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Gil J. Wolman (1929-1995)



L'Anticoncept

A1. Megapneumies (10:08)

A2. La Memoire (3:17)

A3. Ralentissez Les Cadences (2:25)

A4. L'Anticoncept (Excerpts) - Avant'Oeuvre (5:55)

B1. L'Anticoncept (Excerpts) - Trits (3:28)

B2. L'Anticoncept (Excerpts) - "Ce Qui Inventent N'ont Jamais Vécu" (0:48)

B3. L'Anticoncept (Excerpts) - "Nous Avons Créé Des Règles Arbitraires" (12:25)

B4. L'Anticoncept (Excerpts) - Post Scriptum (3:30)

Recorded between 1952 and 1973.

edition of gil j wolman megapneums, or the beginning of the whole sonic adventures. if gysin was a strong conceptual influence for the henri chopin and bernard heidsieck generation, wolman was showing them the sonic direction. just with the use of the breath and respiration, his megapneums had the same intensity of the electronic manipulation that will make chopin's audiopoems so radically new and uncompromising. this lp also include excerpts from wolman sound-film "l'anticoncept" from 1952.


The Anticoncept
Cinematochronic Argument For A Physical Phase of the Arts

Preface

Let X be the original. All art poses the elementary equation: movement of X. Progenitor of the cinematograph: movement of photography.

Emile Reynaud writes movement on the screen with photographs successively taken and projected at a given rhythm.

The Lumiere brothers simplify this process by photographing movement directly.

An art evolves by multiplying its origin by elements that are specific to it.

The evolution of the cinematograph is marked by optical variation and variation of movement and their combinations: close-ups and other shots.

In 1896, Promio gives a second dimension to movement by introducing the first travelling shots.

Thus furnished with its specific means, the cinematograph begins to express a new reality by an original stylization. It produces several masterpieces.

Then, without laying the problem to rest with the reproduction of speech, [the cinematograph] perfects its technology on the criterion of precision, to the point that it ceases to interpret in order to reproduce reality, whether real or novelistic.

The cinematograph had arrived at that stage, when in 1951 Isou destroys photography in favor of sound; and in surprise one saw a most banal fish in the sea take on an unaccustomed relief by means of a love story that unreels on the sound track.

The same year, Gil J Wolman realizes his first cinechronic film, which he calls by abbreviation and to mark the difference with the cinematograph: ATOCHRONE.

Wolman divides the second by 24; he thus renders an image autonomous, which, outside of all symbolism, becomes the element of the propagation of movement on the exterior of photography. Asynchronous, at the unreeling of the atonic narration, this new antithetical movement, counters each vocal inflection.

AND A NEW ART BEGINS.

I love you I no longer love you he loves another woman.

Beneath the mask she must be pretty she must be ugly.

THEOREM.

There is no negation that does not affirm itself elsewhere.

Negation is the transitional term to a new period.

Negation of the intrinsic, immutable, a priori concept, projects this concept outside of matter, reveals it a posteriori to an extrinsic reaction, becomes mutable by as many reactions.

THE TIME OF POETS IS FINISHED.

TODAY I'M SLEEPING.



