Apparatus Theory: SYMBIOPSYCHOTAXIPLASM: TAKE ONE (1968)

In 1968, American documentarian William Greaves set off into Central Park with a robust crew to conduct screen tests for a fictional film. As pairs of actors rehearse a nasty breakup scene, the inner workings of the production become increasingly convoluted, and questions of authorship, recognition, sexuality, and cinéma vérité abound. 

Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One — borrowing from “symbiotaxiplasm,” the reciprocal relationship between humans and their environment — enacts a bizarre, metafictional setup: a film crew captures the actors during their audition process, while a second film crew documents the first film crew, while a third film crew documents the entire film-within-a-film framework, including the two film crews, the actors, and passersby. 

Finding Hollywood acting forced and inelastic, Greaves wanted to instead conjure spontaneous, “authentic” performances from the film workers, who slide from collaborative to conspiratorial as the inner and outer films progress. (Greaves himself is playing a character: a clumsy chauvinist unable to wrangle his troops long enough to cast the film.) The result is both live theatre and surveillance footage — an absurd mise en abyme that philosophizes on the very nature of image-making.