Re: Brakhage leaves the shade

From: Marilyn Brakhage (email suppressed)
Date: Fri Apr 25 2008 - 10:00:23 PDT


Zac,

There is a large collection of Brakhage correspondence now at the
Library of the University of Colorado at Boulder. This would include
copies of at least some of the letters to Jonas. The person to contact
about accessing that material is the archivist David M. Hays:
(303)492-7242.

You could also try contacting Robert Haller at Anthology Film Archives,
who also keeps a collection of materials: (212)505-5181. He might
have the original letter there.

Marilyn Brakhage

On Friday, April 25, 2008, at 07:20 AM, Z O wrote:

>
>
>
> Hello,
> I am new to the list.  I have a question that could maybe turn into a
> topic.  It involves a letter Brakhage wrote to Mekas in 64.  It seems
> that it is a fairly famous letter, but I haven't been able to track it
> down.  It is about his withdrawing his films from the Film Maker's
> Co-Op.  It says, I have been able to find fragments of the letter,
> this "I cannot in good conscience continue to accept the help of
> institutions which have come to propagate advertisements for forces
> which I recognize as among the most destructive in the world today:
> "dope", self-centred Love, unqualified Hatred, Nihilism, violence to
> self and society."
>
> I guess it was in regard to Andy Warhol having won the independent
> film maker's award.   Can any one tell me where I can find this
> letter?  I found a letter to Mekas in the 'Brakhage Scrapbook' from
> 82, but it was only referencing his actions of removing his films from
> Anthology and Film Maker's Co-Op...  Does any one know where I can
> find the original, ground shaking, as it were, letter?
>
>
>

> -Zac
>
> ----
>
>
> Apomorphine is no word and no image — […] It is simply a question of
> putting through an inoculation program in the very limited time that
> remains — Word begets image and image IS virus —
>
> At what moment does one start making indifferent art?
>
> From the moment that one is less of an artist, when the necessity of
> making puts down its roots in memory alone. I believe my exhibitions
> depend and still depend on memories of a period when I assumed the
> creative situation in a heroic and solitary manner. In other words, it
> used to be: read this, look at this. Today it is: allow me to
> present...
>
> I didn't want to be obsessed with how to use the world, and that's
> part of my ambivalence towards my art work. I finally managed to shut
> the voices up, mostly by ignoring them. I basically stopped doing art
> work, and when I felt the urge to make a piece I just waited until the
> feeling went away.
<image.tiff>
>
> Express yourself wherever you are. Mobilize!

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