Filming Detroit II





Filming Detroit II
—for Joseph Cornell

“A bad event
happened to me
but its having
occurred became
even more complicated
in my thinking 
about it.”
—Barrett Watten
Bad History

This Barthes-esque “third meaning” has its own way of structuring the film differently as Cornell does creating his “Rose Hobart” film out of the “East of Borneo” talkie motion picture.

Cornell’s “third meaning” emerges with the “stills” & condensed imagery of “Rose Hobart” (15 minutes)—compared that of Borneo (1 hour 10 minutes).

Cornell’s “film” begins only when language & “talkie” metalanguage ends.

Everything that can be said about “East of Borneo” can be said in a written text entitled “Borneo”—except this third or “obtuse” meaning. One can gloss everything in “Borneo” except the obtuse quality of  Rose Hobart’s face, her gestures, her actions.

This obtuse filmic lies in the region where Rose Hobart herself pauses, stops, smiles, looks, moves, lives & performs for us her own story—and language or cinematic dialog or the soundtrack can’t really describe this third world of nuanced, obtuse meaning that’s seeable but not describable. 

Except with Bad History surreal aesthetics & readymade filmics…
________________________

Collage of Detroit’s William Livingstone House
—“Detroit’s Beautiful,
Horrible Decline,” Time

http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1882089_1850985,00.html

Constructed in 1893 in the once elegant Brush Park neighborhood, this home, designed by architect Albert Kahn, was moved from its original location several years ago by preservationists who hoped to maintain it. It was demolished last year.


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