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8A - Monday, October 25, 2010
The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com
E aXHII PROFILEa
Cage's stormy 'Weather'
FILM COLUMN
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NCE. MORE. ago, and found shared insights in
these musicians. A fusion of their
rings back'60s work has become the ONCE. MORE.
Festival., which began its run on
avant-garde Sept.20 and runs through Nov. S.
Cage's "Lecture on the Weath-
By BRAD SANDERS er," originally created in 1975 and
DailyArts Writer inspired by the American bicenten-
nial, is his account of the misdirec-
e people are deathly afraid tion of politics and society, and his
nderstorms, some get a thrill appreciation for the role of natural
he sounds sounds in producing music. Amanda
ir terror John Cage Krugliak, curator for the Institute
me make ___4P - for the Humanities and School of
spired by Installation: Art & Design professor, evolved this
ural phe- Lctu're an account into a multimedia exhibit
a. The , that includes loud sounds, lighting
te for the the Weather' and film, at its climax reproducing
nities, in Through Nov. 5 an entire thunderstorm.
lebration Instituteforthe "He was mostly interested in
e ONCE Humanities sound for the sake of sound, he
l, an Ann Free thought pure sound was music,"
music Krugliak said. "There's certainly
1 that had plenty of scholars who talk about
us between the '60s and '70s, Cage and how sophisticated his
sing multiple exhibits paying methods were, but at the end of the
to the avant-garde mindsets day Cage was just about the sound of
musicians and artists who the street and the sound of a mixer
uted to the festivals. "Lee- and the sound of water."
the Weather," an installation Cage was heavily influenced by
late iconic composer John Henry David Thoreau and their
s one such tribute. similar appreciation for the natural
ONCE Festival consisted of world. Drawings from Thoreau's
p of talented composers and sketchbook are included in the
mers who shared their non- exhibit.
onal tastes formusic with Ann "In some ways they are both nat-
Cage attended half a century uralists, they care about something
pure," Krugliak explained. "In a
time when we have so much tech-
nology, that really these basic ways
of working and imaging with sounds
and speakers has such impact"
The audio used for the exhibition
is from a 2007 recording of "Lecture
on the Weather," which is directed
by Kuhn.
"I don't know if it's just me, but I
get excited at the fact that I'm hear-
ing these people that otherwise you
think about being in a textbook or
something you're studying," Krug-
liak said. "You're in this room with
their voices - it's as if you've con-
jured up ghosts or something. It's
really cool."
Cage was also fascinated by the
concept of time. Visitors to the
exhibit may lose their sense of time
as they are enveloped in the closed-
off room.
"One quote I love ... spoke about
how time wasn't vertical - it was
horizontal, meaning there isn't a
really clear beginning and end, and
the past is just this big open space
where a lot has happened," Krug-
liak said. "In the recording we used
("4:33"), there were four minutes
and 33 seconds where you only
heard the sound of the audience and
no one played ... he based everything
on that little measurement of time."
Krugliak hopes that this exhibit
can serve as a forum for discussion.
"This is really rare - the trust
doesn't give permission for this to
be done very often and it's only been
shown a few places," Krugliak said.
"I would love for a group of students
to use this as a class, and talk about
politics, music and anything else."
In Krugliak's perspective, this
work can be incorporated into mod-
ern student life at the University.
"To hear Cage's voice fill a room
in 2010 is sublime. It reignites the
past," Krugliak said. "To recreate
'Lecture on the Weather' inspires
the present, and adds to it the
sounds of students bustling in the
hallways, jackhammers completing
last-minute repairs and conversa-
tions about new ideas. It speaks of
choice and possibility."
As part of the festival, there will
be University Musical Society per-
formances by some of the original
festival composers and founders:
ONCE. THEN. on Nov. 2 and ONCE.
NOW. on Nov. 4. A Nov. 3 sympo-
sium will feature distinguished fac-
ulty speaking on Ann Arbor's role
in avant-garde art and Case Trust
Director Laura Kuhn will deliver a
Nov. 4 Penny Stamps Distinguished
Speakers Series lecture at the Mich-
igan Theater. Also, the Institute
for the Humanities has a display of
documents, posters and compos-
ers's manuscripts from the original
festival.
ANTWOORD
From Page 7A
"Ay-yay-yay, I am your butter-
fly" at a pitch right out of "Yoshi
Story," Ninja trills a fast-paced
rap and a background of com-
puter bleeps manages to gather
it into something resembling a
song.
