Letters: Coda by Michael Snow to Issue #84


Jan. 10th, 2005

To C Magazine and its readers,

Postscript to "AN INTERVIEW WITH MICHAEL SNOW" in issue #84 Winter 2004

Apologies and Corrections/Clarifications by Michael Snow

Unfortunately I was increasingly horrified as I first struggled to read this interview. Equally unfortunately, what is wrong with it is largely my fault. Much of what I apparently said is incomprehensible. However sometimes this incomprehensibility must be due to odd copy editing.

I hereby attempt clarification, for the record, in the hopes that the first puzzled and confused and, perhaps understandably, contemptuous readers of the interview will also read this.

Besides the many confused sentences there are also some errors of fact that need correcting: the 2 reproductions on page 23 are not of "So Is This" a film of 1982. They are of the video installation work "That/Cela/Dat" (2000) at its first exhibition "Voici" curated by Thierry de Duve at the Palais des Beaux Arts in Bruxelles.

Continuing the interview on page 26, the first sentence of my answer to Ariane Beyne's question about the Walking Woman is puzzling: "The Walking Woman was never on canvas". In fact the outline of "The Walking Woman" was used on many paintings on canvas. Probably what I meant was that the contour which I used (mostly unaltered) between 1961 and 1967 did not come from a pre-existing painting by myself.

Later in the interview there is some discussion of my new book "BIOGRAPHIE of the Walking Woman (1961-1967) 2004". It is 240 pages of all photos, but it also contains a text about the genesis of the Walking Woman outline. I append it here because my statement in the interview is very confusing and must be corrected. This description is much more informative:

About BIOGRAPHIE

In late 1960 Michael Snow made several naturalistic flat cut-out cardboard figures which used the/a wall as their background.

In early 1961, to make one of these, he drew - then cut out with a matte knife - a side view of a female figure walking, 152cm tall, within a drawn rectangle on a piece of cardboard. No model was used.

Long story short : realising that he had a positive and a negative stencil, and that this two-dimensional figure was easily reproducible, he decided to use this "mother" cut-out to make some variations on its surface (but not its contour) and its placement.

This cut-out was not made for unforeseen uses, but once started, new possibilities continued to occur to the artist. Thus all his work between 1961 and 1967 used the outline or silhouette of the original cut-out as both tool and subject.

The original contour was always the same, but depicted in many ways with many mediums : graphite, ink, watercolour, acrylic, enamel, spray paints and oil, on various surfaces : paper, cardboard, canvas, metal, wood, a car door, etc. Many photographic works and films and performance works were made.

Collages, frottages, pliages, rolled-works and three-dimensional pieces in stainless steel, tin, aluminum, wood, plastics, rubber and cloth were made.

He also made many "lost works", where compositions using the Walking Woman contour were placed (usually clandestinely) in many locations (site being an aspect of their composition) in Toronto and New York and elsewhere - on the street, on lamp standards, signs, in subway stations, on subways, in private homes and offices, in stores, in galleries, as well as on cars and trucks.

The outline was printed and disseminated to be used by anyone, randomly printed in newspapers (not advertising); compositions were sent by mail and friendly travellers took the outline to distant places including the Equator. In that case, a photograph was made. Few of the "lost works" were documented.

Ultimately the artist found himself with an incredible archive of photos, mostly made by others, of the almost infinite manifestations of the Walking Woman contour. This includes those works that were made for gallery exhibition, but many many more photos came from a tremendous range of circumstances (installations, constructions, film stills, lost works, studio views, etc.)

BIOGRAPHIE is a 2004 Walking Woman Work which consists of the juxtaposition and the many-sided sequential ordering of a selection from these deliberate, inadvertent, and by-chance photographic documents - conflating the trivial and the sublime appearances of The Walking Woman. It is a Finnegan's Wake, non-chronological Biographie.

The foregoing text from "BIOGRAPHIE" answers Ariane Beyne's next question: "Were the photographs also exhibited in galleries? Or did you consider them documentation?"

The first mangled sentence of my reply in the printed interview contains a mistake in transcription: "Some of them were but mostly no I emulated all these photographs from other people". Probably I said "collected". The sentence should be : "Some of the photographs are by myself, sometimes they are photos by others of art works by myself but most of them are photographs which, sometimes incidentally, contain the Walking Woman outline and were taken by other people". Most of the photographs used in "BIOGRAPHIE" were not exhibited in galleries. However:

In the book there are photos of my first photo-work "Four to Five" (1962) which was/is not a "documentation" but a use of photography to make a 2 dimensional wall art work.

