TECHNES Encyclopedia Database

Introduction, by Stephen Broomer

Techniques of photochemical alteration and image destruction might be traced to Isidore Isou, the Lettrist filmmaker whose Traité de bave et d’éternité (Treatise on Venom and Eternity, 1951) used base scratches and bleach to interfere with the image. While these destructive techniques would later be used as a rhythmic strategy (Len Lye, Free Radicals, 1958) and as a metaphor, by infliction upon figures (Stan Brakhage, Reflections on Black, 1955), Isou’s use of these techniques is prophetic in its material self-consciousness.

Isou’s film holds a lesson in material confrontation that Stan Brakhage would carry forward as his experiments with painting on film began in earnest, marked by Dog Star Man (1961-64). Brakhage’s notion of painting, arising out of a broad acquaintance with late modern painterly techniques, was not merely an application of acrylic to plastic, but used bleach dilution and other household cleaners to alter colours and to create new textures by the damage wrought to the film image’s emulsion. In this, Brakhage’s strategies represented a significant turn in experimental film practice, and influenced a legion of filmmakers who would, from the 1970s onward, establish a photochemical vanguard that variously engaged in the destruction of their own or pre-existing (found) images and in breaking down an image’s material constitution. These techniques were advanced in diverse bodies of work, and as such, cannot be said to constitute a movement; however, for the delicacy of their material fascinations, many of these films can be reconciled with the contemporaneous photographic movement dubbed by Lyle Rexer as the “antiquarian avant-garde.”^[1]

These techniques were pronounced in the work of filmmakers such as Phil Solomon, Jürgen Reble, Cécile Fontaine, Carl Brown and Lawrence Brose. These filmmakers developed techniques such as bleach etching, boiling, and decaying film in order to achieve a range of plastic effects. Bleach etching, also known as mordançage, is done by applying a solution to the film plane that causes emulsion to loosen and separate from the plastic base; the emulsion detaches in veils, resulting in an image that appears to be peeling off of the frame. Boiling film, or alternately boiling and freezing film, can cause the emulsion to reticulate, to break down so that grain crystals become dominant, often assuming pronounced stylization (as bean-like shapes in interlocking formations). Decaying film takes advantage of the film strip’s material constitution – and its propensity to decompose – by turning the strip into a breeding ground for enzymes, fungi and bacteria, by burying it or leaving it outdoors, exposing it to the elements. All of these techniques will potentially strip a film bare, or cause the plastic base to warp, making it impossible to project. As a result, these films are often transferred to fresh stock using contact or optical printers, which might also be used to further enhance the image.

For Phil Solomon, transformation of the image is often a means of turning imperfect memories into poetic expressions. His sources range from home movies to images from American film and television history. His cycle, the Psalms, uses chemical manipulation of the film image in combination with optical printing in order to first reduce images to flattened planes and then to give them forced dimensionality. These works combine intimate rumination with plastic abstraction: scenes from The Twilight Zone become semi-abstract through chemistry, and are then cast in bas relief through re-photography, assigning a false depth to stylized forms. Among Solomon’s most visible contemporaries was German filmmaker Jürgen Reble, who emerged from the film ensemble Schmelzdahin in the 1980s with a body of strongly individuated work dealing with decay techniques and corrosive chemistry, in application to film diaries, giving cosmic and spiritual connotations to the material fact of these techniques.

Experiments with toner and corrosive chemistry dominate the work of Carl Brown and Lawrence Brose, both of whom confront spectres of cultural memory through their use of destructive techniques: Brown’s films have consistently dealt with themes of mental distress and hallucination, nowhere more plainly than in his Air Cries “Empty Water” trilogy (1993), while Brose has dealt with themes of homosexual persecution, as in his De Profundis (1997), a biographical imagining of Oscar Wilde’s final days. Cécile Fontaine has been active since the early 1980s in making films that use film detritus, working with what yann beauvais has called “margins, the excluded parts of cinema,” her work becoming a process of de-collage and image recycling.^[2] Fontaine’s work often uses abandoned home movies as raw materials for destructive techniques.^[3] Other examples of filmmakers of this generation who worked with destructive techniques include Louise Bourque, Luther Price, Jennifer Reeves, Mike Hoolboom and Matthias Müller.

Advocacy for these techniques has been offered by Canadian animator Steven Woloshen, who has published a number of practical books dealing with these techniques (Recipes for Reconstruction, 2010; Scratch, Crackle & Pop, 2015)^[4] and by Process Reversal, a collective based in Colorado that offers touring workshops and screenings. With the growth of artist-run centres and labs that host such workshops, these techniques have become widespread. By the 2010s, these strategies were being practised and extended by artists internationally, among them, Nicolas Rey, Kevin Rice, Eva Kolcze, Cherry Kino, Daniel McIntyre, Sarah Biagini, Robert Schaller, and Philippe Leonard.