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A Concrete Cinema?

A Concrete Cinema?

In 1959, in a television interview conducted by actor Jean Desailly, Pierre Schaeffer expressed the intention to explore and develop a form of cinema that could be called concrete. A visual counterpoint to what he, together with fellow composer Pierre Henry, had conceived as musique concrète in the late 1940′s.

It is unclear precisely what Schaeffer intended with the expression cinéma concret. However, Schaeffer’s initiative resulted in a very large body of audiovisual works, produced within the Research Service of ORTF (The French Radio): approximately 1200 television productions, animation films and video art pieces.

Unfortunately, very little critical reflection on his theories and art, has been dedicated to the audiovisual productions that came out of the Research Service, in its years of existence between 1960-1974. It is only in the most recent years that the mass-digitization of INA’s archives, has unveiled to a larger public a glimpse of what the films contain. This program, assembles and reveals a tiny fraction of this production in the form of twenty-five films, selected with the aim to illustrate the theoretical foundations and aesthetic discourses of the Research Service’s audiovisual production.

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- Part I: Beginnings and Endings -

Discorama, 12 juin 1959: Pierre Schaeffer à propos de la musique concrète
France 1959, 6 minutes, color.

Journal télévisé – August 10, 1961 (excerpt)
France 1961, 6 minutes, b/w.

Symphonie pour un homme seul
Dir.: Louis Cuny. France 1955, 14 minutes, color.

Étude aux allures
Dir.: Pierre Schaeffer and Raymond Hains. France 1960, 5 minutes.

Objets animés
Dir.: Jacques Brissot. France 1960, 5 minutes.

Les Achalunes
Dir.: René Laloux. France 1958.

Chercheurs 62 (short version)
France 1962, 17 minutes, b/w.

Égypte ô Égypte: Dans ce jardin atroce, Un présent du fleuve, Livre des morts
Dir.: Jacques Brissot and Pierre Schaeffer. Music: Luc Ferrari. France 1962, 62 minutes.

Presque rien avec Luc Ferrari, 2006
Dir.: Jacqueline Caux and Olivier Pascal. France 2005, 50 minutes, color.

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- Part II: A Concrète look at film, art and music -

Les Grandes répétitions – Cecil Taylor, 1965
Dir.: Luc Ferrari and Gérard Patris. France 1966, 44 minutes, color and b/w.

Eurêka – Visualisation, art et cybernétique, 1967
France 1968, 16 minutes, b/w.

Entretien Pierre Schaeffer-McLuhan, 1970
Dir.: Fabien Colin. France 1973, 12 minutes, b/w.

L’écran transparent, 1973
Dir.: Bernard Parmegiani. Music: Bernard Parmegiani. France 1973, 26 minutes, color.

Essai visuel sur l’objet sonore, 1962
Dir.: Fabien Colin. France 1973, 12 minutes.

L’ange, 1982
Dir.: Patrick Bokanowski. Music: Michèle Bokanowski. France 1982, 70 minutes, color.

Court-Circuit No. 180: Michèle Bokanowski
France 2004, 17 minutes, color.

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- Part III: Children’s play and adult animation -

Les Shadoks: episode 1, 2 and 8
Dir.: Jacques Rouxel. Music: Robert Cohen-SolalFrance 1968, 11 minutes, color.

Une lettre égarée – Les Francais écrivent aux Shadoks
France 1969, 4 minutes.

Délicieuse catastrophe
Dir.: Piotr Kamler. Music: Robert Cohen-Solal. France 1970, 11 minutes, color.

Coeurs de secours
Dir.: Piotr Kamler. Music: Francois Bayle. France 1973, 9 minuts, color.

Jeux des Anges
Dir.: Walerian Borowczyk. Music: Bernard Parmegiani. France 1964, 9 minutes, color.

Chronopolis
Dir.: Piotr Kamler. Music: Luc Ferrari. France 1982, 52 minutes, color.

Scherzo Infernal
Dir.: Walerian Borowczyk. Music: Bernard Parmegiani. France 1984, 5 minutes, color.

Les Maîtres du temps
Dir.: René Laloux. Original Music: Jean-Pierre Boutayre, Pierre Tardy and Christian Zanési. France 1982, 78 minutes, color.

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Why Concrete Cinema?

First of all because the audiovisual productions of the group are not very widely known, though the composers of the GRM put just as much effort into them as in their musical composition. Second, because it is interesting to take a look at a lesser known area of European experimental film and media art, to try to bring out new perspectives and hidden gems. In historical accounts of experimental film, it is often New York and Vienna, that are thought of as the creative centers of the mid-twentieth century filmic avant-garde. These accounts see the European avant-gardes of the 1920?s as a precursor to many of the later American and Austrian filmmakers, implicitely assuming that the European filmic avant-gardes dried out after the 1920?s. Though it is not within the aim of this program of films to contest that historical exposition, it is definitely a point to demonstrate that experiments were going on in France in those later years as well, that were definitely unique and original, although perhaps not as widely influential and conceptually radical. What was going on in France, will be referred to here as Concrete cinema: an institutional production led by Pierre Schaeffer, at the same time functional and experimental, and at the same time apart from and completely intertwined with contemporary French experimental, art and documentary cinema production.

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To identify this body of works – in a context outside of France – it is necessary to look differently at its founding figure and his role within the French radio: Pierre Schaeffer. Let us start by comparing two photos of Pierre Schaeffer here. From being thought of today as mainly a composer outside of France, I would like to bring attention to the many activities, productions and research projects he was involved in, and think of him here as a catalyst for many different media experiments.

The first photo has become almost iconic. It is from a session shot in 1951 by photographer Serge Lido, that depicts Schaeffer in front of the Phonogène à clavier - in english the Phonogene. The Phonogene was an instrument invented at the French radio, that controlled the speed of short tape loops via a keyboard, crucial to the development of the compositional method of musique concrète. Loops of recorded sounds on magnetic tape would pass by the tapeheads at different speeds according to the keys pressed. In manipulating the sounds in this way they would change pitch, and reveal hidden abstract aural qualities. Simply put, the Phonogene was a prototype of the modern day sampler, where short digitally stored sound bits are manipulated from – in most cases – a keyboard.
This photo, has become almost synonymous with Schaeffer, his conceptualization of organised real sound on tape as a compositional principle, and with musique concrète. I think this is a result of the dramatic effect of the blinding light bulb, and Schaeffer’s intense look in this picture as if he is listening with the utmost attention reproduced by the instrument. The photo invokes perhaps a romantic cliché of the inspired artist with a vision. It has created an image of him as a  visionary inventor and composer, and put him and his work on a piedestal that tends to overshadow the diverse activities of the composers working within the GRM and the research service. But the claim here is, that it has also overshadowed the many faces of Schaeffer himself, his theoretical work and his involvement in cinema and radio on a broader scale.