My reply continues with: "They were part of my installation for Expo '67 in Montreal, while the Walking Woman project started in Toronto in 1961 and continued in New York in 1962."

I suppose what this is trying to say is :
"In the book I used documentation photos which I took of the sculpture installation I did for Expo '67 in Montreal. The Walking Woman project started in 1961 in Toronto, continued from 1962 in New York, ending (I thought at the time) with the work at Expo '67".

Ariane Beyne refers to "The Audience", the sculpture I did for Sky Dome in 1989. My comments about this work are also confusing. The "attention" of each of the figures in The Audience is aimed at different specific locations. Many of the sculptures are "looking" at you, there are precise areas where you, the standing or walking spectator, will be "looked" at (through binoculars or with nose thumbing or being pointed at, etc.) This had/has absolutely nothing to do with "the different seating areas in the stadium" as I'm quoted as having said in the printed interview. I never said that.

To clarify a bit more about "recent" installations, "That/Cela/Dat" (2000) is shown with one very large projection flanked by 2 large monitors at each side. DVD is the source. It's in English, French and Dutch, each language sequence being programmed to be on each screen for 15 minutes then shifting to the adjacent screen. This way each language sequence has its turn on the big screen.

"Two Sides to Every Story" (1974) is not ìrecentî but has been seen recently (2002) in The Whitney Museum exhibition "Into the Light" which is touring and is, as of this writing, now in Lisbon. It's a film (16mm) installation.

"Sheeploop" (2000) is a 17 minute loop. In Berlin it was shown simultaneously on 3 different monitors separated from each other and near Cinema Arsenal in Potsdamer Platz.

I am horrified and I must clarify my incoherent statements about Stan Brakhage's work. This incoherence is complicated by some faulty transcription (I can't believe I could have been that garbled).

Stan Brakhage made several films which were done, first, by hand painting on the individual frames of transparent 16mm film (occasionally larger formats). Negatives were made of these films then positive prints which were/are projected. What I was trying to say in the interview was that these films are an important contribution to "painting" but that by and large those who have a specific curatorial or critical interest in "painting" never see them because they don't go to screenings of so-called Experimental Films.

My disagreement with Ariane Beyne's statement that Brakhage's work "is so much more about painting than other filmmakers work" is also a mess.

Here's my answer rephrased: "That's not true. Brakhage made about 400 films. Most of them are photographic, only a few are "painted" films. Having so much of their sources in the practice and significance of, first, vision and secondly vision-with-a-movie-camera, it is very misleading to say that his films in general are "about painting".

His last 15 years work contains many beautiful photographic films. I mentioned one of them "A Child's Garden and the Serious Sea" (1991). It's extraordinary and adds something new to the many other "photographic" accomplishments of his work.

Ariane Beyne said "That brings us to your sound works. They were really a huge discovery for me." Amplification: her "discovery" was made a few years ago and resulted in her curating an exhibition of my sound works "Hearing Aid" (1972) with "Correspondance" (1970) and listening tables where one could listen to any of the many recordings I've made. This show was at Galerie Klosterfelde in Berlin in 2002. A CD also titled "Hearing Aid" featuring the CCMC was issued as a kind of catalogue by Supposé (Hamburg).

My comments about "My Chatham Square Album" are also confusing. It's a double LP, both design and music by myself recorded in 1972, but issued by this New York label in 1974. Its title: "Michael Snow. Musics for Piano, Whistling, Microphone and Tape Recorder". The sentence "But I used playing the radio in standard time in 1968" should be: "But I used playing the radio to make the sound track of an 8 minute film titled 'Standard Time' (1968)". I also "played the radio" for some of the sound in "Rameau's Nephew" (1974).

"Two Radio Solos" is a cassette of 2 playing-the-radio improvisations done in 1980 and released in 1988 by a no longer existing Toronto company. (It's still available though).

The "Even" in the statement "Even the CCMC was founded" should not be there. It should read "The CCMC was founded to use every possible usable sound".

To clarify what Nobuo Kubota did within the CCMC in "1976 or so": "He recorded a number of cassettes of what he thought of as useful music. Within the "cage" of many instruments that he'd built he had 2 cassette players, each of which had a volume pedal. He could enter his choices from these cassettes into the on-going music in a way that's pretty close to current DJ practices except that his musical range was wider".

Lastly Ariane Beyne refers to "The Last LP" (1987). My comments should have included that it was subsequently issued as "The Last LP CD" (1994) by Art Metropole.

I'm a veteran of interviews and know from experience that my transcribed-to-print verbal answers are often awkward,

I requested a copy of the transcript but never saw it.

Thanx to C's generosity in printing what wouldn't have been necessary if it had been possible for me to clarify the transcript.