Alberte Pagán

[Published in Invisible Fisherman: The Art of Bill Brand,
Visual Studies Workshop, pp. 39-57]

Moment (1971) was my first Bill Brand film. On that original viewing I was captivated by the mathematical perfection of the work. Moment belongs to that group of films built on sequential, permutational, and combinatorial algorithmic structures—Schwechater (Peter Kubelka, 1958), Zorns Lemma (Hollis Frampton, 1970), Serene Velocity (Ernie Gehr, 1970), Maine Montparnasse (Claudine Eizykman, Guy Fihman, 1972), 1 to 60 Seconds (Taka Iimura, 1973), Romantic Italy (Chris Garratt, 1975), Zèbres (Pierre Rovere, 1978)—which are perfect because they are the embodiment of precise algorithms. Nothing can be removed or added, nothing can be modified. Even the duration of the films must be exactly that and no other, because it is the result of a closed structure. In the case of Schwechater, the film ends when the possible combinations are exhausted; in the case of Zèbres, when the strips of acetate on which the animals’ photograph was imprinted run out—the size of the photograph being directly related to the film’s duration.

Some time later I saw Rate of Change. This mathematically titled film constitutes the first part of the chromatic trilogy Acts of Light. Despite also being the result of a fixed, predefined structure (made without a camera, the circular chromatic journey is calibrated in the laboratory according to a scheme provided by the filmmaker), it departs from Moment’s black-and-white realism to venture into the realm of abstraction. The soundtrack of Rate of Change consists of intermittent tones whose varying frequencies are each tied to a specific chromatic range. Rate of Change is proof that cinema, contrary to what its name suggests, is not—or need not be—movement but rather change. In this sense, it is an heir to Diagonalsymphonie (Viking Eggeling, 1924), a film that William Moritz describes as “un-cinematic” because it only offers small changes in essentially static graphic figures.

…MAIS