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As this program intends to see Schaeffer and the activities of the Research Service in a different light in the context of this course, it is appropriate as a point of departure to include another photo from the same session, that litteraly puts him in a different, less dramatic light, and sort of dedramatizes this overshadowing vision of Pierre Schaeffer.

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Pierre Schaeffer dedicated most of his professional life to write theoretically about music, sound, radio and television. He kept close relations with Marshall McLuhan, and it is often forgotten that there was a fruitful theoretical exchange between the two, though they had fundamental disagreements. In academia and especially in the field of media studies outside of France, the name of Pierre Schaeffer as an important thinker and European media theorist of the twentieth century is virtually ignored, though the nature of his activities was extremely rich and mulit-faceted. One of the activities that he initiated – that supplements the musical output of the Groupe de Recherches Musicales – was the audiovisual production of the Reserch Service, that existed at the French radio between 1960 and 1974.

Several of these works have circulated individually in festivals in recent years, and some are published on DVD. To give some examples: last year, two of the collective works by the couple of filmmaker Patrick Bokanowski and composer Michèle Bokanowski L’Ange (1982) and Battements Solaires (2008) were presented at the Rotterdam Film Festival. This year in Brussels, the composer Bernard Parmegiani’s L’oeil écoute (1973) was shown as a part of the La Semaine du son-festival. In France the DVD editions of the children animation series that features the music of composer of Robert Cohen-Solal, and was produced by Pierre Schaeffer, is still today a great success.

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The films range from children’s and adult animation (Kamler, Laloux, Borowczyk, Rouxel), documentary (Schaeffer, Patris, Ferrari, Tréguer, Brissot) and experimental film (Bokanowski, Parmegiani). Characteristic for most of them, is a sort of aural vision. The audiovisual works made within the Service de la Recherche either promote or are aesthetically governed by a philosophy of sound and recording. Acousmatic sound challenges the hegemony of the moving image and contests a separation of the senses, in a relationship where sound and image are equally important and the eye listens.

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- Sources -

Bibliography

Gayou, Évelyne. GRM. Le Groupe de Recherches Musicales. Cinquante ans d’histoire. Librairie Arthème Fayard, Paris 2007.

Lammer, Jocelyne-Tournet. Sur les traces de Pierre Schaeffer. Archives 1942-1995. La documentation Française, Paris 2006.

MacDonald, Scott. A Critical Cinema 3: Interviews with Independent Filmmakers. University of California Press 1998.

Noguez, Dominique. Éloge du cinéma expérimental. Éditions Paris Expérimental, Paris 2010.

Schaeffer, Pierre. Machines à communiquer 1. Genèse des simulacres. Éditions du seuil, Paris 1970.

Blogs/Web Resources

INA: www.ina.fr

INA-GRM: www.inagrm.com

Knox, Jim. Concrete Cinema. www.liquidarchitecture.org.au/la4/concrete_essay.html

The Sound of Eye: http://thesoundofeye.blogspot.com/

UbuWeb: http://www.ubu.com/film/kamler_coeur.html

Schaeffer on media research within the O.R.T.F.

Now that the end of the course is approaching, and I feel that I have been enjoying the ride reading texts by and about Schaeffer, I would like to share a little quote from one of  Schaeffer’s media theoretical books Machines à communiquer. 1 Genèse des simulacres from 1970 (page 280), translated for the occasion. It is perhaps not amongst Schaeffer’s most profound thoughts, but something I think is relevant to post here to contextualize the works, to give at least a little insight into the institutional framework within which these works were made:

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“Apartheid. Just see, the most part of the people who reflect on television are not a part of it, and those who are don’t have the time to do so. It is not more complicated than that! in the U.S.A., where everything works so well, where the research is so honoured and where you study in many universities the phenomenon of mass media with much more competence, one can notice the same dichotomy. A colleague from Stanford of whom we asked, after his stunning demonstrations of the effects of television (violence, pedagogy, etc.), if he had any relation (institutional) with this or that channel, answered us with a big smile that such a thing would simply be unthinkable! There were even, in the charter – very moral – of his laboratory, articles with the aim of protecting the research from any intrusion from these organisms – intrusions from which they do guard themselves from, by the way. But they turned to us to congratulate us: we were one of the rare centres in the world to benefit from an institution! Yes, the research service (Service de la Recherche), sheltered as it is by its mother-house, is a true curiousity, an eighth wonder of the modern…

From this privileged situation, ambiguous fortunately, working at the same rhythm, with the same constraints, the same goals (let’s hope), if not all of the same motifs as the Sponsor, the research service has a good conscience, but could ask if it is mutual. It has often claimed, as its primary raison d’être to be that of constituting for the whole Office (O.R.T.F.) an “organ of simulation”. If O.R.T.F., at least from a budgetary perspective, represents approximately one hundredth of the national budget, the research service finds itself in the same proportional relation with the O.R.T.F.“

Aural Vision and Non-Sense – A certain cinema… that one could call concrete

1.

In recent years, the audiovisual productions related to the composers of the Groupe de Recherches Musicales at the French Radio, founded by engineer and composer Pierre Schaeffer in 1958, have encountered increasing interest from enthusiasts of concrete and acousmatic music, in the frameworks of sound art and experimental film festivals around the world.
Several works have circulated individually in festivals in recent years, and some have been published on DVD. To give some examples: last year, two of the collective works by the couple of filmmaker Patrick Bokanowski and composer Michèle Bokanowski L’Ange (1982) and Battements Solaires (2008) were presented at the Rotterdam Film Festival. This year in Brussels, the composer Bernard Parmegiani’s L’oeil écoute (1973) was shown as a part of the La Semaine du son-festival. In France the DVD editions of the children animation series that features the music of composer of Robert Cohen-Solal, and was produced by Pierre Schaeffer, has been an enormous success, reflecting the reception of the series when it was first broadcast on French national television in the 60′s and 70′s.
These are just some examples of the large body of films and television productions, that are somehow related to GRM-composers, most of them produced within the Service de la Recherche, founded and led by Pierre Schaeffer in the years between 1960 and 1975.
The films meet an increased interest outside of France in the blogosphere where concrètophiles trace the films and try to create an idea of just what these audiovisual works are like, from the few stills and descriptions that can be found online. A bootleg 3”CD-series with the soundtracks of several of these films, was even released by an Australian label, so at least it has been possible to get an impression of just what these films sounded like. Simultaneously in France, where critical reflection on the works have been very sparse, publications have appeared within the past five years, that seek to open the archives of the GRM and of Pierre Schaeffer to critical reflection. And several works can be found online on the website of the Institut National de l’Audiovisual (INA) in Paris, that give an impression of the discourses and artistic expressions that flourished within the group.
In spite of the increasing interest and access to these films, the situation is still that most of them remain unseen and completely unknown. It is therefore the aim of this programme, to stimulate critical reflection on these films, to address enthusiasts of electroacoustic music and of experimental film and to ask them to come up with frameworks in which we could see these films. To begin such a critical reflection, it is the intent of this programme to provide one itself, that reflects both the current representations of the audiovisual productions produced with the involvement of GRM composers, in its program.

