Sean Hillen and the New Wave of Photomontage

"Irelantis" is the title of the works and exhibits of the man Sean Hillen. As you can probably tell from the title of his works, he is Irish. He has decided to take up the art form of photomontage in order to speak out and recognise the troubles that the country has been going through in his lifetime. His photomontages are all done by him alone: he takes all the photographs for them and he cuts and pastes them. The first set of "Irelantis" was concerned about the war, and were therefore full of anxiety and fear. His second installment in "Irelantis" was more centred on love and peace. He wanted to settle people's anxieties. It all started as political satire, asking the question of civilisation or not. This is exactly what photomontage in the Weimar Culture was brining forth. If you are interested in seeing some of the work of Sean Hillen, you can check out his web-page.

Dialectical Montage with Roots in Epic Theatre

Dialectical Montage: the juxtaposing of specific scenes of a movie to determine a relationship between the two (or more).
Epic Theatre: Theatre which uses the "V-Effect" to break the audience's emotional bond with the play and alienates them from what's happening on stage.

These two concepts used together can be a very interesting combination. It is known that Bertolt Brecht liked to use technology in his plays, and in some of them he added a large screen in the background to show video footage. I was always curious as to what exactly he (or the directors who are adapting the play) chose to show on those screens as the play went on. I was able to find this out recently.

Recently at York Private School there was a production of Brecht's The Resistable Rise of Arturo Ui. As I wasn't able to make it out to actually see the play when it was on stage, my friend, who went to that school, was able to see it. He told me they showed clips of Stalinist Regimes and Communist gatherings along with landscapes and such. As I wasn't able to see it, I am not sure, but it seems to me that the director decided to use dialectical montage to emphasize some specific points throughout the play.

Bauhaus Schooling at Use Today

The Bauhaus is one of the two directions of art that sprouted with the forming of the Weimar Republic (the other being Berlin Dada). This style lasted for about 14 years, starting in the Weimar Republic, then moved to Dessau and eventually ending in Berlin. Its goal was to explore art and industry, and the relationship between them. It was not influenced by the past, but strove towards the now and the future. To teach this art form, a school was created. This school had a six month preliminary period where the student is "tested" in all aspects of the Bauhaus. At the end of that period, if the student shows an understanding and ability in these areas, the student will be accepted as an apprentice in a workshop setting for three years. The ultimate goal of the apprentice is to learn architecture in its whole.

I find this kind of schooling to be very similar to the Theatre program here at York University. This program has a six month "test" period as a common first year, in the sense that one is required to take courses in, more or less, every aspect of theatre. At the end of that "test" period, auditions and interviews are held to get in to the second year and become a student of a certain aspect of theatre. At the end of the three years studying that aspect, that person's main goal is to be either an actor, a playwright, a designer, a stage manager, a director, etc.. This program also is not too concerned with the past. The only time that a student's past is important is applying for the program in the first place. In the Acting classes they want you to forget everything you know about acting and start from the beginning again. The Stagecraft classes also start at step one to cover all aspects and give a broad understanding of the subjects to each student.

Brecht: "Bigger Than Jesus"?

From November 16th to December 12th, 2004, the Factory Theatre downtown Toronto, at Bathurst and Adelaide, is hosting a brand new play called Bigger Than Jesus. It is a one-man show, starring Rick Miller and is directed by Daniel Brooks. I saw the first preview of this show on November the 16th, and I reccommend it to anyone who is looking for a good time. The reason I bring this play up is because it can be seen to have a certain "Brechtian" feel to it.

* WARNING! To all those interested in seeing the show: DO NOT READ FURTHER due to numerous SPOILERS of some of the BEST PARTS OF THE SHOW. Sorry. *

The first aspect of Brecht in Bigger Than Jesus is that Mr. Miller speaks directly to the audience and tells straight up that he will be undertaking the role of Jesus for the evening. To add to this he even jumps into the audience and gets the audience to participate with him. When he decides to sing a song, he lets the audience know. He lets most of the props show. His biggest prop, the camera, is in plain view of the audience and he even lowers it and films the audience with it. He talks to the audience through it, completely killing the willing suspension of disbelief most people put on while going to see a show. He even mentions that in the play.

Messages and words are written for the audience to see and projected on the screen behind him. This is very much like how Brecht has narrative boards lowered on curtains between scenes. Mr. Miller even plays with action figures for about twenty minutes of the whole production, which is only ninety minutes long (he informs you of this as well). By doing this, he successfully keeps the audience's minds thinking and he clearly gets his messages across. This is exactly what Brecht wanted to do, but Brecht uses a grander scale. None of the Brecht plays I am familiar with are one-man shows. In full plays, it is harder to destroy the willing suspension of disbelief because there must be interaction between characters. That aside, Rick Miller and Daniel Brooks have successfully created a work of art that can be comparable to Brecht in technique and motive.

Moholy-Nagy's "Gesamtkunstwerk"

Interdisciplinarity is the basis of how FACS 1900 operates. It is about the breaking down of singular structures to realise that all forms of art can be equally used together and compliment each other. Gesamtkunstwerk is the culmination of the arts. It started as a concept taught by one of the teachers at the Bauhaus, of architecture; calling in the specialists of each art form to to add their touch where needed. It allows a work of art to be carried on by any other student of the Bauhaus. This concept, however, can be applied to so much more than just architecture. Modern movies, with all the new innovations and special effects, often use a culmination of the arts to produce the piece.

