"YES" "YOU" "CAN" / Al Razutis [LIMITED EDITION]

publication date: 14th July,  2020

isbn: 978-0-9957480-6-4

Born into a ’post-war dystopia’ called ‘post-war Germany of displaced people living in Displaced Person camps’, Al Razutis tells us a story: ‘What culture there had been was destroyed in the rubble’ and the post-war generation would rise and proclaim a new activism.

 

This collection of writing, "Yes" "You" "Can" was shaped by his avant-gardism and what William Wees called 'agonism', and it reveals how such activity and world-view becomes an art, a social force of protest, and a legacy for next generations.

 

Al Razutis is an avant-garde filmmaker who has continued his work for fifty years; he is a pioneer in holographic arts and now a critic, archivist and historian for this medium; he is a video artist who took his interactive bio-feedback 'video art' devices on to the broadcast tv stage, and one of the early adopters of motion-picture art in web virtual reality. It is fitting that his films are also in stereoscopic 3D and that he is working on new titles as well as holography.

 

This selection of writings reflect the broad range of his interests and abilities, written over decades of his migrations in media and reflecting his restless soul which can never be contained by any academic or single artistic discipline. He joins a host of other revolutionary art authors who commented, created, delivered manifestos of the soul.

 

These works are dedicated to the next generations that somehow will survive the present ones.
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110 pages printed on recycled paper

13 cm x 21 cm x 13mm

colour plates

section sewn

over time, the black ink and the front cover will rub away and camouflage in with the television static noise.

designed and hand bound at the press

limited edition handmade run of 100

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Al Razutis has inspired me in two ways: the first, to
understand the artist as an individual, involved in the plurality of views and opinions. The individual as someone who is both original to themself, but also part of a greater spectrum. The individual as someone who is both original to themself, yet not fixated on fashion or style as to be part of a “movement”. The artist as someone who does not follow, but is searching for the authenticity within himself and within his environment. This leads to the second way Al has inspired me, and that is, to not compromise yourself, not only as an artist, but as a human being. This artist, this individual, is truly terrifying to the institution. Al’s work and outlook helped me through the frustrations I suffered at film school. The predominance on Hollywood and mainstream cinema troubled me, mainly because we were discussing already over-discussed films, but also because we were learning about the cinema that had created patriarch rather than transformed it. We were learning about a cinema that had created archetypes and stereotypes for financial gain. We were learning about a cinema that had been part of a harmful system. Al Razutis was my first way in to the other side of cinema. A cinema, a way of thinking, that was about freedom. Not stereotype or archteype. A cinema, a way of thinking, that was about feelings, textures, criticism, reflection, perception. It was the avant-garde.

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Paperback edition is available here.

PREFACE / Lucy Wilkinson
Place of the First Time / Al Razutis


INTRODUCTION / Al Razutis / 1
THIS IS THE STORY / 10
MANIFESTO, CINEMA ART (MARCH 28, 1980) / 21
AUTOPSY OF THE PATRIARCH / 36
A LESSON HERE FOR IMPOSTORS AND SIMPLETONS / 41
THREE WRITINGS FROM FRAMEWORKS:
    'WHAT IS CINEMA NOW?' / 47
    'FORGOT ABOUT IT BEING "ART"' / 51
    'A PILGRIM FROM SPROCKET-LESS CYBERSPACE / 55
PO-MO COLLAGE: 'CANADA'S MEDIA ART HISTORY AND FALSE CLAIMS': HOW THE PO-MO ERA HAS BECOME CUT AND PASTE META-HISTORY / 65
PROPOSITIONS FOR THE DECONSTRUCTION OF CINE-STRUCTURALISM: AN ELIPTICAL INTRODUCTION TO THE FILMS OF PETER ROSE. / 75
MANIFESTO: IMAGINATION VS MACWORLD / 91
APPENDIX / 99