David Gatten
Encyclopedia
David Edward Gatten is an American
experimental filmmaker and moving image artist. Since 1996 Gatten's films have explored the intersection of the printed word and moving image, cataloging the variety of ways in which texts functions in cinema as both language and image, writing and drawing, often blurring the boundary between these categories. His films often employee cameraless techniques, combined with close-up cinematography and optical printing processes.
Among other projects, he is currently working on a series of films entitled Secret History of the Dividing Line, a True Account in Nine Parts, a project which Artforum magazine called “one of the most erudite and ambitious undertakings in recent cinema.” He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2005 to continue work on this series of films exploring the library of William Byrd of Westover (1674-1744) and the lives of William Byrd and his daughter Evelyn Byrd (1707-1737).
In the May/June 2010 Film Comment poll, The Top 50 Avant-Garde Filmmakers of the Decade, David Gatten placed at number 8, tied with Peter Hutton.
In November of 2011 Gatten's work will be the subject of a fourteen film retrospective entitled "Texts of Light" that will open at the Wexner Center for the Arts before travelling to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC and the Harvard Film Archive in Cambridge, MA, as well as other venues.
Gatten is currently Visiting Professor and Distinguished Filmmaker in Residence in the Program in the Arts of the Moving Image at Duke University.
off the South Carolina
coast. The resulting sounds and images were produced by the physical and chemical interactions between the film's emulsion
and the surrounding salt water, sand, rocks, crabs, fish and underwater creatures.
Gatten's previous film, Hardwood Process, takes the shape of a diary and also explored the "secret writing" of nature, combined with hand-processing of the 16mm film stock, use of natural dyes, toners, chemical treatments, optical and contact printing.
Gatten's rarely screened first film, Silver Align, is a portrait of one of Gatten's mentors, the filmmaker Zack Stiglicz, filming on the shore of Lake Michigan.
The second film in the cycle, The Great Art of Knowing, is generally regarded at Gatten's most important film and was listed on the "50 Best Film of the Decade" in a 2010 Film Comment critics poll.
The series has been credited as having a "unique approach" to biography, and the films have been
compared to the works of artists Agnes Martin and Marcel Broohthaers, filmmakers Hollis Frampton, Nathaniel Dorsky, Robert Beavers and Stan Brakhage, poets Susan Howe, and e.e. cummings, and philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Ludwig Wittgenstein.
Portions of the cycle have been included in the 2002 and 2006 Whitney Biennial exhibitions and in 2011 all four completed parts were included in "The Unfinished Film" exhibition at the Gladstone Gallery, alongside works by Joseph Cornell, Sergei Eisenstein, Jean-Luc Godard, Dziga Vertov and Andy Warhol
Faculty Page, Program in the Arts of the Moving Image, Duke University
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
experimental filmmaker and moving image artist. Since 1996 Gatten's films have explored the intersection of the printed word and moving image, cataloging the variety of ways in which texts functions in cinema as both language and image, writing and drawing, often blurring the boundary between these categories. His films often employee cameraless techniques, combined with close-up cinematography and optical printing processes.
Among other projects, he is currently working on a series of films entitled Secret History of the Dividing Line, a True Account in Nine Parts, a project which Artforum magazine called “one of the most erudite and ambitious undertakings in recent cinema.” He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2005 to continue work on this series of films exploring the library of William Byrd of Westover (1674-1744) and the lives of William Byrd and his daughter Evelyn Byrd (1707-1737).
In the May/June 2010 Film Comment poll, The Top 50 Avant-Garde Filmmakers of the Decade, David Gatten placed at number 8, tied with Peter Hutton.
In November of 2011 Gatten's work will be the subject of a fourteen film retrospective entitled "Texts of Light" that will open at the Wexner Center for the Arts before travelling to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC and the Harvard Film Archive in Cambridge, MA, as well as other venues.
Gatten is currently Visiting Professor and Distinguished Filmmaker in Residence in the Program in the Arts of the Moving Image at Duke University.
Biography
Gatten was born on February 11, 1971 in Ann Arbor, Michigan to Robert and Florence Gatten. He lived in Michigan and Ohio until 1978 when the family moved to Greensboro, North Carolina. Gatten's interest in the moving image originated in the mid-1980s, while in Junior High School, when he began writing video game software the TRS-80 operating system. He graduated from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro with a BA in Media Studies and Art History. Gatten received his MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1998 where he studied with Tatsu Aoki, Daniel Eisenberg and Shellie Fleming. He is married to the filmmaker and writer Erin Espelie.Early Work
To produce What the Water Said, Nos.1-3, Gatten placed unexposed rolls of film in crab traps in the Atlantic OceanAtlantic Ocean
The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's oceanic divisions. With a total area of about , it covers approximately 20% of the Earth's surface and about 26% of its water surface area...
off the South Carolina
South Carolina
South Carolina is a state in the Deep South of the United States that borders Georgia to the south, North Carolina to the north, and the Atlantic Ocean to the east. Originally part of the Province of Carolina, the Province of South Carolina was one of the 13 colonies that declared independence...
coast. The resulting sounds and images were produced by the physical and chemical interactions between the film's emulsion
Emulsion
An emulsion is a mixture of two or more liquids that are normally immiscible . Emulsions are part of a more general class of two-phase systems of matter called colloids. Although the terms colloid and emulsion are sometimes used interchangeably, emulsion is used when both the dispersed and the...
and the surrounding salt water, sand, rocks, crabs, fish and underwater creatures.
