Jack Waters Jack Waters Photo: Peter Cramer, 1997. Escaping "Mediocrity's Vast Columbarium" The Estate Project's Film Preservation Program was developed in consultation with archivist and curator Jon Gartenberg to create a model for the preservation of work by independent and experimental filmmakers, whose films often survive only as "camera originals." Gartenberg conducted this interview with multi-talented filmmaker Jack Waters, the first living filmmaker whose work is being preserved by the program, over the course of several weeks. The occasional comments of Peter Cramer, Waters's lover and collaborator, are also included. Jon Garternberg (JG): You are quite the modern Renaissance man: You have an ongoing, successful career as a dancer and choreographer; you've co-directed ABC No Rio, a Lower East Side art exhibition site; and you co-organized Naked Eye Cinema to document, distribute, exhibit, and broadcast films from downtown, avant-garde filmmakers on public access television. You're also a writer and critic who has reviewed the works of Marlon Riggs, Isaac Julien, and others; a community- and AIDS activist; and have sustained a long-standing professional and personal relationship with your life partner, Peter Cramer. Quite an impressive resume. Jack Waters (JW): It's not unusual or difficult to work in a variety of modes. The rules of composition and structure are common to all the arts. Our emphasis on specialization--the idea that the artist should be limited to one style or medium--is particular to this century. Which is why I guess the term Renaissance--a past epoch--comes to mind. Gore Vidal wrote about the novelist Anthony Burgess that "It is an article of faith (bad) in our dull categorizing time that no one may practice more than a single art: even worse, within the house of literature itself, the writer must keep to only one, preferably humble, room; yet a gift for any art is almost always accompanied by at least the ability to master one or more of the other arts. This is a secret of genius' lodge that is kept from every faculty room lest there be nervous breakdowns and losses of faith and transfers from English studies to physics. But where Goethe, say, was allowed his universality, today's artist is expected to remain cooped up in mediocrity's vast columbarium." JG: I'm curious about the practical realities that may have forced you to shift from one form of creative expression to another... JW: I think the most successful work happens when the message, feeling, or idea is in perfect concert with the form, but sometimes necessity plays an important role. For example, dance is an expensive form. When choreographing became too difficult because of the lack of economic support needed for studio space, dancers, and the time to work in a group, I started to put my feelings and thoughts to writing, visual art, and experimental performance modes. Likewise, film became an attractive alternative to repeating performances, in that moving image media has the ability to capture form and repeat it endlessly with a mere fraction of the physical effort of creating live dance. As far as my curatorial activities, that has always been an organic process related to my creative interests. When Leslie Lowe and I started Naked Eye Cinema it was a way for us to learn film history and technique. We'd program Eisenstein and Buñuel on the same bill as our own nascent works and those of our contemporaries. Likewise my involvement with Abc No Rio was not only a forum for my work and that of my colleagues, but a way to learn from contemporaries and past masters of various art forms. I should mention that my work has for the most part been collectively driven. It burns me that this culture is so personality oriented to presume that art is the product of a single individual. The over-emphasis on personality is a marketing device that conveniently packages things at the expense of complexity and thought. The people I refer to as "my colleagues" are those whose ideas, skills, experience, and inspiration continue to impact on the work that I am "credited" for. The term "credit" itself has financial overtones. JG: Let's focus on your moving image projects which the Estate Project is preserving. Can you tell me about the genesis of your first film, "Berlin/New York"? JW: "Berlin/New York" was originally created as a backdrop to a dance/performance work I did as a member of the collective POOL in 1986. The piece was about the arbitrary nature of political borders. The previous year my colleagues and I had been refused entry into Switzerland because we gave contradictory information at the border about the performance we'd booked there. We weren't getting paid for it, but we intimated that the gig might provide support for our stay, after the border guards told us that $300 between us wasn't going to be enough money to sustain the four of us there. We were coming from Spain where we'd had a terrific