NELSON HENRICKS COMPILATION 1985-86
In 1985, while still a student at the Alberta College of Art, I did some experiments with a Super8 film camera. Two films resulted: Visa and New York. The following year (my graduate year) I was the recipient of an EM/Media Video Scholarship This allowed me to learn the rudiments of video production and post-production. I produced seven videotapes during the tenure of the Scholarship Programme. The titles of the works included are Enola Gay, Rain, Dream, Industry, Stupid Video, Dance and Salomé. (See individual titles for descriptions.) Visa, my first film, was never exhibited publicly.
In the first six months of 2005, I set about restoring these works from 3/4” master tapes. This included remastering the sound to eliminate noise as well as redoing the opening titles and credits. In the case of Visa and New York, new transfers from the original Super8 films replaced the crude ones done in he eighties. I also uncovered a short untitled sketch I did for a compilation entitled Ten Tolls from the Bell Block, done during a production workshop with Geoffrey Shea and Paulette Phillips.
On the 20th anniversary of my entry into the world of media production, I would like to release these works, of which only one (Stupid Video) was ever distributed. All titles are between three and six minutes in duration. These tapes show me learning how to work with video, and should be regarded more as sketches than as bona fide finished works. However, as juvenilia, they do foreshadow much of what was to come. I offer them humbly, as evidence of my apprenticeship.
VISA and NEW YORK
Running times: 3:30, 4:30
Someone once said to me that everyone's first tapes should be labelled as such. And it would be almost true to say that NEW YORK
is my first tape, but not quite. After slaving away over a Super 8 editor for several months in 1985, I finally completed two films:
VISA and NEW YORK. VISA was a mainly an exercise in learning how to edit, and was later remodelled and recycled as the opening sequence
of LEGEND. It is essentially a road movie, with some shots of high-rises and battered kite trapped on a power line, thrown in for good measure.
With the gruelling experience of editing VISA still fresh
in my mind, NEW YORK was edited very little: the visuals appear in exactly
the same order as they were filmed, except for the closing shot. (The location
was the observation deck of the Barbizon Plaza Hotel on Central Park South,
now closed and converted into condos.) When I became a member at EM/Media
in late 1985, one of the first things I did was transfer NEW YORK to VHS
by reshooting it off the wall of my studio at the Alberta College of Art.
This allowed me to add on the ethereal guitar soundtrack, which I performed
direct to tape the night before a class crit. When the tape was bumped up
to 3/4",
a mono mix of the guitar track and studio noises was made.
VISA: Credits
Music, camera and editing: Nelson Henricks
1985
NEW YORK: Credits
Music, camera and editing: Nelson Henricks
Thanks to EM/Media
Nelson Henricks, 1985
ENOLA GAY
Running time: 2:00
I wrote a poem called ENOLA GAY on the fortieth anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. It was later published in Blue
Buffalo Magazine, for which I received the handsome fee of ten dollars. Encouraged by this success, the ENOLA GAY was
transformed into an impromptu performance piece, which in turn became the basis for this tape. It was shot on VHS in my bedroom
at my parent's house over the 1985 Christmas holidays at about 11 at night. My parents must have wondered.
ENOLA GAY: Credits
Text and camera: Nelson Henricks
Thanks to EM/Media
Nelson Henricks, 1986
RAIN
Running time: 5:20
Recorded about ten minutes after ENOLA GAY, RAIN narrates a more or less true to life account of my first bad
break-up. More precisely, it describes that exact moment when I woke up and discovered I was no longer in love.
Appropriately enough, I performed this text in the nude (I couldn't decide what to wear). The left and right
channels (two different readings of the same text) were recorded on different days, mainly because the location
sound was poor. They fall in and out of sync with each other, creating an oddly schizophrenic effect.
RAIN: Credits
Text and camera: Nelson Henricks
Thanks to EM/Media
Nelson Henricks, 1986
DREAM
Running time: 5:40
Perhaps the original STUPID VIDEO, DREAM is -- quite literally -- me sitting on the floor of my parent's living room,
reading a dream out of my journal. At this time, I was very interested in the notion of story-telling. My idea was to
make a series of videos (RAIN, DREAM and HOME) in which the viewer created the action in his or her head. Interesting
concept, dubious results. An accidental comedy.