Gatten's previous film, Hardwood Process, takes the shape of a diary and also explored the "secret writing" of nature, combined with hand-processing of the 16mm film stock, use of natural dyes, toners, chemical treatments, optical and contact printing.
Gatten's rarely screened first film, Silver Align, is a portrait of one of Gatten's mentors, the filmmaker Zack Stiglicz, filming on the shore of Lake Michigan.
Secret History Of The Dividing Line Cycle
Since 1996, Gatten has been at work on a nine-part film series that takes as inspiration the 4,000 volume library of William Byrd II, an American colonial writer, planter, and government official. The individual films explore one or more titles from the library while also elliptically describing episodes in the lives of William Byrd and his daughter Evelyn Byrd. Currently four parts are completed and the fifth part has been in progress since 2005. Curator and writer Henriette Huldisch describes the cycle as "focusing on specific volumes from the library, letters, and personal papers, Gatten’s series probes the relationship between printed words and images, philosophical ideas, historical records, and biography. Throughout, his thematic concerns are realized in an array of cinematic processes and techniques, constituting a parallel survey of the medium’s history."The second film in the cycle, The Great Art of Knowing, is generally regarded at Gatten's most important film and was listed on the "50 Best Film of the Decade" in a 2010 Film Comment critics poll.
The series has been credited as having a "unique approach" to biography, and the films have been
compared to the works of artists Agnes Martin and Marcel Broohthaers, filmmakers Hollis Frampton, Nathaniel Dorsky, Robert Beavers and Stan Brakhage, poets Susan Howe, and e.e. cummings, and philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Ludwig Wittgenstein.
Portions of the cycle have been included in the 2002 and 2006 Whitney Biennial exhibitions and in 2011 all four completed parts were included in "The Unfinished Film" exhibition at the Gladstone Gallery, alongside works by Joseph Cornell, Sergei Eisenstein, Jean-Luc Godard, Dziga Vertov and Andy Warhol
Recent Film Series
In addition to the Secret History films, Gatten is working on two additional film series, one under the umbrella title Films for Invisible Ink, and another titled Continuous Quantities, that includes the films Journal and Remarks and Shrimp Boat Log. Based on an entry from Leondardo da Vinci's Notebooks, the Continuous Quantities films are composed on shots 29 frames (1.2 seconds) in length.Filmography
| Year | Title | Format | Length | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2002 | Secret History of the Dividing Line | black & white, silent, 16mm | 20 minutes | Secret History of the Dividing Line, a True Account in Nine Parts: Part I |
| 2004 | The Great Art of Knowing | black & white, silent, 16mm | 37 minutes | Secret History of the Dividing Line, a True Account in Nine Parts: Part IV |
| 1999 | Moxon’s Mechanick Exercises or The Doctrine of Handy-Works Applied to the Art of Printing | black & white, silent, 16mm | 26 minutes | Secret History of the Dividing Line, a True Account in Nine Parts: Part III |
| 2001 | The Enjoyment of Reading | color, silent, 16mm | 18 minutes | Secret History of the Dividing Line, a True Account in Nine Parts: Part II |
| 2011 | The Matter Propounded, of its possibility or impossibility, treated in four Parts | black & white, silent, 16mm | 13 minutes | a film toward Part V of Secret History of the Dividing Line, a True Account in Nine Parts |
| 2007 | How to Conduct A Love Affair | color, silent, 16mm | 8 minutes | a film toward Part V of Secret History of the Dividing Line, a True Account in Nine Parts |
| 2010 | So Sure of Nowhere Buying Times to Come | color, silent, 16mm | 9 minutes | a film toward Part V of Secret History of the Dividing Line, a True Account in Nine Parts |
| 2010 | Film for Invisible Ink, case no. 323: ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST | black & white, sound | 20 minutes | a film toward Part V of Secret History of the Dividing Line, a True Account in Nine Parts |
| 2006 | Film for Invisible Ink case no. 71: BASE-PLUS-FOG | black & white, sound, 16mm | 10 minutes | |
| 1998 | What the Water Said, nos. 1 – 3 | color, sound, 16mm | 16 minutes | |
| 2009 | Journal and Remarks | color, silent, 16mm | 15 minutes | |
| 2006 | Shrimp Boat Log | color, silent, 16mm | 6 minutes | recut and printed 2010 |
| 2007 | What the Water Said, nos. 4 – 6 | color, sound, 16mm | 17 minutes | |
| 2008 | Film for Invisible Ink, case no. 142: Abbreviation for Dead Winter [diminished by 1,794] | black & white, sound, 16mm | 13 minutes | |
| 2009 | ORDINARY TIME, EQUIVOCAL INVENTORY | color, silent Super 8 | 10 minutes | |
| 2008 | TODAY! (EXCERPTS #28 AND #19) | color, sound, Super 8 & 16mm on digital | 10 minutes | collaboration with Jessie Stead |
| 2008 | TODAY! (EXCERPTS) | color, sound, 16mm on digital | 38 minutes | collaboration with Jessie Stead |
| 2007 | TODAY! (EXCERPT) | color, sound, 16mm | 20 minutes | collaboration with Jessie Stead |
| 2003 | FRAGRANT PORTALS, BRIGHT PARTICULARS AND THE EDGE OF SPACE | black & white, silent, 16mm | 12 minutes | |
| 1996 | HARDWOOD PROCESS | color, silent, 16mm | 14 minutes | |
| 1995 | SILVER ALIGN | color, silent, 16mm | 6 minutes |
External Links
David Gatten Official WebsiteFaculty Page, Program in the Arts of the Moving Image, Duke University