2.

How could we approach these works?
We could start by trying to delimit the period we wish to reflect with this programme. An attempt at this was made in the insightful retrospective of films scored by composer Bernard Parmegiani, curated by filmmaker and curator Jim Knox for the Australian Liquid Architecture sound arts festival in 2003, that has served as an inspiring preceding example to this program. Here, the years in which the Research Service – le Service de la Recherche de l’O.R.T.F. – led by Pierre Schaeffer at the French radio operated, were used as a starting and end point – from 1960 to 1974.
But we would like here, to go a bit further, to reflect as well the earliest sound-image experiments conducted by composers of musique concrète to later intersections between the GRM and pop culture. The years in which the first cinematic experiments were made within the Groupe de Recherche de Musique Concrète – the group that preceded the Groupe de Recherches Musicales – in 1955 with Pierre Schaeffer’s and Pierre Henry’s filmic collaboration with choreographer Maurice Béjart, to the year 1982 where composer Christian Zanési would score René Laloux’ animation classic Les Maîtres du temps. And we would like to work with the notion that the works of the GRM constitutes, what we could call a Concrete Cinema – a cinema that crossed borders between children’s and adult animation, documentary and experimental film – characterized by its use of music and sounds, and an interest in experimental musical forms, by a vision that was profoundly aural.
Pierre Schaeffer did never consequently speak about the audiovisual GRM productions as concrete cinema, and we must not forget that the majority of these works were produced for television and conceived as experimental television within the context of a national broadcast institution – the Office de Radiodiffusion Télévision Francaise (O.R.T.F). On the other hand, many of the works in this retospective, were distributed in especially animation and documentery film festivals (i.e. Piotr Kamler and René Laloux’s films), and several of the films showed out of competition at Cannes (i.e. Jacques Brissot and Patrick Bokanowski’s films). Pierre Schaeffer once – in a television interview conducted by actor Jean Desailly on the show Discorama in 1959 – expressed that the GRM was attempting to produce a form of cinema that could be called concrete. As I see it – departing from this interview and judging from what Schaeffer explains over the following film clips – his way of using the term is an attempt to elaborate on the concept of the acousmatic, that is so central to musique concrète. In musique concrète, the acousmatic is an elaboration of the teaching method that the Greek mathematician and philosopher Pythagoras would use to transmit his knowledge to his students. The story goes – though there is no certain evidence of this (which to our mind does not make a difference) – that Pythagoras would teach his students from behind a curtain or a screen – akousmatikoi in ancient greek – though the word has different meanings. He did so in order to assure that his students would focus on and listen carefully to what he said, not being distracted by his visual appearance. Schaeffer used this situation as an analogy for the act of sound recording, and elaborated on it. The recording of a sound, Schaeffer would claim, was removing it from its cause and obtaining the possibility to give full attention to its aural qualities. When we listen to a sound we think we can often determine its cause, but very often, it is actually not that easy to do so. Some sounds have very similar qualities. The sound of cracking ice can sound very much like fire for example, and these sounds share features with waves. Sound and representation is in other words not logically coherent. Based on this observation, Schaeffer would state that recorded sound or acousmatic sound, sound having been removed from its sound source, would bring out abstract aural qualities. Abstract because we cannot determine the sound’s cause with certainty when it has been removed from its source, secondly – pushing the potential of sound recording further – by manipulating sound changing the playback speed and thereby its pitch.
Furhermore, to elaborate on the notion that there exists a type of cinema that we could call concrete, it is relevant to point out that musique concrète is a musical form, that by many of its practitioners is claimed to be cinematic, a ”cinema for the ear” (cinema pour l’oreille) – especially by composer and film theorist Michel Chion. It is often referred to as an art of fixed sounds (art des sons fixés), a time-based musical form, progressing from A to B, fixed on support, be it lacquer records in the 40′s, magnetic tape from the 50′s to the 90′s or in a digital format today. A genre whose constant play with abstract and figurative aural objects and anecdotal elements – sound situations that we recognize from our daily lives – shares traits with some forms of narration or sequencing of situations in experimental and documentary cinema. Finally, acousmatic and concrete music is not performed live in a classical sense, but spatialised through a multi-loudspeaker dispositif in the concert situation, and listened to almost in complete darkness. As such the listening situation of acousmatic music, is very close to watching a film in the black box of the cinema as we kno it, and can feel like watching a film without images. With this in mind, it is perhaps not surprising that Schaeffer as a director of research at the French radio, would seek to push musique concrète and the GRM composers in this direction.

3.

In 1959, when Schaeffer commented on extracts of cinematic works in the interview with Jean Desailly, seemingly thinking from an acousmatic standpoint, he drew attention to the abstract forms depicted on screen, to the fact that we can not determine what excactly creates these abstract forms, but only vaguely identify structures and figures.
One of the important notions in the media theory of Pierre Schaeffer was the ”in-between-ness” of audiovisual media, and of almost synaesthetic non-sense. He strongly contested the separation of senses, that media theorists such as Marshall McLuhan would consider one of the evident effects of electrification. A view that he expresses in a short debate with McLuhan, included in this program. Cinema, according to Schaeffer, could thus be said to ba an act both of listening and of sculpting in time. Though the films presented in this programme do not in any way consciously seek to apply Shcaeffer’s ideas strictly – within the GRM all of the composers developed very personal styles and compositional ideas – time and the act of listening with cinema are recurrent themes in almost all of the films selected in this program, on either a textual level in forms of the subject matter depicted or on a conceptual and formal level. Concrete cinema seeks the attention and curiousity of the ear just as much as of the eye – the eye listens – be it through hypnotic colour patterns, wild sound collages of organised sounds, or noises juxtaposed with traditionally more recognizable musical structures.

This program of films departs from Pierre Schaeffer’s notion of a Concrete Cinema – expressed in the interview by Jean Desailly – but wishes to leave it open to the spectator what excactly concrete cinema is, in order to stimulate critical reflection. The context that is provided here, groups films made within, before and after the period of the Service de la recherche, according to genre, and to some degree year of production.

The films range from children’s and adult animation (Kamler, Laloux, Borowczyk, Rouxel), documentary (Schaeffer, Patris, Ferrari, Tréguer, Brissot) and experimental film (Bokanowski, Parmegiani). Characteristic for most of them, is a sort of aural vision. The audiovisual works made within the Service de la Recherche either promote or are aesthetically governed by a philosophy of sound and recording. Acousmatic sound challenges the hegemony of the moving image as the primary signifier and contests a separation of the senses, in a relationship where sound and image are equally important.

