6 Easy Pieces is a compilation of shots and sequences made over the period 1996 - 1999, which seemed to find themselves draw together by a kind of gravitational attraction. The work is intended as a kind of sampler of the potential aesthetic range of DV and consumer-level NLE systems, though, of course, it is not merely a technical or aesthetic demonstration. It is also a commentary on contemporary arts, past history, creative energies, society, and, shall we say, a grab-bag of the author’s interests, from social observations to the usage of symmetry in religious architecture and music. The work was, more so than the two previous works done in DV, a deeper exploration into the shifts which digital media provoke - not only aesthetically, but, owing to the radically altered financial aspect, to the mode of working and thinking itself. I did not intend to make 6 Easy Pieces: not one shot was made with any intention of using it in a film or with an a priori idea. Rather they were made in process of experimenting with the medium, and it was only after they had been made, and were sitting in the back shelf of my mind that that found a connection and meaning for themselves. This mode of working and of approaching “work” has been for me invigorating creatively and, if you will, spiritually.
2000 | Digital Video | Color | Sound | 68 minutes
Camera, edit, and concept : Jon Jost
Music: highly altered
by computer baroque Romanesca and liturgical music
Featuring: Voice
over and writing and/or translation by Edoardo Albinati; Vera Mantero
(Dancer in sequence 5), Sarah Antunes (Shooter in sequence 5)
Shown at: Yamagata (Prizewinner), 2001; Rotterdam
2000; Palermo Immagine Leggere, VideoLisboa, Chonju (Korea), Popcorn
(Stockholm), Bergen International, Golden Horse (Taipei), New York Video
Festival, Chicago Underground Film Festival
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"Jon Jost takes us to the border of what film can be. It’s
an open project that doesn’t attempt to make any statement, but
stresses its materials as a composer would his music, using space, color,
time. The filmmaker insists that his “electronic cinema” is
a return to an authentic way of seeing. We took his word that his material
is documentary, i.e. taken from reality, not dramatic or loaded with meaning.
It makes us share in his pleasure at seeing, and captures moments of life
that never took a sense before."
- Jury statement, Yamagata fest, for Runner up award, written by Hartmut
Bitomsky, Jury President and head of Cal Arts film department
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