Tijela pritisnuta uza zid, neka vrsta srca, pseudo-jetra, oblici u migraciji, prazna seksualnost naseljena tumorima, insektima i životinjama. Eraserhead i Alica u zemlji čudesa istovremeno.
Tom McCormack: Dreamful Slumbers: James Fotopoulos at Microscope
Alice in Wonderland
'Dreamful Slumbers', a show of drawings and movies by James Fotopoulos put on by Microscope last fall, with satellite screenings at Anthology Film Archives, offered a chance to take stock of the filmmaker as his practice is shifting. His move from 16mm to digital has been accompanied by a variety of changes in the texture and meaning of his work.
At the level of independent, DIY production, digital
filmmaking removes many of the constraints inherent to filmmaking. The
freedom that results often casts artists-especially if they have a large
body of work-in a new light.
"Broadly speaking," wrote Jean-Luc Godard, who liked to speak broadly, "there are two kinds of film-makers":
Those who walk along the streets with their heads down, and those who walk with their heads up. In order to see what's going on around them, the former are obliged to raise their heads suddenly and often, turning to the left and then the right, embracing the field of vision is a series of glances. They see. The latter see nothing, they look, fixing their attention on the precise point which interests them. Godard was speaking, on one level, of two approaches to framing and editing: the first involved wide-angles and shifting perspectives, edited intuitively; the second involved tight shots, expertly composed, edited with eerie precision.
Godard's description baffles the regular categories invoked in film studies concerning 'realism' vs. 'expressionism'. According to this binary, there is one ideal approach to filmmaking (realism) meant to reflect reality and another ideal approach (expressionism) meant to express the psychological conditions of the characters or author. Most films are a combination of the two, but most movies veer more in one or the other direction of these ideal types.
Not so, claimed Godard. In his system, there are directors who have developed one, more erratic approach to walking down the street, and there are other directors, obsessives, who organize visual information for themselves in a very different way. In the first camp Godard places Rossellini and Welles; in the second, Hitchcock and Lang. Per Godard, Rossellini is not a 'realist' just because he makes movies about poor people and Hitchcock is not an 'expressionist' just because he makes movies with strange angles. It's more that Rossellini is more distractible, while Hitchcock has a focused gaze. Furthermore, Rossellini is more inward, in a sense, staring at the ground, able to glimpse his surroundings only when he lets his eyes dart around; Hitchcock is the one looking.
But still, the latter group, the Hitchcocks, do define the visionary tradition in cinema. They are looking, and what Godard means by drawing a distinction between this and seeing is what Wordsworth described in Tintern Abbey when a rush of sentiment causes his eyes and ears to comprehend "what they half create/And what perceive."
Filmmakers like Rossellini, and like Godard himself in Breathless (1959), register their subjectivity by determining camera motion according to quotidian whims of perception. Filmmakers like Hitchcock and Lang register their subjectivity by carefully selecting elements of reality onto which they have projected it. Which kind of filmmaker is James Fotopoulos? The minimalism of many of his early films challenges, in a way similar to Godard's essay, pat distinctions between realism and expressionism. Minimalism can be an attempt to capture the world without the ostentatious adornments of popular culture; but it can also be an attempt to efface from reality all the elements the artist doesn't perceive to be an embodiment of his or her vision.
The exhibition 'Dreamful Slumbers' makes a good argument for Fotopoulos' minimalism being of the second variety. Drawing is where Fotopoulos goes to test out provisional ideas; drawing is his drawing board, as it were, and he draws from his imagination; this is where he looks, as it were.
Alice in Wonderland
The classic Fotopoulos image, in terms of his movies, is two bodies set starkly against a white wall, and there's reason to believe indeed that what he is doing is effacing from reality the elements that do not conform to his visionary ambitions, because the major concern in nearly all of his drawings is the human body.
Not just figures but innards, too. In addition to full bodies are strange invented parts: sort-of hearts, pseudo-livers. These bodies from the inside and out are very much half created and half perceived.
The visual world here is recognizable in terms of other artists from Fotopoulos' generation. The visual idiom is drawn from both pop- and sub-culture. In terms of the first, there is the influence of fantasy illustration, lushly imagined curves and well-shaded fey worlds. In terms of the latter there is a debt to underground comics. Fotopoulos' drawings are fetishistic in their approach to and occasionally seem self-hating regarding their own fascination with the human body. This is recognizable from the work of comix artists like R. Crumb and Peter Bagge.
Crumb used delicate lines to offset the obvious disgust he felt for his desired objects; Bagge grossly distorted his figures to project his own self-loathing onto them. Fotopoulos' approach is related to both but is neither so subtle nor so aggressive. His works simultaneously have a tossed off and worked over quality, as if obsessive but uncommitted. They remain incompleted sometimes, just pencil lines; other entire figures will drop off the page and disappear, malformed. It is as if the desire to draw them got strangled amid doing so, as if he is sometimes losing interest, or bothered somehow by his own imaginings.
The hermetic world of these drawings sheds an interesting light on Fotopoulos' movies. Hitchcock's storyboards are famous for how precisely they laid out his movies' visual design. A different visionary, Stan Brakhage, eventually got frustrated entirely with filming, so precisely did he want his movies to reflect the impulses of his consciousness, and this alone, that he began painting and scratching directly onto film-stock.
Fotopoulos' drawings also contain storyboards, but they seem more provisional than Hitchcock's. His work, too, suggests a desire to shape a movie around the desirous flickering of his mind, like Brakhage, but Fotopoulos' films themselves are less inward. The drawings seem to work more like a map; an area of potential interest; some place to go next; as if as an artist he is always starting with inwardness, but eventually turning out, looking around, seeing what else is there.
The films that Fotopoulos created out these imagined worlds, which screened as part of 'Dreamful Slumbers', continue with his visionary minimalism. Alice in Wonderland (2010)-which accounts for many of the drawings displayed-reimagines Lewis Carrol's story as a matter of shifting tableau and brief, suggestive texts.
Carrol's book buzzes along with manic invention; it's maximalist, perpetually proving Carrol's ability to create new situations, riddles, conceits. Fotopoulos subjects it to a radical boiling down, retaining elements of wonder and confusion but abandoning the rest. Fotopoulos' camera often holds on the main character as snippets of dialogue and ideas appear in writing.
Working in digital, Fotopoulos is willing to let his imagery overflow occasionally, as when he includes drawings in the films, but still maintains a tone of austerity through tightly controlled editing and use of ellipses; holding on images for a long time and omitting key information.
The story is refracted into pieces of information that have to be put together by the viewer. The strategy-in its elongation of single moments-recalls the silent filmmaking of Russian director Evgenii Bauer. But even more so, it recalls, once again, comic books. Comic books demand a hermetic reading strategy; they're associated with adolescence in part because the narrative world they create has an aura of the autoerotic, being staged in the reader's head. Fotopoulos builds his film-world along similar lines. Narration is offered over drawings that render interior space; the visuals are at a level of fantasy further removed from the dream-imagery of the book. The book imagines a dream-world that is physical, but it's as if Fotopoulos is embodying Alice's consciousness-her feelings, etc.-as she is inside the dream-world.
Thick Comb
Thick Comb (2011) takes its lovers and strands them in the world of Fotopoulos' drawings. Quite literally, Fotopoulos blurs their edges so they literally bleed into his strange, pink backgrounds. In this world -conjured through purposefully cheapo digital effects- they go through the typical routine of sex and confession. The routine is interrupted once more by the intrusion of sculptural objects and nervous burps of a bass line.
