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Our culture tends to teach us that the world is an ordering of passive things, of opaque surfaces. In Serene Velocity Ernie Gehr further consolidates his vision of the world as a radiant web of energies in which the strands of human consciousness make up the warp. This notion of contemplation as an active posture of the mind is not new. It is, rather, “Medieval” in a mental climate gone largely “Roman”. - Hollis Frampton, 1970. (previously unpublished writing )
Most famously, Gehr’s Serene Velocity (1970), created a stunning, percussive head-on motion by systematically shifting the focal length of a stationary zoom lens as it stared down the center of an empty institutional hallway – thus playing off the contradiction generated by the frame’s heightened flatness and the composition’s severely over-determined perspective. Without ever moving the camera, Gehr turned the fluorescent geometry of this literal Shock Corridor into a sort of piston-powered mandala. If Giotto had made action films it would be this. - J. Hoberman, “Ernie Gehr; A Walker In The City”, 1995
Preserved on 35mm by the Museum of Modern Art with funding from the National Preservation Foundation’s Master Grants Program. Special thanks to Steven Higgins and Peter Williamson. This screening dedicated to Mary Lea Bandy. - Ernie Gehr
"Table (1976), to take a slightly more elaborate conjuring trick, converts an ordinary kitchen surface, a homely clutter of crockery and utensils, into pure visceral sensation – the celluloid equivalent of a Cubist still-life. For 15 minutes, Gehr alternates two slightly different points of view, accentuating individual shots through the use of blue or red filters (and sometimes no filter at all). His simple, if painstaking procedure produces a stuttering hypnotic shutter: Some objects appear simultaneously in 2 positions, others flex their shimmering forms or collide their neighbors, while a few barely seem to “move” at all.
"Because Table was shot over the course of a single day, the light is continuously changing – shadows deepen, different objects catch the sun. Throughout, Gehr varies the amount of time each shot is held. When he picks up the pace, the overall movement resembles an animated cartoon cycle of objects chasing each other around the table. When he shifts into high gear, the screen starts to flash and ripple, barely able to contain the forces released in it. Rather than a simulation machine, Gehr has employed the motion picture apparatus as a cyclotron. The movies are pulverized into their constituent elements and then recombined.” - J. Hoberman, “Ernie Gehr: A Walker in the City,” 1995.
A convoluted ‘western’ where magic ‘mecanique’ takes center stage and primal passions abound. In this process, even the editor gets carried away, and the director’s work is turned upside down, but never mind. Shots rub shoulders, collide and/or collapse into each other, while a set of performers, speaking a new language, attempt to breath some zest into their wacky roles. And the Monkey Wrench? History. Ah, the phantasmagoric power of the movies! - Ernie Gehr, 2006
Some time prior to the invention of the cinematographe Nietzsche was
said to have suffered a breakdown here and was found in the streets
weeping while he embraced a horse. Today the street cars still run but
horses and philosophers are scarce. Once it was the nation’s capital
then no more… It was one of Europe’s silent film capitals with many
studios, this too passed. This is a city of rising and falling empires. Industries, fashion and construction leave track marks and cause a
daily commotion in the relative calm. A city known in part for its
famous shroud a much contested pre-photographic negative transfer of
one of history’s most worshipped figures was itself shrouded for
months. Black veils hid buildings overtaxed with hasty restorations and
racing in countdown with near time lapse renovations. Preparing to
preen in its short- lived moment of televised overexposure.
In Gehr’s piece more modest figures appear, walking to work emerging
from the shadows of the portico and the arcades – 14th century through
the1940’s dressed for the present day, digitally immortalized without
even blinking. But they quiver. These pedestrians are unwitting
acrobats of the highest order as the daily grind is telegraphed into a
new construction. Who says you can’t be two places at once? Those in
the picture on screen are, and you will be as well. - Mark McElhatten
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