Kuleshov Sukiyaki 2004
Single Channel Video, 2.58 min
Caspar Stracke and Gabriela Monroy

Kuleshov Sukiyaki is based on the music piece "Systole No 2" from INTERSTICES (2000) by Terre Thaemlitz. It uses this music collage as a grid for the montage of a particular set of found images.

In the music piece “Systole No 2”, Thaemlitz deconstructed a funky 70's pop song with the idea to extract those music passages where no vocals are being sang. These are usually the pop song segments that hardly anyone pays attention to. Thaemlitz therefore distills the background radiation of the song, transforms it into an arrhythmic instrumental piece, not without leaving some traces of the singer's voice - his inhalations and exhalations, "suggesting emotional, physical and/or sexual exasperation, and occasionally resulting in the whispering of new words…” (T.T.) Analog to this "systolic" sound collage Kuleshov Sukiyaki contains a patchwork of clips from 70's erotica and soft porn movies which highlight similar emotional moments, including the befores and afters of orgasm scenes.

It features a variety of highly aesthetic cinematography (in films of Radley Metzger, Paul Morrisey) as well as stylistic somersaults. In the eyes of their producers and occasionally even directors these elements are exclusively created for the support or exaggeration of pure lust and sexual charge, that their creators hope to have embedded in these scenes. This over-saturation becomes apparent even in single images, after being taken out of their context. (Mostly close-up's of actors gazing at their partner.) In this assembly of images the energy fields are redirected, using their magnetic charge in order to fuse together associative image elements of entirely different films. In addition, it also applies the oldest experiment in associative editing, the famous Lev Kuleshov effect, while featuring a non- linearity that could be compared to the —now legendary— chopped film-with-sukiyaki dish by experimentalist Tony Conrad.