Appearing here, as in Alice, the objects Fotopoulos overlays combine the phallic, vegetal, and fecal into one: a family reunion return of the repressed. They embody, of course, the confessions the lovers have to make to each othe r-or the ones they'd rather not- just as they embody the reason Alice has to voyage beyond the quotidian world.
In Chimera, Fotopoulos' molds take over the faces of the main characters. Resembling the masks of Greek tragedy grown strange with biomorphic flourishes, the masks stress Fotopoulos' concern with characterological abstraction, which has remained a constant in his films.
How these elements will translate into one of his current projects-an epic film about Richard Nixon-is a fascinating subject for conjecture. In an age of "historical recreation" of the Forrest Gump-type, political history is always dealt with in terms of realism. Fotopoulos' obsession with rearticulating interiority through elision and absence could very well serve as the perfect treatment of a life that's been over-mythologized.
"Broadly speaking," wrote Jean-Luc Godard, who liked to speak broadly, "there are two kinds of film-makers":
Those who walk along the streets with their heads down, and those who walk with their heads up. In order to see what's going on around them, the former are obliged to raise their heads suddenly and often, turning to the left and then the right, embracing the field of vision is a series of glances. They see. The latter see nothing, they look, fixing their attention on the precise point which interests them. Godard was speaking, on one level, of two approaches to framing and editing: the first involved wide-angles and shifting perspectives, edited intuitively; the second involved tight shots, expertly composed, edited with eerie precision.
Godard's description baffles the regular categories invoked in film studies concerning 'realism' vs. 'expressionism'. According to this binary, there is one ideal approach to filmmaking (realism) meant to reflect reality and another ideal approach (expressionism) meant to express the psychological conditions of the characters or author. Most films are a combination of the two, but most movies veer more in one or the other direction of these ideal types.
Not so, claimed Godard. In his system, there are directors who have developed one, more erratic approach to walking down the street, and there are other directors, obsessives, who organize visual information for themselves in a very different way. In the first camp Godard places Rossellini and Welles; in the second, Hitchcock and Lang. Per Godard, Rossellini is not a 'realist' just because he makes movies about poor people and Hitchcock is not an 'expressionist' just because he makes movies with strange angles. It's more that Rossellini is more distractible, while Hitchcock has a focused gaze. Furthermore, Rossellini is more inward, in a sense, staring at the ground, able to glimpse his surroundings only when he lets his eyes dart around; Hitchcock is the one looking.
But still, the latter group, the Hitchcocks, do define the visionary tradition in cinema. They are looking, and what Godard means by drawing a distinction between this and seeing is what Wordsworth described in Tintern Abbey when a rush of sentiment causes his eyes and ears to comprehend "what they half create/And what perceive."
Filmmakers like Rossellini, and like Godard himself in Breathless (1959), register their subjectivity by determining camera motion according to quotidian whims of perception. Filmmakers like Hitchcock and Lang register their subjectivity by carefully selecting elements of reality onto which they have projected it. Which kind of filmmaker is James Fotopoulos? The minimalism of many of his early films challenges, in a way similar to Godard's essay, pat distinctions between realism and expressionism. Minimalism can be an attempt to capture the world without the ostentatious adornments of popular culture; but it can also be an attempt to efface from reality all the elements the artist doesn't perceive to be an embodiment of his or her vision.
The exhibition 'Dreamful Slumbers' makes a good argument for Fotopoulos' minimalism being of the second variety. Drawing is where Fotopoulos goes to test out provisional ideas; drawing is his drawing board, as it were, and he draws from his imagination; this is where he looks, as it were.
Alice in Wonderland
The classic Fotopoulos image, in terms of his movies, is two bodies set starkly against a white wall, and there's reason to believe indeed that what he is doing is effacing from reality the elements that do not conform to his visionary ambitions, because the major concern in nearly all of his drawings is the human body.
Not just figures but innards, too. In addition to full bodies are strange invented parts: sort-of hearts, pseudo-livers. These bodies from the inside and out are very much half created and half perceived.
The visual world here is recognizable in terms of other artists from Fotopoulos' generation. The visual idiom is drawn from both pop- and sub-culture. In terms of the first, there is the influence of fantasy illustration, lushly imagined curves and well-shaded fey worlds. In terms of the latter there is a debt to underground comics. Fotopoulos' drawings are fetishistic in their approach to and occasionally seem self-hating regarding their own fascination with the human body. This is recognizable from the work of comix artists like R. Crumb and Peter Bagge.
Crumb used delicate lines to offset the obvious disgust he felt for his desired objects; Bagge grossly distorted his figures to project his own self-loathing onto them. Fotopoulos' approach is related to both but is neither so subtle nor so aggressive. His works simultaneously have a tossed off and worked over quality, as if obsessive but uncommitted. They remain incompleted sometimes, just pencil lines; other entire figures will drop off the page and disappear, malformed. It is as if the desire to draw them got strangled amid doing so, as if he is sometimes losing interest, or bothered somehow by his own imaginings.
The hermetic world of these drawings sheds an interesting light on Fotopoulos' movies. Hitchcock's storyboards are famous for how precisely they laid out his movies' visual design. A different visionary, Stan Brakhage, eventually got frustrated entirely with filming, so precisely did he want his movies to reflect the impulses of his consciousness, and this alone, that he began painting and scratching directly onto film-stock.
Fotopoulos' drawings also contain storyboards, but they seem more provisional than Hitchcock's. His work, too, suggests a desire to shape a movie around the desirous flickering of his mind, like Brakhage, but Fotopoulos' films themselves are less inward. The drawings seem to work more like a map; an area of potential interest; some place to go next; as if as an artist he is always starting with inwardness, but eventually turning out, looking around, seeing what else is there.
The films that Fotopoulos created out these imagined worlds, which screened as part of 'Dreamful Slumbers', continue with his visionary minimalism. Alice in Wonderland (2010)-which accounts for many of the drawings displayed-reimagines Lewis Carrol's story as a matter of shifting tableau and brief, suggestive texts.
Carrol's book buzzes along with manic invention; it's maximalist, perpetually proving Carrol's ability to create new situations, riddles, conceits. Fotopoulos subjects it to a radical boiling down, retaining elements of wonder and confusion but abandoning the rest. Fotopoulos' camera often holds on the main character as snippets of dialogue and ideas appear in writing.
Working in digital, Fotopoulos is willing to let his imagery overflow occasionally, as when he includes drawings in the films, but still maintains a tone of austerity through tightly controlled editing and use of ellipses; holding on images for a long time and omitting key information.
The story is refracted into pieces of information that have to be put together by the viewer. The strategy-in its elongation of single moments-recalls the silent filmmaking of Russian director Evgenii Bauer. But even more so, it recalls, once again, comic books. Comic books demand a hermetic reading strategy; they're associated with adolescence in part because the narrative world they create has an aura of the autoerotic, being staged in the reader's head. Fotopoulos builds his film-world along similar lines. Narration is offered over drawings that render interior space; the visuals are at a level of fantasy further removed from the dream-imagery of the book. The book imagines a dream-world that is physical, but it's as if Fotopoulos is embodying Alice's consciousness-her feelings, etc.-as she is inside the dream-world.
Thick Comb
Thick Comb (2011) takes its lovers and strands them in the world of Fotopoulos' drawings. Quite literally, Fotopoulos blurs their edges so they literally bleed into his strange, pink backgrounds. In this world -conjured through purposefully cheapo digital effects- they go through the typical routine of sex and confession. The routine is interrupted once more by the intrusion of sculptural objects and nervous burps of a bass line.