The retrospective unfolds in three parts covering three areas of the audiovisual production of the Service de la recherche. It begins with Pierre Schaeffer’s interview on French television with actor Jean Desailly in the part entitled Beginnings and Endings. Beginnings are seen in this part in the form of the earliest works of animation and documentary by directors René Laloux, Jacques Brissot and the composers Luc Ferrari and Pierre Schaeffer themselves, and in the form of the televised public discussions with the applicants for the Service de la recherche in 1962. Endings in the form of the work of Pierre Henry, one of the founding figures of musique concrète, whose dramatic departure from the French radio was the ending to a fruitful collaboration between him and Schaeffer, but also one of the main events leading to the creation of the Service.?The second part, A concrète look on media, art and music, reflects the theories of media and music that flourished within the service. This part consists of documentary portraits, debates and of experimental film and video art. From Luc Ferrari’s and Gérard Patris’ passionate portrait of free jazz pioneer Cecil Taylor, Michel Tréguer’s personal and low-key reportage on cybernetic art at the MIT to a parody of a debate between Marshall McLuhan and Pierre Schaeffer to artist-couple Michèle and Patrick Bokanowski’s L’ange and Bernard Parmegiani’s non-sense cinema.

Concrete Cinema – Moodboard + Sketches

Concrete cinema – Visual Exploration

A brief note on the term “Concrete cinema”

The term “Concrete cinema” is the central concept of my exhibition. I find it necessary therefore to create a little explanatory post here, that explores the meaning of the term, its use and history to hopefully arrive at a definition to be included in my curatorial statement.

I would first like to point out that the term is not a neologism but on the other hand still a term that remains relatively obscure though it has been used. It is not like “musique concrète” that is a widely known and famous denomination. As I indicated in my first post, Pierre Shaeffer speaks of a cinema that could be called concrete in the cited interview conducted by Jean Desailly from 1959. This is the first application – to my knowledge – and therefore the point of departure of my retrospective programme. The second use of the term that I would like to shed light on here is by Australian curator Jim Knox in his programme of films scored by composer Bernard Parmegiani for the 4th edition of the Liquid Architecture Festival of Sound Arts in 2003.

Let me start by looking here at what Pierre Schaeffer could have intended with the term, to then give my view on what Knox’ use of it implies, and then finally how I intend it.

Pierre Schaeffer does not as such speak about concrete cinema consequently. He expresses more vaguely that the GRM is producing a form a cinema that could be called concrete. As I see it – judging from what Schaeffer explains over the following film clips in that video – his way of using the term is an attempt to elaborate on the notion of the acousmatic central to musique concrète. As I mentioned in my first post, the concept of the acousmatic is central to musique concrète as a founding principle. The word acousmatic is a reference to the central effect/element in the teaching setting that the Greek mathematician and philosopher Pythagoras would create for his students. The story goes- though there is no certain evidence of this (which to my mind does not really make a difference) – that Pythagoras would teach his students from behind a curtain – akousmatikoi in ancient greek (though the word has different meanings) – or a screen. He did this in order to assure that his students would focus on and listen carefully to what he said, not being distracted by his visual appearance. Schaeffer uses this situation as an analogy for the act of sound recording, and elaborates on it.  The recording of a sound, Schaeffer would claim, was removing it from its cause and giving full attention its aural qualities. When we listen to a sound we think we can often determine its cause, but very often, it is actually not that easy to do so. Some sounds have very similar qualities. The sound of cracking ice can sound very much like fire for example, and these sounds share features with waves (I will uplaod later a little piece by Parmegiani that demonstrates just this). Based on such an observation, Schaeffer would state that recorded sound or acousmatic sound, sound having been removed from its sound source, would bring out abstract aural qualities. Abstract because we cannot determine the sound’s cause with certainty when it has been removed from its source, secondly – pushing the potential of sound recording further – by manipulating sound changing the playback speed and thereby its pitch.

It is this concept that Schaeffer seems to elaborate on in what he calls concrete cinema. As he says, the forms that we see on the screen are a play with abstraction. We cannot determine what excactly creates these abstract forms that we see onscreen, though we can identify structures and figures.

Jim Knox’ use of the term in his curatorial statement, does not seem to imply this. His way of using Concrete cinema is very much like the one I propose here, where the main intent is to see the audiovisual productions of the GRM as an integral part of the GRM activities. I think his introduction to this field is both very precise, insightful and passionate. Though I would not use as high strung language and big claims about the audiovisual productions of the GRM and their place in film history, I definitely share his ecstatic response to them. I find it is important to include Knox’ statement here, as it is a use of the term that I want to adhere to and elaborate on by presenting a larger selection of works. Knox’ statement can be found here.

And if anyone should be interested this is the link to Jim Knox’ blog. I have found many great things there.

A Sketch for a retrospective of Concrete cinema

I am posting a sketch here, that indicates what films I am thinking of including in my retrospective programme and shows the form and shape I wish to give my exhibition. I am thinking much in the form of a traditional retrospective film programme as one would encounter it in a cinematheque. I would like to divide the programme into four parts – or maybe five, but I have not decided on that yet – that links the films on the basis of genre or affinities between the composers’ or filmmakers’ style or position within the Groupe de Recherches Musicales. This division is where I intend to show my critical reflection on this body of films, so I consider it an important part of the project.

I have been inspired to think in this form by a retrospective that I had the luck to follow during my year as an Erasmus student in Bologna in Italy. It was a retrospective that had been curated by French art historian Phillipe-Alain Michaud originally for the Pompidou centre in Paris, where he is the film curator of the experimental film collection. The Cineteca di Bologna invited him to present that exhibition in october 2007. It grouped the different films into filmmakers of different cities, periods, styles, expressions etc. The programme included mainly American and Austrian filmmakers, and a few French and German, including many canonized classics of experimental cinema that you rarely get to see on film, and some more recent works that added depth to the programme and invited to reflect on the state of experimental film. This was my first real encounter with experimental cinema in a proper setting, that in many (fundamental) ways changed my idea of what film could be. Unfortunately it is seemingly not easy to find the blurb of that retrospective online anymore, otherwise I would have posted it here. I can find a part of the program as it was when screened in LeMans, but I don’t remember it having the same structure when I saw it: http://www.esba-lemans.fr/content/projection-cinéma-art-du-mouvement-2-paysages-elegies-portraits.

I will edit this post continuously, adding and deleting titles till I am happy with the programme.

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Part I: Beginnings and endings

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This first part of the program is a display of the earliest cinematic attempts from the GRM and the Research Unit at the French radio. We have chosen for this

In three cases I have relied entirely on the film descriptions of archivist and author Jocelyne Tournet-Lammer taken from her catalogue published in 2006 Sur les traces de Pierre Schaeffer. Archives 1942-1995. Though I would prefer to write them myself based on my own impression, I do not have that option as I have not seen these films. I think therefore, that it is best to rely on a source that has seen these films herself, not to produce false facts that could end up circulating elsewehere.

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Discorama, 12 juin 1959: Pierre Schaeffer à propos de la musique concrète

Excerpt from the television programme Discorama hosted by actor Jean Desailly, edition of 12th June 1959.

