John Cavanaugh — Blink (Fluxfilm no. 5)
“Flicker: White and black alternating frames.” (George Maciunas)
The Fluxfilm anthology is an example of a collective work produced by Fluxus, much like their musical recording or publications. The artist and founding member of Fluxus, George Maciunas, began gathering this series of 37 films as early as 1966. With a few exceptions, the artists who took part were not known as filmmakers.
At the age of 18, John Cavanaugh made fluxfilm #5, Blink, declaring that“cinema is yoga of getting organized the patterns of direct energy.” According to Jonas Mekas, Cavanaugh’s filmmaking approach seemed one of the most promosing of the New York avant-garde at the end of the 1960’s, but nothing is left of it today. Cavanaugh withdrew all his films from Anthology Film Archives at a time in his life when, due to extreme LSD experiences, he sank into a period of insanity during which he was institutionalized for several years.
Fluxfilm #5 results from a minimal process known as flicker and built on the basic elements of cinema: single frames, light and darkness. Alternating black and white frames produce a strobe effect throughout the film. With this simple, binary process, John Cavanaugh reveals the essence of cinema: its frame rate, the frequency at which the film illusion is created. Fluxfilm #5 can be compared to Tony Conrad’s film, The Flicker, made the same year. In Tony Conrad’s more demonstrative film, the intermittence creates an illusion of continuity as a psychophysiological perceptual experiment. Cavanaugh’s film on the other hand omits all didactic intentions. This film can also be compared to Yoko Ono’s Eye Blink (fluxfilms #9 and #15), with the difference that the latter’s statement is literally accomplished yet slowed down, while the subject of Cavanaugh’s film is none other than the rhythmic blinking of‘mechanical’ eyelids. On the one hand is Eye Blink, the cause, and on the other hand the visual result, Blink, produced by the repetition of this simple experience. Where Ono’s film plays on stretching the observation of time, Cavanaugh’s analyzes real time, slicing it up with a mechanical shutter. (Maeva Aubert, Re:Voir booklet)