Appearing here, as in Alice, the objects Fotopoulos overlays combine the phallic, vegetal, and fecal into one: a family reunion return of the repressed. They embody, of course, the confessions the lovers have to make to each othe r-or the ones they'd rather not- just as they embody the reason Alice has to voyage beyond the quotidian world.
In Chimera, Fotopoulos' molds take over the faces of the main characters. Resembling the masks of Greek tragedy grown strange with biomorphic flourishes, the masks stress Fotopoulos' concern with characterological abstraction, which has remained a constant in his films.
How these elements will translate into one of his current projects-an epic film about Richard Nixon-is a fascinating subject for conjecture. In an age of "historical recreation" of the Forrest Gump-type, political history is always dealt with in terms of realism. Fotopoulos' obsession with rearticulating interiority through elision and absence could very well serve as the perfect treatment of a life that's been over-mythologized.
James Fotopoulos: An Interview by Brian Frye
Brian: So, to start with, how about some background information? How did you get into film?
James: I grew up in Norridge IL, which is right outside of O'Hare Airport. It's a strange area, mainly because of the airport and the amount of activity passing through it. Combine this with the forest preserves, the factories, the hotels, and the attempt to have some type of normal suburb right on the edge of it, and it creates nothing but corrupt activity and a strange negative energy that fills the air. The area is mostly populated by suffocatingly close working class family, which would destroy your ambition and dreams if you didn't have the will power to fight the "closeness" with force. In that type of situation the standard of what you can do with your life is set very, very low. And no one wants to deal with any outside challenges or criticisms. There is a great deal of fear and threat. Fear of being exposed. But as for filmmaking, I just grew into it for reasons I can't explain. I didn't one day say, "Here, this is what I'm gonna do." My father was very interested in movies, photography, and history so maybe it comes from there. He is also very organized. My mother was always interested creating things and artistic stuff. When I was a child - in grammar school - I was interested in the filmmaking process. You know, makeup and puppets, acting these out in front of a camera and those types of things. And I was interested in still photography, drawing, science, all that stuff. And it just seemed like film - all those things were a part of it. I was into stop-motion, the Harryhausen type. I didn't know what it was at the time, but I knew I guess insinctively that those interests were fragments of this larger meduim . So, when I got into high school the obsession intensified, and I started doing video work with the high school for their public annoucements.
B: So that's when you started making moving images, in high school?
J: Yeah, when I was a freshman.
B: And that was pretty mechanical stuff, or you could do whatever you wanted?
J: No, actually I got fired. I went to a Catholic grammar school and a Catholic high school - they
were
private schools - basically under
the assumption that you received a
better education in a private school.
Which is wrong because anything I
learned that was useful, I learned
myself. And when I was younger, my
family and teachers at school, considered
me a troublemaker and a person of
low intelligence and with little ability.
This I think was basically because
I had no interest in school and wished
to not participate in any of it. But
now I am very glad I attended those
schools, because of the religous element
that I was able understand early on.
But in that environment you couldn't
really say, "This is what I want to
do. I want to make films," because
that was the furthest thing from anybody's
mind. Which it still is to some extent.
Even with people writing about my
films and them screening and being
distributed, I'm still, in the eyes
of many, not a "real" filmmaker. The
response to my interest to film was
very negative from many people around
me. It was perceived as a phase and
still is by some of the same people.
But this was good because I think
it forced me to be very strong-willed,
very early on. I remember that at
that time I was interested in the
Super-8 my grandfather had - he had
all the equipment - so I was leaning
toward an interest in that. And then
when I got involved in the actual
school video things, the school would
say, you know, "We're gonna do a blood
drive. Who wants to make a video for
the blood drive?" And not that many
people were really into it, I was
the only guy. And then, I would collect
my friends, and do these things. And
then I started doing stuff, ah...
B: Well, what kind of tapes did you make for something like that?
J: There'd be - the blood drive would come up, and there would be people vomiting, it would be stuff like that. Someone would get shot, and there would be blood all over the place, and these type of things. I guess very childish, but never trying to shock the school. I never thought of it like that.
B: Yeah, I could see the school not being particularly thrilled with that.
J: Yeah, well, they were sort of confused for awhile, but there were two teachers and one in particular that actually supported me and thought that I "had something." He is the one that told me to go to Columbia. I just fell into that school. No one in my family was really willing to give any direction or make much of an effort, so I was on my own. I was told "you have to figure out what you want to do." I knew what I wanted to do, but had to keep quiet about it for a while and just "play around" with this film stuff. Filmmaking means maybe you'll do commericals, the counselors in high school thought. So I asked this teacher, and he said "Go to Columbia. It's a good school, there's no admissions test." So from sophmore on I didn't think about college because that was where I was going to go. And maybe it is different now, but this is 1991, 1992 and the independant film phenomenon - or lie - really hadn't hit too hard yet. In Chicago at least it hit after I was gone from Columbia. I believe their admissions exploded around 1996 or 1997 and then they started going digital. But anyway, back to the videos. I did one where I think a crippled guy was in a garbage can or something like that and a Physics teacher complained. And that's when they said, "You can't do this anymore." So I was fired. So I started making videos with my friends. We started incorporating them into class projects. We did one hour and a half video of Dante's Inferno. And they actually showed those at the school. But you learn pretty quickly. But this whole time I was thinking about film from a very techincal, psychological stand point. Like, "why in this film does that shot make me feel that way? and how do you do that?" or "there are only five people in this movie's crew and the whole thing was shot outside". And very quickly you realize that film is not video, not even close - but a totally different thing. It is too bad they can't co-exist and one doesn't have to replace the other, but as we know that is not how America works. They are not interchangeable, once you begin to break down film into that emotional and technical way. This was when I was a freshman or sophomore. When I was a sophomore I shot my first film. But I was basically trying to learn the tools and what they do.
B: So you were watching a lot of film then?
J: Well, yeah. And that was all part of the learning and growing and understanding the medium. Which is still the case today. Most of it was all pretty much out of necessity. Out of understanding what you're doing in a very practical way, to get things done. So that's how I started watching a lot of films. I was interested in certain things. My dad had the International Encyclopedia of Film. I've got it right over here. You know the book I'm talking about? You know, the blue one? A lot of the avant-garde stuff's in there. And I remember that I just read through it. It went into the tinting and toning type processes, all the silents, everything was in this book. And I read through this book sort of out of curiosity. What is going on? And that just snowballed. I started watching a lot of stuff at that time. Just to understand what the history is.
B: So your first feature was ZERO, right, but you made short films before that?
J: Yeah, I made four short films, on film.
B: In high school?
J: I made two in high school, and then I made two while I was at Columbia before I dropped out.
B: So did these first films grow out of the stuff you were seeing at the time?
