IF I WERE TO “CROSS REFERENCE” THE GUIDING CONCERNS OF MY WORK I WOULD SELECT two major themes. One is best loosely described as “East-West issues” (and by East-West I mean the relationship between the so-called Western World and the countries of the former Eastern block -- including the ex-USSR and the former Yugoslavia). The other, overriding, concern is the question of art and ideology. This has been true since the mid-80’s, when -- through a sequence of lucky breaks -- I was the first American to write about, and photograph, the Soviet rock counter-culture for US media (in Rolling Stone first, and then the Nation and Interview, among other places). It remains true now, with Predictions of Fire, a film about the ex-Yugoslav collectivist art movement NSK and the relationship between art and ideology in the 20th century. The source of this fascination with the East and West, and with art and ideology, is no doubt my experience of growing up in a US diplomatic family stationed at various key places during the 70’s and 80’s: Moscow. Belgrade. Ankara. They unroll like a spool of archival film in memory, fixed in time & space, yet also in motion. Commuting psychically, spiritually, and physically between the twin poles of a bi-polar world prepared me, finally, for a pretty informed “take” on its disappearance (and the resulting chaos). The crises in Russia, which is ongoing, and the horror in ex-Yugoslavia, which is ongoing, remain perpetually in my thoughts and concerns. Is there such a thing as Western “values” which are supposed to react? How do “we” see ourselves in the context of this struggle? The question of the “Other” is part of the texture of my life-experience. In the late 80’s, when I was a journalist and photographer, I did my best to sell commissioning editors on the Yugoslav story well before the violence erupted. I will always remember the Village Voice editor who said: “Call me when there is a war in Yugoslavia.” (He will remain unnamed.) By then, however, I was already in NYU Graduate Film School and disgusted at mass media, with its pack mentality (a mirror of the same mass mentality capable of sending an entire nation into war). Film, finally, has been the true goal, one that I managed to reach with Predictions of Fire. What do I see myself bringing to film? For one, a determination to prove that the film medium doesn’t need to simplify complex issues; it’s a language which doesn’t have to be second to prose in its ability to be concise, or evocative, or profound, or in fact to be history. If it’s possible to mention it, the project for which potential NYFA money is intended is a road movie titled Transnationala: An Untitled Road Movie, which I shot this summer on digital video. Ten Russian and Slovenian artists packed into two Winnebagos on a mission of discovery across the United States (the East on a trip from East to West -- this time within the USA). As a New Yorker with an ingrained “expatriatude”, it neatly encapsulates my life-long interests. And it’s already mostly in the can. I’m working now on some more production for it, then will do post production in Ljubljana, so that audiences will be able to see what happens when nine Russian and Slovenian conceptualist artists arrive in Las Vegas. To take only one example. Michael Benson
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