On Steiner, Beuys and Godard's blackboard use

" He often used the board to either emphasise a concept or date, or to imaginatively construct a complex idea and break it down according to a diagram. Often, initially simple sketches and diagrams were continuously developed during the course of a lecture until, in the end, an "imaginative, colourfully-flowing overall picture" was created which could be directly and vividly experienced. Most of the blackboard drawings were erased after the lecture, until an attentive listener, saw to it that the provided blackboards were covered with black paper. Thus many drawings were preserved after all.."

Sam Renseiw postulates that we can hear the 'drawing', the plan on the ground; at another level we find dissonant emphases, at the next level a voice, which is softly bound from its diction, and then another that is rigorous and hard in its articulation. All of this is synchronous. View it unfold here or click on the blackboard above.( patafilm #114, 01'42'', 15.3 MB, mov/quicktime)

Gracefully choreographed but stilted

…the most important innovation, of what is called neorealism, it seems to me, is to have realized that the necessity of the 'story' was only an unconscious way of disguising human defeat, and that the kind of imagination it involved was simply a technique of superimposing dead formulas over living social fact..."

A Zavattini pataquote on neorealism; Sam Renseiw's Anatomical studies affords the voyeuristic spectator gracefully choreographed, stilted stills. Enjoy it here or click on the mise en scene above. (00'47'' 2.9 MB mov/quicktime) / link update 02.10.15

The New Age of Ballooning

Next week on 'The Golden Age of Ballooning', Patalab will examine the work of Girlsher and Coxwell, the English balloonists who ascended to a height of seven miles in 1862 without washing. There's also a record of someone reading the book of 'The Golden Age of Ballooning', a crochet-work bedspread with the words 'The Golden Age of Ballooning' on it, available from the BBC, price €18 and there are matching toilet-seat covers and courtesy mats with illustrations of many of the baboons mentioned. Also available is a life-size model frog which croaks the words 'The Golden Age of Ballooning' and an attractive bakelite case for storing motorway construction plans in, made in the shape of a balloon.

Renseiw and Co. giving it quietly the full monty, Flying Circus wise. Coming soon to your favorite opera house in Copenhagen. Vorspiel here, or click on the balloon image.  /link updated