Nova - Lia Gangitano

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projects information contact Back toApeshit v3

NOVA

by Lia Gangitano

There's only one reality left. This is here. This is now.

(Taylor (Charlton Heston) Planet of the Apes)

The futurism of the past has caught up. Computers that date no further than 1989

confront the eyes with the dim light of their prompt outdatedness. The early

Macintosh computers that comprise Leah Gilliam's installation Apeshit v3

illuminate Taylor's prospect: time becomes abbreviated. The images, they're familiar,

nostalgic. But 1973 isn't that long ago either. Encountering a not so distant past--

forced to recede by the velocity of technology--evokes the subject of time travel, a

central lie of science fiction. The Planet of the Apes begins. It's 3978. All the gu ys

have beards. Going forward in time has made them obsolete.

Originally derived from painti ngs of scenes, Charlton Heston considered The Planet

of the Apes a "new genre: the space opera." Its status as "racial allegory" has been

documented. The grand intentions and aesthetic genealogy that constitute this sci-fi

epic seem to thwart the revision of its position as a political statement on race

relations. This matter goes unaddressed by the various websites devoted to the films.

Perhaps such anachronistic revision must occur on similar terms, that is, formal as

well as ideological.

Taylor's imminent realization that human reign on earth is over is signaled by his

discovery of iconic ruins, weighty representations o f a destroyed planet. Like th e

imagined painted vistas of barren topography and the operatic scope of its tragic

scenery, the landscape of Apeshit v3 insinuates "a dark, noisy, polyphonic space: a

low-tech graveyard, where tools, technolog ies and id eals might go to d ie."1 A

monolithic flatness characterizes the cowering early model Macs, rising from

scorched grass and reflecting weakly on patina-ed walls. Their beige plastic

obsolescence, reminiscent of the talking doll found in the wreckage of the forbidden

zone, speaks as lost proof of a limitless future.

1. motion of activity. (capture them)

In reference to Gilliam's 1996 video Sapphire and the Slave Girl, a work that

integ rates original and archival footage, she comments "I throw these decades up

against each other to compare them, because I think very little has changed...."2 In

herrecent works utilizing an obscure 8mm trailer for Battle for the Planet of the

Apes, such as Split, a CD-ROM derived from research into primatology and science

fiction, the temporal collision of outmoded and advanced technologies draws

attention to the failed p rogressiveness that the film represents. Apeshit, a vi deotape

by Gilliam, ex plo its this footage "to highlig ht the u nstable relationship between the

real, historical past and the distant, imaginary future. (Briefly released to the amateur

film market in the mid 1970s, the 'reduction print' is a cheap 8mm duplication sold

to encourage the sale of 8mm film projectors and to promote new releases.)"3

Like many of Gilliam's accumulated works, the third in stallment of the trilogy in

question, Apeshit v3, implies prior and subsequent volumes that change names,

compose partial histories, remain encyclopedi c. Consistent practices, such as the use
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of video technology to equalize footage from disparate time periods, yield "a feeling

of an extend ed historical present"4 th at is central to her address of topics ranging

from the naming process to the power of speech. Apeshit v3 exacerbates this

historical leveling with the introduction of archaic computers that run movies with

varying degrees of aptitude. The images were processed using Paik Raster Control

Units, Jones Channel Colorizers and Frame Buffers. Images were compiled and

processed digit ally, p rogrammed usin g Macromedia Direct or and set-up to run on

68030-based Macintosh Computers. An uncanny ability to divulge and mask

familiar images, modified and modul ating, seems to belie th e unsoph isticated

character of these early Macs.

Gaps between imagined technolog ical futures and present material cond itions are

customary. William Gibson's 1984 novel Neuromancer first introduced the term

cyberspace, which the author defined as "a graphic representation of data abstracted

from the b anks of every computer in th e human system," but the no vel was

composed on a manual typ ewriter and "a large part of the inspiration for

'cyberspace' resulted from his first experience wearing a Sony Walkman in the

summer of 1981."5 That a virtual reality was once conceived from a subtle shift in

percep tio n caused by walking aroun d the city with a Walkman insp ires a return to

the streamlined elements and simplified tools that form the evocative content of

Apeshit v3.

3. I against I (behold the talking ape)

Battle for the Planet of the Apes, like the four volumes that precede it, involves a

bat tle over speech. In Tayl or's first u tterance ("get your stinking paws o ff me you

damn dirty ape"), the conflict is foreshadowed. Battle ends where Planet of the Apes

beg ins. Gilliam comments: "But in spit e o f its attempts at reversal, Battle remains a

parti al, colored text. ...This dysto pian allego ry p resents a troubli ng economy of

binary oppositions an d ent renched racial hierarchies. Futuristic in scope b ut

retrogressive in worldview, the film's contradictions are technical as well as

ideological. Reduced from 35mm, reprinted in black and white and then subtitled,

the cinematic and semiotic codes of the reduction print read as both primitive and

prescient."6 Th is disparity of lang uag es, formats, is increased exp onentially byGilliam's treatment and presentation of this p iece of conten tious evi dence. "Is there a

relationship between these forgotten formats and the discontinued political

ideologies that they depict? Serving up Battle for the Planet of the Apes as proof,

Apeshit v3 puts forth tolerance as an outmoded technology."7

I want to be combed out now.

Reducing what has been referred to here as ideological significance (the p olitical

contents o f The Planet of the Apes films) to the subtit les that app ear intermittently

on the computer screens, Gilliam excavates certain phrases to level ou t the fictional

terrain. "Clever ape," "Are you ready to die, ape?" "Now fight like apes." function as

distillations of an oppositional proposition without a predetermined effect. Byrecontextualizing their meaning, an inevitable outcome is vaguely rewritten amidst

the pathos of destruction. The words "pull back," appear on an "image intentionally

distorted and raster scanned to h ighligh t the ape's flight to safety."8

"Virtual reality, cyberspace, digital imaging, and other abstract methods of

configuring space, the latest products of a constantly mutating technological

environment, have reconfigured ou r traditional physical exp erience of the visual."9

Yet when viewing motion pictures on computers with outmoded speed capacities,

the d igital i mage simulates a hand-cranked film, conflating the disparate histories of

the filmic and the electronic image. Despite the fact that supposedly high-tech

devices generate the images, they recall early cinematic precursors, much like the


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flipbook. "Various optical d evices such as the zootrope, the stereoscope, the magic

lantern, the praxinoscope, the thaumatope, and the zoopraxiscope both created the

illusion of a moving image and exposed its means of production."10

4. don't ever talk to strangers

1 Leah Gilliam, project description , Apeshit v 3, 1999 .

2 Gilliam quoted by M eredith E. Holch, "Resharpen th e Edge," The Independent,

July 1996: 27.

3 Leah Gilliam.

4 Meredith E. Holch, "17 Ways to Resharpen the Edge," The Independent , July1996: 27.

5 Bruce Headlam, "Walkman Sounded Bell for Cyberspace" (need citation).

6 Leah Gilliam.

7 Leah Gilliam.

8 Leah Gilliam.

9 Chrissie Iles, "The Mutability of Vision," New Histories, (Boston: The Institute of

Contemporary Art, 199 6): 110 -111.

10 Chrissie Iles: 112.
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