Six Films, 1974-81, Sound And Silent Prints1981

WALK THAT DOG: This and the following films constitute a body of "interviews" begun in 1973 and completed in 1981. Although they are not serial in content the films should be shown in chronological order when screened as a group. A chance meeting between the artist, ten young boys, and a yoyo champion in a drug store parking lot provides the substance for this rambling and anarchic filmed interview that at once parodies "man on the street" television interviews while introducing and sustaining an unusual but deliberate verité technique on its own. OBSERVEILLANCE: A lyrical tour guide takes the viewer on a trip down the Wakulla River in North Florida. Although the camera remains relentlessly fixed on him, his vivid, near-musical descriptions of Southern flora, fauna, and wildlife gives a better view of things than total visual mobility could ever allow. CUT: A peculiar homage to the things that go wrong, this film is purportedly about rugby. The self-explanatory title for this jumpy "documentary" is less concerned with the filmed subject (the game, the field, the players) than a comic editing style and the complete acknowledgement given to the technical aspect of gathering and manipulating raw footage. A QUIET AFTERNOON WItH STRANGERS: "A 'silent' interview, QUIET AFTERNOON is the most strange and moving of Turkle's films, documenting the year-round garage sale of an eccentric, elderly Ohio couple. The omission of sound and the focused, grainy attention of their legacy of bric-a-brac, discarded appliances and collected curiosities adds greatly to the film's ultimate emotional effect." – Frank Young, Florida Flambeau LINCOLN LOGS FOR JESUS: "Playing on all of Tyler Turkle's previous interview films, accelerating and violating their stylistics, LINCOLN LOGS FOR JESUS is a nearly Cubist look at the world. A fast-paced consumer jaunt, almost ritual in nature, winds its way through flashes, repetition, swift cuts, and the reverse switch for an edgy, jarring continuity." – Steve Dollar, Media X EXCESS, BLACK NOISE, AND FAST MOVING PICTURES: Seventy seconds of furiously energetic filmmaking in which all of the possible pauses in visual and aural activity have been removed. What is left when all of the fat has been trimmed? Monkeys with diamond studded collars, killer fish, and a parade of incongruous images, statements, questions, and answers guided to an exciting climax by a storefront dummy who takes over the interviewing chores midway through the film. "The central idea of Turkle's interview films involves getting around the images that block perception. The film tricks the images or somehow pushes them toward a deliberate self-consciousness, while simultaneously encouraging their chance or found condition. The processes of chance and deliberation combine to produce works of gentle beauty and profound, acerbic wit. Altogether the effects of these films is that of sentiment moved to the power of scrutiny." – Richard Milazzo, Artmode Exhibition: Herbert F. Johnson Museum, Cornell University; New Orleans Museum of Art; Fort Worth Art Museum; SF Museum of Modern Art.