J: No, I think with ZERO that was more the situation. But with those shorts I think the good thing is that I did all that when I was really young. So I had already developed an ability to organize things pretty well. Because when I would shoot these videos in high school, I would have to organize everybody, get everybody together and make them do it. And I became very good at that. Because I remember when I got into college I realized that I had - compared to the other students, I was able to pull things together quicker. And part of it was also very instinctive. I was able to just walk in and say, "This is where it goes, this is how its going to be," with a camera. And I noticed a lot of the other guys couldn't do that. I think a lot of that had to do with the fact that when I was 13 I was trying to do it. And the thing was, I was never playing around. Those videos when I was 13, I was dead serious about them. Even though looking back on them now they were probably ridiculous. But I was dead serious. This was not just me screwing off with a camera, this was real. So, even the earliest things were that way. I always acted very impulsively and instictively. And it was all very much that way. Each short was different. I remember the first short was just learning how to do things, understanding. The second was a refinement on that and with that I was very conscious of the lens and perspective, probally because of Lang's M. You know, "This lens does this, this does that." And that was done in the woods, because I grew up by a woodlands area. There were forest preserve areas by the airport. And then when I got into college I did the other one. The first one, it did well at the school. It was in that best of the year-end nonsense they do. That had the mannequin stuff in it, from ZERO. And then, the one I did after that was the sync-sound one. And by this time I did not agree with or abide by anything that they were telling me to do. I had already seen more films that any of the teachers and more importantly, shot more footage than any of them.
B: It's interesting that you were making these films while you were at Columbia, because especially ZERO and MIGRATING FORMS have a really distinctive stylistic quality, in terms of both the structure and this tension between a Warhol-esque documentary feeling and then these extremely distorted sequences. And I'm wondering where that came from.
J: I don't really know. I mean, by MIGRATING FORMS, I was gone from school. And ZERO, by the end I was gone. The very beginning of it I started there, but no one knew about it, because there was so much talk and very little productivity, which I find embarassing. I was just doing it outside. And I wasn't even taking film classes. I was too fed up even for that. I was taking a science course, I think. Columbia was also a complete joke. These teachers didn't know anything. I meet teachers from film schools all the time and I can't believe it, I can't believe that some of these students are taking out loans or their parents are working two jobs, so they can go to college and this is what they get, and the students don't know any better. Because the "film world" is a very tricky and sometimes evil place. Even at that level. But I hadn't seen that much experimental stuff at the time. The majority of what I watched was studio films. And then it was taking things down to the very basic... ZERO came very
quickly. I wrote it out in a night.
I know now it was all serial-killer
stuff and all that, but I didn't think
of it like that. I just thought of
it very impulsively as, "What is the
extension of these types of emotions,"
and I guess it's fairly accurate in
that way. I just saw a mannequin in
a store window and the relationship
in the film came to me. And if I may
say so, there are very, very few films
I have ever seen that deal with that
subject matter properly. And sex crime,
pornography and things related are
a problem, mainly in America. I hear
people say: "We do not need any more
films about killers and hit men."
The answer to that is - you need films
that do it right. People have said
ZERO is juvenile - badly acted and
so on. The type of people in ZERO
are juvenile and their sexual obsession
with the forbidden is like a time
bomb. There is no healtly human interaction
with that behaviour. It is self destructive.
Some of them may be intelligent, but
not emotionally mature. So these people
are not reasonable, which an audience
wants. And this nightmarish existence
has to be translated into film. So
the film must mirror those emotions.
And in doing that it should be somewhat
unbearable, static, childish, externally
acted, repetitive, sterotypical, contradictory
and illogical. And in terms of "good"
and "bad" cinema, "bad" cinema is
closer to the sociopath's inner world.
People like to believe that yo can
rationalize this these actions and
behavior. But if you take your one
sexual and violent impluses and think
about from in where in the soul do
they emerge? What deep cave are they
coming from? What magic? And think
about the impluse of it, the power.
It is unexplainable in a clear cut
way. It can't be boiled down. So these
people are like out-of-control animals.
Their impluses are like time bombs,
in this quest to fillful these powerful
needs. I feel a lot of people don't
want to know that. But in terms of
the actual filming, I remember ZERO
was a learning experience, there was
an abundance of filters used, special-effects,
forced perspective, puppets, miniatures,
editing tricks. The printing was a
little insane. It was like an explosion.
This stuff was pouring out. There
was a lot of footage shot that wasn't
used. A lot of scenes that weren't
shot. But part of that was like -
you're in a situation where everyone
is telling you "you can't do all this
type of stuff." At Columbia I remember
a teacher heard I was doing this,
and he said, "It's a nice little exercise."
Because from what he saw of my shorts,
being sexual and the special make-up
and all that, to him I wasn't interested
in serious filmmaking. That type of
mentality of, "You can't do this."
So you have to develop the willpower
to do it. And that's part of the filmmaking
process, not just with the first film,
but every film. I remember with ZERO
a lot of it was making it as real
as it can be. Which I still try to
do with everything. Try to keep it
as close as I can to how things really
are. Not the lie of objectivity, which
doesn't exist or a consensus reality,
which changes, but the reality of
how we "percieve" the world. B: So was it based on something? I'm just wondering where the film came from, in terms of not just the story but also the aesthetic.
J: Yeah, I think it just sort of came from trying to tell the truth about those types of feelings. I think I
had
ideas, like images of what I thought
things would be. I saw that basement
he lives in. I had seen it a long
time before. And the thing about it
is, pieces of ZERO are in those two
shorts I did. There are things that
are literally in them, like the caged
guy, the same actor, all those things.
And those feelings and images are
still there. So when the time came
to shoot it, I was translating that
into the film. Translating all of
these perceptions into the image/sound
language. Like saying, "I have these
tools that could do this and that,
and if I was in this world or parallel
worlds, how would that be in a film,
what would be the truth." And also
this is all in pursuit of a constant
pushing forward, an evolution of your
spirit. The religion of your life.
And with these tools comes a quest
to understand your relationship with
God and understand the world or worlds
we inhabit. I become very obsessive
over things and my imagination has
tendency to go into overdrive, so
I'm always trying to take all of this
chaos and control it with tools of
cinema. Like putting all this confusion
in a tunnel and contain it into something
positive. Because what you don't want
to happen is allow your imagination
to fall into depravity or laziness,
becasue that is easy to do. So your
job becomes willing your spirit and
imagination into this communication
with other people through film. People
allowing their imagination to dwell
in pornography, sexual activity and
drugs are all trying to do the same
thing I am with film: evolve to make
sense of life and understand our relationship
to God. But their way is a dead end.
Because it is easy and feels good
immediately and like anything, the
obsession is intense, but it cuts
them off from other people, from communication
with the collective, because the moral
structure of the world hasn't changed
and isn't going to anytime soon, as
long as we remain human beings, so
they remain on the outside. ZERO was
the beginning of my learning this.
But it is impossible to explain your
drive, obsession or abilities. You
can try to think about it, but you
can never understand it. It can never
be rationalized. Why images and sounds
pop into your head and why you're
compelled to make them into films,
the core of that is a mystery. I don't
think you can fully understand your
soul. B: Its interesting you say that, because in a way certain themes in ZERO especially, and I think MIGRATING FORMS as well, have this David Lynch feel to them, and yet the approach visually is totally different. It's got this concrete, immediate quality to the shooting. It doesn't have that otherworldly quality. It's very much in the world. Like this is actually happening. It's got a very documentary, very material feeling to what you're seeing.
J: All the stuff in the films comes from things that are around you or me. With MIGRATING FORMS, even more than ZERO, because ZERO was an outside thing. You knew the woods. You knew this industrial type basement. In ZERO you could say they came from very specific things that would happen. It's sort of like the idea of those things. The idea of a washroom. It's a private place.
B: And that was inflecting how you went about approaching the shooting of that scene then? The feeling of the space?
