SCIENCE IN ACTION
Science In Action
Q&A with Craig Baldwin
Spectres of the
Spectrum
directed
by Craig Baldwin
Working
out of his gadget-cluttered basement studio in San Franciscos Mission
district, Craig Baldwin has handcrafted a unique body of subcultural cinema
in the past decade. Hes the unabashed Unabomber of underground film, assembling
volatile collages of found footage into paranoid stream-of-consciousness narratives
that touch on conspiracy theory themes and lunatic radicalism. Baldwin has covered
sampling and copyright controversies in Negativland in Sonic Outlaws (1995),
the colonization of the American southwest in ¡O No Coronado! (1992), and
the CIA, flying saucers and mind control in Tribulation 99: Alien Anomolies
Under America (1991).
In addition to his own films,
Baldwin has curated the Other Cinema series for 14 years, screening a wide array
of experimental and underground films. Hes an entrenched San Francisco
sublebrity who can still be seen on the streets, pasting up fliers for his latest
shows.
His newest film, Spectres
of the Spectrum, takes on the theme of electromagnetism in the history of
speculative science, touching on a panoply of fringe figures like Edward Teller,
Wilhelm Reich, Nicola Tesla and Korla Pandit in a futuristic fantasy narrative
involving time travel, millennial apocalypse and psychic warfare. Baldwin discussed
Spectres of the Spectrum with his characteristic nonstop verbal overload
in this recent transmission from his subterranean lair.
Youve got a lot of
ideas bouncing around in Spectres. Howd all these overlapping these themes
develop?
Well, theres certainly
more than one source. One was the concept of HAARP, which is an acronym for
High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program. For me this represented the
perfect metaphor for some kind of military-industrial doomsday machine, but
in fact it probably isnt. Its probably just some kind of everyday
research, and it might even be defunded by the time the movies done, but
it had this metaphorical status because it did represent a completely unprecedented
use of the ionosphere as a possible armature for military application. That
rung very heavily, very profoundly with these kinda science-fiction-resonating
ideas that I want to exploit, to bring to my essay to give it a kind of genre
feel. When I started reading about HAARP I got the feeling that it was something
within the landscape of electromagnetic research and development that I could
build a story around. Now at the other endwhat I call the material endwere
these kinescopes from the Science in Action show. Here the impulse came
from the material itself, which were these beautiful eerie haunted poetic black-and-white
artifacts from an earlier day. They had an incredible kind of attractive quality,
a weird quality, so I wanted to work with the grain of the artifact, the kind
of metallic shimmering you get, the grain of the live video on film, the halos
around people.
So the film kind of worked
toward the middle from these two ends. All the other things started to coalesce
like dust and gas around those poles, to use another cosmic model! Other things
were drawn in like gravity, like the stories of the inventors lives, and
of course the narrativeha!about empire, democracy and media outlaws,
which is an ongoing theme of mine. So all those Craig Baldwin themes started
to get drawn in. Theres also these little episodes or vignettes where
we talk a little about history, or a little about psionics, or a little bit
about the use of radiant energy weapons; we talk a little bit about Teller,
we talk a little bit about Reich and so on. One idea will lead into another
in a sort of free-association way, which is not necessarily good for me because
it means more work cutting the thing together and definitely more work for the
audience to keep track of it all. But its supposed to be a natural expression
of the artist vision, which is confused or whatever or schizophrenic.
I watched the rough cut
on tape. What did I miss that will be in the finished film?
Well, the titles arent
there yet. There are a lot of intertitles. The idea is that the movies
structured as a pirate tv transmission, so periodically every eight or nine
minutes or so a title card will come in on a B-roll and burn in and add this
historical footnote...
Like a pirate feed overriding
normal signals.
Yeah, yeah, thats
always one of the levels thats operating.
So whered you come
across the kinescopes?
They were from the Exploratorium,
a great resource here in San Francisco. They were cleaning house and getting
rid of a lot of prints, and they came right into my hands. When I came into
a whole bunch of them with titles like Miracle Materials, Digging
Down Under, Science of Money, Medicine in Space, Radar
Defense Technologies, X-Rays and so onI saw that they represented
a whole complete total range of mid-century science. I felt there was a kind
of isomorphism between what was happening in the 50s and the 90s because its
both postwar, and post-Cold War. Its the same situation of being after
a war and being flush with the arrogance of ruling the world. All the money
has gone into the research and development of this kind of technology. Its
one with the whole ideology, the culture of worshipespecially here in
Silicon Valleyof the newest kinda gadget thats probably useless
for the most part and doesnt improve the quality of life. I mean, its
just making a smaller class of people richer and richer.