Pierre Schaeffer interviewed by actor Jean Desailly (Le Doulos, La Peau Douce) about the activities of the Research Service at the French Radio. After discussing the experimental music festival in Brussels, Belgium, the conversation turns to the cinematic production of the GRM. Over extracts of film, Pierre Schaeffer discusses this form of cinema “that one could call concrèt”, trying to apply his notion of the acousmatic to cinema. In the clip preceding tje actual extracts of the films produced by the GRM, we see a young René Laloux and Nicolas Schöffer.

France 1959, 6 minutes, color.

Journal telévisé – August 10, 1961 (excerpt)

On national television news – interviewed by Michel Péricard – Pierre Schaeffer announces the recruitment of researchers for the Research Unit at the French Radio.

France 1961, 6 minutes, b/w.

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Symphonie pour un homme seul

The composition Symphonie pour un homme seul (1950) - one of the best known works from the early musique concrète period at the French Radio – was made in a close compositional collaboration between Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry. In 1955, choreographer Maurice Béjart decided to do a stage adaptation of the work for television, which resulted in this beautiful and vibrantly coloured early filmed ballet directed by Louis Cuny. This version of Symphonie pour un homme seul represents in several ways both a beginning and an ending. Between Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry things would become tense in the following years, leading eventually to Henry’s dramatic departure from the French radio in 1958. For Pierre Henry and Maurice Béjart this was a step closer to a fruitful artistic collaboration that would culminate years later in the famous ballet Messe pour le temps présent (1967) that would mix Béjart’s ballet choreography with Pierre Henry and Michel Colombier’s original mix of musique concrète and psychedelic rock. Though Pierre Henry did not work within the GRM or the Research unit at the French Radio, it  is important to include him here as their surely would have been no GRM without his contributions.

Dir.: Louis Cuny. France 1955, 14 minutes, color.

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Étude aux allures

“This work is born from a chance meeting between two études, one aural, Étude aux allures by Pierre Schaeffer, the other visual, sequences shot by the painter Raymond Hains with the aid of a fluted lenses of which the movements multiply and animate a coloured graphism. In these two parallel experiences an equivalent phenomenon finds itself: the speed. Using the music as the canvas of montage, Hains makes perceptible, in his film, the wordless dialogue that establishes itself between the sound-image events”

* Description taken from archivist and researcher Jocelyne Tournet-Lammer’s Sur les traces de Pierre Schaeffer. Archives 1942-1995 (2006). Own translation.

Dir.: Pierre Schaeffer and Raymond Hains. France 1960, 5 minutes.

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Objets animés

“Jacques Brissot establishes in this film a parellelism between the traces left by different objects that the painter Arman uses on his paintings and those by moving natural phenomena (waves, waterfalls) that he has filmed. It is a sort of apologia for movement conveyed by a very short montage. These different shots work within a compostional structure of which the temporal structure is determined by the Étude aux sons animés by Pierre Schaeffer.”

Dir.: Jacques Brissot. France 1960, 5 minutes.

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Les Achalunes

A rarely seen early effort from the director of the later French animation classics La Planète Sauvage (Fantastic Planet, 1973) and Les Maîtres du Temps (Time Masters, 1982). Laloux is one of the many well-known artists who received his training within the Reseach Service, and who after his departure would keep the ties to the GRM experiments and aesthetics. This is one of the research group’s earliest experiments in children’s animation.

René Laloux

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Chercheurs 62 (short version)

This is the short distilled version of a two-hour film that documents the discussions between the candidates for research at the French Radio that were assembled as a consequence of Schaeffer’s announcement. The candidates show their own take on the television medium getting to comment news actuality footage, and Pierre Schaeffer evaluates the experiment and the level of the candidates media litteracy.

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Égypte ô Égypte: Dans ce jardin atroce, Un présent du fleuve, Livre des morts

“Dans ce jardin atroce is the first section in this TV programme in three parts. From the text Journal du voyage by Jean Cocteau, read by the author, Jacques Brissot proposes a stroll from the valley of the Thebes and the temple complex of Karnak. A travel amongst the ruins amongst which some seem to be defigured statues becoming simple sand again. Several frescoes, porticoes and obelisks, sphinx and hieroglyphs plunge us into a frightening silence of a dead world that refuses to let go of its grip. The second part entitled Un présent du fleuve presents itself as a report thought up from the Histories of Herodot. This travel in the Nile valley, that each year waters the fields thanks to its beneficial floods, opens for a discovery of the ancestral gestures, the beauty of the wall paintings that decorate the temples while the text of Herodot evokes the gods and the places of the ancient Egypt. The third section taking the title of the series presents itself as an essay on funerary texts taken from the Livre des morts des anciens égyptiens by Grégoire Kolpatchy. Jacques Brissot strives to give a cinematographic equivalent of the long voyage of the soul in the land of the dead with its porticoes that represent stages of initiation. The camera takes a walk in the landscapes and the temples of the valley of the Thebes, between the pyramids, gigantic statues, colonnade perspectives, frescoes and hieraglyphs. The slow framing of sequenced views allows us to discern the slow progression of shadows on the stones due to the sun.”

* Description taken from archivist and researcher Jocelyne Tournet-Lammer’s Sur les traces de Pierre Schaeffer. Archives 1942-1995 (2006). Own translation.

France 1962, 62 minutes.

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Presque rien avec Luc Ferrari

Jacqueline Caux and Olivier Pascal: Presque rien avec Luc Ferrari.

A passionate portrait about composer Luc Ferrari by friend and biographer Jacqueline Caux (also wife of French music critic and concert organizer Daniel Caux). Luc Ferrari looks back on his life and compositional career, from the very beginning with his impulsive boat trip to New York to meet composer Edgard Varèse in 1954, his fascination with John Cage’s musical ideas to his unfinished collaboration with French turntablist and electronic musician eRikm just before his dead.

France 2005, 50 minutes, color.

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Part II: A concrète look at film, art and music

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Les Grandes répétitions – Cecil Taylor

Luc Ferrari and Gérard Patris: Les Grandes Répétitions – Cecil Taylor

Under the title of Les Grandes Répétitions Luc Ferrari and Gérard Patris made a series of five portraits of prominent musical figures of 20th century composition for French television in 1965-1966. The series included portraits of Olivier Messiaen, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Edgar Varese, Hermann Scherchen and Cecil Taylor. For this retrospective we have chosen the portrait of Free Jazz pioneer Cecil Taylor, to serve as a testimony to Luc Ferrari’s always curious and anti-dogmatic attitude towards other musical forms and philosophies. Listening to Cecil Taylor’s thoughts one understands the melting pot that experimental music was in the 60′s. The exchange between world music, minimalist composition, jazz and electroacoustic music was intense in those years. Luc Ferrari, instead of creating barriers and insisting on the superiority of one compositional idea over another took it all in, succeeding always in remaining distinctly his own.

