experimenta media arts festival 1994

Looking Awry

Looking Awry: Experimental Film and Video from Aotearoa

An alternative or experimental art practice is notoriously difficult to define. As soon as the notion of an avant-garde was born, so began the debate as to what constituted it- be it couched in terms of politics, poetics, new ways of seeing, marginality or cultural resistance. The debate has circled uneasily, never resting, its volatility a necessary response to a continuously changing cultural sphere.

The label 'alternative' begs a question: alternative to what? As a First World colony, New Zealand has a complex cultural history. Pre-contact Maori culture, formerly structured as Kiwi or tribal, was threatened by, yet resistant to, the colonial Anglo-Celtic culture. These two strands meshed into a supposedly mono-cultural New Zealand-ness, which then, acknowledging both the legacy and living presence of Maori culture, became bi-cultural Aotearoa. Meanwhile, changing immigration patterns add further cultural influences, as does the ever-presence of British and American mass media. It is within this complex of influences that alternative has to stake out its presumed opposition to a mainstream. But in the context of New Zealand film, mainstream refers to our relatively frail national cinema movement which, in order to shine at Cannes, has distinguished itself from the Hollywood mainstream that sets the terms of cinema. Hence, alternative film in the New Zealand context becomes doubly displaced - from both the multiplex and the dizzying fast-track to France.

A similar dilemma faces alternative video. In this country, video's 'terrible parent', broadcast television, offers a cultural mix of British, Australian, American and New Zealand programming. The blend is inter-textual; the various national televisions both compete with and influence each other. As a consequence, the paternity of New Zealand alternative video-like in a soap opera narrative-is always in question and it has to negotiate its rebellion carefully.

Given the power of the media industry, alternative film/video feels vulnerable, as it is easily assimilable into more commercial territory. The industry holds forth the constant promise of success (or viability at least), uttered as wanting to reach a wide audience -the phrase of ratings and the box-office. Inevitably, the border becomes fuzzy and rightly so, as truly alternative work cannot survive in a vacuum. But the balance can be difficult to achieve; while commercial values must not set the terms of an alternative movement, it is important that the works do not become defensive or doctrinaire.

The blurring of borders between alternative and commercial sectors that exists everywhere in the Western world feels even more extreme in a country the size of New Zealand. First, because each thread of experimental work is sustained by such a small group of practitioners, its very continuation can feel uncertain; second, the demand for alternative practices rarely reaches critical mass - there is no strong lobby group demanding funding and structural support; and third, the tradition of New Zealand pragmatism (otherwise known as the 'clobbering machine') is deeply hostile to anything it perceives as esoteric or pretentious. Consistent with this, the apparent popularity of mainstream tele-cinematic forms becomes the yardstick with which to measure experimental or alternative work as 'elitist'.

Distribution remains a central problem and the paucity of outlets has left the alternative community in a classic catch-22 position. Apart from rather grudging support from the public gallery system, the margins of the commercial outlets - late night television and theatrical film release-have been virtually the only distribution options. Yet if film/video makers move towards these markets, their programs, teetering on the border, may cease to be experimental altogether.

Given the problem of distribution, the lack of training opportunities, and the absence of general reinforcement, alternative film/video makers have had to learn to survive through a mixture of tenacity, self help and support from a few institutions, most notably the Creative Film and Video Fund of the New Zealand Arts Council. In a welcome initiative, the Council recently funded the Moving Image Centre, a national organisation intended to develop an infrastructure for independent film and video within New Zealand. As well as consolidating existing activities, the MIC has organised a short film/video festival, regular screenings, seminars, and workshops. It is also urging the educational circuit, packaging New Zealand shorts and producing a regular magazine. In addition to providing outlets for New Zealand and international film/video, MIC hopes to extend the level of debate about moving image culture in this country.

The film/video works that will be presented at experimenta are diverse and, if generalisations are to be made, they are practical ones; the pieces are short and made mostly by younger film/video makers; many are relevant to a local context although international influences can be felt; they are works that have received little exposure elsewhere.

