Gordon Matta-Clark’s Splitting has the feel of a documentary invade by Buster Keaton. From the very start the title cards create a sense of disjuncture. They clearly set out the terms of the project, but the matter-of-fact declaration “Beginning at the center of the house two parallel lines were cut through all the structural surfaces” distracts from the absurdity of what is actually happening and defers interpretation.
But we cannot escape the fact that Matta-Clark does what he says he is going to do. Starting with a close-up of a sawzall and the insertion of the blade, we see a house bisected. The cuts are made and then suddenly the sunlight comes through the gap. The cut transforms from physical to metaphorical as the light cuts through the house and onto the lawn. At this point the physicality of the camera enters the composition through lens flares that parallel the cut. The flares rise up to the sky, to the disc of the sun.
Matta-Clark is captured by this light. He celebrates it with a title card and an exploration of how the light and cut interact. There are a series of interior shots with the sun-white windows and cut providing a high contrast to the dark of the interior that calls to mind the “Ray-o-graphs” that started the exhibition.
The second part of the film begins by returning the focus to the physicality of the project. The sawzall is replaced by a masonry cutter scoring the foundation and hot scenes of shirtless artists wielding sledge hammers and straining to lower the jacks. The film celebrates the masculinity of the tools and the project. As the last piece of the foundation wall is knocked loose, Matta-Clark leaps to grasp the corner and hold the building up. At this point the humor of absurdity becomes slapstick. Laughing he steps away. The building stands.
As the jacks are removed a wedge of buildingless opens up to the sky. With this wedge, sunlight can now fill the house revealing more of the interior and how the planes have slid off their access. Parallel surfaces now intersect. The rupture is illuminated.
Splitting speaks to the divide of property relationships in the US. By identifying the setting as a “bedroom suburb” of New York City Matta-Clark locates his project as one removed from, yet dependent on the larger metropolis. This geographical divide is furthered as one part of the house is cut off from the other and made even more unstable. Had the furniture not been removed to the basement it would begin its slide to the margins. As red-lining and industrial public housing destroyed communities so to does Matta-Clark erode the household’s foundation.
Various commentators have seized on the identification of the building as a “one-family house” to link the project metaphorically to Matta-Clark’s complicated relationship to his father. But by concluding his film with the phrase “urban ‘renewal’,” complete with the scare quotes, along his other projects (including the later Conical Intersect and his broken window pieces) its clear that Splitting (also) points in more political directions.Gordon Matta-Clark’s Splitting has the feel of a documentary invade by Buster Keaton. From the very start the title cards create a sense of disjuncture. They clearly set out the terms of the project, but the matter-of-fact declaration “Beginning at the center of the house two parallel lines were cut through all the structural surfaces” distracts from the absurdity of what is actually happening and defers interpretation.
But we cannot escape the fact that Matta-Clark does what he says he is going to do. Starting with a close-up of a sawzall and the insertion of the blade, we see a house bisected. The cuts are made and then suddenly the sunlight comes through the gap. The cut transforms from physical to metaphorical as the light cuts through the house and onto the lawn. At this point the physicality of the camera enters the composition through lens flares that parallel the cut. The flares rise up to the sky, to the disc of the sun.
Matta-Clark is captured by this light. He celebrates it with a title card and an exploration of how the light and cut interact. There are a series of interior shots with the sun-white windows and cut providing a high contrast to the dark of the interior that calls to mind the “Ray-o-graphs” that started the exhibition.
The second part of the film begins by returning the focus to the physicality of the project. The sawzall is replaced by a masonry cutter scoring the foundation and hot scenes of shirtless artists wielding sledge hammers and straining to lower the jacks. The film celebrates the masculinity of the tools and the project. As the last piece of the foundation wall is knocked loose, Matta-Clark leaps to grasp the corner and hold the building up. At this point the humor of absurdity becomes slapstick. Laughing he steps away. The building stands.
As the jacks are removed a wedge of buildingless opens up to the sky. With this wedge, sunlight can now fill the house revealing more of the interior and how the planes have slid off their access. Parallel surfaces now intersect. The rupture is illuminated.
Splitting speaks to the divide of property relationships in the US. By identifying the setting as a “bedroom suburb” of New York City Matta-Clark locates his project as one removed from, yet dependent on the larger metropolis. This geographical divide is furthered as one part of the house is cut off from the other and made even more unstable. Had the furniture not been removed to the basement it would begin its slide to the margins. As red-lining and industrial public housing destroyed communities so to does Matta-Clark erode the household’s foundation.
Various commentators have seized on the identification of the building as a “one-family house” to link the project metaphorically to Matta-Clark’s complicated relationship to his father. But by concluding his film with the phrase “urban ‘renewal’,” complete with the scare quotes, along his other projects (including the later Conical Intersect and his broken window pieces) its clear that Splitting (also) points in more political directions.
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