Editing is something that rarely has been described in a way that would make me nod without reluctance. Walter Murch describes it as being the blink of an eyelid in his most notorious book In the Blink of an Eye. He suggests that it has the same effect as a cut in a film. I suppose it would be like a break from ones own sight to the next perspective.
In the German language however people are easily convinced that the essence of editing is to be found in the cut. The reason this preoccupies my mind is because I live in Berlin and far to often sigh when I hear the word - cutter-.
“Cutter” is the word that stands for “Editor” in German and that gives us the idea that the individuals' task is to stand there with an axe waiting to severe frames from each other. Also the word “Schnitt” which stands for the Edit, or Editing as a whole, stresses the cutting all over again. As an editor it is hard to make one understand what the task actually is. Very often we fall into the trap of vehemently defending the Art whilst using spoken or written language (mea culpa). One may speak of, appropriation, observation, association, contextualization, juxtaposition and so forth, but at the end I would say that the experiments very often discover a visual language that should not succumb to the limitations of words and syntax. Furthermore, I actually believe that editing is the process in which we search an appropriate grammar for each video, film or experimental piece. I came to think of this in the last weeks and I must say, I was happy to notice that I could find it in something, that I found in the back of my external disk drive. Yes, HDD is the drawer in which we can rediscover things we once created, wrote, sketched, photographed or downloaded from the net. I however was confronted with this short video, made with found footage. I believe it was made about three years ago and all I can say is that it stirred up many thoughts about what editing is-not-is. As all things that lie beyond the tree of good and evil, this issue will haunt me again. Maybe the difficulty to articulate editing is a blessing since it defies definition and leaves some room for us to explore.
“Cutter” is the word that stands for “Editor” in German and that gives us the idea that the individuals' task is to stand there with an axe waiting to severe frames from each other. Also the word “Schnitt” which stands for the Edit, or Editing as a whole, stresses the cutting all over again. As an editor it is hard to make one understand what the task actually is. Very often we fall into the trap of vehemently defending the Art whilst using spoken or written language (mea culpa). One may speak of, appropriation, observation, association, contextualization, juxtaposition and so forth, but at the end I would say that the experiments very often discover a visual language that should not succumb to the limitations of words and syntax. Furthermore, I actually believe that editing is the process in which we search an appropriate grammar for each video, film or experimental piece. I came to think of this in the last weeks and I must say, I was happy to notice that I could find it in something, that I found in the back of my external disk drive. Yes, HDD is the drawer in which we can rediscover things we once created, wrote, sketched, photographed or downloaded from the net. I however was confronted with this short video, made with found footage. I believe it was made about three years ago and all I can say is that it stirred up many thoughts about what editing is-not-is. As all things that lie beyond the tree of good and evil, this issue will haunt me again. Maybe the difficulty to articulate editing is a blessing since it defies definition and leaves some room for us to explore.
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