Field Report 1 Schaller and The Bear Garden

Trances are rare to encounter. It’s not always that one is able to slip mentally passed the grind of the hustle and bustle of everyday and quiet the mind for any amount of time. Art seems to be the only outlet for something of this nature to even remotely occur outside of receiving hypnotic therapy or using illegal substances. Even then it happens less often than more that something can call for a patron’s complete absorption to the extent that one experiences the cessation of all thoughts and truly just observes what is there before them. I experienced this for a brief moment however when I experienced two films based off the 201’s class curriculum. I can sincerely say that I was brought into a sort of meditation with both the work of Robert Schaller and that of The Bear Garden by Andrea Leutenker.
Firstly I’d like to tip my hat off to Robert Schaller. On top of making the films, his projection work was quite impressive. The way in which he collaborated the films in which he made and the performance of their projections was remarkable. I was stunned by it visually when watching and afterward pondered the motivation for such work. What outcome was Schaller hoping for?
For me it had to have been to put the audience member in a trance. From his three projector composed story of the dancer I was completely captivated throughout its entirety. I was literally thrown from all my day’s work, expectations and misconceptions to come and just try to understand this work. This was just a prelude to the trance however. The real hallucinogenic experience came from Schaller’s riveting piece on the trees. The alternate perceptions from juxtaposing the different shots and angles in rapid succession developed my thesis of this meditative stance on these works. One second I was viewing a tree on the screen with its depth location changing quite moderately and the next minute, I was watching a collage of trees moving rapidly before my eyes. I didn’t have a second to think about the last; which all the while had put me in a trance until the very end. Only then was I able to make sense of the work and only now am I able to reiterate it.
The Bear Garden I believe was similar in motivation. The artist I believe wished to have a similar outcome as my response to Schaller’s tree piece; only for me it fell quite short. It went no where slowly. In the beginning I most certainly felt similar feelings in the work to Schaller’s. Brushing through the golden meadows following the camera was exquisitely representative of this trance like state within the film for me. I watched with great gratitude for the opportunity to become overwhelmed by it, but then this feeling honestly vanished within me. From the slow whispers in the background to the faint images of the people overcast by the colored lenses applied by Leuteneker I found myself distracted and at moments humored. Basically it was difficult for me to get into it the way Schaller’s piece did. In moments the imagery was brilliant, but the range of sounds and overlapping images really dragged me into thinking there was a little bit too much aspiration involved for its own good.
In conclusion it was Schaller’s simplicity and tempo of his film that made it work for me in completely captivating myself in this trance like state. The Bear Garden was a little extensive and at times boring for even though it contained much of the same aesthetic values as Schaller’s. Yet, Schaller’s soundless piece left my mind in silence for the moment and its visuals kept my eyes communicating with the picture the entire way through; fully embodying a trance as much as it possibly could have.