One of the great visionaries of experimental film, Jordan Belson (1926-2011) made works that transport us out into the farthest reaches of the universe and into the deepest recesses of the mind. Whichever route out of ourselves is taken, we arrive at the same destination.
Belson described the hypnotic short film Allures as a “combination of molecular structures and astronomical events mixed with subconscious and subjective phenomena.” Reading like a visualization of the evolution of the universe, simple abstract shapes are transformed by degrees into complex designs. Bursts of color and whirling patterns induce a trance state in the viewer; forms emerge from the void and then dissolve back into it, and some nonlinear version of progress emerges. As Belson put it, the film “seems to move from matter to spirit.”
Against the cosmological grandeur of Allures, Meditation conjures a mind in the state of meditation. In his program notes for the film’s first screening, Belson included a quote from the religious leader Ramakrishna that might describe the experience of the work: “I saw a shining ocean, endless, living, blissful. From all sides luminous waves, with a roaring sound, rushed toward me, engulfed and drowned me; I lost all awareness of outward things.”
Jordan Belson, Meditation still, 1971. 16mm film transferred to single-channel video (color, sound, digital copy). 6 min (loop)
