Iain Sinclair & Ah Sunflower Footage (ASV 10)

Allen speaking in this clip, from Iain Sinclair and Robert Klinkert's "Ah Sunflower!" movie, is one of the great items on the web - on You Tube anyway - in that it speaks so specifically to the (visual seduction of the) medium - postmodern self-awareness, "so you don't get deceived".

so essential is it that its been memorized, but here is the original

- and with a transcript:

Allen: "If you will keep your mind on the image that is in front of you, which is my face in the camera or in your tv tube or screen (tv tube) and realize (now) that I’m looking from the other side directly into a little black hole, imagining that you are there, and also imagining what would be possible to say that would actually communicate, through all the electricity and all the glass and all the dots on the electric screen, so that you are not deceived by the image seen but that we are all both on the same beam, which is, you’re sitting in your room, surrounded by your body, looking at a screen, and I’m sitting in my garden, with my body, with noise of cars outside, so that we’re, at least, conscious of where we are, and don’t get hypnotized into.some false universe of just pure imagery, so that, in other words, you’re taking the film in front of you as an image, with a grain of salt, as an image rather than a final reality, and so you don’t get deceived by either my projections or the projections of the newscaster who will follow."

Iain Sinclair writes about Allen, on the occasion of the DVD's release here (and also, in depth, for Vertigo magazine here). Home Cinema's The Digital Fix reviews it here.

and here is Sinclair further discussing the circumstances of the filming:

Sinclair's own The Kodak Mantra Diaries (first published by his own Albion Village Press in 1971 and recently republished by Kevin Ring's Beat Scene) is essential reading. The new edition is substantially different to the original, not only in format but also with a slightly different selection of photos. It also features a new introduction by Tom Clark.