But "Rich Bitch" starts to turn
up the tacky. The track is Yolandi's
proclamation that her newfound
success hasn't changed the fact
that she's still an asshole ("I do my
own thing when the phone rings
... Only speak to people I wanna
speak to").
It's one big trashy whine, but
something about its obnoxiously
whirring harmony and the whis-
pers in the background holds your
attention.
"She Makes Me A Killer" also
occupies the middle ground
between crude-funny and out-
GUSTER
From Page 7A
sweetness; it produces the same
overbearing queasiness that
inevitably comes after that third
Snickers bar that you totally
thought you could stomach, but
now causes you to become ill at
the sight of sweets. Case in point:
right disgusting. Stealing back the
spotlight, Ninja uses a few sexual
anecdotes to teach listeners why
they shouldn't marry a pretty
woman.
The poor guy can't understand
how his horny nature makes
things go from "hunky-fucking-
dory" to him getting beat up and
ball-broken by the ladies. Explicit
it is, but it's still hard not to laugh
when, over a frantic synth shim-
mer, he offers a girl he's with to his
DJ and lets out a panic-stricken
"I thought Barney said sharing is
caring!"
But when the nasty takes over,
$O$ loses its sense of fun. "Fish
Paste" is a four-minute insult
about somebody's mom's vagina,
and it would be ill-advised to weed
through the thick vowels and roll-
ing "r"s of "Beat Boy" to find the
song's lyrics.
Die Antwoord can make a
good beat and has a sort of trashy
appeal, but everything has its
limit. Embarrassingly explicit at
On "Bad Bad World," Gardner
brings sugary naivet6 to new
heights when he sings "There
is love / There is peace in this
world" followed by his earnest
proclamation "It isn't such a bad,
bad world!"
You can almost see the yel-
low smiley faces and peace signs
swirling in this guy's brain as you
gag from the heaping spoonful of
sugar being poured down your
What striking ... walipaper.
times, the group doesn't under-
stand moderation or social mores.
But the bizarre gratuity that
makes it unlistenable is also its
throat.
One may wonder why a bunch
of Jewish guys from Tufts Uni-
versity would float a few Jesus/
quasi-biblical themes throughout
the album ("Stay with Me Jesus,"
"Jesus and Mary"). Sure, stranger
things have happened, perhaps,
but this intriguing turn is mini-
mized considerably by the fierce,
albeit annoying, optimism on this
record.
aving spent so much time
in front of the screen,
I've often assumed that
a jump to a
creative role
in film would
be a simple
thing. How-
ever, beyond
film's practi-
cal difficul-
ties - which
are daunting ANKUR
no matter the SOHONI
environment
- I've found it
tough in my time at the University
transiioning from consumer to
creator and viewer to artist.
Recently introduced to screen-
writingthrough a class here at the
University, I've been constantly
struggling to develop a good bal-
ance between viewer and writer,
suddenly stumbling across a mine-
field of my own self-delusions and
arrogance and discovering the
difficulties any filmmaker has in
developing a voice.
There is incongruence
between the two sides of a film.
Each film is created in a certain
way and with certain motiva-
tions, and then each is viewed in
a manner entirely independent of
those motivations. The separa-
tion contributes to the beauty
of the art, because a single film
can be seen an infinite number
of ways. Nonetheless, the gap is a
frustrating one to cross.
I watch film on a moment-
by-moment basis. That sounds
simple, but it's true beyond the
obvious statement that film is a
collection of images. It reckons
back to the very first films, which
were entirely non-narrative and
illustrated only a single scene,
such as the Lumiere brothers'
1896 classic "The Arrival of a
Train at La Ciotat Station." Film
is naturally momentary, not nar-
rative, but narrative film is all I've
ever known. And that's something
I didn't realize until I saw the
other side of the art.
When I watch a film, story can
take a back seat, and the macro
film's fatal flaws matter little in
the context of the micro scene's
emotional connection. In every
subsequent moment, the film has
a chance to win me over. I don't
watch anything with a cynical
urge to throw it away, and I don't
make ajudgmentuntil the closing
credits roll.
I'm an easy sell. And I'm the
type of viewer that movie studios
love. That said, much to my cha-
grin, myviewer identity doesn't
translate well into a creative one.
