Motel Chronicles is a collection of short stories, poems, and recollections that work together to starkly outline Shepard's distinctly American worldview. This book is essentially a work of fiction, although it has a heavily autobiographical bent, as does much of Shepard's other work - particularly his plays. One of Shepard's strengths is his ability to bring a scene or memory to life with a sparing use of language and an aesthetic that is profoundly influenced by the landscape of the American West. I am very interested in this idea of how we relate to, perceive, are shaped by, and shape our landscape - both externally and internally. Shepard relates memories in distinctly visual language. I am interested in how this concept can be translated to film.
Shepard, Sam. Motel Chronicles. San Francisco: City Lights, 1982.
Wallace Stevens Collected Poetry and Prose (non-fiction)
Stevens' poems are layered studies in perception. Some important themes are how man and nature effect and define one another. How the imagination and reality are inextricably combined. It sometimes seems as though Stevens sets up dualities in his poems, but it is more useful and less narrow when reading his work to look for how he works with the relationships between many ideas. There is one epic poem in particular that I think may inform my next project: The Comedian as the Letter C. This poem can read as the story of the life of it's protagonist, Crispin, as he travels through various environments (internal and/or external) and is changed by them, while changing them. In this work Stevens invokes the phrase, mythology of self. I'm still parsing out exactly what this means but I am intrigued by this way of describing the phenomenon of creating self.
Stevens, Wallace. Collected Poetry and Prose. New York, Library of America, 1957.
Documentary and Anti-Graphic Photographs - Henri Cartier-Bresson (photographer)

While Cartier-Bresson is considered to be one of the first purveyors of the photo-journalistic style, I am interested in his work not so much as a representation of reality but an expression of the artists relationship to reality. First trained as a painter, Cartier-Bresson turned to photography after becoming enamored with the notion that a photograph could fix eternity in an instant. While this idea may have been somewhat naive, it led the artist on an inspired path of actively stalking and capturing his subjects. He did have an uncanny ability to witness remarkably candid moments, but he was not interested in capturing these events merely to convey the "truth". Inspired by the Surrealists, Cartier-Bresson sought the unusual and realized the potential for photography to create new meaning by taking moments out of context or juxtaposing unlikely subjects and objects together within the frame.
Vermare, Pauline, ed. Documentary and Anti-Graphic Photographs. Paris: Foundation Henri
Cartier-Bresson, 2004.
The Decision of the Eye - Alberto Giacometti (sculptor)

Bezzola, Tobia, ed. The Decision of the Eye. Zurich: Scalo Verlag AG, 2005.
Paris, Texas - Wim Wenders (filmmaker)
Inspired by Sam Shepard's Motel Chronicles, the film Paris, Texas is perhaps one of Wender's best known works. It is essentially a road movie in that it uses travel as both a vehicle and metaphor for the transformation of the protagonist, Travis Henderson. The story describes a boomerang journey; Travis has travelled away from himself - by wandering through the desert in self-imposed exile - and must completely break down and submit to rescue in order to return. I am interested in this movie aesthetically for is abandoned and desolate landscapes, narratively for the way Sam Shepard's autobiographical abstractions have been arranged into a narrative arc that actually does them justice, and conceptually as a metaphor for transformation and revelation.
Wenders, Wim, dir. Paris, Texas. Perf. Harry Dean Stanton, Dean Stockwell, Nasstassja Kinski. 1984.
The Poetry of Solitude: a Tribute to Edward Hopper (painter)

Levin, Gail, ed. The Poetry of Solitude: a Tribute to Edward Hopper. New York: Universe, 1995.
No comments:
Post a Comment