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Tuesday, May 19, 1987
Program II: Razor Blades and Gas Station
"Both Razor Blades and Gas Station deal with isolated imagery-in one, single images fill each frame, in the other, the entire film is of one site. Also, in being two-screen projections, relationships and juxtapositions are set up between images. Film itself becomes a powerful icon, evoking varying, multiple responses. The two films of Paul Sharits' Razor Blades are composed of fourteen repeated loops consisting of images often only a few frames in length, images which are both easily read in their simplicity-a hand, a word, a color-and impossible to read as they speed by, subsumed within the rhythm and 'mandala' effect of the film. The film is at once continuous and repetitive (the cyclical nature of the film loops) and discontinuous and ever-changing (with its attention to the individual frame and the varying juxtapositions between the two films). The desire to 'make sense' of the film coexists with an immediate physiological response to the bombardment of images. In Robert Morris' film, a gas station (which one usually speeds by or through) is observed in real time. As cars come and go, passing on to other sights, we continue to contemplate two views of the station, one a fixed long shot, the other, changing, random details in close-up. The contrast emphasizes the incompleteness, the limits implicit in a particular point of view." Kathy Geritz
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