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Eurêka – Visualisation, art et cybernétique

A “christmas present” from the GRM announces journalist Michel Tréguer in his introduction to this television feature sent in the end of December 1969. Tréguer comments on films of experiments in media and cybernetic art from the MoMA in New York and at the Massachusettes Institute of Technology. In a highly personal and laid back voice-over style, Tréguer explains and comments on the experiments and  shares his opinion on the artworks and techniques.

Michel Tréguer

France 1968, 16 minutes, b/w.

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L’écran transparent

“1973 video by Bernard Parmegiani with accompanying musique concrete score. The source is a VHS rip, the origin of which is unclear. Special thanks to the CiNEMAGROTESQUE uploaders for this one, despite the fact that they attributed it to Polish animator Piotr Kamler… whom he had composed for previously. “L’Ecran transparent” comes from a fruitful period of audio-visual art during a residency in Köln, after Parmegiani had returned from a tour of the U.S. The score can be found separately on a 3″ CD called “Musique Concrete Soundtracks to Experimental Short Films, Vol. 6.“

- Description from

Dir.: Bernard Parmegiani. Score: Bernard Parmegiani. France 1973,

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Entretien Pierre Schaeffer-McLuhan

A deconstructed conversation on musique concrète, mass media and religious mysticism between two theorists and friends seemingly not willing to  understand and give in to each others theoretical projects.

“This film directed by Fabien Colin, from rushes filmed some months before, is an illustration of a “role play”. Treated with humour, what is in question here is a example of incommunicability, even though the actors are two specialists of communication. The mediator (Guy Dumur) can’t do much about it…”.

* Description taken from archivist and researcher Jocelyne Tournet-Lammer’s Sur les traces de Pierre Schaeffer. Archives 1942-1995 (2006). Own translation.

Dir.: Fabien Colin. France 1973, 12 minutes.

L’ange

Patrick Bokanowski’s L’ange is already a well known classic in Frence experimental cinema, having been put into an established canon by scholars Dominique Noguez in his reference work Éloge du cinéma expérimental and by Scott MacDonald in the third installment in his interview book series A Critical Cinema: Interviews with Independent Filmmakers. However, just as much as Bokanowski’s truly unique multi-layered cinematography – the result of his studies of optics and chemistry paired with cinema – overwhelms, it is important to acknowledge that his wife Michèle Bokanowski’s tape manipulations of strings and synths is vital in establishing the eerie, mystic and hypnotizing tone of the of the film.

In seven tableaux we see masked people trapped in situations and repetitive actions from which they are unable to escape. A man stabs a doll hanging from a ceiling with a sabre. Librarians search for a clue in every book of their library. A woman brings her husband a bowl of milk that she keeps dropping on the floor. Nothing seems to lead anywhere. But in-between the tableaux we can see the shape of a mysterious person walking round on a labyrinthic staircase…

France 1982, 70 minutes, color.

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Court-Circuit No. 180: Michèle Bokanowski

Excerpt from television channel Arte’s film series Court-Circuit No. 180. Portrait of Michèle Bokanowski broadcast June 7, 2004.

Michèle Bokanowski explains her ideas on sound-image relationships and on musical composition for the films of her husband Patrick Bokanowski. In her home studio in Paris, she finds some of the original tape recordings for the soundtrack for L’ange and demonstrates  how she put parts of the soundtrack together.

France 2004, 17 minutes, color.

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Part III: Children’s play and adult animation

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Les Shadoks: eposide 1, 2 and 8

Jacques Rouxel with music of Robert Cohen-Solal: Les Shadoks episode 1, 2 and 8.

France 1968, 11 minutes, color.

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Une lettre égarée – Les Francais écrivent aux Shadoks

Television sketch hosted by actor Jean Yanne.

France 1969, 4 minutes.

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Délicieuse catastrophe

“Polish animation giant Piotr Kamler is one of those artists who seem to obsessively return to the same themes and problems regardless of the necessary outer diversity of their work. In Kamler’s case, the obsessions revolve around issues of existential and cosmogonical significance: time, repetition, fracture, creation, nothingness and the nesting of worlds within worlds.Délicieuse Catastrophe is one of his most intriguing and narratively hermetic works. Once again, Kamler collaborated with a GRM electroacoustic musician – Robert Cohen Solal in this case, whose beautiful soundtrack, oscillating between moments of sheer throb or repetition and deranging passages of freewheeling sonic burst, is as essential to the unfolding of the narrative as the director’s enigmatic eyescapes. There’s a pulsating rhythm that animates the world, a pounding ball that punctuates existence in its most monotonous cycles of repetition and apparent meaninglessness. Inside the ball lies the dimension of temporality and existential isolation, as if time is the condition for the breaking up of reality and the multitude of sensible forms. Once we have crossed diverse worlds, we reach an isolated platform in which our “character” lives, suspended over a red liquid of some sort. He moves back and forth, immersed in a series of repetitive tasks he himself probably doesn’t understand, but of which he seems to want to escape. But he fails, alas, as there’s no obvious escape from this dimension, and eventually returns to his monotonous existence. All of a sudden, however, a break occurs: something apparently created out of dirt is cast through the looking-glass and the mechanical cycle of repetition is shattered; the music of the spheres is now out of tune and we see our hero flying through a series of forms which quite clearly suggest female allures. An intruder, of the same shape we had initially seen encompassing our character’s world, is now living in his previously lonely platform. He picks a horn to entice the mysterious intruder with its music and something unprecedented happens: they now both delight in its beautiful tones, and monotony has been broken. As if commanded by a higher voice, the man tries to return to his quotidian pointless tasks; but the intruder won’t let him, craving for more music and delight. The hero complies, initially unaware that he is undermining the order of things. In the frolic of this newly-found meaning, the clock he carries on his neck is replaced by the same red liquid that now seems to boil around his platform. A deluge will follow, on which the artist will float, creating with his magical horn countless new worlds. The mechanicity of the cosmos has collapsed, and the thaumaturgical horn player now delights in his own creations. Whether through the presence of the previously encompassing female figure that invaded his platform or through his own creative power (which may, after all, be one and the same thing), he has escaped from the servile cycle of repetition that defined his vain existence.”

- Film description by the generous, but anonymous, author behind the music film blog The Sound of Eye

Dir.: Piotr Kamler. Music: Robert Cohen-Solal. France 1970, 11 minutes, color.

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Coeurs de secours

“Visually, this one brings to mind Edward Gorey as well as shadow puppet plays. The opening suggests that Kamler is exploring the nature of time here, and indeed it’s difficult to imagine anyone better suited to do so than a stop-motion animator. Note the interesting recursive scalar relationship wherein the men playing chess are themselves inside of a rook on a larger chessboard. Once again, Kamler works with a genius of electronic music from GRM – this time, composer Francois Bayle.”

- Description from UbuWeb

Dir.: Piotr Kamler. Music: Francois Bayle. France 1973, 9 minuts, color.

