Boston: The MIT Press, 2015. — 352 p. — ISBN-10: 026252760X; ISBN-13: 978-0262527606.As Hollis Frampton's photographs and celebrated experimental films were testing the boundaries of "the camera arts" in the 1960s and 1970s, his provocative and highly literate writings were attempting to establish an intellectually resonant form of discourse for these critically underexplored fields. It was a time when artists working in diverse disciplines were beginning to pick up cameras and produce films and videotapes, well before these practices were understood or embraced by institutions of contemporary art. This collection of Frampton's writings presents his critical essays (many written for Artforum and October) along with additional material, including lectures, correspondence, interviews, and production notes and scripts. It replaces -- and supersedes -- the long-unavailable Circles of Confusion, published in 1983. Frampton ranged widely over the visual arts in his writing, and the texts in this collection display his unique approaches to photography, film, and video, as well as the plastic and literary arts. They include critically acclaimed essays on Edward Weston and Eadweard Muybridge as well as appraisals of contemporary photographers; the influential essay, "For a Metahistory of Film," along with scripts, textual material, and scores for his films; writings on video that constitute a prehistory of the digital arts; a dialogue with Carl Andre (his friend and former Phillips Andover classmate) from the early 1960s; and two inventive, almost unclassifiable pieces that are reminiscent of Borges, Joyce, and Beckett.Collecting His Thoughts: Remarks on the Writings of Hollis Frampton, by Bruce JenkinsPhotographySome Propositions on Photography
Digressions on the Photographic Agony
Eadweard Muy bridge: Fragments of aTesseract
Incisions in History/Segments of Eternity
A Talk on Photography and History: Time, Space, and Causality
Meditations around Paul Strand
Impromptus on Edward Weston: Everything in Its Place
Lecture Notes on Edward Weston
Erotic Predicaments for Camera
Fictcryptokrimsographology
Pictures, Krims's Pictures, PLEASE!
Notes on Marion Faller's Photographs
Proposal for ADSVMVS ABSVMVS
ADSVMVS ABSVMVSFilmA Lecture
For a Metahistory of Film: Commonplace Notes and Hypotheses
A Pentagram for Conjuring the Narrative
Notes on Composing in Film
Letter to Stan Brakhage
Letter to Donald Richie
Letter to the Editor, Artforum
Film In the House of the Word
The Invention without a Future
Interview at the Video Data Bank
Notes on Filmmakers
Zorns Lemma: Script and Notations
(nostalgia): Voice-Over Narration for a Film of That Name
Notes on (nostalgia)
Envoi
Statement of Plans for Magellan
Phrases.Mag
Talking about Magellan: An Interview
Text of Intertltles for Gloria!
Mental NotesVideo and the digital artsThe Withering Away of the State of the Art
Proposal: Hardware and Software for Computer-Processed and -Generated Video
About the Digital Arts LabThe other artsLetter to Enno Develing
Preface: 12 Dialogues 1962-1963
On Plasticity and Consecutive Matters
A Note on Robert Huot's Diaries
Inconclusions for Patrick Clancy
Comic Relief
Two Left Feet
Letter to Macalester College
Notes: By Any Other NameTextsA Stipulation of Terms from Maternal Hop!
Mind over Matter
