ChantWork, more

#videopoetry #singing #poesie #video

To see the original version of this, go here: https://vimeo.com/186507014

Here is the 146th from the Baram Series (“Sound into World”) and one of the first of those projects that received a proper screening (at a conference for the Korean Society of Comparative Literature). That was a few years ago. I’m glad that the poem at the heart of it has now been published at Former People.

Making a videopoem is considerably different from writing a poem; that’s especially true when — as is the case with “Sound” — making the poem and making the video go hand in hand. I wanted to capture something about the different experiences I had of rural and city life here in South Korea. These differences are more pronounced than in Western countries — perhaps because the cities are so densely populated. The cities are constantly interesting. But it’s difficult to achieve a meditative zone within them.

I also wanted to experiment with ambient environmental sounds and sound collage. Most movies employ music . But at what point does the music become a morsel that’s thrown at a (restive) audience — a form of seduction, in other words — instead of something integral to the film that lends it its intended quality (in this case, a kind of meditativeness)?

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Voici le 146e de la série Baram («Sound into World») et l'un des premiers de ces projets qui a reçu une projection appropriée (lors d'une conférence pour la Société coréenne de littérature comparée).  C'était il y a quelques années.  Je suis heureux que le poème au cœur de celui-ci ait été publié chez Former People.

 Faire un vidéopoème est très différent de l'écriture d'un poème;  cela est particulièrement vrai lorsque - comme c'est le cas avec "Sound" - faire le poème et faire la vidéo aller de pair.  Je voulais capturer quelque chose sur les différentes expériences que j'ai eues de la vie rurale et urbaine ici en Corée du Sud.  Ces différences sont plus prononcées que dans les pays occidentaux - peut-être parce que les villes sont si densément peuplées.  Les villes sont constamment intéressantes.  Mais il est difficile de créer une zone méditative en leur sein.

 Je voulais également expérimenter les sons ambiants et les collages sonores ambiants.  La plupart des films utilisent de la musique.  Mais à quel point la musique devient-elle un morceau qui est lancé à un public (rétif) - une forme de séduction, en d'autres termes - au lieu de quelque chose d'intégré au film qui lui donne la qualité voulue (dans ce cas, une sorte de méditation  )?

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Sound into World 

—

Listen --

No, listen this way:

*

The too much of sky is like a tool

that tightens nature's energy.

Its sound is like an ache.

Nature's sights and sounds are too;

they have t'-'eauty.

They woosh and jitter and ahh.

*

But then mountain – assertive, aggressive –

breathes up as high as sky,

and sky, made nervous, merely smiles quietly on ground. Tree, interceding, creates home

for all sorts of beings,

and sky, calmed of anxiety, rests.

*

Think of all things –

or think of nothing at all.

*

Rain resembles poetry,

or satori.

Rain wants to blur everything

that resembles negative thought. But negative thought propels itself – it wants to escape.

Can we escape, too?

Can we clarify thought

by running to a new location

that will enlighten us?

Road blurs thought, too;

we have to be humble

and return to sky for advice –

correction: advice from the clear things under sky; the things that exist

even when

sky is gone.

- Finn Harvor

From my collection of ambient and authorial movies.