On March 15th several recent works by Gehr were shown at the RedCat
theater in Los Angeles. I apologize up front for the scrapiness of my
notes.

The Collector:
old photographs, shot with a digital camera, edited with differing,
but not shocking, rhythms. The time period and location of the
photographs is not clear, one guesses they're early 20th century. The
compositions and situations of the photographs vary: sometimes street
scenes, sometimes decentered tourist-like shots, sometimes portraits,
sometimes blurred accidental close ups, sometimes mundane corners,
mostly outdoor shots. A clear theme or narrative is avoided. Silent,
then about a quarter of the way through, only the sound of a train is
heard for the remainder, making, it seems, one stop and then
continuing. There is a poiniance to it, though it lacks nostalgia. It
is half remembered as sentimental, however. The other half, a study of
space detached from theme, order. The period and the train sounds do
bring longing into the picture, that is, if one indulges in the
cliches of the period. It is not a work meant to dispell anything. It
is honest work. The collector is Gehr, photographs collected from
photo fairs. I'm not sure of the date of the video, possibly 2003.

Passage:
I'm not sure of the date on this 16mm film either, though I scrawled
2003. Gehr explained however that the footage was shot at a friends
urging in 1999, I believe, in Berlin, the former East Berlin, upon his
overwhelming personal reaction to the place . Intercut left to right,
right to left tracking shots from an elevated train looking down onto
a small street, over buildings, back and forth, again with only train
sounds. There is a brief static shot of the rainy street amongst all
the velocity of the opposing directions of the tracking shots. Another
static shot, somewhat like a reverse shot, of the train quickly
passing from a stop, staccato squares with the light behind the
windows. A certain dynamism of old all about the film. There is
memory, shots are repeated. A cornering, not quite a wash.

Glider:
A glide over distorted, refracted images of the sea, the shore, and
the hills and establishments around it, soaring above in a birds eye
view.

A Lucretian film. It begins with the water which looks at the same
time like a puddle and an ocean. Then a wider shot soaring over the
beach, and a costal highway with tiny cars seen. It all looks like a
model set-- an effect partly due to the stringy, uneven glide. In
movement it's like Mephisto and Faust's cloak-ride over the model of a
European landscape in Murnau's Faust, only it's real! Because of the
warped refraction of the image, the ocean seems to lap over onto
itself like never before seen, an omnidirectional flow. At one point
in the glide the camera seems to clasp to the top/side of a building
and track perfectly parallel with it, looking down towards the ground.
An edge of the world type of image later when it unclasps moving out
over the shore, upside down, to the side, out in the middle of the
ocean... a giant wave... the horizon... a mixed up whirlpool, all at
the same time. I don't want to reveal how Ernie achieved this
refraction, so that anyone reading this can be as fascinated as I was,
Ernie explaining his achievment AFTER the screening.

Throughout one knows this is truely taped, a true phenomena, i.e. not
electronically manipulated (aside from the device for capturing the
light), not programmed...in fact IMPOSSIBLE TO PROGRAM. Were it not
true, it would be reprehensible. Why? Truely videotaped, even the
refracted bent light of a landscape is still light, infinately more
various, beyond anything someone could possibly program or modulate. A
phenomenal video, perhaps the first phenomenal digital video. To
paraphrase Berenice Reynaud: if the ocean is there and Ernie Gehr is
not there to film it, does a wave crash?


Yours,
andy