Modest Egoists

MODEST EGOISTS Ken Jacobs Witha few self-promoting exceptions we avants are a retiring bunch. We lay ourselves out completely in our works and then recede in our persons. We figure our offerings, our new-borns are shining, they'll command attention; we've done our job and now don't want to interfere with the relationships the works will form with the world on their own, because we want those relationships actual, not pushed, forced, distorted, unreal. And this amidst the noise, the elbowing and bulldozing, the purposeful skewering of attention accomplished by brazen manipulative cynical slicko advertising: conmanship as culture. And then we get astonished when our shining babes don't get picked up. Another simile. We're the proper girls at the dance, circa 1950, lining the walls on stiff chairs, waiting to be asked. Meanwhile, the dance floor is being overrun by highly practiced whores. And yet I believe our demure behavior is proper. It's right to simply release these things into the world and see what happens. We depend on that uncontaminated interaction to learn more about what we've done. Problem is the world is distracted. The work is left pining on the margin of social existence. And few art critics are willing to risk sideswiping their own careers developing an attachment to it, to us. We're more likely to pull them out than they to pull us in. I'm impressed . .. that the AFI [American Film Institute] bothers with us. I've wondered, wrathfully, should we go with this neglect? And make ourselves at least seem exclusive, a private club; pick up on the "elitist" slur and make ourselves hard to find; manufacture a mystique, exact vows of celibacy from would-be audiences; ourselves determine the small numbers of our receivers? . . . rather than continue to go a'begging. But that's dismal, too. We're out of intellectual fashion. Yet there is a move we can make. How about a nonacademic , real down avant-garde cinema hour or so on cable, showing and talking, getting pissed at each other, just as in real life? It would be real life. Yes, very likely 40 0 we'll be contributing broadcast works to Public Domain. Big deal . . . if they might gain some place in public consciousness. And, in any case, they'll only be transient electronic xeroxes. We will coax viewers to seek out the voluptuous substance of film. If we, with our accursedly "esoteric" interests, are mutants of some sort ... well, we just happened along, didn't we? Mutants arise, like everything else. There's always a new crop and they will turn off to the aesthetics of spiritual plunder. They need to know where to turn. Our few screening venues are glorious shrines, but tucked away like vibrant clitorii. We shouldn't be; we do have to outreach. M. M. Serra tells me Kathy Geritz is doing such in San Francisco. Let's make an East Coast effort and go for our own cable program, and see ifwe can trade with San Francisco, other cities. Another thing: I love the film labs. The people who man and woman them have attained a higher stage of civilization than we artists that depend on them. Long live Guffanti. Long live A-1, etc. Long live film. But I'm up for making copies of our works cheaply available, not on tape, which is too compromising, but on laserdisk. I'm aiming to do that, particularly as a way to sustain in time my Nervous System performance pieces. Lastly, a word about my tripod: meaning, the triumvirate of persons that supports me. (This is a criminally short list, as if I could make it without my friends, or without Nisi and Aza.) They never met. My mother, Janice Rosenthal. She signed her stories Gerry Zelda. She died at 27, cheated of her life. She could've been here today, age 80. I used to watch her watercolor. My painting teacher, Hans Hofmann. I like to think he'd see what I do in film as carrying on the good work. Flo. My wife, my collaborator. Thank you. KEN JACOBS is currently teaching at the...