Films are not conceptually
created on such an elemental,
scene-by-scene basis. Screen-
writing, as the beginning for the
process, focuses on the narrative
flow and character development
of the entire film; the idea is that
viewers can subconsciously sense
narrative structure in a way that
will automatically feed their con-
scious reaction to the film. Many
interested viewers, of course, will
critique a film's narrative struc-
ture quite consciously, but such
analysis is more often done after
the actual viewing, not during it.
STRANGER
From Page 7A
"Manhattan;" Dianne Wiest's
soft and tender "I'm pregnant"
in "Hannah and Her Sisters."
But what exactly have the aughts
yielded for us? Murder and three-
somes? Even the decade's best,
the nubile "Match Point" and
"Vicky Cristina Barcelona," are
missing that brief descent from
sexy fantasy-romp into reality.
In fact, the absent ending isn't
so much an anomaly as a grow-
ing constant, as distasteful to the
audience as the grating voiceover
narrations. These items mark the
tragic realization we all don't
want to admit: The world is no
longer relevant to Woody. And
what's worse: Woody is no longer
Before a writer takes on the
actual writing of a screenplay, he
or she must create a "logline" - a
one-sentence outline of the film's
plot, identifyingthe protagonist,
conflict and primary goal in
concise and simple fashion. This
was my first writing challenge
- one made insurmountable at
first because of my viewing style.
Envisioning my creations, I would
always see an image, not a story.
It was disappointing to see how
unprepared I truly was to make
the jump, but even more disap-
pointing to realize that visual
and dramatic creativity is of little
value without an established
structure in the narrative.
From the logline, every writer
moves closer toward a more
detailed plan, eventually develop-
ing scenes and going step by step
through the scriptbefore actu-
ally writing it. In the actual act
of screenwriting, there's signifi-
cantly less spontaneity than I had
ever envisioned.
I had looked forward to the cre-
ative process of writing a script,
going freestyle and making some-
thing artistically attributable to
a single burst of creative energy.
The same way that poets let their
words flow, whether they have a
saving grace: As infectious, penis-
fixated South African scenester
rap groups go, Die Antwoord is
the best.
Not since Ren and Stimpy's
"Happy Happy Joy Joy" has there
been a musical product released
with the same ecstatic message
so relentlessly stated.
By the time the final track "OK
Alright" begins with another
jaunty, cute-as-a-button piano
riff and Gardner singing "Oh no,
here we go," you can't help but
agree. It's time to go on a sugar-
free diet.
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Screenwriting *
might not be for
me after all.
specific structure or not, or the
way that a jazz musician will play
an improvised solo - that was the
way I envisioned screenwriting,
usingthe formal qualities of the
craft to my creative advantage
while allowingthe story to devel-
op itself almost automatically.
Screenwriting can't be
approached with the same
momentary perspective with
which I view films. Screenplays
are not films, and to impose the
experimental qualities of one on
the other would miss the point.
I love watching film because
of the visual moment - when
image, sound and editing com-
bine to carry the viewers beyond
the story and leave a lasting
imprint in their memory. There is
little a screenplay can do to truly
replicate that, because all the
necessary ingredients are added
much further down the road. The
joy I feel in watching films isn't
present in screenwriting, and
without jumpingto conclusions,
it might not be the best role for
me.
That said, I'm too dedicated to
film to let itngo, and by the time I
finish my first screenplay my voice
will be more fully formed. I'll like-
ly discover further difficulties and
roadblocks to my creativity, but
if I can bring something personal
to the process, it's my tenacity to
let the moments stand out from
within the whole.
Sohoni's next career goal isto be a
mime. Crush his dreams by e-mailing
him at asohoni@umich.edu,
relevant to us.
Notthatthis newswill makethe
flock of Woody aficionados attend
any fewer of his films, as the num-
bers at the box office can attest to.
When the film ended, there were
claps in the audience, because
there are always claps. When the
lights went up, people stayed to
watch the credits, because they
always do.
With each new movie around
the corner, all we really want to
see is "the nextgreat Woody Allen
movie," and we are willing to wait
for it until the day we die. Maybe
that masterpiece will come, and
maybe it won't, but in the mean-
time, all we can do is hold onto
the constants - these glimmers
of past greatness. Because for
us, the illusion is better than the
medicine, any day.
Mlake your moment count
Spotlight
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