A Critical Cinema 2: Interviews with Independent Filmmakers

of conformism. That's the natural tendency, just for the sake of convenience and safety. You learn what doesn't kill you; you play it safe. But when it comes to art, you can do stuff that'll "kill" you. A basic example of that is the oscillation of light and dark in the projector. Of course, the modern cinema device was designed to eliminate flicker, but you can bring it back and play around with it.

MacDonald:

During the late sixties you began to make a new kind of kinetic sculptureWhat you call "floats." How do you see them relating to your film work?

Breer:

In my films, I deal with a medium designed for motion and bring it to a point where things go by so fast that they start standing still: the interruption of continuity is so great that finally there isn't much, if any, continuity, and I have what amounts to a static picture where everything is on the brink of flowing into motion but never quite does. With the floats, it's the same and in another sense the opposite. Sculptures are "not supposed" to move, but these do, just barely. In each case I'm challenging the limits of the medium, or confusing the expectations that one might normally have.

And there's something more to it. Since childhood model airplane days, I've always had a great satisfaction in putting things together, pounding nails, sawing wood, sandpapering. My brain had gotten me into a kind of painting that didn't have a hell of a lot to it past the conceptual stage. In my geometric paintings I just had to cover vast areas of canvas: it was like house painting. When I started doing films, there was a lot more involvement with making things. There was the camera apparatus itself, and making thousands of images for a film put a demand on my imagination that doing one painting didn't. Starting to make sculptures had a workshop satisfaction that filmmaking didn't. It got me involved in the world of switches, wheels, electricity. It made me feel good. I could even listen to the radio when I worked. And I got high on the idea that when I was through with them, these things had their own autonomy. I didn't think I was Pygmalion, but the idea of making art objects that were restless was intriguing to me. I was trying to create a sort of gallery presence with them and didn't want their activities reduced to anecdotal events, so that people would wait to see what happened when they bumped into each other. But I did get a certain pleasure in the unconventional behavior (in any behavior at all!) of these art objects.

One collector who was being persuaded to buy one of the floats was very worried. She asked me what would happen if one of them went across the room and ran into one of her paintings. Bob Rauschenberg, who did buy a bunch of them, was worried that his dog would take after them, but his dog never showed any interest at all. There were some

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Breer's floats on the move.

junior high kids who used to come to the gallery after school. They'd lie down on the floor of the gallery and wait until the floats would nudge up to them. Those kids understood that the floats were atmospheric, which was the point as far as I'm concerned.

MacDonald:

Why did you start working with the rotoscope in

Gulls and Buoys?

Breer: Gulls and Buoys

started in the South of France. We took four kids down to an apartment in a chateau that we rented for eighty dollars a week. I was supposed to be on vacation for once. I had gotten this heavy number about not always working, but I still wanted to. The place was very bare. There was a desk and a desk lamp. The desk had a deep drawer, and I put the lamp in it and made a light table with a piece of broken glass. I bought cards in a little stationary store. I'd buy them out every dayfifty cards. I just started drawing. I outlined my hand, and then I took the key out of the desk and outlined that. I guess from that I

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