Voiceover

Those who invent have never lived the characters of this work those who invent have never lived i want to move through all of life the gangster and his victim you say i am not ashamed i have my eyes open watch out for my stockings monique she you you are real certain ones exist the others will soon my steps for a rule the night for a cord i walk and i set up symmetrical frontiers to common places of double mouths of simple provisional bodies of the five atrophied senses and i arch the lost acts To the false earth without elements of the fourth dimension and i set up walls that crumble one must live fire catches the grasses the roots of the trees one must live you won't have me i enter the moon printed shadows on the yellow dress with two very distinct smiles in the eyes that one must know how to capture together in order to see you walk in order to be tired i speak without ambiguity in order to sing there is a butcher's red and grey white awning it's raining and holds us on an island the bridge suspended you have skin with an odor without accent your mouth must be alcohol padded around a lizard dead i oscillate between pleasure and to see at auteil while a nag hesitated before the obstacle a young girl raped the satyr i oscillate between pleasure and i break some fingers in your hand FIRE a cat flows under the bench wet she has closed eyes that count my phalanxes i have some violet blood in my head i wipe my nose you wipe your nose we are two the waiting was a luxury and we were so old that youth serves us if we don't know how to be old as well on the circular path there are some false moons of electric lights four years later the party at the lake under the bridge of stones is still dry depressed by the stupid depth brought to light the children no longer invent the submarine mysteries of the lake of the hills chaumont and i turn stupidly onto the traces of the ass and i throw some ashes to the birds it was it was it was it was it was it was it was it was it was it was it was it was it was i lived so much that dead with sandy eyes in order to deny but some sand too fine to sleep the others got caught on the platform of the bus in motion were running up to drowning themselves in the corridors of the metro one had to be drugged at this point in order to imagine that the train following would be fatal eggs the thousand from 900 to 12000 butter the kilo from 425 to 585 camembert the piece from 35 to 70 gruyere the kilo from 290 to 390 green beans the kilo from 50 to 100 potatoes the the squares squares the squares the children are a tree and the hands of the marriages of hanged men in the sun slide the words no longer know how to speak the mouth opens in order to kiss the benches deep and hollow capitalize themselves with flexible nuances "No, some manners please" it's an ink stain a bolt of lightning an earthquake it's certainly the end of a world bastard bastard bastard bastard bastard bastard she was thin i paid for the room she took a towel and told me to leave something for the service i finished the cigarette reading the regulation on the door while she washed up finally "watch out for my stockings" the time to think of something else the red solar eye is sky mixed inseparably with bodies in the same way one never sees oneself in order to see oneself one must go in the opposite way the prompt reflex will annihilate the mind one must stop before thinking about stopping she has drawn her gaze from the vaults of dead families petrified her two breasts of clay and brings them to the preceding girl seven eight nine ten eleven twelve thirteen fifteen under the bridge where moves the axis exposed to the air of bodies it smells like urine the fixed light of trocadero floats on the seine the water slaps the arches i reinvent the sea we walk in order to extenuate the silence but soon inside some legs one must decrease the angles i you lap the saliva you i catch the tongue and relax it aerodrome train station port anthill crossroads war the vital act takes on sadistic proportions of cataclysms i have liquid hands to discover you forgetting nothing of the prestidigator hands the virgins rasp the acne tomorrow rises to the boulevard the impasses leave each girl a skin of pus the brakes grind fires alternate in mid sky i plow the same street of boredom auscultate the detached vertebrae of the cat abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz advertising enters backwards but it caught in traps at the tuilleries the chairs with one arm in the damp part of the lip you planted a tooth the fly that irritated it had broken the attraction that held us with four fingers you say "what kids we are" i forget the phrase you write it later the only girl who i name monique leper solitude of ugliness shrew rueil avoid the benches of stone where the space in the seat catches the dirty old men i walk with your double hand balance in order to fill the instant we don't know that we are happy joy today i will raise up sky scrapers for you with a thousand windows seen on the walls of the rue d'aubervilliers lime washed alive with love three benches of the path in the seminary the empty land sluggish animal and then we trample the uneven grass "you'' write me from Paris about everything about the seine about the theatres about" i wrote you in the parks he was crushing his cigarette butt in the cavities of the death head she speaks without lively words she leaves the esophagus without transitions pulps pearls stones she conjugates the least heavy that the air through eighteen years install some passages of untempered steel among them all And recapitulate where we are with it no no no not already i certainly forgot don't go away the glass of rum the phrases phrases for nothing for saying for saying nothing silence modulates itself on words heartsick so that's all we walk in the rain we kiss in the parks i caress you through your dress our muscles tense on the grass and then you get the fuck out for metaphysical reasons under the aerial metro thursday i smoke the time of two cigarettes you left peanuts peanuts peanuts standing a man totally gallowslike in a car long uncovered throws dead bodies expurgate the cemetery belches with tenacious worms living in the green flesh a dyed blonde in her somber slip discharges some hysteria through symbols dactyls THAT empty the newborns to the pipes bleeds pikes on the cut hearts of the women he screws in fingernails through the eyes to the skull three dirty fingers eat away the belly from the navel under the grass guts you will stuff the greasy slime odors odors odors of those who still croak off on all fours corinth steel tannin cove nile wine-red acacia cyclamen rainshower cock etruscan ingot ecru seine here it's not death life stops there is on the live rock the sun in capitals of tar i am looking for you through your phalanxes open to the air here you no longer recognize the places you believe that i invent but here it's not you another woman comes to perpetuate you become you and you the other she the second night you open yourself entire in the narrow bed complete the road of the previous girl carbon between the crude dreams of actions you sleep white polycarbons without pleasure finally mistress of fear "i'm not ashamed i have my eyes open" come take les halles in the mud at eight o'clock in the morning up to chatelet i'm retracing the road the light chisels the retinas the blood takes on the motions of prodigious cataracts i know where to pour in public latrines in italy i suffered from constipation and i thought that there existed no greater pain what does that prove there is always someone who waits for someone to come on the point saint michel the electric clock scrapes at the imagined for me this will be later without dancing we cut in every way the public dances naked she comes to sleep with malleable inflections sleep and don't move for the emptied slut of my gaze all the arborescent girls of the street have a past so so when will we be free perpetual virgins without memory and who don't speak in