“And here is observed one further curious parallel between the visual and the musical overtone: it cannot be traced in the static frame, just as it cannot be traced in the musical score. Both emerge as genuine values only in the dynamics of the musical or cinematographic process.”
—Sergei Eisenstein
The wonder and delight of certain dreams resides in the fact that they have not yet been realized. This is, I think, the case with the vision of montage sketched out nearly a century ago by the man who remains our wildest dreamer. Much, of course, has transpired in the long night of the cinema; many have learned, and learned well, the lessons of Sergei Mikhailovich. The research, however obscurely, continues unbroken. Still, we haven’t yet advanced to the point where the dream follows us past waking, where we might feel as comfortable toiling in the fourth dimension “as in our own house-slippers.”
Still, certain artists at least fleetingly give the impression of having achieved this comfort, and Rose Lowder is one of them. Across 50 years of avowedly experimental practice—“experimental” in the sense that failure is a welcome possibility—she has advanced and refined our understanding of
