…The Nut Behind The Wheel

After I wrote about the film making of Chris Petit, in connection with my own tentative experiments with shooting video from a moving car, I started to think a bit about how different means of transport affect our perceptions of the environments we traverse.

Burleys Flyover, Belgrave Gate, Leicester, December 2013

I’ve already discussed the advantages of cycling for those who wish to carry out urban observations, dérives, or just getting out there and collecting visual material, as an alternative to the psychogeographer’s traditional default of a good long walk.  It remains the nearest thing we have to the environmental immersion afforded by walking, (or running I guess, - but that seems to have a more directed agenda), and an obvious way of preserving the relationship between physical body and surroundings.  However, for now, I’m thinking about the far more mediated ways that car journeys affect our perceptions and, in particular, the relationship between them and film (or video), typically highlighted in Petit’s work.

Still From: 'Radio On', Chris Petit (Dir.), 1979

Most drivers, or indeed car passengers, take for granted the sense of being insulated from their surroundings in a protective capsule of metal, plastic, rubber and glass.  Indeed, car manufacturers and automotive proselytisers make a point of stressing the Clarksonian cliché of a car’s interior as ‘a nice place to be’ [1.].  To travel in a car is thus, inevitably, to experience a heavily mediated visual world.  It often seems that the ‘better’ the car, the more involving the interior becomes, (mood lighting, information screens, entertainment centres, massage seating, etc).  Often, in extreme high performance cars, the rear view is completely sacrificed and any side view severely compromised whilst vast expanses of windscreen emphasise the road ahead.  If only through the ludicrous velocities they can achieve, such vehicles seem to direct the occupants’ attention, (and particularly the driver’s, of course), to some point on the far horizon that might be reached with as little reference to the intervening terrain as possible.

Supermarket Car Park, Belgrave Road, Leicester, December 2013

In the majority of workaday vehicles however, there is a more interesting balance between the dual perceptions of interior and exterior space and the way the first edits the second.  The landscape becomes sectioned into the portions visible through the vehicle’s windows; framed by bodywork; filtered by tinted glass, condensation, raindrops, frost and grimy wipers traces.  In both ‘London Orbital’ [2.] and ‘Radio On’ [3.] Chris Petit allows these elements to intrude into his framed image.  In the latter, this not only draws our attention to the idea of any car but also to the cultural signifiers pertaining to a particular car.

Still From: 'Radio On', Chris Petit (Dir.), 1979

If the film could be seen as a poem to the stalled state of Post-War Britain just prior to the massive upheavals of Thatcherism and the dubious landscape we now inhabit, the choice of R’s old Rover seems masterful.  The wood, chrome, leather and iconic badging of that car’s interior speak volumes about an older, more comforting past and Petit allows his camera to linger on the huge steering wheel and the dash, from which R’s all important music and news bulletins emerge.  Thus, not only is his view of Britain around the A4 physically cropped, but contextually framed too, by the vehicle he occupies.  When the tired, heavy old car stalls and is abandoned on the quarry’s edge, with no way forward or back, at the end of the film, he is forced to seek a completely different means to exit, (on a soon to be privatised train).

Richard Smithson, 1969

Thinking about this reminded me of a piece by the American Conceptual Land Artist, Robert Smithson, that I referred to some time ago but which seems worth quoting again.  Although clearly separate from the Continental European and British traditions, Smithson’s documentations of early visits to New Jersey are clearly psychogeographic in intent.  ‘The Crystal Land’ [4.], whilst ostensibly an account of a geological field trip, captures Smithson’s subjective relationship to his surroundings through multiple gear-changes in viewpoint and literary style.  Particularly effective, is the passage in which he relates the macrocosmic environment of the great outdoors, the crystalline structures he seeks within it, and it’s formation through geological time, to the microcosmic environment of the vehicle occupied by his party.

"My eyes glanced over the dashboard, it became a complex of chrome fixed into an embankment of steel.  A glass disc covered the clock.  The speedometer was broken.  Cigarettes were packed into the ashtray.  Faint reflections slid over the windshield.  Out of sight in the glove compartment was a silver flashlight and an Esso map of Vermont.  Under the radio dial (55-7-9-11-14-16) was a row of five plastic buttons in the shape of cantilevered cubes.  The rearview mirror dislocated the road behind us.  While listening to the radio some of us read the Sunday newspapers.  The pages made slight noises as they turned; each sheet folded over their laps forming temporary geographies of paper.  A valley of print or a ridge of photographs might come and go in an instant." [5.]

