Structuring Sex 22/4/25

A screening of Chantal Akerman's Je, Tu, Il, Elle (1974) preceded by a selection of artists' moving image works exploring desire and the body.

A Brief Introduction to Chantal Akerman and Structural Film

Structural film, in its broadest sense, is a term used to describe an approach to filmmaking which prioritises the basic elements of filmmaking over conventional narrative and character-driven film. Historically, the term also describes a particular movement born from avant-garde and experimental filmmaking during the 1960s and 70s in the United States, one which includes what is perhaps Structural Film’s most enduring figure: Michael Snow, as well Hollis Frampton (the creator of our first film of this evening) and Tony Conrad.

Chantal Akerman in Je, Tu, Il, Elle (1974)

Chantal Akerman, the late Belgian director, whose pioneering work has inspired decades of filmmakers, was exposed to structural film on her arrival to New York in 1971, at the age of 21, when she watched Michael Snow’s La région centrale, a three-hour film shot from the top of a Quebec mountain in which the camera pans in all directions. This formative experience would become the foundation for a breadth of work spanning multiple genres, but often grounded in structuralist sensibilities: long takes, repetition, experiments with the representation of time, and a rejection of traditional narrative structure.

Back and Forth, 1969, Michael Snow

Akerman found an incredible power in the reciprocity of structural cinema; a cinema that demands its audience’s time and attention. Stripping back film to the most basic elements of the medium, without character or narrative, can have as much effect on the viewer as even the most entertaining of genre films, and perhaps even moreso. Akerman herself said of Snow’s 1969 film Back and Forth, in which the camera rhythmically pans back and forth, inside an empty classroom, gradually increasing in speed, that it “has as much tension as a Hitchcock film”. The camera’s movement, and only the camera’s movement, inspires the feeling; both meditative and disorienting.

Akerman found the lack of emotion within structural filmmaking to be a missed opportunity within a male-dominated movement and sought to inject her films with some form of narrative. In her first feature, Je, Tu, Ille, Elle, a brief number of different scenes are presented in long takes, with its few characters always at a distance. Everything is sparse - sets, actors, camera movements and story. This is how Akerman portrays the complexities and intangible nature of depression.

Je, Tu, Il, Elle

An unknown woman has broken up with her girlfriend. She empties her room, lies down, takes her clothes off, puts her clothes on, lies down again. She spoons pure sugar into her mouth as if to sweeten her very being. She writes endless notes. Then, she hitches a ride with a stranger, who speaks far too much about his sex life. She listens but is either never in frame, or obscured by his figure. The woman is separated from everyone and everything until she is with her lover again, and finally the sparseness is OK. She becomes one with her lover: bodies writhing together, limbs in and out of each other. But Akerman is careful, we are at a distance. Where the man is allowed to indulge in his description of pleasure, we are not allowed to see the women’s: no expressions, no sounds. This is a moment that is only for them.

Despite being viewed as one of the great feminist filmmakers, Akerman derided the label of feminist or woman filmmaker. Instead, she believed that film is a medium of freedom “beyond the boundaries of identity” and her intricate and varied body of work deserves to be viewed outside of such confining lenses.

The Short Films

Prince Ruperts Drops

Hollis Frampton (1936-1984), 1969, 7mins

Not only an accomplished photographer, writer, filmmaker and pioneer of structural film, Frampton also made significant contributions in the very early development of computer science. Part of the 1960s New York avant-garde filmmaking scene, his films have been described as both beautiful and mathematical, his focus being on film as a series of images and filmmaking as an arrangement of these images.

The title for Prince Ruperts Drops comes from a scientific process by which molten glass drops are poured into cold water, creating tadpole-like shape with a body that can withstand hammer blow, but a tail which, if even slightly broken, would cause the whole object shatter. The film has the quality of waiting, of unbearable tension. A tongue licks a lollipop over and over and over. A hand bounces a ball on the ground, over and over and over again. A sensation so frequent the nerves go numb.

You can watch Prince Ruperts Drops here.

Fever Dream

Chick Strand (1931-2009), 1979, USA, 7mins

“It is a means to get into other perspectives of the culture, to meet them, and to identify with them as fellow human beings.” Born in San Francisco and originally an anthropology student, Strand made her first film age 34 after exploring ethnographic film, creating a series of works documenting the everyday lives of Mexican women.

Fever Dream is wet with light: glistening and sparkling with sensuality. Close-ups of unknown parts of the body are rubbed and kneaded like dough, oiled skin massaged by eager fingers. Oil collects at the fingernails and around the nipple, soft between fingertips. Haunting instrumentation and a high-pitched lilting singing voice accompanies poetry: "In the back of the theatre is a forest. I lie there pressed to the earth, eyes open to the sky." Then, a woman smiling, locked in an embrace, eyes closed, letting the rain, which comes fast and hard - thin white lines across the screen like grass or hair - whip her awake.

