Retrospektive Tom Konyves
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SYMPATHIES OF WAR: A POSTSCRIPT (1978) 6:30 min.
After I completed Sympathies of War, I produced A Postscript almost immediately. In this work, I explore the appropriation of the soundtrack of the original videopoem as a “recontextualizing device”. The “performed speech” of reading that was foregrounded as the centerpiece of Sympathies Of War is repositioned in A Postscript in favour of “performed writing”. The composition of the frame, as in the performance section of Sympathies of War, is frozen, self-referentially “mummified”; it is the close-up of the VTR, the camera focused on the needle of the audio level (VU) meter, as we hear the soundtrack of Sympathies of War begin to play. Attached to the machine, directly under the meter is a 3” x 5” tear-sheet note pad. As the soundtrack fades out, my hand comes into view, holding a pen. I begin writing on the pad but the words being written appear fragmented, partly obscured by the hand doing the writing. I withdraw my hand which reveals the complete text. The hand returns into view, tears off the sheet from the pad, revealing a blank sheet. The volume control is turned off as the hand begins to write, then raised to normal level as the writing is torn off the pad. If the structure of the original Sympathies of War was the repeated SPEECH/ STOP/SPEECH/STOP, in A Postscript it is WRITE/TEAR SHEET/SOUND FADE IN/SOUND FADE OUT, repeated 10 times.
