“For it is the avant-garde that time and again has tested the faith and power we invest in both the idealized nature of the unique artwork and the power of the artist as author.” [1]

In early film, credits were featured in the opening scenes, within the title sequence. This took place at the beginning of the film, with further titles or text introducing subsequent scenes, or — as in early black and white film — as a representation of dialogue or speech. A credit sequence at a film’s closing is a relatively recent convention, as is the sheer multitude of names listed; in early film credits, crew and other supposedly non-essential personnel where often not acknowledged.

While a seemingly banal concept, the emergence of the credit sequence parallels the collectivity of the film or video’s viewing experience. A projected work is intended for multiple people to view simultaneously, hence the scale of the image. Yet while the credits indicate those who were involved the production of the work, the collective act of viewing a film or video speaks to the multiplicity of its reception.

Neven Lochhead’s and after that what changes features a near endless index of individuals who were ostensibly involved in the video’s production. Overlayed onto shots of the forest along the Gatineau River in Quebec, some names are featured more predominately, as though they were important figures, others scroll across the screen, part of a larger crowd of minor characters and contributors. Aside from the occasional contextualizing text — such as “and introducing…” — the majority do not appear with any background information or a defined role. There is no indication of their activity, of what part they played, of how they contributed to the work.  

Yet acknowledgements are always awkardly defined. I remember coming across a book a few years ago by Janet Wolff titled The Social Production of Art, where she argues that we need to rethink who is involved in the making of a work, and ask how this involvement should be viewed. Drawing from Feminist and Marxist thought, she responds to the systemic erasure of both women and working people, reconsidering the nature of artistic production in light of their absence. While she is deeply critical of these omissions, she is also hesitant to elevate or mythologize individuals producers, as cultural production emerges within a broader context or culture. She quite pointedly states that the idea of an individual existing outside of their “social experience … must be abandoned.”[2]

Yet if we abandon the individual, who do we then credit? What function can credits — or any attribution or acknowledgement — serve in light of this rejection? This is a tension not lost on Wolff, where she points to the specific ideological and cultural conditions that form the foundation of our understanding of attribution. Put more simply, there is a tension present in the production of all art, and we need to consider more closely who is involved, and what context surrounds their involvement.

This might be too literal of a reading, but I began wondering if an economic reading of credit — in the sense of credits and debits — might shed some light on this issue. Credit is, after all, a component of a broader exchange. This does not need to be a cold, impersonal exchange — the type that increasingly prevails in contemporary economic activity — but could entail a more substantial exchange. As David Graeber argues, the settling of debts serves to close relationships, but open credit arrangements — the more pleasant kind in particular, where you owe a neighbour for borrowing their lawnmower or a fellow artist for editing your work — actually build relationships, maintaining a certain bond.[3]

When watching Lochhead’s video, I wondered why he sought to surround himself by these names, by these invented individuals, each appearing so briefly yet indicating the presence of their entire personal story and history. I wonder if this sense of community may play a part. After all, who is Hannah Mireux? Where does she live? Why did she become involved? What did she hope to gain? What did she hope to contribute? But credits never give that much away. They point to an unknown crowd, gesturing toward a quiet presence.

I look over my shoulder and see someone watching the video with me. I wonder about them. A similar set of questions arise. Yet I never receive an answer, and maybe that’s not the point, maybe it’s the presence itself that matters.

Michael DiRisio
Artistic Director of Modern Fuel Artist-Run Centre

Endnotes:

1. Okwui Enwezor, “The Production of Social Space as Artwork: Protocols of Community in the Work Le Groupe Amos and Huit Facettes,” in Collectivism after Modernism, ed. Blake Stimson and Gregory Sholette (Minneapolis, London: University of Minnesota Press, 2007), 223.
2. Janet Wolff, The Social Production of Art (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1981), 3.