'Yours' Supermarket, Belgrave Gate, Leicester, 2013

If one way in which the view from a car can be likened to film is through cropping and framing, the other is, of course, through the editing of an ongoing dynamic view.  This notion of an environment passed through and viewed in a constant state of flux is intrinsic to any form of vehicular travel.  However, some of the features specific to driving, (certainly in cities) are the multiple changes of pace, and of direction, the punctuations of junctions and traffic control measures and the rhythms of stop-start progress through heavily regulated systems.  My own domestic journeys, from which the 'Belgrave GateProject’ originate, could be said to break down, perceptually, into those views remembered as tracking, panning or zooming sequences and those static views apprehended repeatedly as I wait at the same stop lights each day.  Many of these are now indelibly burnt into my visual memory, just as a film editor can ensure certain images become memorialised as resonant landmarks within a film’s overall forward motion through time, space and narrative.

Supermarket Car Park, Belgrave Road, December 2013

Petit certainly captures plenty of this in his films, albeit in a rather hypnotic, Euopean Art-cinema manner.  Ironically, another memorable example comes from a dramatically different tradition.  The cop-thriller, ‘Bullitt’ [6.] is a clichéd favourite of most boy racers and usually scores highly in fatuous lists of ‘Top 10 Car Chases’ etc.  Whilst clearly a love song to the overpowered, under-steering, macho delights of the American muscle car, the film’s chase sequence interests me far more as an account of the specific, sunlit environment that is Urban San Francisco, when viewed from a moving vehicle.

Stills From: 'Bullitt', Peter Yates (Dir.), 1968

There can be few streets more distinctive in character, nor demanding to drive through, than those climbing and descending that city’s precipitous, terraced hillsides.  The sequence cuts in numerous views from within the two vehicles and is particularly effective at describing those numerous occasions when a San Franciscan driver must find their car’s radiator pointing at the sky or into a deep chasm with a severely compromised views.  For all the unbridled dynamism of the chase, it’s also notable, (and relatively realistic), just how often Steve McQueen and the baddies he pursues, are forced to slow for a junction or take account of oncoming traffic.  In terms of painted imagery, if ‘Radio On’ finds some kind of analogue in the work of Jock McFadyen, I can’t watch ‘Bullitt’ without thinking of Wayne Thiebaud’s and Richard Diebenkorn’s views of Californian streets.

Jock McFadyen, 'Looking West', Oil On Canvas, 2003

Jock McFadyen, 'Roman Road', Oil On Canvas, 2007

Wayne Thiebaud, '24th Street Intersection', Oil On Canvas, 1977

Wayne Thiebaud, 'Hill Street (Day City)', Oil On Canvas, 1981

With apologies for yet another mammoth post, there’s one other example I would cite of the relationship between car travel and the cinematic view.  It’s the old technique of projecting film of a passing scene beyond the windows of a static vehicle, (often being rocked by studio technicians).  Such a familiar and dated film technique has become both reassuringly quaint and, in these deconstructed times, an ironic reminder of the very artifice that is central to the medium.  It’s a wonderful instance of a version of the outside world being edited and mediated by the windows of a vehicle as part of a wider cinematic illusion.  Watch something like that at a drive-in (as many routinely once did), and you could easily get lost in all those contextual frames.

Still From: 'Detour',  Edgar G. Ulmer (Dir.), 1945

It occurs to me that many modern cars now feature built-in cameras to relay heavily mediated views to the driver from outside the vehicle.  I’m also struck by how often I read reports of the latest breakthrough in driverless car technology.  With no actual need to monitor the road ahead, how long, I wonder, before the windows of such a vehicle might be transformed into large video screens?  The passing view might actually be selected from anywhere in the world, I suppose, or the whole car just be transformed into a moving cinema or games station.  Would that break the relationship between a car’s occupants and the physical world outside for good?  What would be preferable, I wonder, – to ride from London to Bristol with ‘Radio On’ playing on the windscreen, or to study the actual view, put on some music, and create your own mental road movie, heading west on the old A4?


Postscript:

Although I have only a modest understanding of mathematics, I am slightly anal about finding order within numbers.  Therefore, as this is post No.100 in 2013, - I'll make it the last of the year.