J: Well, the idea, which is still an idea I have now, and I try to adhere to, is to elevate everything above what you're doing. You're elevating everything to an artifice, by making a combination of a very real physical, concrete real object which is at the same time artificial. By doing this, it comes closer to our inner reality or truth. Which film does better than any other medium. You're taking all of these very concrete things and you're moving them into this inner thing, technically, it is all done techically, because these tools are what is actually putting these things up there in front of people to view. This representation that we are all part of this giant ball of energy that is life. And each different tool, will have a different effect on the audience. It is a type of invention or feeling or atmosphere of invention. And I think - and I could be wrong, but I believe - this is done in the photography stage of the process. It is when the camera is rolling that this invention occurs. This aura can't be created or "saved" later. In video, what I believe as of now, it is done in post. That could change for me in the future. That is the only way to elevate that medium into "invention" or create that filter. Which isn't a bad thing, just a different thing. And that's what I was doing then, although I couldn't articulate it. Even
in MIGRATING FORMS. The actual shooting
all comes down to being very practical.
It's supposed to be done here and
now. We have to get it done in two
days. Things build over a period of
months, and it's all very instinctual.
These pieces go together. What's important
is whether these shots fit together
or if these colors edited next to
each other make sense. For example,
a friend of mine was watching a short
film of mine and complaining that
certain shots of the film were "vagina"
references and I should cut them out.
Now many people have seen this film
and many of them have been women.
No one but him said this or even thought
this. When I explained why those shots
had to be there, why they could not
be pulled from the structure, for
many structural and textural reasons,
he just shook his head, as if that
didn't matter. But he is wrong, that
is all that matters. He projected
references onto the film from his
own personality and life history.
And that is something everyone is
going to do. You as a filmmaker can't
worry about that. It is not my problem.
You should respect your audience,
but you owe them nothing. Another
example is that someone once said
in MIGRATING FORMS that he didn't
like the film because the character
of the Man ignores the tumor on the
Woman's back. What if the Man in the
film doesn't know it is there? That
is not the logic the film creates.
Or in WALL understanding who is who
as the film progresses or trying to
hear every line of dialouge is not
the critical factor, but if the film
succeeds the dialouge and people become
an atmosphere and that feeling conveys
the meanings.That is how the film
makes sense. And people can project
any interpretation on to the film
they want, I hope they do. But that
type of thinking, that type of linear
logic, is not my interest. Because
that type of linear logic doesn't
exist in life. So the logic is the
placement or combination of the details
that create the world of the film.
Those details could be three frame
shots, shadows, lens, and so on. People
are also those details, so they too
are objects. Because the technical
stuff - whether it's video, film,
whatever - That's your representation
of your interior space. That's the
glue. So, when you're seeing the film,
it's inseperable from what you're
doing. Somebody asked me when I was
in Cleveland, "You talk a lot about
the technical stuff, what about the
content?" And I said, "There's no
difference. They're the same thing."
B: One of the things that makes the films so compelling is that you don't really let this lurid subject matter overwhelm the filmmaking process. You describe the movies, and they sound as if its going to be one kind of experience, but the actual viewing is something very different. Every section of the film gets the same amount of weight. It's not like you've got a lot of throwaway and buildup, and then say "This is what I really want you to look at."
J: I think that serials from the 30's and exploitation films, horror films, and these types of cinema that are considered "low" are much closer to life. Because of the complete lack of anything that is rational and the brutality is closer to how we live. For example, I saw some lowly exploitation film recently where the hero and the heroine, bloodied and wounded from gun fire, blow up a truck in a desert with the bad guy in it. This is the end of the film. So, as this explosion is going on and they are falling to the ground arm in arm in slow motion they are making out. This may seem ridiculous, and the film was not good, but that scene most people would say "that's not realistic". But it may really be closer to life, because the rational has been stripped away and only the emotions exist. Things in my films that are considered lurid to me are never thought of that way. They are simply attempts to get close to the truth, and sometimes to get there you have to go throw some troubling things. And I again use the world I live in as my refernce point. Everything in the films is in the lives we live. Life can be very brutal. There is no need to avoid that. I don't think that art should make the viewer forget anything, but rather show people the hardness of life. And be honest about it. The films should not entertain you , but make you realize how how much potential your life has and that you could strive to accomplish great things, if you want to. Even the people in the films, they're all pieces of this giant puzzle. And all those little details matter. So if something is of a lurid nature it has to fit into the project, no differently than anything else. So the films are not just about these dark things; all elements are equal. All are part of this world. I'll be sleepless over edits. One shot will just drive me crazy for days. Every little part has to be right. Or as right as you can get it. People forget, they begin to think it's like life, where we don't pay attention to these things. But all of those little things are what make the work alive.
B: I'm interested in what you said about the people being like a piece in a puzzle. It resonates with the Chagnon film (THE AX FIGHT) that you showed at the RBMC. In a way, that whole films is about breaking down an event. Its an attempt to decipher a puzzle, as it were...
J: I think the thing that was most compelling about the Ax Fight was the idea of anthropology. The idea that we're all part of the same energy. Which I guess is there in ZERO as well. It's like the trees and all of these things are the same as we are. And they have to be given equal time. And that's not a negative, misanthropic view of people. If you take things down to the smallest particles, they're like the glue we exist in. Which is a very hopeful thing in terms of evolving.
B: That's interesting, because there is an ontological quality to all of your films. It reminds me in a way of how Bresson talks about directing. Without psychologizing. You pare things down so far. You have these extreme situations, and yet, you're not trying to present the interiour space of the characters. They're just events taking place, just like everything else. You don't try to explain them away or make sense of what they're doing.
J: The idea of the anthropologist was very strong. And that's in the studio films too. You can look at someone like Cagney - who the more I think about it, could be the best actor in the history of American films - and he existed as this thing, this block, this man, this image, and he knew it. And you don't have to go beyond that. I was talking to a guy last night about Keaton. If you look at his films - the ones that succeed - it's all action that's being filmed. It is completely kinetic things as well, which makes it come closer to a fusion of the medium and our evolving. You don't have to ask who this is, what's going on. You know. He's there and the action takes place. It's a very geometric thing. He's using these tools to explore and unearth, manipulate and record. So, I'm only filming action. I'm not filming what you're thinking. And you ask, how this relates to your own very basic existence. How is this occuring on an everyday level or in an everyday way, where I don't think about these things, because it's what I do? I don't think about a lot of what people ask me, because I'm just doing it. But I was also impressed with the idea, and I still am, and will do more with it in ESOPHAGUS. The idea of, Chagnon, going somewhere and studying something. Using these tools to try to understand things, to unearth information, to manipulate and record. He's very aware of what the tools are doing and how you can gain understanding with them. It's difficult to say, "Well, I'm going to eliminate actors." Because you can do it. You can go there, and translate it all through a camera. But to add people inside of that, you have to ask how people really act, as opposed to how movie acting is. And all these techniques and styles - avant-garde, narrative, acting and so on - are all part of the history we've made. So they need to be understood and used, and in using them, pushing forward into some type evolution of the soul.
B: Maybe you could talk a little bit about your interaction with actors? In all of your films, but especially MIGRATING FORMS and BACK AGAINST THE WALL, I found myself asking, "Are these actors or non-actors?" It's hard to tell.
J: In BACK AGAINST THE WALL, and even MIGRATING FORMS, a lot of them had done a
lot of work as actors. And my idea
was always to make it as close to
- there's all these different styles
of acting. And the more you think
about it, the more you start to think,
so what the hell is acting? It's the
same thing with photography. What
is supposed to be good photography?
