The Surface of Illusion: Avant-Garde Apperception in Structural/Materialist Film.

David Macrae

In structural/materialist film, the illusory imagery of filmic representation is obscured by the corporeal actuality of the celluloid surface. The intriguing films made in this vein seem to reach straight into the historical origins of film experimentation and avant-garde material manipulation. This essay aims to reveal a direct legacy of conceptual relationship running from the early European avant-garde film-works of the 1920s, to the structural/materialist films of the 1960s and 70s. The avant-gardist impulse which connects these areas may be located in the axiomatic function of apperception: the self-evident, media-specific awareness and recognition of the process of perceiving. The term 'apperception', of course, may also be used in the sense of fundamental knowledge acquisition in which new concepts are contrasted, and contextualised, with existing elements of prior knowledge. This concept of contextualisation can additionally be related to the historicising notions which Peter Bürger applied to the historical avant-garde and its relationship to what he terms the neo-avant-garde.

For Bürger, the historical avant-garde is a phenomenon statically rooted to a temporal location, and the so-called neo-avant-garde is dismissed as merely a form of "consumption fad" - a muted mimic of earlier aspirations which only consolidates the perceived limitations of aesthetic revolution. Avant-garde film is an area which Burger left woefully neglected in his theoretical excursions. By exploring examples of European structural/materialist film, it may be possible to elucidate the nature of a range of significant relational factors deriving directly from the early film-works of the historical avant-garde. In this way, a vital artery of developmental avant-gardist innovation may be exposed to new attention, and Bürger's characterisation of avant-garde/neo-avant-garde historicisation may be challenged and critically reassessed.