experience performing a site-specific work and some pieces from our repertory. But we were so exhausted from doing every aspect of production and publicity ourselves that we just relaxed into a state where we were caught off guard. Four men on a bus from Spain with stubbly chins and dirty jeans. We looked like bums...like drug addicts. We were pulled off the bus and strip-searched. They questioned us about the anarchist political materials we were carrying representing the Abc No Rio milieu. Also, we were carrying all this witchy type stuff: tarot cards and books like "The White Goddess" that reflected the pagan ideology that influenced us. JG: How did "Berlin/New York" evolve into a freestanding film? JW: After the dance/performance of "A Free Ride," we were asked by Area, a nightclub in TriBeCa, to perform a piece on the theme of war. We did a routine about urban guerrilla warfare--dressed in army fatigues--and expanded the film to incorporate more footage. When I looked at the film again in this context, I realized that the footage of torched buildings on the Lower East Side looked a lot like the images of bombed-out Berlin. I then added a soundtrack. The completed film is the documentation of two devastated world capitals, one ruined because of real estate speculation and the other because of war. JG: I think this film also demonstrates your interest in challenging social restrictions and in transcending barriers. In my view, this is expressed visually in the film with shots of the Berlin wall obstructing your view, the fences of Lower East Side inhibiting your entrance, and even the cinematic layering you built into the film by rephotographing images projected onto a screen and incorporating them within the fabric of the film. You seem committed to addressing tabboo subjects and to redefining the dimensions of the dialogue around them. JW: My interest in confronting taboo subjects probably comes from my upbringing. I am a product of the Society for Ethical Culture and went to alternative schools that more or less followed the Summerhill philosophy of education. I was raised to question authority and tradition. Both my parents come from families with clerical backgrounds and both rejected what they saw as religious hypocrisy. As a kid I was taken to anti-war and civil rights demos and was encouraged from an early age to think independently, question rhetoric, and participate in debate. This was around the time of the so-called sexual revolution, so discussions of sexuality often entered into the mix. My parents' friends and associates came from all types of socio-economic backgrounds and several were lesbians and gays, so I had an early understanding of the interplay of race, gender, and sexuality. My folks also mixed company with people from conservative backgrounds--cops, and politicians--as well, so I was used to an environment where strong opinions crossed. JG: In "The Male Gayze," you recount a personal story of racial and sexual exploitation and your resulting feelings of victimization and violation. JW:"The Male Gayze" was one of the easiest films I ever made. It flowed almost automatically out of my then-interest in semiotics and structuralism. The voice-over tells a personal story, an account of an actual experience and the feelings generated. Still from The Male Gayze Photo: Jack Waters JG: What was this experience? JW: I met a famous Dutch choreographer while attending a choreographic competition in Cologne. He was of the opinion that blacks were out of place in the classical companies. And he was notorious for his attraction to black men. Ultimately I posed for some erotic photographs which he released publicly without my consent. Although I was unidentifiable because my head was cropped out of the image, that erasure of my persona made matters even worse. JG: So the film was a way of raising all the issues fundamental to defining your own identity. What about its structure and look? JW: The image is basically home movies. A view from my window intercut with scenes from a place in the country we used to go to that belongs to the Philadelphia Ethical Society. So there's a battle going on between two modes of expression, linearity as manifested by the text; and disjunctive perception as conveyed by the image, which also reflects the city/country opposition. The gritty scenes of drug traffic versus the serenity of nature. JG: "The Male Gayze" was widely shown. JW: Yes, at Abc No Rio, the New York Lesbian and Gay Experimental Film Festival (now MIX), and at festivals worldwide. It was distributed by Frameline, the San Francisco-based distributor, for about five years. It was exhibited in venues I helped to create under the banner of the Naked Eye Cinema throughout the U.S.,in France, Germany, Canada; all over. I guess the most prestigious screenings were at the Whitney Museum in New York in conjunction with the exhibition "The Black Male: Representations of Masculinity