03/11/11 - 14/01/12
Manon de Boer
Think about Wood, Think about Metal

Manon de Boer
Think about Wood, Think about Metal, 2011
16 mm film transferred to HD cam, colour, sound Dolby Surround or Stereo, English
48 min., filmstills

Think about Wood, Think about Metal  (2011) by Manon de Boer is a third cinematic portrait in a trilogy on the seventies.  The two other films are Sylvia Kristel - Paris (2003) and Resonating Surfaces (2005). The protagonist for this third film is the percussionist Robyn Schulkowsky. Fragments of the life and thinking of Schulkowsky are situated in the history of avant-garde music during the seventies and after. She works and has worked with composers like John Cage, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Derek Bailey, John Zorn, Frederic Rzewski and Christian Wolff.  In this new film the performance by Schulkowsky of percussion improvisations constitutes a major medium in the film. This percussion on the sound track is audible almost throughout.

Rhythm and the non-linear structuring of time play a major part in this film in turning more abstract notions, such as memory, history and life, into a cinematic experience. Structured repetitions, pauses and the experience of duration in both the visual and the auditory elements constitute a constellation of links between past, present and future. Often image and sound have their own temporal logic. Sometimes the sound refers back or forward to something which happens before or after in the image. This results in a kind of ‘rhyme’ between what is seen before and what comes back later in another form. This disrupts the linearity of time, moments of doubt or hesitation arise and the cinematic experience is situated in the here and now of watching and most important listening.