I've heard two times in the last three
weeks that MIGRATING FORMS was badly
photographed. Someone said it was
shadowless. And someone else said
it was dark. That's not even worth
talking to people about, something
like that. I still have trouble understanding
what a good film is. With actors,
on a practical level, you have to
take each person individually, no
matter how many people you have. I
don't have auditions, usually I just
get to know them. You find out pretty
quickly if they're not on board, and
if so, you just lose them. In BACK
AGAINST THE WALL, the three leads
were originally all different, and
I replaced them. First, they have
to look right. They have to fit in
as a piece. They have to fit in as
an image. And the second thing is
how their voice sounds. Not necessarily
how they act, but how their voice
sounds. Then you can begin working
with them, on the basis of how their
personality is you can begin going
in and doing all this work with them.
Some need more, some less. And a lot
if it is, "Say this. More here." That
type of thing. "Sit down." To create
that blur, in between acting... in
BACK AGAINST THE WALL, when Levey
flips out it's very theatrical. But
then the rest of it is very down.
The party is acted totally differently.
And even the main girl - in the second
part her acting has changed. And that
was all very deliberate, to create
this glue of how people really might
act... How our perceptions of people
and space and objects are constantly
changing. Those perceptions change
within a blink and then we need to
assimilate these new images and actions.
When someone flips out, how do you
perceive that, if you're the person
doing it, or the person watching?
It's got to be really weird, like
a crazy thing, emotions all over.
How do you translate that into a film?
So there's always that attempt to
get the emotions of it and the atmosphere
as real as it can be, which sometimes
isn't what people think real acting
is supposed to be like. With MIGRATING
FORMS, each of those people you had
to treat differently. The main guy,
you knew he could only do this much,
that's what he was capable of, so
you worked with him in one way. The
girl internalized everything, was
more method, in a generic sense. So
that's how you worked with her, you
let her do that. The landlord was
a totally different type of actor,
he was a theater actor. So he was
this outside thing that could come
in and act very theatrically, because
he was an outside element. In WALL
it was an extension of that because
you have more actors. Debbie, who
played June in the film was a very
powerful image. Her performace is
a combination of her will power and
an understanding that she is also
an oject to be photographed and manipulated
my me. She very very interested in
everything technical and how that
was going to filter into what she
had to do. That what she was doing
was part of all these other things
that are on on the set and the filmmaking
process functions like an organism.
It's difficult to find actors like
that. The result is this strange hybrid
what we as a collective percieve as
good and bad movie acting, but that
hybrid is closer to inner truth. B: There were elements of MIGRATING FORMS that reminded me of both Andy Warhol's films, which people have probably mentioned, and also some on Chantal Akerman's films, specifically some of her early films, which had a very similar structure and sense of time, or time passing. Marking the passage of time through the repetition of similar sequences.
J: I still have never seen a Warhol film. Of Akerman's I've seen JE TU IL ELLE, but I can't remember if I saw it before or after making MIGRATING FORMS. The film I was watching was THE LONG VOYAGE HOME. And that was a way of communicating to the guy who was my camera operator what we were doing. He asked "What is it like?" And the atmosphere that popped into my head was THE LONG VOYAGE HOME. That was the thing that was closest in terms of grays and shadows. B: It's very common for people today to talk about post-modern directors and appropriating images, but when I see your films, I see parallels with other movies, but they don't ever feel like quotations. There are structural similarities, or sometimes even borrowed elements, but they are subordinated to the film.. It reminds you of something, but never feels like an obvious nod. I wouldn't even call them allusions so much as common approaches. J: You know I never even thought about half that stuff until someone wrote about it. Even with the makeup, which I was doing before ZERO, I just had this idea, and I had to do it.
B: It seems like a healthy form of allusion, rather than an appropriation You're making sense of certain precedents, while still keeping your distance.
J: I've never looked at someone's film and said, "Oh, I want to do that." Even people I admire, like Ford, I never said, "This is what I want to do." Even in ZERO, when I did the hand-tinted stuff, I hadn't even seen Brakhage's films yet. I had just seen silent things that were tinted, and the emotions of that made sense. You have to know about the history of film, you can't just ignore that. When I heard that in GLADIATOR they used all those polarizing filters, I wanted to go see what the hell was going down. So you want to know everything that's going on with this machine, this medium that's constantly changing. So you watch all of these films. If they creep into your work, I'm sure that happens to a lot of people
B: You write the screenplays for all of your own films?
J: Yeah.
B: So BACK AGAINST THE WALL, for instance, where did come from?
J: Well, BACK AGAINST THE WALL, that wasn't something that was sitting around. ESOPHAGUS, which I'm doing now, was a script before MIGRATING FORMS. And I couldn't get it together to pull it off. For every film you do, a whole bunch will fall through. When MIGRATING FORMS was in post, I wanted to do another film. And I tried to do this film THE NEST, then ESOPHAGUS, and another one called THROUGH THE WINDOW. WINDOW had a lot of similarities to BACK AGAINST THE WALL, the criminals and pornography and all. And is or could be if ever done a better film. I was trying to get that going, and it kept on falling apart. So, I was at a wake, and this guy was telling me, "Oh man, I have a great story, if you want to make a movie." You know, that type of nonsense you always hear, which in a way is putting you down. And it was the story of this guy who was a mechanic, and he had a friend who was a mechanic. And the guy was really intelligent, he had a very advanced comprehension. I believe what happened was he hit a guy at a stoplight or something and an argument started and he killed the other guy with a crowbar. He went to prison, and all of a sudden by coincidence, his friend was there, for a similar type of reason. And this guy read through the prision library and the two guys created a language they both communicated with. He told me the story and I was like, "Whatever, ok." But this idea made a lot of sense. These elements were playing around in combination with living in the city. Areas like Stone Park, near O'Hare and Cicero in Chicago, those areas of the city, which I always found intriguing. These very shady, red light areas where there are prositutes and all these strip clubs and fashion show bars. And there's always this undercurrent of violence in all these places, even in the clubs. The guys are drinking and the girls are around. It's very tense. Like in those little bars out by O'Hare, among the trees. And the nightclubs in the city. The way the people acting all trying to live the true American dream, which is that everyone warrents beging famous or genius.
B: Kind of lost parts of the city.
J: Yeah, lost parts where criminal behavior is going on. It's very stereotypical in one way. That does exist in a stereotypical way. And of couses these people and their behaviors are very influenced by movies and television, which feed back to that ball of energy, the glue of live, the throwing time into question and the pyschic exchange between people and object through out history. But then there's this more complex thing going on as well, this pursuit to save one's soul. And it sort of grew out of all of that.
B: In BACK AGAINST THE WALL, the guy just does what he does. There's no attempt to explain or prove his genius.
J: One of the problems is that we have these blinders on. We're always organizing everything, forming a facade, a way to deal with things. The more you get down to the smallest things, the more you realize how complex they are. And that's where understanding is. You have to be able to understand why we are, and how we're going to continue. Everyone's always trying to organize things, reduce them. There is no reason to explain. That is not where the truth is at. The truth come from how a film creates an enegry or atmosphere. And this makes the viewer active. And in that internal figuring out in combination with all experineces of your life you have brought to the film and the experinces you gain after, maybe the truth will emerge Don't get me wrong, that element of the film is important, but only what is there on the screen is necessary. Fragments of information that creates a larger world. And the more you learn about the world, the more you realize how little of it is understandable, how we are grappling with the same issues since the beginning of humans.
B: It's a rationalization. Like when someone makes a film about a serial killer, and you get the inner voice of the serial killer. Which just castrates it, because its really the filmmaker's inner voice. It's the filmmaker imagining what a crazy person is going to be thinking. And of course the filmmaker isn't crazy. So its a sane person's version of a crazy person, and all of the sudden you understand the motivation, and it makes sense. It's so dishonest.