search of her who on the sidewalks alternating at each train on the trains the bistros on the road the crowd of all the capitals of Europe and of the towns at dawn behind a girl alone in the waiting room i throw a rock into the pond the stories spiral out upside-down towards the sex i will recapitulate love in the real order of the circles my little girl another at como at night under the marabout i saw her face only at the end of the fingers of others issues of the ripe green clusters never at the right time for all the missed women at the transfer point of the metro postulate grab her ass hesitation he's a bad lot regrets jean louis surrealism played at 81 our lives on the boulevard saint germain in the sphere of the first stage with maurice i cheated and thereafter each night methodically i prepared my dreams the new generation will leave nothing anymore to chance peanuts peanuts peanuts she came back to jump over years with both feet together up to the point au change the other girl dead in a corner on the first step i was thrown a bit off my route what phase would she accomplish she in the perfect girl -- absolute -- mixed TO GARBLE THE FUTURE ON THE PATH in the seminary your mouth has gotten deep you need a lot of saliva to erase the time between "i want to move through all of life" quick quick quick square du temple you are biting me in the hollow of my thumb and each day i tear open the wound a scab i grow tired before the blood beethoven van gogh outside the train passes through the hours we will continue to sing "au revoir madamoiselle" peanuts peanuts peanuts huge rats hanging around a trashcan where the fetus of an aborted infant cries wrapped up in the sheets of a weekly with stories lived from the heart i climb the second stairway of saint genevieve you are there sitting she read i can barely see you but it's her one doesn't mistake rotaries bodies i i reinvent you i watch her i confront "hello" she watches me it's you i tell you your name a name of a river you speak "you were saying" your voice is a hard light lights her face it's not her middle of the night hatched with unequal circles the silence exasperates the boys gathered together from the country cancer solitude embodies mine from this day on he carefully emphasized that death was nothing but that it was difficult to die and he had doubts about NOTHING was creating to enter into a formulation i SEE NOTHING IN ORDER TO become the problem he disassembled his veins with a rusted blade i lean back against a column hollowed out i pretend to be waiting he threw himself into the canal several years later we recalled to him by chance on the telephone that it was the canal saint martin when they pulled him out he had two drowned kittens against his chest i returned to dieppe with albert we had put up the hut on almost the same spot the sea had a mask of heaviness you had to be sordid to resist the vertigo he needed air made a child's grimace smile in the mirror he was seeing his death mouths glued together we had started to vomit to consume the acts was to forget to be free i have my hands flat on your i crush you against the tree standing up i look at you marvelous you make me drunk the days of stupid girls later you will invent me return there we got ready i lost the day for living on the train from the north he juggled very quickly between the beaten paths with words used in order not to see them constructed fragile phrases that fell before understanding he wanted to renew love through a new filmic technique one bone after the other until there were four on the table bistros i let half of my skull bead up caress my brain in the open air with your spinner's hands in slow motion he would come back from all the suicides ready to begin again the genesis of the world he had a memory like a man no one had ever suffered as much as his body crushed in the shadow once more among words i say to him and it's to you that i'm speaking no tricks because she is sketching out another boy we split up he missed her by a green light by a second by a sidewalk by a train he was walking with his chin closed down on his adam's apple he balanced real lucidities in the shadow of forms we created arbitrary rules we played at love in a parallel universe without water played we forgot to live and i practice artificial respiration personalities by external usage poets with rotten words virgins with the looks of whores black looks good on you we will allow legend to catch up at saint germain des pres for the tourists of the other quarters "got a smoke, buy me a drink" an enormous skeleton of scrap iron flows at a slow tempo "i can't love you i love someone else" what was there to reply to this rigorous logic huskvarna jonkoping mjolby norrkoping stockholm he didn't cry may be still in sweden taxa taxa taxa ALONE he created things away until the discovery of paroxysms at the place called the heart several burns with cold orgiastic sensibilities one girl coming afterwards she was an exact double of the preceding one with the off-handed ease of a habit this lasted this lasted i open my eyes to a newborn this lasted i crossed over without turning back to the origin my life is an imageless corridor and while i'm at it in the order of things i except nuances a man gives in his language names of children and bread to the pigeons with a mechanical arm night comes without one being aware of it i walk barefoot on the beach what he didn't saw he grimaced on contact with the pebbles i assume the vindicative flight of love caught up in the game of docile vision however it was not so simple the truth is that he would speak to the girls he loved so they'd know in order later to anticipate his silences and he rendered them infinitesimal each breath he could increase the size of a fart up to the stars art unhinges the emotional personality creation splits in two rot plus creation i turn on the out-of-date trajectory of nights rumpled by four of the he recapitulated the inclemencies with a mathematical precision the alliances of his belly he lived parallel extremities without conditions the sky moved i could never detach the clouds from the idea of sky it's raining around eleven o'clock a drunk woman asks for a light it rains against the window somewhere on another continent partner enter into the alternative of cliches you disappear into the amorous finality he found her again without apparent deformation the same eyes in the same palor between two lives only she had become more fragile at the first tactile confines she broke modesty afterwards he gave her the night in her palm in order to isolate himself "we are going to lose everything we are no longer children" "of course of course" and it took him the time to count to fifty to discharge his veins since then everything had gone to their bellies with the gait of an orangoutang pressed down his foot on the mug of the poor little man crumpled in a corner of the cellar one eye out of its orbit and some fresh blood flowed to become lost in a thin thread on the white silk shirt "you're going to talk" i wish them happiness the couple takes their revenge and crosses over reality becomes real man is born an old man and dies a foetus what a program one dawn i cut across les halles with parsimonious steps back and forth you are awake beautiful and you have already brushed your teeth when the ones in love don't know that they are lovers they make love with movements without importance he took aim on every girl at point blank range he was an asthmatic he had one steel lung for hygiene i finish the night with an old prostitute very ugly i make an epilogue of indissoluble rudiments from the succession of events he was accentuating the errors to excess of desolation i trench your belly with hands tied i asphyxiate you we share the foul air i flush the toilet on my siphonal memory persists a whiff of shit END POST SCRIPT resembles you and keeps me her mouth breathless near the ruins she speaks with your words renews past situations life is not retrospective I AM IMMORTAL AND LIVING

