Norm Bruns
2021
Figure With 14 Trains
Norm Bruns
One film, FIGURE WITH 14 TRAINS (7 min, sound), exists in a sort-of middle ground between documentary and experimentation. Around and superimposed through images of a man in bed are elegiac shots of Chicago trains, suggesting something almost erotic, much like SWIM, but it’s unequivocal in its depiction of the transit system as a wondrous framework. -Karen Sachs
Figure With 14 Trains
Theatre of the Horse and Moon
Norm Bruns
"The former is one that reminded me of Méliès, with its simple but profoundly affecting special effects, such as a shadow puppet-like model of a ship being carried against well-lit backgrounds; Bruns renders the artlessness artful, and his modest ambitions exude the purity of early cinema. " - Karen Sachs
Theatre of the Horse and Moon
The Poet and the Pond
Norm Bruns
More evocations of this style are evident in the shorter film THE POET AND THE POND (6 min, sound), an amalgam of patterns and repetitions that also bring to mind both the disciplined litanies of Marcel Duchamp and the surreal dreamscapes of Salvador Dali. (Scharres indicated in her piece that Bruns “is largely unfamiliar with the tradition into which his work clearly falls,” making all these comparisons, hers and mine, thought-provoking. How is it that an artist can so fully exude his own style that seems to be the product of certain influences, but isn’t?) -Karen Sachs
The Poet and the Pond
