mom: We can make it work, if your grandfather were alive

Karin: But is not alive, said Karin, 

 Such a television screen effect, the same one superposed with a postcard flashing after sky dissolves to abstracts when ending Karin symbolic body position looking to the sky, also flashes together with natural sky shellings when the viewer may see Karin through the hotel window far away in the coast and she said:

Karin: Not a soul in this place

Karin Mom: You are not alone, (Shelling and screen tv flashings effects on the sky)  

Dear granddaughter, 

Karin grandfather voice entrance in off

Starting to exit the last part of the film toward the end with the grandfather off voice

Entrance Panoramic Images of the Wind forces removing everything in the living room like curtains but the room now empty with still the same screen television effects. 

Grandfather voice: 

You has come to late, 

This place now just a memory

Just a picture laid flat without perspective

I tried to build something here but found the land was follow and cursed

I too had come too late, 

you looked at me and saw yourself reflected 

Notes

  -Additionally I discussed on the eye in surrealism and a certain relation between surrealism and etnography I called out in reference to Derrida and Leiris as an ethnographer who was a part of the art surrealism movement of the earlier XX Century. 

  - A Film by Brian Deutzman, conceived, composed and directed by Brian Deutzman, made possible thanks to the generous support of the john s and James lknight foundation, main actress Karin: the voice Karen Segal, Karins mother: Noga Segal, The corpse: Stefan Catinella, Sound design and original score by Izabella Dousoglou, executive producers Lucas Leiva and Jillian Mayer, special thanks to Danielle and Borscht Corporation.  

  - In the other inside room scene she is on the bed or is rough back from a dream

Bibliography

  

Abdel Hernandez San Juan, The Posmodern Work, Paper, Transart Foundation of Houston Collection, Translated by Gabriel, Houston, Texas, USA, 1995

Abdel Hernandez San Juan, Beyond the Intertextual, Paper conference lectured by Abdel Hernandez San Juan at the Fondren Library Lecture Auditorium as a guest of the faculty of classical and Hispanic studies, curator at the alejandro otero museum of visual art, introduced to the audience by George Marcus from the faculty of anthropology, translated by Graciela Daichman, coordinated by Hector Urrutibeity, Dean of the Faculty of classic and Hispanic studies and Surpic Angelini, president of transart foundation, Houston, Texas, USA, 1996