See you in 2014.





[1.]:  Jeremy Clarkson, Numerous Episodes Of 'Top Gear', BBC 2.  Re-Running Ad-Nausiam On Various Channels Around The World, At Pretty Much Any Hour Of The Day.

[2.]:  Chris Petit & Iain Sinclair (Co-Dirs.), 'London Orbital', Illuminations, 2004

[3.]:  Chris Petit (Dir.), 'Radio On', BFI Production Board/Road Movies Filmproduktion GmbH, 1979

[4.] & [5.]:  Robert Smithson, 'The Crystal Land', Harpers Bazaar, May 1966.  In: Jack Flam (Ed.), 'Robert Smithson: The Collected Writings', Berkeley/L.A., University Of California Press Ltd, 1996

[6.]:  Peter Yates (Dir.), 'Bullitt', Solar Productions/Warner Bros. - Seven Arts, 1968

Season's Greetings

Ho,

Ho,

Ho!

Belgrave Gate Project 8: Circulating Memories / The Films Of Chris Petit

A few posts back, I mentioned my current enthusiasm for shooting video footage through the windscreen whilst driving around the area encompassed by my ongoing ‘Belgrave Gate Project’.  It’s very early days in my sideline as an Artist Film Maker, (ahem), and, as I’m still at the raw footage stage, there’s nothing worth showing in public as yet.  I’m also knee deep in a full scale painting with which I’ll probably see the year out but, hopefully, over the Winter break I’ll also have time to properly assess what I’ve got and commence the video editing process in search of something coherent.  In the meantime, I thought I’d mention a couple of films that seem to have influenced my current adventures in moving imagery.

'London Orbital':

‘London Orbital’ (2004) [1.] is a film made as a collaboration between Author, Iain Sinclair and Film Maker, Christopher Petit and devised as a visual companion to Sinclair’s book of the same name [2.].  As I discussed in a previous post, the overall project marks an exploration of the M25 London Orbital Motorway and, not surprisingly given the pedigree of these two, is a deeply psychogeographic enterprise.  Whilst the original book charts a long multi-staged walk around the road’s audible catchment, with numerous tangential meditations on the places it bypasses, the film centres far more on the experience of actually driving the same route.

Iain Sinclair, (With Bridge)

Christopher Petit, (With Another Bridge)

It’s difficult to shrug off the overriding impression of the M25 as a road to nowhere or a vast solution to a logistical problem that was rendered almost unusable as soon as it had opened.  To drive around it, is to orbit one of the planet’s most significant cities without ever touching it; to short circuit a liminal tract of pocket landscapes, forgotten sites, suburbs and dormitory towns without earthing anywhere definitive; to trace an immense zero on the landscape.  One could circle around this baffling racetrack for eternity if the congestion would allow it.

Still From, Chris Petit & Iain Sinclair, (Dirs.), 'London Orbital' 2004

Chris Petit’s task was to somehow capture something of this through the lens of his relatively unsophisticated video camera, and his solution was a simple but highly effective one.  Although it employs a variety of different modes of filming, the passages that make the greatest impression on me are those in which Petit shoots through the windows of the moving car.  The resulting images create a kind of endless flux in which vehicles stream by a viewpoint that is itself dynamic, and through a range of lighting and weather conditions.  Nothing is fixed and there is a sense of endless travel with no prospect of arrival, of being perpetually on the way to somewhere, (or nowhere), else.  It seems to suggest a very contemporary state of being and is rendered even more hypnotically nebulous whenever the lens is deliberately unfocussed.

Stills From: Chris Petit & Iain Sinclair, (Dirs.), 'London Orbital' 2004

My own experiments have included numerous examples of deliberate unfocussing; of shooting in different conditions at day and night; of exploiting the found filters of condensation, frost and rogue reflections on the glass.  Without really thinking about it, I now realise just how influenced I have already been by Petit’s camera work.  As I disappear up my own tail pipe, repeatedly orbiting around Leicester’s Belgrave Circle and the Burleys Roundabout, it even feels like I might be emulating his and Sinclair’s circular journey in microcosm.


