The Untutored Eye

Stan Brakhage was an American experimental non narrative filmmaker, born in 1933 and died in 2003. He made over 400 films. This reading comes from the opening paragraph in his first book Metaphors on Vision (1963). His films searched for unpredictable and unplanned spaces, each instance of perception a vital part of the experience.

At first reading I was excited by the idea of trying to imagine what it would be like if we could experience things as though for the first time. Then upon rereading I became aware of the attack on the man-made reframing of sight, through religion and it’s prioritising of language over sight. As seen in the last few words of the paragraph “beginning was the word” which could be a quote from genesis 1:1 or from John 1:1

Which begs the question if one has something to write about one must have first experienced it? This paragraph speaks of a loss of innocence with sight, in that to name something not only locks it within a frame, but also blunts our perception to other possibilities or nuances, resulting in an inability to see or experience things in full. Thus the idea that bonds language and reality together comes under fire, questioning the value of the signs in the form of names and language.

Brakhage alludes to a way of seeing and being which is foreign to language, more in line with an encountered dynamic experience. This explains why I as a painter find the translation into words of that which occurs within a work in the heat of the moment to always fall short of the experience. In the following quote Foucault discusses the relationship of language to the visual

‘The relationship of language to painting is an infinite relation...neither can be reduced to the other’s terms...But if one wished to keep the relation of language to vision open, if one wishes to treat their incompatibility as a starting-point for speech instead as an obstacle to be avoided...then one must erase those proper names and preserve the infinity of the talk’

(Foucault p.6)

This supports Brakhage’s idea that we must erase the definitive nature of the word and replace it with a process that allows openness and possibility. An emergent process that is different with each encounter, and one which allows a multiplicity of relations.
As a visual artist, I feel the weight of carrying the tradition of vision and visualisation forwards, the ways to achieve this may not be found in asking the right conceptual questions, but in the ability to be in the moment and open to the experience of being.

Bibliography
Brakhage, Stan. "From Metaphors on Vision." 1978. 5 April 2011 .
—. "Metaphors of Vision." Film Culture (1963).
Camper, Fred. Stan Brakhage on the Web. 2002. 3 April 2011 .
Foucault, Michael. Les Meninas. 2002.
The Bible. New Jersey: Thomas Nelson, 1972.