[Alumni-chat] Recent Visit to YS

[toyboy (andy at svcable.net)]

5.  Andy: Thank you.

5a. You're welcome.

I have to admit being a Monday Morning Quarterback of the "opposite Camp". I know this is going to get me into hot water with Bob, and I've even been advised not to, but so be it. I'm going to confess my sins. Or as Travis would have it, an "old grudge".

Back in the early 90's I still had in my possession the animation stand that my pal and I had built from scratch while at Antioch. Those were the days when the marginalization of the Art Department was on the horizon. The professors were always valiantly begging the Administration for more money. Sometimes getting it, more often not. So, without much, we were given a room to use (the film department was on the 3rd floor of the Art Department then) and not much else. From that we not simply built a stand, we built interest in animation and rather vibrant little animation studio. If I've managed to be a role model of sorts to anyone, it happened there. I like to claim that I inspired at least 2 or 3 younger students to become animators, and who are still working in the trade today.

Anyway, I took the stand with me, since I had plans to continue working as an animator. But my animations turned into the simplicity of flipbooks rather than the "complications" of film. And after a decade or so of having it housed in one barn or another, I figured enough was enough and maybe it was time to donate it to the Alma Mater. I went to visit Antioch with that idea in mind, only to discover that the Film Department was no longer part of the Art Department, but now part of the Communications Department.

Now by way of background, you must understand how things were structured in the early 70's. Video was just in its early stages, with bulky porta-packs and all. And Video was, of course, the domain of Bob Devine. Film on the other hand was under the auspices of the Art Department, under the domain of, first, Paul Sharits and later Tony Conrad, both of whom were well-regarded and important artists in the avant-garde film world. (And please, I'm not saying Bob was not well-regarded. I'm just defending what went on in the Film Dept.) But first and foremost, aside from their formalistic tendancies in their own art, they had a most well-rounded knowledge of and vision of film as an art form. Even Paul whose films were tyrannically, even antagonistically non-narrative, had a deep respect, if not love, of French film. His awe of filmmakers like Bresson and Renoir was palpable. He wasn't a madman. He was a true intellectual who happened to also be a filmmaker. As difficult a person as he
was, I credit him for opening up worlds upon worlds to me, beyond the Hollywood construct (yet including Hollywood too).

There was a relatively friendly split on campus. It was when term "vidiot" was coined, for better or worse. But for the most part, and I know I'm generalizing here, the study of video was largely for documentary purposes, and film was studied as a plastic and varied art form. The latter was my background, and the singular thing that I most cherish about my Antioch education.

So, perhaps this brief synopsis might help explain my chagrin when I discovered that the film department had been taken over by the Communications Department. It was no longer part of the Art Department at all, and the film professor, as best I could understand, had no background with film as an art form, at least in the sense of using it for one's own personal vision and/or as a tool for learning to see. Now I know that is a slippery comment to make, at least in the sense of an "art is in the eye of the beholder". But either you believe politics and didacticism kills art or you don't. I do. And you either care about that, or you dont. I do.

I decided not to donate the animation stand. I remember receiving nicely written appeals for me to change my mind, first by Bob, followed by Al Guskin himself. I refused and refused again.

Now before you think that I've held this as an animus against Bob, I'll have to say in all honesty you're wrong, although I do hold him responsible for the move, which was ferociously fought against by the Art Department at the time. But it did, in one feel swoop dramatically change my feelings about the College. I understood even at the time I was attending Antioch that there were, as it were, barbarians at the gate of the Film Department. Either you loved what was going on there at the time, or you found it terribly irrelevant. I loved it. I thrived on it. It saved my ass, if not my mind. Antioch was nationally known at the time as having an incredibly unique thing going on at the third floor of the Art Building. Every single film artist that you can name from the 70's came to Antioch or had their films shown there. 

Was it selfish on my part to use some Ampac money to help show Michael Snow's four hour film, "La Region Centrale", in Kelly Hall? A film made by a remote controlled robotic armature, with a soundtrack of the remote's beeps, and a visual ever faster swirl of color and speeding blurs; a film that is hardly known but by a small cotorie of people then and now; a film that started with a packed house and ended with about 10 of us mesmerized and grateful. Perhaps. Perhaps we got away with murder, but I'd do it all again in a heartbeat. We knew what we were watching was historic, and even if the "h" was small, it was important nonetheless.

Even after both Paul and Tony left, the torch was carried on for awhile by Janis Crystal Lipzin. I'm not sure when it all really ended as I lost touch in the 80's. I'm sure this is where Bob will point out how wrong I am or how out of touch I am. But I'm not wrong about my experience, and I'm not wrong in knowing that the education I had, watching "odd little films", even those that Tony pickled, was not a waste of time or money. It was a long hard look at reality, in the broadest possible sense, through the medium of film. And I pity those budding filmmakers at Antioch over the years since that haven't had as luxurious an opportunity. (And remember, it wasn't that luxurious!)

But to see it not just end, but be killed off was what saddened me. No one can tell me that it was just "the times" because I know too well how other small Colleges have kept film programs going, under the auspices of the Art Department, without much problem. Evergreen is just one example. It's not even to say "documentary film" bad, "art film" good. (Or Bob bad, Paul/Tony good.) It is to say, there was  a tug of war of resources, and Art lost yet again.

So was it selfish of me at that point not simply to rescind my proffered donation of a home-made, rather klunky animation stand, but to always feel reticent since that time (during my "income producing" years) to withold donations? Perhaps. But while everyone likes to say "the personal is political", decisions are often in the end personal in nature and politics has the least to do with it. It was all I had to go on.

I don't claim to be a "great artist" because of Antioch, but I was able to rub shoulders with some, and I thank Antioch for it. All I have been able to see, since that time, is not simply a neglect of the Arts at Antioch, but an almost palpable hostility to it. And I haven't been able to find in myself the will to give to such an institution. You could almost say that I felt I'd be betraying myself to give money to that. Yes I loved Antioch.  Do I still? Yes, but in a very tough way.