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Jeux des Anges

“Game of Angels is an elliptical time-and-motion study of civilised savagery – the timetabled, sanitised horrors of concentration camp and gulag. Its beautifully abstracted cattle-cars and serial decapitations heighten that ambivalence; Borowczyk has applied the full force of his draftsmanship. This grotesquely stylised realism is echoed in the score by Bernard Parmegiani – a rigorous effecting and blend of abstracted environmental sounds. Sound and image alike are discreet and delicately rendered – the better to confront the unsuspecting viewer with the secret dividends of polite society. Almost 4 decades later, its impossible to imagine how much this film must have disturbed audiences to its broadcast premiere.”

- Jim Knox in his Concrete Cinema-essay from the 2003 Liquid Architecture festival

Dir.: Walerian Borowczyk. Music: Bernard Parmegiani. France 1964, 9 minutes, color.

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Scherzo Infernal

Dir.: Walerian Borowczyk. Music: Bernard Parmegiani. France, 5 minutes, color.

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Les Dents du Singe

Dir.: René Laloux. France 1960, 13 minutes, color.

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Les Maîtres du temps

Following an attack of giant hornets the little boy Piel finds himself all alone on the planet of Perdide left only with a walkie-talkie handed over to him by his father shortly before his death. The walkie talkie becomes his sole means of communication with life forms he knows in the form of his father’s friend Jaffar and the crew on his ship. As they hurry their way through space to rescue Piel from Perdide, conflicts arise aboard and time plays its tricks.

Large parts of the sound effects and synthetic music is designed and created by GRM composer Christian Zanési. As such it continues and consolidates  the GRM imaginations of extraterrestrial children’s music from the Shadoks series.

Dir.: René Laloux. Original Music: Jean-Pierre Boutayre, Pierre Tardy and Christian Zanési. France 1982, 78 minutes, color.

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Part IV: Concrète revisited and reappropriated

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Livre des morts

Eric Pellet with Olivier Capparos and Lionel Marchetti: Livre des morts.

France 2003, 89 minutes, color.

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ANAT, Filter Issue 66 Synchresis (excerpt)

Ian Andrews with self-composed music: ANAT, Filter Issue 66 Synchresis (excerpt).

Australia 2007, 7 minutes, color.

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Paranoid Park

Gus van Sant with music of Bernard Parmegiani: Paranoid Park.

France/USA, 85 minutes, color.

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Happy-End

Peter Tscherkassky with the music of Michel Chion: Happy-End.

The Austrian found footage filmmaker Peter Tscherkassky is always eager to mention the GRM composers as a source of inspiration for his work, and he has used music of both Bernard Parmegiani and Michel Chion for his own films. One of them is his Happy-End from 1996 in which he reedits amateur footage of an unknown Austrian couple, that is fund of schnaps and eventually erotic play. The soundtrack is a nauseous tape manipulation of Belgian actress Annie Cordy’s jolly Bonbons, caramels, esquimaux, chocolats and an excerpt from Michel Chion’s Requiem (1977)

Austria 1996, 12 minutes, color.

Work Plan

Project goals

My goal with this project is to propose a critical framework for the audiovisual productions of the Groupe de Recherches Musicales at the French Radio, working from the notion of a “Concrete cinema”. This context will represent my personal reflection on the affinities and stylistic features that I think these films share. Though I intend to reflect and use the official sources and works written on the GRM’s history, I wish to put emphasis on my own interpretation of these works style and subject matters. My point in doing this is to show how little critical reflection exists in relation on these works, and ideally to invite other GRM and film enthusiasts to present their view on how these films could be understood today, within the context of experimental film history and the history of GRM. To this day there does not seem to be a strategy for the dissemination of these audiovisual works from the Institut National de l’Audiovisuel in Paris. Whereas many of the audioworks of the GRM are published by INA or by small record labels, only very few of the GRM-related films and television works have found their way to DVD or to the INA online access portal. I see this as an obvious field to explore since so many of the works produced within the GRM complement the audio works. Some of them were even broadly appreciated in their time of production, critically and with the public.

As said, I would like therefore to propose a context for a group of these works that I would claim together give an impression of the aesthetic diversity and creativity that flourished in this time – departing from the notion of a concrete cinema. A point in doing this is not to provide one right context, but to present my perception of the continuities and the stylistic predominant features that I see within this body of work. I aim at encouraging other enthusiasts to interfere with their own ideas and to present their view themselves.

Target group

My target group is one that has at least some familiarity with some of these works. This means that in theory it is a very broad target group, that can bring in many perspectives on these productions. For example the animated television series Les Shadoks that will be included popular, was a hugely popular children’s animation programme in France in the 60′s and 70′s and still today, where new episodes are being made. At the same time, the works of Pierre Schaeffer in different editions, are today among the bestselling audio releases of the INA, and has therefore a relatively large target group as well.

On the other hand, film and music enthusiasts who have followed the group’s activities through the years who know the back catalogue with the insight of experts, could be interested in rediscovering this rare area of the group’s production, and be able to give insights on production details and the discourses shaping these works in their time.

Though many people would be able to enjoy these films, I would expect mainly an audience interested in experimental music and film to find interest in this programme. I wish to address myself to an audience familiar with the expressions and theories of acousmatic music, trying at the same time however, to make my introduction to these works easily accessible.

Results of project

The vignette that I wish to leave for this project will consist of three parts. First of all a regular programme with a curatorial statement, a list of the films with descriptions and stills. Second, a flyer that condensates the design and the descriptions of the program, and lists the films. The statement will be the most important element in the vignette. It is here that I try to give a definition of a concrete cinema, that will hopefully encourage discussion. Third I wish to leave a flash animation with sound, that uses the design from my programme and can be used as an introduction to a website.

Below, I have included a link to a video – again from the INA archives – that was made for the 50-years celebration of the GRM in 2008. Unfortunately it does not have subtitles, but it makes use of many clips from GRM films and recording sessions, and thus gives a good impression of the group’s audiovisual output nevertheless.

As the video cannot be embedded I have chosen once again a still – in this case three – from one concrete cinema film. These stills are from Michèle and Patrick Bokanowski’s L’Ange from 1982. If you click on the stills, you will be directed to the video.

A Cinema of the GRM? – Subject Exploration

This project is born out of my passion for the electroacoustic music of the French Groupe de Recherches Musicales (GRM). A musical research unit at the French Radio founded in 1958 by radio engineer and composer Pierre Schaeffer. For years I have been collecting sound works – both works officially published by the Institut National de l’Audiovisuel in Paris and unofficial bootlegs of works of composers associated with the group. Eventually, the fascination of the work of GRM inspired me to take up sound recording myself. For this reason I feel it is something that have had a great impact on me and my perception of music.

What I would like to explore with this project in the context of the course Seminar Audiovisual Sources is, however, an aspect of the group’s activities that is not very widely known, and that I myself, have only been able to find dispersed information on, on the internet: the cinematic and audiovisual production of the Groupe de Recherches Musicales.