in Contemporary American Art." Although it is the most successful of my films in terms of its acceptance and exposure, I'm a little resentful of this. I suspect that a lot of its accessibility has to do with the fact that it tends to be perceived as narrative driven, which is very unusual for my work. It's also a racial critique, which is expected of black artists. JG: How is the Estate Project currently helping you ensure that the work is more widely seen? JW: I've never had more than one print struck from my edited camera reversal original. Frameline showed it on video, and though there is certainly value in seeing it on video, it was really made to be viewed as projected image. The fogged tones of the film it was shot on are very subtle, and much better seen on celluloid, because the its texture is an important element. Also in the past, the film always had to be projected on double system; that is, the image and the audio were literally separate physical elements. This meant that in order to ensure that the film was properly synched I had to be present at a screening. Having a composite internegative (where the picture and track are synched together on the same physical element) will make it easier to make multiple prints, so more people will be able to see the work. JG: In "Diotima," you carry forward this discussion of pornography and eroticism in a more stylized, theatrical vein. JW: "The Male Gayze" closes with a statement I made to the effect that pornography always produces a victim. I started to feel that the statement was too inflexible, perhaps even misinformed. "Diotima" attempts to distinguish the difference between pornography and obscenity. Still from Diotima Photo: Jack Waters The funny thing is that to a lot of people questioning something often means opposing it. I got flack from the S/M community after making "The Male Gayze" and writing letters to the gay press questioning the reiteration of traditionally oppressive power symbols like Nazis, cops, cowboys in their sex ads. But I was merely questioning, not saying I opposed them. I got responses from people comparing me to Falwell, Helms, and other homophobes. In the process I learned a lot about desire and about sexuality as an expressive form in itself. In "Diotima," I address the problem of presumed authority inherent in the narrative form. Diotima presents questions of sexuality not just from my point of view, but also from other people I asked to enter into the discourse, from the anti-porn feminist, to the curator of a lesbian sex club, to the old line white male hetero-centricity of the philosopher Schopenhauer. Then I proceed to screw around with identity so what's spoken doesn't necessarily correspond to the image of the person on the screen.The piece approaches a queer-defined sexuality. I use Plato's "Symposium" as a point of departure. Diotima, by the way is the only woman represented in the "Symposium." The look of the film is neoclassical, very post-modern. Its pared-down high style is the beginning of a departure from the dry intellectuality of my prior work. There's a lot of jokes and gags, but they're kind of esoteric. Like when the participants pass around the mutable "talking stick" that transforms into a vaginal symbol. Or the deliberate censorship of the feminist's discourse on censorship; the pairing off of Andrea Dworkin against Schoepenhauer is somewhat tongue-in-cheek. The very obvious "Greekness" of the second half is a play on traditional association with homosexuality. JG: You continue your exploration of sexuality in some of your video works. "The Flower Market" has a more immediate emotional resonance, than the more cerebral "Diotima." Could you talk about this in terms of the shift in mediums, from film to video, and what you were trying to accomplish? JW: Above all "The Flower Market" is a romp. Theory is only useful to me as a means to an end. I'd been focusing on how desire, power and oppression converge in sexuality. The need to analyze evolved into the desire to practice. It was time to let go and see how what I'd discovered would manifest organically, without so much cerebral preoccupation. Also in "The Flower Market" there are formal challenges. I wanted to show that video can be a sensual and textured medium without expensive electronic equipment. This was brilliantly proven by Peter's lighting. His shading softens and highlights the contours of the bodies of the figures having sex. His application of colored gels drives home the textural comparison between human tissue and floral membrane. JG: For me, the film actually evokes a strong sense of sadness and nostalgia. The contrast of the imagery--the romp in the field suggesting bees producing nectar, and the voyeurism of the flower shop--coupled with the song "Where Have all the Flowers Gone" seems to link the celebration of unbridled sexuality with human loss and suffering through AIDS. Let's turn to "Percodan and Wisdom" and "Introducing Mr. Diana." JW: The making of "Percodan And Wisdom" was serendipitous. Sur Rodney (Sur) who I had known peripherally in the East Village art scene when he was a partner at Gracie Mansion Gallery, commissioned me to make this piece that was an interpretation of a poem of the same name, a reminiscence of pre-AIDS sexual awakening in New York City. Visualizing the images and feelings he evoked required drawing on all the elements I'd been engaged with in the previous years--employment of the para-narrative; the dream or subconscious state; the exploration of sex without questioning. "Percodan and Wisdom" gave me the chance to work with another black male body besides my own--Lee Rivers's. He's this guy I'd been noticing at the gym for awhile who was the sexiest, most incredibly cooperative and versatile performer I've ever worked with. JG: "Introducing Mr. Diana" once again allows you to address societal attitudes--in this case attitudes surrounding sexuality, violence, and eroticism... JW: "Mr. Diana" is a full collaboration between me and Peter. It brought us back into the political arena where we take a documentary approach without necessarily conforming to the documentary's formal dictates. While others have been censored or defunded, Michael Diana is the only artist we know of who has actually been jailed for pornography and barred from practicing his art as a cartoonist. The challenge here was to present the irony of the gnarly, bloody, violent cartoon satires emanating from this gentle, delicate personality who produced them. In its current form the unabashed sexual objectification of Michael in the second part of the piece feels a bit schizophrenic to me because it doesn't fully contextualize the porn aesthetic. Aside from being a celebrated underground cartoon artist, Diana's life was equally influenced by his work as a dancer and model in both straight and gay clubs, films and magazines. I've considered refining the video to reflect this, and also to give a greater understanding of the impact of the 1996 Florida conviction that brought him to New York. JG: You and Peter have recently been performing a dance piece, "B/W Study: The Dance," in New York and Europe which, incidentally, got a rave review by Jennifer Dunning, of the "New York Times." What was the genesis of this idea? JW: "Black and White Study" is the film Peter created in 1996. Our collaboration "Black and White Study: The Dance" is driven by his concept, so it's best for Peter to answer. Peter Cramer: It's funny but people have always called us by each other's names. How or why they confuse us, I've never asked...I thought it would be interesting to see how I might create a single entity using the matte box that spliced us together as one person. The result is that we integrate as bodies but the heads still split in a way that implies our divergent racial, social, and political experiences. Film is such a versatile medium of scale. You can alter its size and shape. It condenses and focuses space in a very direct way that in the theater is primarily created by the use of lighting. My own involvement as a theater technical director gave me the know-how to expand "Black and White Study's" fractured use of the picture frame and recreate it for the stage; a three-dimensional reading of a similar experience to the film itself. However, since the film is silent, "Black and White Study: The Dance" gave us a chance to speak as people and dancers living with HIV/AIDS. This engenders a more emotional response. Our mortality was not really on my mind when I created the film but the fact is that when we no longer exist, the film will always capture the purest essence of our relationship as homosexuals and dance partners. JW: To me "Black and White Study" represents the completion of a full circle. Think of "Berlin/New York" as an element within a performance that generated a film oeuvre and "Black and White Study" as a film work that was the impetus to revisit dance as a primary artistic medium. JG:"Black and White Study" transcends the basic oppositions of the black and white film image, as well as of your different skin colors. Your two bodies move in a flat planar surface across the divide of the black and white screen and meld effortlessly into a stirring, creative flow that reflects the oneness of your lives together, each of you as a choreographed extension of the other. This film is very compelling to me; it's really quite moving. Jon Gartenberg is president of Gartenberg Media Enterprises, Inc., which restores and distributes moving image- and publishing assets. For the Estate Project, he recently oversaw the restoration of the films of Warren Sonbert and is currently working on preserving the films of David Wojnarowicz and Curt McDowell. Also Read Artist in the Archive Interviews with: Frank Moore, Visual Artist Rebecca Guberman, Visual Artist and Filmmaker Gregg Bordowitz, Activist and Video Maker