The vitality, experimentation and humour evident in the works, is testimony to the survival skills of the alternative sector Its narrative begins for many (and for some must always end too) with Len Lye, the filmmaker and kinetic sculptor, whose extraordinary work drew often on Pacific themes. Although his presence will always be felt, the influences on alter native film/video are multiple. Cultural models

offered up by the 'international' avant garde, glimpsed at the non-peak hours of the Wellington International Film Festival, clearly hold sway; but powerful too are the influences of indigenous and Pacific culture.

A background in conceptual and fine arts is evident in the crafted music-based video Switch by Sean Kerr, and in Gregory Bennett's animation loop LookingAwry, while the New York performance scene is appropriated and parodied lovingly by Tessa Laird in Kathy Does Jurassic Park. Glenn Standring's Lenny Minute 1 also borrows generously, blending influences of popular culture, such as comics and film noir, with re-appropriations of Jean-Luc Godard's recycling of the same. The hybridisation of various cultural traditions is evident in the Maori and Pacific Island work included in this collection: in her animation film, A Maori Dragon Story, Lisa Reihana uses an updated version of traditional Maori puppetry to tell a story of love, rejection and revenge while, in Veronica Vaevae's Family Line, streaks of video snow link together her family members across the screen and the generations. Brechtian/feminist techniques of distinction and the blurring of fiction and documentary shape two moving films on childhood - Cushla Dillon's Love Seen (from a Black Hole) and Rachel Davies' Sweetness - and the influences of the New Romantic movement, which revels in flamboyance, excess and humour, are felt in Katherine Fry's The Pink, Peter Wells' Good Intentions, Deidre McKessar's She Always, and Mark Raffety's 'serial' tape Mother Knows Best.

When I reflect on the program as a whole, certain features stand out. The first is the predominance of animation. Reihana and Bennett's works, mentioned above, are joined by May Trubuhovich and John Johnson's Dunno and Douglas Bagnall's intense 'no wave' B77 01 (A), giving viewers an indication of the variety of animation styles being produced in the alternative sector Reihana suggests the attraction to animation in New Zealand is partly one of scale. As a kitchen table industry (literally referred to in Dunno), requiring comparatively more labour than capital, it is attractive to makers on low- or no- budgets.

Given the relatively few resources for production in this country, a surprising feature is that video has not been more widely used. Filmmakers have tended to continue to view video as a poor cousin, romanticising the superior aesthetics of film. This attitude could have a historical explanation; while porta-pak fever gripped the arts communities in the metropolitan centres, video technology in New Zealand was categorised as a luxury import and heavily taxed. The early growth spurt which has led to a remarkable and diverse independent video sector in Britain and the United States has not been evident in this country.

Finally, a third feature of this collection is that most of the works are by students or young film/video makers. This is an indication perhaps of the frailty of the sector and the widespread attitude that experimental work has to be a training ground for the 'real thing'. Peter Wells, whose own body of work shows an inspiring commitment to experimentation, has repeatedly insisted that short film/video are works in their own right, not just a warm-up exercise for a feature. This is a point worth repeating if the alternative sector is to be sustained.

For me personally, the most engaging work in the collection combines formal experimentation with substantive content, functioning discursively, rather than by narrative. Its subject matter is political, ranging through gender politics, family and the re-writ ing of Maoritanga, but the films and tapes function by looking awry, rather than directly, at their topics. Although the works make local interventions, they are threaded through with international influences-critical theory, feminisms, sub-nationalisms, queer activism. With these intellectual and political imperatives comes the position that it is not only what you say, but how you say it, that effects social transformation.

It is against this experimentation that the well-worn populist argument that brands alternative work as elitist is sounded. It is true that familiar programming may be comfortable to an audience, offering it certain pleasures. But it is also safe, generally reinforcing a commonsense interpretation of things. Alternative film/video can, in my opinion, destabilise the notion of common sense that underwrites 'things as they are; exposing the status quo as one ideological position amongst many. Hence, the experience of watching alternative film/video is not always an easy one; the challenge such work offers is to make individuals not only think differently, but by extension perhaps, live differently. Despite their marginalisation, then, the best of these works offer a significant intervention in contemporary artistic and social culture.

Annie Goldson is a film/videomaker who teaches production and theory at the Centre for Film, Television and Media Studies at Auckland University.