Background

The GRM was formed in 1958 by the radio engineer and composer Pierre Schaeffer, alongside the young composers Luc Ferrari, Bernard Parmegiani and Francois Bayle (Schaeffer, Parmegiani and Bayle can be seen on the photo below, from left to right). The GRM composers are most famous for having introduced and coined the genre of musique concrète – today also referred to asacousmatic music. It is a genre of tape music, that uses real sounds as its material, captured on either magnetic tape or digital recording media. Composers then create manipulations of these captured sounds with the technological means offered by the recording media, in order to produce abstract sounds. By doing so, the composer removes the sound from its source, and engages in a play with signification and referentiality of real sound. It is a predominant trait of this musical genre, that the works often play with a juxtaposition of the abstract and the figurative, finding itself somewhere in between the iconic/abstract and the anecdotal/referential, between pure abstract sound and radio essay/play.

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Since 1958, the GRM has operated as a musical research unit within the French Radio and l’INA in Paris, and has remained to this day a reference point for electronic musicians in France on a very large scale. National centers of musical creation and research exist in different regions of France that adhere to the practices of the GRM, and has from an early stage – the late 60′s and the 70′s – tried to create a cross-over between autodidact DIY-electronic music culture and academia that seeks to challenge the tendencies to cultural centralism in France – the Parisianisme.

For a more extended account of the activities of the GRM and Pierre Schaeffer’s theories of composition I have included links to the relevant wikipedia-sites in the above.

Why a cinema of the GRM?

First of all because the audiovisual productions of the group are not very widely known, though the composers of the GRM put just as much effort into them as in their musical composition. Second, because it could be interesting to take a look at a lesser known area of European experimental film and media art, to try to bring out new perspectives. In historical accounts of experimental film, it is often New York and Vienna, that are thought of as the creative centers of the mid-twentieth century filmic avant-garde. These accounts see the European avant-gardes of the 1920′s as a precursor to many of the later American and Austrian filmmakers, implicitely assuming that the European filmic avant-gardes dried out after the 1920′s. Though I do not intend to contest that historical exposition, I would like to show with this project, that things were going on in France in those later years as well, that were definitely unique and original, although perhaps not as widely influential and conceptually radical.

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To illustrate my question of whether we could discern a cinema of the GRM from the audiovisual productions of the GRM, by revising the group’s practices, I will start by posting and compare two photos of Pierre Schaeffer here. I think the question, at least as a starting point, adresses a need to revise the role of Pierre Schaeffer within the French radio. From being thought of today as mainly a composer outside of France, I would like to bring attention to the many activities, productions and research projects he was involved in, and think of him here as a catalyst for many different media experiments.

The first photo has become almost iconic. It is from a session shot in 1951 by photographer Serge Lido, that depicts Schaeffer in front of the Phonogène à clavier - in english the Phonogene. The Phonogene was an instrument invented at the French radio, that controlled the speed of short tape loops via a keyboard, crucial to development of the compositional method of musique concrère. Loops of recorded sounds on magnetic tape would pass by the tapeheads at different speeds according to the keys pressed. In manipulating the sounds in this way they would change pitch, and reveal hidden abstract aural qualities. Simply put, the Phonogene was a prototype of the modern day sampler, where short digitally stored sound bits are manipulated from – in most cases – a keyboard.

This photo, as mentioned, has become almost synonymous with Schaeffer, his conceptualization of organised real sound on tape as a compositional principle, and with musique concrète. I think this is a result of the dramatic effect of the blinding light bulb, and Schaeffer’s intense look in this picture as if he is listening with the utmost attention reproduced by the instrument. It has created an image of him as a  visionary inventor and composer, and – at least to my mind – put him and his work on a piedestal that tends to overshadow the diverse activities of the composers working at the GRM. The photo invokes perhaps a romantic cliché of the inspired artist with a vision. But to my mind, this understanding of Schaeffer, has also overshadowed the many faces of Schaeffer himself, his theoretical work and his involvement in cinema and radio on a broader scale.

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Therefore, I would like to see Schaeffer and the activities of the Groupe de Recherches Musicales in a different light in the context of this course. To express that intention, I find it appropriate to include another photo from the same session, that litteraly puts him in a different, less dramatic light, and sort of dedramatizes the moment. I find that a dedramatization of this picture is a good point of departure for my wish to focus on a lesser known aspect of the GRM in form of the audiovisual works of the group.

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Pierre Schaeffer dedicated most of his professional life to write theoretically about music, sound, radio and television. He kept close relations with Marshall McLuhan, and it is often forgotten that there was a fruitful theoretical exchange between the two, though they had fundamental disagreements. In academia and especially in the field of media studies outside of France, the name of Pierre Schaeffer as an important thinker and European media theorist of the twentieth century is virtually ignored. I do not intend to go into an in-depth discussion of Pierre Schaeffer’s media theories here. But as one of these many practices that he initiated, that supplements the musical output of the GRM of which a large part today is neglected, one finds the film and television series of the GRM.

Many of these works have circulated individually in festivals in recent years, and some are published on DVD. To give some examples: last year, two of the collective works by the couple of filmmaker Patrick Bokanowski and composer Michèle Bokanowski L’Ange (1982) and Battements Solaires (2008) were presented at the Rotterdam Film Festival. This year in Brussels, the composer Bernard Parmegiani’s L’oeil écoute (1973) was shown as a part of the La Semaine du son-festival. In France the DVD editions of the children animation series that features the music of composer of Robert Cohen-Solal, and was produced by Pierre Schaeffer, is still today a great success. These are just some examples of the large body of films and television productions, that are somehow related to GRM-composers.

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My claim is that these works could be presented in a discursive framework, that perceives of them as a specific kind of cinema represented by the GRM. The intent to develop a so-called cinéma concrèt within the GRM was in fact expressed by Schaeffer in an interview on the French television show Discorama hosted by actor Jean Desailly in 1959. Here, examples of the earliest cinematic experiments of the GRM were showed and commented. I include here the link to that interview that the Institut National de l’Audiovisuel in Paris has digitized and made accessible online. It is at 3:35 that the conversation turns to cinema and examples are shown:

http://www.ina.fr/video/I05028438/pierre-schaeffer-a-propos-de-la-musique-concrete.fr.html

We could see that interview with Schaeffer as the point of departure for the “Cinema of the GRM”. A cinema that would later evolve into something completely different, that included very little participation from Pierre Schaeffer, and resulte in children’s and adult animation, documentary, media installations and experimental film.

A Cinema of the GRM?

Title: A Cinema of the GRM?

Curator: Christian Gosvig Olesen

Subject: The audiovisual productions by or related to the Groupe de Recherches Musicales at the French Radio.

Person: Pierre Schaeffer

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As an example of a film produced by the French radio with a GRM composer, I link here to the short experimental animation film made in a collaboration between Polish animator Piotr Kamler and composer Robert Cohen-Solal:

Click on the image below to see Piotr Kamler’s Délicieuse Catastrophe (1971) with music by composer Robert Cohen-Solal.