David Gatten

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. ^[1] His films often employee cameraless techniques, combined with close-up cinematography and optical printing processes. ^[2][3]

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.”^[4] He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2005 ^[5] 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.^[6]

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. ^[7]

Gatten is currently Visiting Professor and Distinguished Filmmaker in Residence in the Program in the Arts of the Moving Image at Duke University. ^[8]

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.^[9] He graduated from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro with a BA in Media Studies and Art History.^[10] 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. ^[11] He is married to the filmmaker and writer Erin Espelie.^[12]

Early Work

To produce What the Water Said, Nos.1-3, Gatten placed unexposed rolls of film in crab traps in the Atlantic Ocean 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. ^[13]

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.^{[14] [15]}

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.^[16]

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.^[17] Currently four parts are completed and the fifth part has been in progress since 2005.^[18] 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." ^[19]

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.^[20]

The series has been credited as having a "unique approach" to biography,^[21] and the films have been compared to the works of artists Agnes Martin^[22] and Marcel Broohthaers, ^[23] filmmakers Hollis Frampton, ^[24] Nathaniel Dorsky, ^[25] Robert Beavers^[26] and Stan Brakhage,^[27] poets Susan Howe,^[28] and e.e. cummings,^[29] and philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Ludwig Wittgenstein.^[30]

Portions of the cycle have been included in the 2002 and 2006 Whitney Biennial exhibitions ^{[31] [32]}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 ^[33]

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,^[34] and another titled Continuous Quantities, that includes the films Journal and Remarks and Shrimp Boat Log.^[35] 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.^[36]

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 Website

Faculty Page, Program in the Arts of the Moving Image, Duke University

References

1. ^ MacDonald, Scott. "Interview with David Gatten." Adventures of Perception Berkeley: University of California Press, Fall 2009.
2. ^ Armour, Nicole. “Private Investigations.” Film Comment Nov./Dec. 2001: 71-72.
3. ^ Huldisch, Henriette. “Man of Letters.” Artforum March 2006: 85.
4. ^ Huldisch, Henriette. “Man of Letters.” Artforum March 2006: 85.
5. ^ "All Fellows". John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Retrieved 20 January 2011.
6. ^ Smith, Gavin. "Best of the Decade: Avant-Garde." Film Comment. May/June 2010. http://www.filmlinc.com/film-comment/article/best-of-the-decade-avant-garde
7. ^ Johnson, Kirston. "Working With Words: The Film of David Gatten." The Devil's Tale: Dispatches from the Rare Book, Manuscript & Special Collections Library. March 2011.
8. ^ Program in the Arts of the Moving Image, Trinity College of Arts & Sciences, Duke University.
9. ^ MacDonald, Scott. "Interview with David Gatten." Adventures of Perception Berkeley: University of California Press, Fall 2009.
10. ^ MacDonald, Scott. "Interview with David Gatten." Adventures of Perception Berkeley: University of California Press, Fall 2009.
11. ^ MacDonald, Scott. "Interview with David Gatten." Adventures of Perception Berkeley: University of California Press, Fall 2009.
12. ^ Cutler, Aaron. "New York Film Festival 2010: Views from the Avant-Garde Wrap Up." Slant Magazine http://www.slantmagazine.com/house/2010/10/new-york-film-festival-2010-views-from-the-avant-garde-wrap-up/#more-17927. October 2010.
13. ^ MacDonald, Scott. “Envoi: David Gatten.” The Garden In the Machine Berkeley: University of California Press, Fall 2001.
14. ^ MacDonald, Scott. “Envoi: David Gatten.” The Garden In the Machine Berkeley: University of California Press, Fall 2001.
15. ^ Eisenstein, Kenneth. “David Gatten’s Handwood Process, I mean Hardwood Process.” Journal of Film and Video. Winter 2003, Vol. 54, no. 1
16. ^ . Camper, Fred. "Films by Shellie Fleming, David Gatten, and Zack Stiglicz." Chicago Reader 4 Oct. 1996, sec. 2: 14.
17. ^ Huldisch, Henriette. “David Gatten.” Whitney Biennial 2006 2006.
18. ^ MacDonald, Scott. "Interview with David Gatten." Adventures of Perception Berkeley: University of California Press, Fall 2009.
19. ^ Huldisch, Henriette. “David Gatten.” Whitney Biennial 2006 2006.
20. ^ Smith, Gavin. "Best of the Decade: Avant-Garde." Film Comment. May/June 2010. http://www.filmlinc.com/film-comment/article/best-of-the-decade-avant-garde
21. ^ Armour, Nicole. “Private Investigations.” Film Comment Nov./Dec. 2001: 71-72.
22. ^ Huldisch, Henriette. “Man of Letters.” Artforum March 2006: 85.
23. ^ Baker, George. “Film Rebuff.” Artforum May 2002: 167-68.
24. ^ MacDonald, Scott. "Interview with David Gatten." Adventures of Perception Berkeley: University of California Press, Fall 2009.
25. ^ Sicinski, Michael. “2007 New York Film Festival ‘Views from the Avant-Garde’” The Common Moviegoer http://academichack.net/Views2007.htm Oct. 2007.
26. ^ Holden, Stephen. "Marching in the Vanguard." New York Times 9 Oct. 1999, late ed.: 27.
27. ^ Halter, Ed. “Secret History of the Dividing Line.” The Village Voice 20 Sept. 2005.
28. ^ Huldisch, Henriette. “Man of Letters.” Artforum March 2006: 85.
29. ^ Huldisch, Henriette. “Man of Letters.” Artforum March 2006: 85.
30. ^ Halter, Ed. “Secret History of the Dividing Line.” The Village Voice 20 Sept. 2005.
31. ^ Iles, Chrissie. “David Gatten.” Whitney Biennial 2002 2002: 86-87.
32. ^ Huldisch, Henriette. “David Gatten.” Whitney Biennial 2006 2006.
33. ^ http://www.gladstonegallery.com/release_unfinished_S_2011.htm
34. ^ Sicinski, Michael. "Wavelength's Preview." MUBI. September 2009.http://mubi.com/notebook/posts?category=Gatten
35. ^ Lavant, Dennis. “24 Hours of Avant Garde: The Good Hours, Part 1.” The Auteurs http://www.theauteurs.com/notebook/posts/1196 October 2009.
36. ^ Lavant, Dennis. “24 Hours of Avant Garde: The Good Hours, Part 1.” The Auteurs http://www.theauteurs.com/notebook/posts/1196 October 2009.

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Name	Gatten, David
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Date of birth	1971
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