Catfish, a film by Elliott Earls
Catfish is Re-released as a DVD-9 Disk
Part narrative film part documentary, Catfish is a fifty-five minute digital film incorporating; motion graphics, typography, and animation into a kind of experimental film. The narrative arc of the film traces the work of Elliott Earls as his work transitions from the lab to the stage. Catfish was filmed at HERE the Independent Art Center in Soho, and at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills Michigan. Catfish was produced in association with Emigre Inc, and was originally released in May 2001.
Elliott and Dr. Gombrich |
The image above is a frame grab from Elliott Earls film Catfish. In this scene, Elliott plagued with doubt, seeks advice from his mentor, Sir Ernst Gombrich. Click here or the image above to see this clip... |
Elliott's Thoughts on Catfish
In the year 2000, I spent about nine months commuting from JFK to Fabrica, Benettons' research center in Treviso Italy. I was serving as an Artist-in-Residence and had been charged with working in a cross-disciplinary manner with Fabrica's designers, photographers, musicians, fashion designers and new media artists. The structure of this relationship proved challenging (but that's another story). During this period I would spend three weeks working in my four-hundred square foot windowless studio on Greenwich Avenue. I would then fly to Italy and spend one week working at Fabrica. Essentially for about nine months I began to work in a rather cyclical manner. I would work for three weeks on the Catfish edit. I would then cue up approximately five minutes of the material and let it render while I was in Italy. I would then repeat the cycle.
In a number of substantive ways I feel like Catfish represented an attempt to deal with some of the traditional concerns of avant-garde film making, while hopefully extending the program. I thought of Catfish as an attempt to interject; motion graphics (calling into crisis cinematic suture ny "jamming" the film plane), spoken word poetry (fracturing cohesive linear narrative structure), the mixture of fictional narrative with theatrical documentary (cross pollinating generas), and performance art. And as a kind of guiding principle, I attempted over time to "dissolve" the narrative structure through the substitution of referential density (through motion graphics, spoken word and performance art) for narrative coherence (traditional linear story telling). See the graphic below.
( Click on the image above to enlarge )
It's important to realize that about seventy-five percent of Catfish is in fact documentation of my (Elliott Earls) performance piece Excerpts from Eye Sling Shot Lions. I had spent the better part of four years working on a performance piece, and wanted to produce a document of that process. However, to understand Catfish, it's important to see it in context. The diagram above is an attempt to illustrate my thinking with regard to the narrative structure of Catfish. The fact that Catfish is simultaneously documentation of a performance as well as it's own object, presents challenges in attempting to deal with it conceptually.
In essence there is the conceptual terrain of Eye Sling Shot Lions (the interactive piece). The conceptual terrain of Excerpts from Eye Sling Shot Lions (The Performance Piece). And, the conceptual terrain of Catfish (the digital film). Each one one of these pieces grew from it's predecessor and is conceptually related. However they are distinctly different endeavors in different mediums, with different goals.
The diagram that I've posted here attempts to begin to deal with the structural relationship outlined above.
So what's new in the re-issued Catfish DVD?
The new Catfish DVD contains the following material:
- Catfish - a 55 minute film first released in 2001 in association with Emigre Inc.
- Ambient Composition in G - a one hour and fifty minute music and animation composition.
- The Saranay Motel Trailer - a five minute preview of Elliott Earls new film.
In April 2007 in preparation for my performance at the Detroit Fringe festival at Music Hall, I re-mastered the DVD as a DVD-9 disc which gave me room to add two new pieces, "Ambient Composition in G" and "The Saranay Motel Trailer."
Play in Quicktime Format | 
Play on youTube
