{"id":4951,"date":"2024-04-22T15:53:53","date_gmt":"2024-04-22T19:53:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/thelantern\/?p=4951"},"modified":"2024-04-22T15:58:25","modified_gmt":"2024-04-22T19:58:25","slug":"interview-bill-morrison","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/thelantern\/2024\/04\/22\/interview-bill-morrison\/","title":{"rendered":"Interview: Bill Morrison"},"content":{"rendered":"

In January, artist and filmmaker Bill Morrison joined <\/span>The Lantern<\/span><\/i> for a Zoom interview to reflect on the Colby Museum\u2019s fall downtown exhibition, <\/span>Bill Morrison: Cycles and Loops<\/span><\/i><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Installation view of Bill Morrison: Cycles and Loops<\/i>. Photo credit: Stephen Davis Phillips.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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Gussie Weiss (Editor of <\/b>The Lantern<\/i><\/b>)<\/b><\/span>:<\/b> Thank you for talking with me today! I was hoping to hear some of your reflections on the exhibition that just closed at the Colby Museum, <\/span>Bill Morrison: Cycles and Loops<\/span><\/i>, especially on what it meant to show your work in a gallery space.<\/span><\/p>\n

Bill Morrison<\/span>:<\/b> I haven\u2019t done a lot of gallery space stuff in comparison to how much I\u2019ve done theatrical cinema. You know, generally, the difference is, in theatrical cinema, you have more of a captive audience, for better or worse. In making <\/span>Cycles and Loops<\/span><\/i>, I understood that somebody who wanted to see a complete revolution could do so, but that it would build over time and that it would build in conjunction with the other things that you could see at the same time or out of your periphery in the gallery, and that the gallery space itself would become kind of an environment. And, I think what you\u2019re trying to do is achieve some kind of spirituality or transformation to transport people. Which, of course, the best cinema does as well, but it usually does with some context. That context is set up linearly over time, and the rules are established, and there is a beginning, middle, and end of some sort. Whereas that\u2019s dispensed in the gallery. It\u2019s a big ask to tell people to sit down and watch a film in a gallery with ambient lighting, ambient sound, and people coming and going. You\u2019re not gonna get as much out of that film as you would in a theater. So, therefore, I think there should be different rules.<\/span><\/p>\n

GW<\/span>:<\/b> I was also wondering if you had thoughts in the same way about the films\u2019 being silent in the gallery, when I understand your cinematic films have sound as a central element.<\/span><\/p>\n

BM<\/span>:<\/b> That was another consideration. Music and sound are really important to my films, and a lot of my work is done in collaboration with a composer\u2014a lot of different composers\u2014and, at the same time sometimes my work is criticized for that because I\u2019ve made a choice and then I\u2019m imposing that choice on the audience, and that footage is not able to go in a different direction now. So, I thought, in a way, with <\/span>Cycles and Loops<\/span><\/i>, this would be a chance to return these films that were all silent to begin with to their silence, and that there would also be a chance for them to live durationally. All the clips would go by in an instant, but now they\u2019re slowed down and they\u2019re looped, so they give people a chance to ruminate about them and create their own music and their own associations. I thought the silence was a way of opening it up.<\/span><\/p>\n

GW<\/span>:<\/b> That\u2019s really interesting to talk about bringing them back to their silence, because these are all sourced from archival materials. Can you contextualize that sourcing?<\/span><\/p>\n

BM<\/span>:<\/b> I go around to archives and say, \u201cYou got anything rotten?!\u201d And when I was young they\u2019d be like, \u201cAre you kidding? We don\u2019t have anything rotten. We preserve films!\u201d But as my reputation has grown, people are like, \u201cYes, we have rotten stuff! We\u2019ve been saving for you!\u201d In some cases, it is incumbent on me to find a lab who will deal with it\u2014because it\u2019s pretty nasty stuff\u2014and other times they\u2019ve already digitized it in house. In some cases, somebody finds me on Facebook<\/span> and says, \u201cI have this rotten stuff, do you want it?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

