Artist Statement:

This is a collage of historical material that should give the reader some insight into why I like Vertov - I like to think of the way he set up a dialectical tension between "real" life and its documentation in film as a predecessor to our modern vimeo/youtube/flickr world of ubiquitous cinema. For this brief description of the project, I've mixed some of my writings with that of several sources taken from a wide variety of contexts. This is simply a web reference page for the Enthusiasm project so that I can highlight the connection between sound in film, and the remix process that DJ culture uses as it's everyday vocabulary. Collage processes, the linkage of editing techniques, and the fact that Enthusiasm was one of the first sound films in the new Communist state, made it a ripe object of interest for my video art project that will be presented in Russia in the autumn of 2010.

In 1930, the Soviet Union was in the middle of massive consolidation of all of its resources. In the process of creating a unified view of the new nation, the Soviets needed to establish a common cultural heritage that celebrated the unity of the workers movement that had essentially brought the elite of Lenin and Stalin to power. Dziga Vertov, at that time was a central figure in Soviet cinema because of his earlier work such as "Man with a Movie Camera" (1927) and Kino-Glaz (1924), and his Kino-Pravda short films, and his work came to epitomize the relentless questioning of previous forms of cinematic story-telling. His work could almost be considered the cinematic equivalent of constructivist impressions of the new Soviet regime. Vertov's films were a kind of reflexive exploration of the creative "freedom" that the revolution had inspired in Russia, but at the same time, were eerily prescient about the control mechanisms that later came to characterize the "totalizing" nature of Soviet life.

Communist Party leader Vladimir Lenin proclaimed that for the new Communist state cinema was the most important of the arts. Traveling trains that made and screened newsreels were a means of connecting the many republics of the vast Soviet Union, and even feature films such as Sergei Eisenstein's Bronenosets Potyomkin ( Battleship Potemkin , 1925), based on an actual historical event, incorporated elements of documentary. Dziga Vertov (1896–1954) brought a more formalist, experimental approach to the newsreel, and with the feature-length Chelovek s kinoapparatom ( The Man with a Movie Camera , 1929), which presents a "day-in-the-life" of a modern Soviet city, created a reflexive documentary masterpiece that, along with Walter Ruttmann's Berlin: Die Sinfonie der Großstadt ( Berlin: Symphony of a Great City , 1927), established the "city-symphony" form.

Vertov and his Kino group produced Enthusiasm as a lyrical documentary on the lives of Coal miners in the Donbas who are struggling to meet their production quotas under the five year plan. Enthusiasm is most noteworthy for it's creative use of the new sound medium. Vertov liberated the recording equipment from the studio and shot sound on location. He also used common everyday sounds and wove them into what can only be described as a symphony. In fact, after seeing the film Charlie Chaplin wrote: "Never had I known that these mechanical sounds could be arranged to sound so beautiful. I regard it as one of the most exhilarating symphonies I have heard. Mr. Dziga Vertov is a musician.”

Vertov's experiments with sound film over a decade later in Entuziazm: Simfoniya Donbassa ( Enthusiasm: The Donbass Symphony , 1930) and Tri pesni o Lenine ( Three Songs of Lenin , 1934) led to a revision of how the idea of propoganda and sound could be intertwined, and while America saw the rise of films by DW Griffith and John Ford as the culmination of the new Hollywood aesthetic, in Europe it was figures like Leni Riefenstahl who carried out the wildest inquries into film's powerful means of fostering social change (albeit for totalitarian purposes).

“Enthusiasm for both his subject and his style permeates Vertov's first sound film, contrasting the old order and the new through didactic, dynamic montage. As in The Man With The Movie Camera, one's attention is drawn to the making of the film itself as a contribution to the modernization program, epitomizing Lenin's statement, 'Of all the arts, for us cinema is the most important'” - for us in the 21st century, the rear view mirror of history is filled with examples of how cinematography shaped the discourse of the 20th centiry. My remix of Vertov's film "Enthusiasm" is a guidepost for anyone who would like to explore the connection between sound and cinema, and the origins of "remix" culture through the editing processes of film and music composition in 21st century Dj culture and contemporary. For me, that's why l like to think of Vertov as the first "youtube director." His work is all about the everyday world being displaced by its reflection in the cinematic mirror of early modernity, now digital modernity.