You can see all this happening
right in these old films. Yeager was in there, the Right Stuff dude,
Nimitz and bankers and the RCA vice president. Theres a complete parade
of every fucking fat capitalistright in front of kids! In front of schoolkids!
It looks ludicrous in the 50s, so I just used that as a mirror to critique the
90s. Its just unabashed, unashamed propagandaall I need to do is
turn it over and itll just shoot itself in the foot. I call it a jujitsu
move, to use the weight of this absurd, preposterous blind belief in technology
being the big fix and you turn it around and critique without being so explicit
about it, though I am at points.
Youre looking back
to the 50s in the film but also back to the 19th century a lot, with references
to spiritualism and the mystical dimension to science. And even in the 50s stuff,
you can see the religious reverence science is taught with, the complete belief
that it can solve all answers to the meaning of life.
Well, its not just
a Luddite film, its not anti-technology and its not antiscience.
The whole point is this ambivalence to science, the peril and the promise. Maybe
Im just new age or California or something, but theres also this
sincere belief in the wonder of the universe, and I tried to write that in to
the person of my main character, the woman who wants to get out of this anthropomorphic
mortal coil and merge with the energy systems. But to get back to the 19th century
and Tesla and all that... Thats the thing, there is this marriage of science
and poetry that we see in that period. I wanted to look at the other side of
science, to turn away from the utilitarian use and the overriding the instrumentality
of exploitative science. I wanted to turn from the ideas of "I can use
it to make money" or "I can use this to destroy other populations
of people," but rather, "This could free us! This could liberate us!
My mind is expanding!"
To get back to the California
thing, do you think theres something particularly San Francisco or West
Coast or frontier about the way you structure your narratives?
Well, there truly is a subculture
here, and Im not saying there isnt one in New York, but people are
interested in making movies for a lot of other reasons than money: personal
expression, and putting forward an alternative vision as opposed to conforming
with the mainstream vision or television or anything like that. So there is
that iconoclastic or nonconformist kind of thing here. The films set in
the Southwest, and Ive set my films there before. And from San Francisco
theres definitely the collage idea. Youve got Funk Art, which is
a major tradition here preceding me, not just in cinema but in sculpture and
visual arts. Theres so many collage artists you could cite, its
not like Im a direct inheritor of one artist like Jess Collins or filmmakers
like Bruce Connor and Robert Nelson. Its more a kind of zeitgeist thing,
a sense ofin the airof humor, sexuality, playfulness. Its
more playful out here, its a very diverse scene. I mean New Yorks
diverse, too, but here its more mixed up, and with the artists here theres
much less of a sense of professionalism and more about creating our own culture,
not conforming to commerce. So out here its not like you make a movie
and get paid to do it. The moneys not at the front end and not at the
tail end. All the movies are made out of a pure love and poverty kind of thing.
Another reason that the movies are made out of collage, not just this playfulness
of form, but also its a cinema of pragmatism. Its just the only
way to do it when thats all youve got. Its more like a cargo
cult kinda thing. I feel like one of those New Guinea aboriginal people who,
you know, things fall down from the sky and you make a propeller into a religious
shrine. So all these products fall from the sky from New York and L.A. and we
make our little shrines and we dance in circles around them! (laughs)
Were trying to have
it both ways, to make our little bricolage shrine out of shiny objects that
we project meaning onto, and to make a movie the way we can with what we got
around us. I dont know if thats true for other people from the West
Coast, but Im also about this refusal to work by the rules of, uh, orthodox
reason (laughter) and rationality maybe.
Next project?
Yeah, my next projectjumping
off the bridge, dude! Im in really bad shape now. Im not braggin
about it, but Im a mess. I should go to the hospital. Im tellin
you, Im raked over the coals. Physically, emotionally, psychologically
and financially. Yknow, I made some movies in the past, I might make some
in the future, but I just cant believe how these people all go, "Well,
my next project is blah blah blah." What luxury, or I dont know what
the word is...how preoccupied they could be. This is a total lifestyle for me,
its not easy to just clock it in and leave the studio at 6. This is working
all night, every night. I mean at this point Im just sick of it.
So all those people that
think filmmaking is a lark or whatever, theyre liars. Its hard work.
I dont know how I possibly fell down the trap of trying to make something
so long, but I must be full of myself or cant shut up or it has something
to do with the language drive, but its a pregnant subject area, thats
for sure.
Spectres
of the Spectrum screens Sunday, Oct. 10, 9 p.m., as part of the New York
Film Festivals "Views from the Avant Garde" at the Walter Reade
Theater, 165 W. 65th St. (Bway), 875-5600.
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