GW<\/span>:<\/b> Right, it\u2019s starting to come to <\/span>you<\/span><\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n

BM<\/span>:<\/b> It\u2019s starting to come to me a little bit. I\u2019m sort of known as the \u2018decay guy.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

GW<\/span>: <\/b>It\u2019s exciting to give life back to them in a way that\u2019s leaving them in their damaged state.<\/span><\/p>\n

BM<\/span>:<\/b> In a way, their damage is a testament to how contemporary they are. That\u2019s the prism through which we\u2019re seeing them. Their newness is this damage; it took exactly this long for them to look this way.<\/span><\/p>\n

GW<\/span>:<\/b> And how do you comb through all of the archival material? I imagine it\u2019s hours and hours of film.<\/span><\/p>\n

BM<\/span>:<\/b> I\u2019ve looked at it so many times, that it\u2019s the ones that haunt me. The ones that come back. And a lot of it is glop, so when a recognizable image comes through and you see that, it\u2019s just this beautiful moment, it\u2019s very clear. <\/span><\/p>\n

. . .<\/span><\/p>\n

BM<\/span>:<\/b> Another thing that\u2019s different about the gallery is there\u2019s no financial burden or timeframe, so you can go multiple times, and if there\u2019s someone you want to bring\u2014\u2018I saw this show, you want to come with me next time?\u2019\u2014it\u2019s more open that way. It can spread through word-of-mouth without the restriction of \u2018it\u2019s gonna close on Friday\u2019 or \u2018there\u2019s only one screening at 7 o\u2019clock on Thursday.\u2019 It\u2019s something that you can plan a social event around.<\/span><\/p>\n

GW<\/span>:<\/b> Similar to the loops. It\u2019s iterative in that way.<\/span><\/p>\n

BM<\/span>:<\/b> They\u2019re cycles and loops! I was just really grateful that it could have such an enormously long run at Colby, that it was up for four months or something, that was just great. I\u2019m sure anyone who was used to going to galleries around Waterville had a chance to see it.<\/span><\/p>\n

GW<\/span>:<\/b> I hope so! Now that it\u2019s down, I\u2019m wondering what you\u2019re working on and if this informs your next projects as you walk away from this show.<\/span><\/p>\n

BM<\/span>:<\/b> I never know how a past work impacts my next work. It\u2019s all fluid to me. I just do whatever\u2019s in front of me, and then after I\u2019m finished and there\u2019s some perspective, you go, \u2018That\u2019s a little bit like this thing you did four years ago!\u2019 or twenty years ago. \u2026 I went in a seriously different direction last year when I encountered this cache of police surveillance footage that documented a police killing in 2018 using their own cameras. A friend of mine who\u2019s a journalist sued for all this footage and got it all from the city, so it was just a plethora of material, and I was able to recreate this crime in a quad-split screen with all the cameras synchronized together and a continuous running time of thirty minutes. That film\u2019s called <\/span>Incident<\/span><\/i>, and it did really well on the festival circuit. And then just last night, we premiered a piece that was part of an opera, which is the other type of work that I do: set-design and video design for operas in theater. It was about the Chinese immigrants who came to Angel Island, which is kind of like the Ellis Island of San Francisco, but rather than getting their passports stamped and sent off to start a new life, they were often held in detainment buildings for months, if not years, so it created this huge tragedy. So, there\u2019s a bunch of different things, and I\u2019m trying to figure out what will bubble to the surface first.<\/span><\/p>\n

GW<\/span>:<\/b> That\u2019s exciting! A lot of different directions.<\/span><\/p>\n

BM<\/span>:<\/b> Yeah, I did a lot with nitrate, and I think this show at Colby kind of summarizes some of the high points with it. I think there are different ways of exploring our audio-visual heritage, and I\u2019m interested in seeing the different eras and different media and different ways of depicting it as I move forward.<\/span><\/p>\n

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