gnosticatacitsong

Meet the filmmakers event: Mike Hoolboom in an interview with Dana Claxton at Cineworks, October 1, 2008

I was paying attention to questions or statements from Hoolboom that would incite Dana Claxton to talk about the kind of things we don't know about. Anecdotes, stories, observances, problems, finding words.

The reason I was watching the form of the interview unfold is because I am preparing a study of some kind - maybe an interview documentary, maybe a scripted format piece about my friend Jack and his painting. He has warned me that he can be tight-lipped about a lot of his ideas about painting. I think he's reticent to disclose or package his nature in a journalistic format of any kind. So I noticed Claxton was matter of fact about the content of her films and the simple process under which many of them were made because obviously her films are her own activities. But after some time, and after a sequence of heartfelt observations by Hoolboom, the interview began to take a shape that was evocative of Claxton's personal history. And in a way it was a kind of satsang for me. Both filmmakers are at home with the sacred in art without talking directly about the sacred. It came up in this way, for example - in describing a subtle art installation he'd witnessed recently, Hoolboom said: It might as well not have been there. Absence was accounted for in the conversation. The place is packed with absences.

My own historical absence took its place beside me tonight as I reflected on the conversation. I used to make one up (a personal history) but I don't anymore. I just don't have one. The notion is foreign to me.

Art at this crossroad is a pallindrome. Gnostic, a tacit song. Forward and backward are the same direction. Anything with tangibility is now a miracle. Is it possible that we understand through art that life itself is enough?