Educational Media Reviews Online

Phill Niblock is a New York-based minimalist composer as well as a multi- and inter-media artist. He was also an original artist member of Experimental Intermedia (EI), in the late 1960s. After he began working with photography in 1960, he moved on to become a filmmaker with choreographers at the Judson Dance Theater in New York where his first intermedia performance piece involved 16mm film, 35mm slide images, sections of live dance and his own music. This was originally performed at the Judson Church, a space dedicated to avant-garde performances. More biographical information can be obtained on his web page.

This 2-sided disc includes a number of 16mm films made in 1973-74 in Mexico and Peru as well as a film shot in Hong Kong in 1978 and another shot in Hungary in 1985. The earlier films were the first films of the series “looking at the movement of people working” and they intently concentrate on the movement of people’s hands. The repetitive movements represented align themselves with the repetition of the movements in the choreographies performed at Judson Church. Most of the activities seen in his films were related to rural life and included such crafts as weaving. He then progressed to movement around more general work on farms such as harvesting. The films are accompanied by his drone music whose structure he prefers. He works with layers of tones which produce a sound field that he likes, and has used as many as 55 tracks for a piece.

Combining the films and the music produces pieces where audiences can make decisions about what it is they are seeing and hearing and to select the aspects to which they want to react at different points in their experience of the work. They could close their eyes and listen to the music; they could mentally ignore the music and watch the rich imagery; or they could shift in and out of visual and auditory experiences in a trance-like condition. The availability of Phill Niblock’s films gives his work an opportunity to no longer sit on the margins by reaching a wider audience through DVD. Highly recommended for the study of drone music and experimental film.