J: Yeah, it is dishonest. And it is part of the fear of the idea that we are going to die. The quest for
reason,
but with this comes a sense of meaningless
in life. So the idea is to prolong
life as long as possible and in doing
this we try to live in a "safe" world.
The war on smoking is an example and
this obsession with health. The way
digital effects are used in movies
is another example. It is a way to
not deal with the fact we are all
going to die someday. I'm not saying
that technology can't be put to some
use, but the basic ideology of simply
re-creating or re-building - not only
landscapes and fantastic creatures,
but human beings, artifacts of the
past, or actual interactions between
people and places, without trying
to shape it or push it into some type
of representation of the dream of
life - when boiled down is a way not
to deal with death. And this of course
is almost always the way it is used.
Not only in million dollar productions,
but in the avant-garde world as well.
It is a denial of the observed concrete
world that we inhabit. Because that
concrete world, which we all precieve
differently, in needed in audio/visual
to properly break through into the
parallel worlds. As is the same with
this obsession with nostalgia in not
just films today, but everything.
It is basically fear. Baby Boomers
fear they are growing old, and the
newer generations are living "virtual"
lives, so they have no real sense
of identity. All of these issues plague
the cinema, because audio/visual encompasses
it all. There are of course some great
films being made, but very, very few.
Maybe if I can keep making films long
enough or whatever film becomes in
the future, I might make some good
ones. In the films I've made, only
a few shots are any good. My palette
of tools is still very limited. You
want to create this organism of work,
that fuctions as a life. Some parts
make work and some parts may not,
some parts will be bad and some good.
But in that it mirror's one's life.
With something like BACK AGAINST THE
WALL, you have to say, "You know we
all have pieces of all of this." And
not only do we have pieces of these
people, we also have pieces of this
room, pieces of these shadows and
these sounds. Pieces of this big glue
that we all make up. If I look at
the room I'm in right now, and look
at the way it is set up, and I try
to understand why it's set this way
over the years I've lived here, it's
very difficult. I don't want to push
things under some larger umbrella,
of like "It doesn't matter who you
are, or what you are, or what orientation
you are, or anything. You fall under
this umbrella." The artifacts from
previous civilizations are what we
have to work with. And those need
to be pushed ahead, to be comprehended.
But to do that, you have to tear away
all of the rational things you've
set up. So there's that. Then you
have to remove this handed down type
of filmmaking- When I was in Arizona,
and these guys from AFI made this
film. The things was like ten minutes,
with crane shots. It was insane. Tom
Hanks's brother was in it.. And they're
up there just talking about how hard
it was, how defeated they were, about
the rain. And that's just handed down.
They're supposed to think that. They've
been given the filmmaker's badge of
problems. And that doesn't help anybody.
It doesn't have anything for others.Migrating Forms
“A kind of stripped-down Eraserhead, shot in low-contrast black and white in the style of cheap '40s porn loops, the film is set inside a single room that looks like the basic set you'd find in an acting class—a table with a chair at either end and a bed. The room is occupied by a stolid-looking guy and his cat and is visited repeatedly by a pudgy woman who strips off her clothes, gets on the bed, and has sex with the man. Sometimes the sex scenes are so softly focused and underexposed you can't tell what's going on. At other times, you see more than you would want. The woman has a large hideous growth on her back (rather like the phallic growth in Marilyn Chambers's armpit in Cronenberg's Rabid). Soon the man discovers a similar growth on his shoulder. Midway through the film, an exterminator knocks at the door. After that, dead insects and rodents put in an appearance. Inevitably, the corpse of the cat turns up as well. Migrating Forms has a formal purity and obsessive power that's all too rare these days.”
– Amy Taubin, The Village Voice
“Reminiscent of early Lynch and Scorsese
escapades, Fotopoulos's exquisitely minimalist black-and-white
experiment is a surprising treat that leaves us holding a messy array of
enigmas in our laps. It's a weird, disturbing work of elemental cinema
made by a particularly obsessive ‘independent filmmaker’—a breed that
has become increasingly rare and less pure in America.”
- Cis Bierinckx, City Pages
- Cis Bierinckx, City Pages
"Migrating Forms is as complete a vision as any
film has the right to be, and generates more intrigue and mystery than
most ever do."
- Walker Art Center
1999,16mm, b/w, 80 min, sound mono (filmed 1997)- Walker Art Center
The Hard-Boiled Egg
"In the 1960's, legendary Grove Press publisher Barney Rosset commissioned original screenplays from several literary giants, including Harold Pinter, Marguerite Duras, and Eugene Ionesco. Only Samuel Beckett's Film was produced. Recently, Rosset commissioned Chicago film and video maker James Fotopoulos to create a digital video of Ionesco's previously unproduced screenplay The Hard- Boiled Egg. This new work is fascinating and quite remarkable. Fotopoulos was scrupulously faithful to the original screenplay, with its dry wit and absurdity, yet it's also unmistakably a work by Fotopoulos, with his dynamic yet minimal visual style intact."
- Onion City Experimental Film and Video Festival
2006, digital video, 27min 08sec, color, sound stereo
Selected works
2010- Insta-gator. 51 pages. Drawings, text, video stills. Fantasma, Inc.
- The Gospels. 50 pages. Drawings, text. Fantasma, Inc.
- 2005. 140 pages. Drawings. Fantasma, Inc.
- The Whale Beach. 22 pages. Drawings, text. Fantasma, Inc.
- Dog. 10 pages. Drawings, text. Fantasma, Inc.
- Christmas. 19 pages. Drawings. Fantasma, Inc. - Dead Son. 7 pages. Drawings. Fantasma, Inc.
- Unknnown Colllaborations 1 (with Torsten Zenas Burns). 198 pages. Drawings, video stills, text.
- Codes. 5 pages. Drawings. Fantasma, Inc.
- Parasite. 22 pages. Drawings. Fantasma, Inc.
- Spies. 21 pages. Drawings.Fantasma, Inc.
- Tape. 50 pages. Drawings. Fantasma, Inc.
- Death Lip. 11 pages. Drawings. Fantasma, Inc.
2009
- Mysteries 3: The Details of Horror. 19 pages. Drawings. Fantasma, Inc.
- Mysteries 2: Nuances. 11 pages. Drawings. Fantasma, Inc.
- Mysteries 1: Clues. 9 pages. Drawings. Fantasma, Inc.
- Fishing. 69 pages. Drawings. Fantasma, Inc.
2007
- I Guess. 10 pages. Drawings. Fantasma, Inc.
2005
- The Watering Hole. Los Angeles, CA; Bastet. Mimeo edition. 20 pages, drawings, photocopied.
- The Lime Book. New York, NY/St. Louis, MO: Phosphorous Recordings/Neshui Publishing. Drawings, text.
- The Lime Book. New York, NY/St. Louis, MO: Phosphorous Recordings/Neshui Publishing. Drawings, text.
2011
- Performer. County Down by Laura Parnes.
2010
- Drawing. "Dead." Visionary Drawing Building
- Cover art, Stone Male: Requiem For a Film Style by Joe Carducci. Redoubt Press, Centennial, WY.- Contributor. The New Vulgate, Blog.
- Cover art, Stone Male: Requiem For a Film Style by Joe Carducci. Redoubt Press, Centennial, WY.- Contributor. The New Vulgate, Blog.
2009
- The Unknown Collaboration with Torsten Zenas Burns and Andrew Erdos
- Contributor. The New Vulgate, Blog.
