Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Bert Tenzer Productions (1963)

Interesting word choice here. I guess having the secret to immortality would be kinda dope, but "perpetual" life? That just doesn't have quite the right ring to it. Visually there's nothing mind-blowing with the stark black and white look. What I dig is the concept embedded here. The record is actually an extended advertisement for cameras and the technology of capturing images on film, which gets to be an interesting sort of cultural and/or marketing idea, i.e. trying to convince people that they can live on perpetually through celluloid. On that note, here's my secret advertisement, go see Bill Morrison's Decasia.

A quick story about digging this one up: I chanced on it in a stack of 10-inchers at an Orlando thrift store and couldn't help but get interested what with the title. I pulled the vinyl out to check the condition and came to find there was a second record in the sleeve. No, it wasn't a double, instead it was another Tenzer production entitled: "THE INVASION OF THE MECHANICAL MEN" (see below). Robots. They're always after that elusive secret for perpetual life.

3 comments:

  1. For those that are interested, looks like an mp3 of this is available on WMFU. Just search for "Tenzer" at this sight: http://www.wfmu.org/onthedownload.php/byartist/110. I had forgotten that they refer to cameras as "Preservation Machines." Genius.

    ReplyDelete
  2. This looks amazing. Paillard-Bolex is a company that made really great spring-wound movie cameras. I have a 16mm Bolex that's my favorite object I own (slightly more than my Techniques 1200, sorry Graham.) This record combines my two favorite things!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Whoa. Synchronicity alert. Watched part of _Decasia_ in class today.

    ReplyDelete