'Radio On':

The second film, ‘Radio On’ (1979) [2.] was also directed by Petit, and feels like it actually relates my own personal history.  In essence, it is a strange, autistically emotionless, Post Punk take on the European road movie, and is heavily influenced by the early work of Wim Wenders, (who co-produced).  It is also a portrait of a country mired in recession and decline with no clear idea of how to proceed.  With relatively little by way of plot, it follows the protagonist’s physical and mental journey between London and Bristol, then beyond to the Severn Estuary.

Title Sequence From:  'Radio On', Chris Petit (Dir.), 1979

I first watched the film whilst living in Bristol myself, in the early 1980s, and was struck by its dream-like sense of a perpetual stranger passing through a series of inexplicable landscapes.  The opening title sequence cleverly co-opts the chasing illuminated text on the front of Bristol Hippodrome, which is even more significant if you know that it stands on the colloquially named 'Racetrack' - an elongated circuit that cars could, potentially, drive round for ever.  However, the most memorable motif from Bristol is the conjunction of a hotel and stark elevated roadway.  It’s one of the first things I ever saw on my own arrival in the city and was not so different in impact from the flyovers and surrounding buildings that now fascinate me in Leicester.  I was also struck by the odd (and very British), choice of vehicle to share centre stage, - an ageing Rover P4, just like the one my father once drove.  The unreliable car is ultimately abandoned on the precipice of a quarry that I’ve convinced myself I once stumbled across on a long walk years ago.

Still From: 'Radio On', Chris Petit (Dir.), 1979

In the context of this post, there are two points about ‘Radio On’ that particularly interest me.  The first is Petit’s deliberate use of a car’s windscreen as an analogue for the movie screen.  Unlike the camerawork in ‘London Orbital’, Petit keeps his camera generally facing ahead, emphasising the sense of forward progress through a landscape and echoing the transitory procession of images, glimpses and impressions that pass before a driver's and a cinema audience’s eyes alike.

“Petit is less interested in narrative than in new in un-English ways of looking and seeing.  He and [Director of Photography] Schäfer are in love with the sensual delight of a camera moving forward through space.  The film is peppered with long, coldly stirring shots from B’s clapped out Rover, moving through a series of defamiliarised, Ballardian English landscapes….Between them Petit and Schäfer attempt to remake our understanding of British urban space, much as Godard discerned contemporary Paris’ futuristic foreignness in ‘Alphaville’” [3.].

That sense of the view from a moving vehicle is definitely something that coloured my own responses to the Belgrave Gate subjects.  My most vivid impressions of Burleys flyover, the Equinox Tower adjacent to it and, indeed the preposterous lime green supermarket opposite, may well be those I first gained during my daily commute to work.

Still From: 'Radio On', Chris Petit (Dir.), 1979

Burleys Flyover & Equinox Tower, Leicester, 2013

Burleys Flyover & Equinox Tower, Leicester, 2013

The other point worth making here about ‘Radio On’ is the pivotal role that music plays within in it.  Petit very self-consciously uses a pretty cool soundtrack comprising tracks from the period, (Kraftwerk in particular).  Much of this music is selected or played by the characters themselves, emphasising its integrality to the ‘plot’ and the actual journey taken within the film.  Of course, it’s hardly original to point out the relationship between music and driving.  Nonetheless, I now realise how rarely I drive without music playing and just how important it is in stimulating the meditation of travel, and in turning even the most routine journeys into private little road movies.

Still From 'Radio On', Chris Petit (Dir.), 1979

Thinking about all this, it strikes me how closely related are films to both dreams and memories. My own memories tend to be very visual and can run like little film clips, (quite often within dreams).  Just like film, these resonant little illusions usually take on great subjectivity, often becoming considerably removed from actual 'reality'.  In the case of  particularly affecting films, images from them can even come to feel more like personal memories.  Just like some of the images in films like 'Radio On', it can be difficult to untangle which really came first, the memory, the visual representation or the memory of the visual representation, and all can stay with me over decades, becoming increasingly divorced from their original context.  It is one of the fascinating features of the overall creative process how such material can gain renewed significance years later, in a different life, and in the context of a nominally 'new' project.

[1.]:  Christopher Petit & Iain Sinclair, (Co Dirs.), ‘London Orbital’, Illuminations, 2004

[2.]:  Christopher Petit (Dir.), ‘Radio On’, BFI Production Board/Road Movies Filmproduktion GmbH, 1979

[3.]:  John Patterson, ‘A Film Without A Cinema’, London, The Guardian, 2 October 2004