Swish

Jean Sousa (1949-Present), 1982, 2mins

Jean Sousa is a widely exhibited Chicago-based filmmaker and photographer who created a series of 16mm films during the 1970s and 80s. United by their meticulous experiments in form, including the use of optical printing, Sousa’s films have explored the relationship between the movement of both the subject (e.g. circus performers and exercise) and the camera.

In Swish, footage of a woman becomes light and movement itself; the image becomes skin. Sometimes purple, bruised, sometimes white hot, blinding, then reds and oranges burning up. Glimpses of hair, a bra, skin again, abstraction can be like lingerie: what isn't seen, what covers, is actually revealing.

"This film deals with the physical properties of the film medium, and pushing those distinctive features to their limit. The film is about  movement, and it is an attempt to get inside of motion. It was made with  a moving subject and a moving camera with an open shutter, the result  being that each frame is unique, without the smooth continuity inherent  in film. The subject, a female body at close range, provides an intimacy  and highlights the subjectivity of being close." - Jean Sousa

When I Put My Hands On Your Body

Marion Scemama (1950-Present) & David Wojnarowicz (1954-1992), 1989, 4mins

“I always did it for myself and my friends.” Marion Scemama is a photographer and filmmaker who is most well known for her collaborations with artist and AIDs activist, David Wojnarowicz who she met while involved in the 1980s New York art scene, specifically her discovery of Pier 34, an abandoned shipping terminal turned gay cruising spot and DIY gallery.

“When I put my hands on your body on your flesh I feel the history of that body. Not just the beginning of its forming in that distant lake but all the way beyond its ending. I feel the warmth and texture and simultaneously I see the flesh unwrap from the layers of fat and disappear. I see the fat disappear from the muscle. I see the muscle disappearing from around the organs and detaching iself from the bones. I see the organs gradually fade into transparency leaving a gleaming skeleton gleaming like ivory that slowly resolves until it becomes dust. I am consumed in the sense of your weight, the way your flesh occupies momentary space the fullness of it beneath my palms. I am amazed at how perfectly your body fits to the curves of my hands. If I could attach our blood vessels so we could become each other I would. If I could attach our blood vessels in order to anchor you to the earth to this present time I would. If I could open up your body and slip inside your skin and look out your eyes and forever have my lips fused with yours I would. It makes me weep to feel the history of your flesh beneath my hands in a time of so much loss. It makes me weep to feel the movement of your flesh beneath my palms as you twist and turn over to one side to create a series of gestures to reach up around my neck to draw me nearer. All these memories will be lost in time like tears in the rain." - David Wojnarowicz' voice in When I Put My Hands On Your Body

"One night, David talks to me about his nostalgia for men’s bodies and his erotic dreams; the beauty of gestures, the sensuality of a man’s mouth on another man’s body. He makes me read a text that he has just written, “when I put my hands on your body, it is the whole history of your body that I feel…”. I suggested that we shoot the scene on video with Paul Smith, an artist photographer from the East Village whom I knew well. He was handsome, sexy, and I knew David was secretly attracted to him. For me, the sensuality and beauty of such a scene could only be expressed through a series of close-ups. I was filming through David’s words; a mouth sliding over a body, a fold in the hollow of an arm, the quivering of a muscle under the skin, the furtive movement of two faces approaching each other, and the meeting of two mouths, lips half-open for a kiss. I will never forget the beauty of that kiss." - Marion Scemama

Hearts, Chains and Flowers

Sylvianna Goldsmith (1929-2019), 1995, 8mins

“I think I spent the entire ’70s in chains. We protested everything.” Goldsmith was an activist, artist and self-described eco-feminist concerned with the relationship between women and nature. She was a founder of Women Artists in Revolution (WAR), established in 1969, which protested the male-dominated New York galleries, The Whitney and MoMA.

Hearts, Chains and Flowers is a combination of found erotic film and choreographed performance: a jarring blend of pleasure and pain, joy and shame. Theatrically costumed and made-up with painted faces, 'sub' and 'dom' roles become indistinguishable from each other, just as the found footage isn't quite discernible from the dance of power play. Who is on top? Who is playing who?

"Filmed from a choreographed eternal B and D triangle, old found erotic footage, optically printed and rear screen rephotographed with a Matte Box, and hand painted. According to Stekel, in all of us is the will to power and the will to power and the will to submission; every pleasure is close to pain, and in all love there is some hate. To be able to stretch our boundaries and explore our shadow side, here with a bit of black humor, this is part of our new freedoms." - Sylvianna Goldsmith

Hearts, Chains and Flowers