RITUAL IN CIRCULAR TIME

Back in the spring, after one of our Avant Cinema screenings, Daniel showed me some animation on his iPhone. I was immediately mesmerized with the colors, swirls, and evolving imagery. He then gave me a DVD of a feature he was still working on. Once I watched it, I realized that Daniel would be a perfect choice for Avant Cinema. Although the feature film, “Ritual in Circular Time,” was designed as a continuous loop with a museum installation in mind, I told him that I felt it would work just fine in a small theatrical setting. Since the main focus in the digital film is the work unfolding before our very eyes – creation, modification, transition, repetition, erasing or evolving into something entirely different – we also agreed that a post-screening demonstration of process would be intriguing.

Artist’s statement

Ritual in Circular Time is an experimental film that is meant to take the place of a painting rather than a traditional movie and was composed from the experimental digital painting techniques I developed after discovering I could capture every brush stroke. I started incorporating time and its circular nature in my "moving paintings" to show that the static image is always false and fails to capture the process, flux and the fractal nature of creation or the invisible self that experiences the world apart from the senses. Ritual in Circular Time was created as ambient video that loops almost seamlessly without beginning or end, composing then destroying itself and was created to allow thought, conversation or improvisation to occur without the constraints traditionally imposed by linear narratives that focus more on story arcs than the way the right brain experiences the present moment while creating. 

When I chose the title, "Ritual in Circular Time,” I was working 80 hours a week on the film and I was watching a lot of Maya Deren's experimental work and was influenced by how she used minimal narrative tied with archetypal images to allow the viewer to fill in the details. Everyone does this automatically to some extent when they watch a film; they identify with a character and relate the story to their own lives and I liked how she could use a very soft touch to allow the viewer to have more liberty in that regard. Also during the production (Oct. 2010 - May 2011) I lived a very circular life in which I created my "ideal" day in which I could do 12 hours of work 7 days a week for about 9 months. I would do almost exactly the same thing at the same time every day at a coffee shop in my hometown of Temple, Texas.

Biographical sketch

Daniel Kliewer has lived in central Texas his entire life and had minor success selling canvas art under the name Kadaligogh, a pseudonym that described his "alienated surrealist impressionism" that characterized a young adulthood troubled with time. After spending a few years meditating, studying esoteric literature and an injury that has left him with permanent nerve damage, he started creating a new type of animation which records the entire process of how an image is composed or painted in order to incorporate the missing dimension of time and its fractal and malleable nature. 

Daniel Kliewer’s Website 

kadaligogh.com

Screening Info

Wednesday, October 19 at 7 PM
AFS Screening Room (1901 E. 51st, Gate 2 by water tower)
$5 AFS Members & Students w/ Valid ID / $8 General Public