- Poster. American Cancer Society Fundraiser. Philadelphia, PA.
- Contributor. The New Vulgate, Blog.
- Poster. American Cancer Society Fundraiser. Philadelphia, PA.
2008
2007
- Poster
paper. "The Fourth Symposium on Synergetics and Morphology:
Explorations into the Shapes of Nature", The Synergentics Collaborative
(SNEC) in collaboration with the Philomorphs and The Edna Lawrence
Nature Lab at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), Providence, RI
- Drawings for Analemma Magazine layout. (Unpublished)
- Cover art. Enter Naomi: SST, LA and All That… by Joe Carducci. Redoubt Press. Centennial, WY.
- Drawings for Analemma Magazine layout. (Unpublished)
- Cover art. Enter Naomi: SST, LA and All That… by Joe Carducci. Redoubt Press. Centennial, WY.
2006
- Still photography. Sharp Electronics, Aquos LCD installation, O’Hara/Klein Ventures, Chicago, IL.
- Illustration and photograph. From Sun Tzu to Xbox: War and Videogames by Ed Halter. Thunder’s Mouth Press. NY, New York.
- CD Layout Design and Images. Criminal Intent by James Fotopoulos & Tobi Parks. Phosphorous Recordings.
- Illustration and photograph. From Sun Tzu to Xbox: War and Videogames by Ed Halter. Thunder’s Mouth Press. NY, New York.
- CD Layout Design and Images. Criminal Intent by James Fotopoulos & Tobi Parks. Phosphorous Recordings.
2005
The Unknown Collaboration/Saturn Return
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Saturn Return was created for “The Unknown Collaboration” a multi-discipline project with Torsten Zenas Burns and Andrew Erdos.
"I have spoken of Memories that haunt us during
our youth. They sometimes pursue us even in our Manhood: -- assume
gradually less and less indefinite shapes: -- now and then speak to us
with low voices, saying: "There was an epoch in the Night of Time, when a
still-existent Being existed -- one of an absolutely infinite number of
similar Beings that people the absolutely infinite domains of the
absolutely infinite space."
- Edgar Allen Poe, Eureka – A Prose Poem
2009, digital video, 26min 13sec, color, sound stereo
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Alice in Wonderland
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An adaptation of the 1886 musical "Alice in Wonderland: A Dream Play for Children" by Henry Saville Clark and Walter Slaughter, Fotopoulos' feature length film propels the Clark/Slaughter score into the 21st century digital age. Sculptures, drawings, text, and original music are used to explore the late 19th century's evolution of painting, literature, and theatre into early photography and moving pictures.
The piece probes the interplay of art and science
and in exploring these ideas certain lives and themes are touched upon -
the relationship between John Ruskin and Lewis Carroll, Ruskin's
theories on drawing, Thomas Eakins' painting and his use of photography,
the burgeoning of early cinema with Eadweard Muybridge and
Etienne-Jules Marey, notions of amateurism and professionalism in art
and the archetype of the condemned artist. The work is presented in two
acts, remaining faithful to the musical's original construction based
upon Carroll's narratives.
"Alice is a multimedia
opera presented in the form of a single-screen movie...At the center of
the proceedings is a medium close-up of a very beautiful young woman who
appears in two guises...Although her face almost never changes its
expression, it seems very much alive, thanks to the talent of the
actress and Fotopoulos's filmmaking. One fully believes that the
drawings (most of them charcoal-shaded outlines on a coral ground),
which cross-fade seemingly in front of her face and behind her head, are
projected from her psyche."
- Amy Taubin, ArtForum
"The perception of solid form is entirely a
matter of experience. We see nothing but flat colours; and it is only by
a series of experiments that we find out that a stain of black or grey
indicates the dark side of a solid substance, or that a faint hue
indicates that the object in which it appears is far away. The whole
technical power of painting depends on our recovery of what may be
called the innocence of the eye; that is to say, of a sort of childish
perception of these flat stains of colour, merely as such, without
consciousness of what they signify, - as a blind man would see them if
suddenly gifted with sight."
- John Ruskin "The centre lines in red represent the general axes of weight and of action and are deduced from a consideration of the centres of gravity of small horizontal sections of the figure. Which centres joined form the continuous lines. In the thorax this line approaches the back outline rather than the front because first of the shape of a section of that region and second because of the position of the lungs of little weight. These lines are maintained throughout their curves by increased action of the muscles on the convex parts of their curves by ligaments or by the resistance of bones only. Such lines form the only simple basis for a synthetic construction of the figure." - Thomas Eakins
" You cannot imagine how exquisite is the fine
detail portrayed. No painting or engraving could ever hope to touch it.
For example, when looking over a street one might notice a distant
advertisement hoarding and be aware of the existence of line or letters,
without being able to read these tiny signs with the naked eye. With
the help of a hand-lens, pointed at this detail, each letter became
perfectly and clearly visible, and it was the same thing for tiny crack
on the wall of building or the pavements of the streets."
- Samuel Morse
Music
Alice in Wonderland: A Dream Play for Children 1886 Score by Walter Slaughter and Script by H. Savile Clarke Produced & Arranged by Ben Hanna Musical Interpretations & Performances by Tim Garrigan, Keith Burton, William Snowden, Kevin Estwick, Tobi Parks, Jack Petracek, Bill Emerson, Ben Hanna, Eric Hall Original Music Produced, Arranged, Composed & Performed by ONO Travis, P. Michael Grego, Rebecca Pavlatos, Jesse Thomas, Shannon Rose Riley After Production Mix by _bledwhite_
Original Music Written & Performed by Rahdunes
Nate Archer, Aaron Coyes, Indra Dunis, Sunny Walker 2010, high-definition video, 99min, color, sound stereo 245 drawings
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“Back Against the Wall is the strongest Fotopoulos I've seen. Initially predicated on the filmmaker's trademark repetitive routines, it concerns a grim slab of middle-aged beef jerky (Martin Shannon) holed up in a characterless apartment furnished mainly with cardboard boxes. Lying in bed, sourly awaiting the return of his young girlfriend (Debbie Mulcahy) from work, Shannon seems like a john in his own place.
Fotopoulos likes his low-rent Hopper compositions harshly lit and underscored by a persistent drone. Back Against the Wall's anonymous atmosphere, pointless conversations, and recurring set-ups hold the promise of sex (or at least violence). But the movie is all about unreleased tension. Shannon's other activities includeplaying chess and listening to the complaints of his no-neck friend (Ernie E. Frantz). When Mulcahy, who apparently works in a strip club, models a series of little nighties for Shannon, he scarcely looks up from his book to acknowledge her. While the viewer patiently waits to discover if the movie is Shannon's long crack-up or just a prolonged slow-burn, Fotopoulos fastidiously maps a little corner of hell—brutal depression is mocked by the wind-up clown sitting on Shannon's night table.
Once Mulcahy leaves Shannon for a marginally livelier, more appropriate sleazemeister, the film's tone shifts first to the blandly inane and then the cumulatively insane. Mulcahy's new boyfriend is a would-be pornographer in hock to the mob—he gets beat up but won't tell her why. This fatal association leads to an extravagantly long scene on what could be the set of a porn film (half a dozen women making up, snorting coke, and sitting around in costume). The eventual payoff is far more grotesque. Mulcahy meets her depressing fate—or is it a happy ending?—In a No Exit motel room with Frantz.”
– J. Hoberman, The Village Voice 2000, 16mm, b/w, 94 min, sound mono (filmed 1999)
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