Dancers double in when an actor cannot dance; designers create computer gerenated scenes when it is inconvenient or impossible for a carpenter or a costume team to handle; singers dub their voices over others and musicians provide background music. This essentially is Gesamtkunstwerk architecture, only instead of making a building or structure, one is creating a whole world in which the movie takes place. If it weren't for this, then the land of 'Middle-Earth' from The Lord of the Rings movies would not have been possible to create. Another good example of Gesamtkunstwerk being used in modern times is this class, FACS 1900. It teaches interdisciplinarity, and one of the concepts it teaches is none other than Gesamtkunstwerk. This is not merely a coincidence.

Brecht put the Epic in Epic Theatre

The title is misleading. It is true that Piscador did invent Epic theatre, but from my standpoint (and many others) it is Brecht that made it known. I first heard about Epic Theatre in my grade 12 drama class. We were actually studying The Threepenny Opera and I have grown to love it ever since. Brecht has become my favourite playwright over the last year because he is fresh and innovative. He believed there needed to be a new way of getting drama across in this new Weimar period, and therefore started what people would later term "Brechtian Alienation". This is the process of distancing the audience from the action going on onstage and destroying the "fourth wall" that theatre of the previous ages created. By changing the action onstage from song to drama to speaking directly to the audience and saying stage directions, Brecht successfully kept his audience's mind working throughout his plays to have them focus more on the thinking rather than the feeling.

Brecht did a whole lot more than just mess around with the dialogue to alienate his audience. He would show all the technical aspects of the show: things like the lights, the microphones and the speakers. He would eliminate the suspense of the scene by stopping before physical combat or when a death would occur. The plays he writes usually do not have a realistic historically accurate setting. He doesn't need it. He would also blatantly change the endings: in The Threepenny Opera he employs the use of a Deus Ex Machina (God in the Machine) to stop Macheath from being hanged. All these aspects help Brecht get his audience out of their "willing suspension of disbelief" and think.

*Our school has put on The Threepenny Opera a couple times in the past, but more recently two years ago. Check out the poster here at the Theatre @ York webpage.

Being a Theatre student, I can easily relate this back to the world of theatre, but so can anyone else because that's what Brecht did: theatre. So instead I will talk about a modern variation of it as I did with photomontage. Although this group of artists do not, I believe, consider themselves as using "Brechtian Alienation", their movies employ many of the same styles and methods of getting the point across. The group is none other then Monty Python. Take, for example, Monty Python and the Holy Grail. This movie, as well as all their other movies, break the action, the feeling, of the movie with cartoons (like the monster in the cave), or musical interludes (like the Camelot song), or something completely different (like an actual intermission or a llama). Their movies are satires and they want their audience to understand what they are satiring. Brecht's work can be viewed as satire as well: he always speaks out against the modern world, like how Mac the Knife in The Threepenny Opera for example is a representation of Hitler. Also, in The Holy Grail, they add in people from different time periods into the setting, like the reporters and the cops at the end. I highly recommend watching some of Monty Python's work.

Introduction, Photomontage and Franz Ferdinand

Hello,

This is the first post of my Weblog! Hurray!... I've not done one of these before and don't really like to keep journals, so this may be very bad. Just warning you straight up.

So Weimar Culture eh? Where shall I start?

I guess my first post can be about photomontage because I find it rather interesting. The style of photomontage captures me instantly, it reminds me of a kind of Where's Waldo? picture except I'm not looking for a person, I'm looking for a meaning. This style of artwork employed by the Berlin Dada school used various different montaged pictures to bring forth a meaning. From most of the photomontage artwork that I have seen, the meaning is usually in reference with the time period and the social events happening. Some of this meaning is lost to me because I am no history buff and do not know what it must have been like for the artists of Germany to live at that time. The meaning that is apparent to me in these works, however, stand out like a sore thumb. Although these pieces of art contain periodical messages, they also seem to contain messages suitable for every generation. There are photos talking against tyrrannical governments and totalitarian leaders (like the first image we viewed in class on the 22nd of October) or the new change in women's role and the oncoming of equality of the sexes (like the second photomontage image we viewed in that same class).

This brings me to a modern use of photomontage that I have come to know. There is a band I listen to called Franz Ferdinand. They are from Glasgow, however they have become very interested in the art styles of the Weimar period. They are an alternative band, however they have an older feel to them. The name itself implies that they are sticking with the old (Franz Ferdinand being the Archduke who was assassinated and started the First World War). The most interesting fact about them, however, and the reason I am talking about them, is that in their videos they incorporate the artforms from the Weimar period.

In their big American debut single "Take Me Out", they employ the use of photomontage as the style of the video. They wanted to make their video something people would think about. There are parts in the video, inspired by "The Mechanical Man" by Otto Umbehr, where the band members are mechanical bodies with only their heads. There are also other mechanical people in the video, and they all move in the similar beat of the song. This is to represent repitition. When I studied the video, I thought of it as how music videos, once they are produced, are just a mechanical thing and do not need the band members to reproduce it live anymore because it is taped. The band's part, therefore, is very minimal in music videos. After reading up on the making of this video, I found out that Franz Ferdinand wanted to represent repitition as a good thing. They believe repitition should be something that artists strive for because if it is really good then people will want to see it more and more. There is also, in this video, a lot of battles between "Franz" and the "Anti-Franz", and it seems to be a basis for the rythem. If you would like to read up more on this, the article can be found at Into the Storm.



I really encourage everyone to check out Franz Ferdinand, even if it is not your style of music. Their videos can be seen at their webpage. They do have a new video called "This Fire", it is in the same style as "Take me Out" however it is not up on their webpage yet.