DOI issue:
Zwrot kinematograficzny w praktyce i teorii sztuki / The Cinematic Turn in Art Practice and Theory
DOI article:Bovier, François: Tony Morgan's "Performative" cinema in the age of the "cinematic turn": "relational films" (1996-1970), "structural films" (1969-1971) and produkt cinema (1971)
Citation link:https://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/artium_quaestiones2020/0080
74
François Bovier
[People's Presence}. The exhibition space looked like a recording studio, revers-
ing the passivity of viewing a film in a darkened room. Munich People, which
Tony Morgan described as "a record of the people who came into the building
and accepted to be documented"31, thus turned the exhibition visitor into a film
actor during a shoot. The object displayed is not completed but is in the process
of completion; it will only be seen after the exhibition (it was broadcast on the
German broadcasting network, WDR, and included in Information, an exhibi-
tion held at the MoMA in 1970). The film depends on the presence of the spec-
tator, who becomes the very subject of the film - visitors, shot from the front
in close-up, provide their names and the date and time when they were filmed.
The issue is not so much to document an action or fix the identity of these peo-
ple as to reverse the roles of the subject of the viewing and the perceived object.
People's Presence, which Morgan referred to as a "confrontation piece", is a var-
iation on this device, paradoxically without a camera. Tony Morgan considered
this performance to be a process of abolishing time, as he described it in the
Aktionsraum 1 catalogue:
The film Munich People is about you in front of the camera and me behind the
camera looking at you. Now in the piece People’s Presence there is nothing be-
tween you and I. Only you in hont of me and I in front of you and you in hont of
the person next to you. People’s Presence is about people's presence. Face to face.
Vis-a-vis.
People confronted with people. POINT BLANK. Nothing in between. I look for
that special vacuum between you and I where we are both at ease and free from
time. To find together that moment where there is no time. That moment of ease
and beautiful emptiness where we touch for a second or maybe longer the no time
land of awareness of being present.
In People’s Presence I stare at you for sixty seconds or more. There is nothing
between us. What we find in that time, whether that time can be opened up to no
time is why I make the piece People’s Presence.32
By doing without a camera, Tony Morgan was able to reduce his work to a sim-
ple meeting, exchange or mutual gaze: to a phenomenological experience of
being-with [Mitsein] and being-there [Dasein], to use Heidegger's ontological
categories - or a pure "relational" experience, in terms of the artistic practices
promoted by Nicolas Bourriaud33. He focuses on relationships between peo-
ple, people who are nevertheless well-known public figures. Relational art re-
31 Documentation for Aktionsraum, 1969, n. p., Tony Morgan's personal archives,
TM Studio.
32 Documentation for Aktionsraum, n. p.
33 See N. Bourriaud, Esthétique relationnelle, Dijon 2001.
François Bovier
[People's Presence}. The exhibition space looked like a recording studio, revers-
ing the passivity of viewing a film in a darkened room. Munich People, which
Tony Morgan described as "a record of the people who came into the building
and accepted to be documented"31, thus turned the exhibition visitor into a film
actor during a shoot. The object displayed is not completed but is in the process
of completion; it will only be seen after the exhibition (it was broadcast on the
German broadcasting network, WDR, and included in Information, an exhibi-
tion held at the MoMA in 1970). The film depends on the presence of the spec-
tator, who becomes the very subject of the film - visitors, shot from the front
in close-up, provide their names and the date and time when they were filmed.
The issue is not so much to document an action or fix the identity of these peo-
ple as to reverse the roles of the subject of the viewing and the perceived object.
People's Presence, which Morgan referred to as a "confrontation piece", is a var-
iation on this device, paradoxically without a camera. Tony Morgan considered
this performance to be a process of abolishing time, as he described it in the
Aktionsraum 1 catalogue:
The film Munich People is about you in front of the camera and me behind the
camera looking at you. Now in the piece People’s Presence there is nothing be-
tween you and I. Only you in hont of me and I in front of you and you in hont of
the person next to you. People’s Presence is about people's presence. Face to face.
Vis-a-vis.
People confronted with people. POINT BLANK. Nothing in between. I look for
that special vacuum between you and I where we are both at ease and free from
time. To find together that moment where there is no time. That moment of ease
and beautiful emptiness where we touch for a second or maybe longer the no time
land of awareness of being present.
In People’s Presence I stare at you for sixty seconds or more. There is nothing
between us. What we find in that time, whether that time can be opened up to no
time is why I make the piece People’s Presence.32
By doing without a camera, Tony Morgan was able to reduce his work to a sim-
ple meeting, exchange or mutual gaze: to a phenomenological experience of
being-with [Mitsein] and being-there [Dasein], to use Heidegger's ontological
categories - or a pure "relational" experience, in terms of the artistic practices
promoted by Nicolas Bourriaud33. He focuses on relationships between peo-
ple, people who are nevertheless well-known public figures. Relational art re-
31 Documentation for Aktionsraum, 1969, n. p., Tony Morgan's personal archives,
TM Studio.
32 Documentation for Aktionsraum, n. p.
33 See N. Bourriaud, Esthétique relationnelle, Dijon 2001.