Occasionally, if one is lucky, one experiences a work of art that evokes a visceral reaction, one that is downright sensual. Consider certain passages of Swan Lake, with two dozen ballerinas moving together in perfect formation. Their routine is so graceful, fluid, and aesthetically pleasing that I have to remind myself to breathe. Or Mozart’s piano sonatas, or Beethoven’s ninth symphony, which are among the most powerful works of art ever conceived. I even find myself tearing up at the sound of David Bowie’s “Life On Mars”—and that song doesn’t even make sense. (I invariably cry out: “It’s true—Mickey Mouse HAS grown up a cow!”)
While I can only speak for myself, these works go beyond simple entertainment, evoking a transcendental emotional, psychological, and physical response. It involves a sense of breathlessness, a widening of the eyes, and a tingle in the back of the spine. It’s no orgasm, but it’s about as close as art can get.
Most films focus on plot and characters. As a result, they lack the purity to evoke this sensual reaction, engaging the viewer on a more intellectual level. In fact, I think colour cinematography, which lacks the elegant simplicity of black and white, further distances us from such a feeling.
Experimental films, which do away with narrative in an attempt to strike at our visceral emotions, often end up even more coolly intellectual than their mainstream counterpart. I’ve been frustrated in the past by video installation art that confuses more than it enlightens, wondering what emotions were supposed to have been evoked. A truly transcendent experimental artwork must contain a strong level of technical proficiency and, dare I say it, earnestness.
This leads me to Takashi Ishida, a Japanese painter, performer, installation artist, and filmmaker whose films will be the subject of the Cinematheque Ontario retrospective Takashi Ishida in Person on December 3. While Ishida’s short films are experimental, they’re not inaccessible. He is, above all, a meticulous and skilful formalist, interested in experimenting with the composition of the film frame, and setting his compositions to beautiful classical music. According to the Cinematheque program guide, “Ishida rigorously explores the tensions between perspective and flat space, rectilinear and organic form, linear progression and repetition.” His stuff is pretty, too.
Ishida’s 18-minute The Art of Fugue (2001) sets the music of Bach to a series of abstract images, beginning with a series of rotating geometric shapes, eventually depicting animations of ornate Japanese emaki (picture scrolls). This film, like so much of Ishida’s work, captures the balance between purity and discipline, and is a staggeringly beautiful work of art.
His other films are similar achievements. Three Red Stripes (2005) features a man making odd noises in front of a backdrop with three vertical red stripes, until Ishida melds the sounds into a hypnotic buzz. Then there’s Film of the Sea (2007), which blurs the line between reality and fantasy with its curious juxtaposition of sea footage and a wall that leaks a stylishly blue liquid. Emaki 1 and 2 (1995, 1996) continue Ishida’s fascination with emaki scrolls set to music.
These laborious, literal descriptions of Ishida’s experimental films are useless. What matters more is their considerable visceral impact. To describe the exact nature of this impact would probably require a more appropriate medium than a newspaper article—perhaps a poem or a piece of music could do it justice. Better yet, just see the films yourself.