DREAM: Credits
Text, camera and editing: Nelson Henricks
Dog: Gus
Thanks to EM/Media
Nelson Henricks, 1986
DANCE
Running time: 3:00
In the mid-eighties 'appropriation' was the word and television
was everyone's favourite demon. Many of my works at this time were blunt unschooled
broadsides against "mass media", which I (probably rightly) blamed
for almost every evil imaginable. Now TV and I are friends again, but that
is another story. Inspired somewhat by the emergence of rap music and scratch
video, DANCE was shot directly off the television and uses footage derived
almost exclusively from a single documentary on the history of dance. Shots
of an South Asian dancer culled from a local cable station juxtaposed with
the sexy, slutty strutting of the 'Solid Gold Dancers' created ironic lines
of flight into -- and out of -- the world of dance. The soundtrack is a little
ditty my friends Judy and Steve and I whipped up in a single afternoon. Mix
bongos, maracas, a wood block and an analog synthesizer with (gasp!) non-musicians
and -- voila! -- an almost convincing instant groove!
DANCE: Credits
Camera and editing: Nelson Henricks
Music: Judy Streblow, Steve Relkov and Nelson Henricks
Thanks to EM/Media
Nelson Henricks, 1986
STUPID VIDEO
Running time: 2:40
My friend David P. Smith said to me, “I made a video once, but it was a stupid video.” This
video is almost as dumb as the title implies: a dazzling array of cheap special
effects coupled with backwards messages and a cheezy electronic soundtrack
that was meant to be as much a parody of mid-eighties rock video as it was
of artless video art. STUPID VIDEO was the first of my works to go into wide
distribution. Fun fact: Years later I learned that STUPID VIDEO was broadcast
on Hungarian national television.
STUPID VIDEO: Credits
Camera, image-processing and editing: Nelson Henricks
Music: Nelson Henricks
Thanks to EM/Media
Nelson Henricks, 1986
INDUSTRY
Running time: 3:30
A friend introduced me to this strange house in the Highfield
district of Calgary. I was immediately seized by the poignancy of this beautiful
old residential clapboard house smack dab in the middle of a grim industrial
wasteland. 'Surely this must be indicative of something', I thought, trekking
out with my video camera on a mild winter's day. The result is a portrait of
the house as well as some vague commentary on… industrialization? urban
planning? pollution? I don't think I had anything that deliberate in mind,
save to create a document of this site which seemed resonant with fugitive
meanings.
INDUSTRY: Credits
Camera and editing: Nelson Henricks
Music: Nelson Henricks
Thanks to EM/Media
Nelson Henricks, 1986
SALOMÉ
Running time: 3:20
My friend Myke Maier, who is now a fairly successful artist
and illustrator, was doing a photo shoot and invited me to tag along. The set-up
was loosely based on one of Aubrey Beardsley's illustrations for Oscar Wilde's
'Salomé'.
I edited the footage to a song by Artie Shaw called 'Nightmare'. Fun fact:
Louise and Iain Baxter helped out with this one, in fact, Louise is in the
title role.
SALOME: Credits
Featuring: Don, Louise and Jacinta
Art Direction: Myke Maier
Camera and editing: Nelson Henricks
Music: Artie Shaw
Thanks to EM/Media
Nelson Henricks, 1986
UNTITLED (1986)
Running time: 1:00
An excerpt from the compilation TEN TOLLS FROM THE BELL BLOCK, UNTITLED is one of ten videos
produced during a workshop conducted by Paulette Phillips and Geoffrey Shea, and sponsored by
EM/Media. Both my apartment and EM/Media were housed in the Bell Block, a three-story, turn of
the century brick building in Calgary's downtown core. A short story about architecture forms the
backbone of this sketch. Colleen Gray (Kerr) was filmed lying at the bottom of the central stairwell,
one of the more intriguing aspects of the building. She reads a background voice-over: a litany of daily routines.
Nelson Henricks
Summer, 2007
