SEE WHAT YOU HEAR WHAT YOU SEE

by Barbara HAMMER
1983 / 16mm / b&w / sound / 1S / 3' 00

"While in the 1970s, Hammer's work enthusiastically explored dimensions of personal experience–as Masha Gessen put it to Hammer in a late interview, "very few people document enjoying their body as much as you have"–in the 1980s, she took a hard turn away from depictions of the empowered female body to other subjects and approaches. For instance, a very short film from 1983, SEE WHAT YOU HEAR WHAT YOU SEE, removes bodies and even the filmed world from the equation altogether. Hammer taped various graphic patterns onto clear film (so the image is nonphotographic), then duplicated each pattern and printed it on the part of the film strip where sound is read by the projector. So one literally hears the pattern (translated from image to sound by the projector) that is simultaneously shown. It would take a clever stretch of the imagination to connect the content of this film to the female intimacy depicted in DYKETACTICS. Instead, SEE WHAT YOU HEAR WHAT YOU SEE would seem to belong more properly to the realm of structuralist concerns, in which Hammer became increasingly interested as she made a shift geographically from the West Coast to the East Coast in the early 1980s" – Sarah Keller, Barbara Hammer: Pushing Out of the Frame, Wayne State University Press, 2021

1 PRINT IN DISTRIBUTION


distribution format 16mm
version restored version
notes Restored by Mark Toscano (Academy Film Archive)
screen 1,37 - Standard (single screen)
speed 24 fps
sound optical sound
rental fee 25,00 €