(By Gil J Wolman. Translated from the French by Keith Sanborn. An imageless film The Anticoncept was first screened on 11 February 1952 at the cinema club "Avant-Garde 52," where it was projected upon a large white weather balloon.)






"La Mémoire" Mégapneumes (1967) from OU 33

In the very early 1950s Wolman, together with his friends Dufrene and Brau, left Isou's Lettrist movement and the dictatorship of the letter for the development of a more personal research in the arts. The Megapneumes actually were a topical and formally very aggressive moment in the development of the later experimental sound poetry. As Henri Chopin wrote: 'Historically Wolman was our source, since he overpassed the phonetic poem made of letters'. And Dufrene: 'Since the early 1950s Wolman and I where always together in the same fights. Wolman is the poet of the breath, the breath that he opposed to the letter of Isou, and whose influence was decisive for the evolution of the ultra-lettrism?It's the breath that creates the poem: rhythm and scream, the scream until now inexpressed in poetry; scream of joy, of love, of anguish, of horror, of hate, but scream'. Premiered on Feb.11, 1952, and immediately banned, the first experimental film by Gil J. Wolman titledL'Anticoncept, was divided into two sections: a non-narrative soundtrack, some kind of interior monologue including physiological noises, and a visual part built on the irregular alternation of black and white circles screened on a metereological balloon. A 'music of light' wetting the scene and producing a physical movement in the audience. Wolman wrote: 'As the Megapneume units created a new sonority, this disintegration represents the transitory period and the beginning of a new amplification of the arts'. And the amplification came."


RELATED RESOURCES:
Gil Wolman in UbuWeb Film