Dan Graham | Films

Dan Graham

Films 

Genève, Switzerland: Éditions Centre d'art contemporain and Écart Publications, 1977

28 pp., 23 x 18 cm., softcover

Edition of 1000

A slim booklet that features descriptions and illustrations from eight early film and slide pieces by the artist. The short texts (in both French and English) illustrate Graham's interest in bodily movement and the optical similarities between the camera and the human eye. 

The original is scarce and sells for a few hundred dollars. The title was reprinted by Marian Goodman Gallery in 2001 and remains available for $20 US, here. 

Body Press: 

"Two filmmakers stand within a surrounding and completely mirrorized cylinder, body trunk stationary, hands holding and pressing a camera's back-end flush to, while slowly rotating it about, the surface cylin-der of their individual bodies. One rotation circumscribes the body's contour, spiralling slightly upward with the next turn. With successive rotations, the body surface areas are completely covered as a template by the back of the camera(s) until eye-level (view through camera's eyes) is reached; then a reverse mapping downward begins until the original starting point is reached. The rotations are at a correlated speed; when each camera is rotated to each body's rear it is then facing and film-ing the other where they are exchanged so the camera's ‹identity› ‹changes hands› and each performer is handling a new camera. The cameras are of different size and mass. In the process, the performers are to concentrate on the coexistent, simultaneous identity of both camera's describing them and their body. (The camera may/or may not be read as an extension of the body's identity.) Optically, the two cameras film the Image reflected on the mirror which is the same surface as the box (and lens) of the cam-era's five visible sides, the body of the performer, and (possibly) his eyes on the mirror (In projection what is seen by the spectator).

The camera's angle of orientation/view of the area of the mirror's reflective image is determined by the placement of the cam-era on the body contour at a given moment. (The camera might be pressed against the ehest but such an upward angle shows head and eyes). To the spectator the camera's optical vantage is the skin. (An exception is when the performer's eyes are also seen reflected or the cameras are seen filming the other). The performer's musculature is 'seen' pressing into the surface of the body (pulling inside out). At the same time, kinesthetically, the handling of the camera can be 'felt', by the spectator, as surfacetension, as the hidden side of the camera presses and slides against the skin it cov-ers at a particular moment."

Helix/Spiral:

"A stationary inner cameraman slides the back end of his camera while pressing it flat against his body; it moves in a gradually descending helix from eyes to feet so the entire surface area of his body is topologically covered. As the camera rotates, circumscribing the body, it films the outside 360 degrees of the surrounding space. At each moment and point on the body the specific angle of the body’s contour determines the camera’s plane or angle of orientation; each second it is filming the light reflected from the particular environmental plane facing parallel to the camera’s front plane, while the other, obverse, side of the filmed exterior is the negative, the cylindrical hole is the larger 360 degree topology wholly occupied by that person’s body. At a distance on the horizon of the inner filmmakers’ view, a second filmmaker with camera’s viewfinder to his eye walks inward in a gradual spiral whose center is the position of the first filmmaker. In walking he maps in his spiraling the complete topographic surface area in 360 degrees between the inner performer and his initial distance. He reaches the point of the inner filmmaker when this performer has taken his camera to feet or ground-level. The outside man’s aim is to continuously center his camera on the inside camera while continuously having himself centered in the view of that camera. To achieve this as he spirals, he adjusts his forward movement relative to the rate with which the inside cameraman manipulates the camera around his body. "