
Film as Warning, Film as Score
Artists Lis Rhodes and Aura Satz, longtime friends and collaborators, have worked with the medium and material of experimental film in order to unsettle its relationship to language, power structures and systems of authority.
In their work, questions of speaking, listening, power, and agency are central to the way they use image and sound. In the lead-up to the Walker’s screening of her debut feature film, Preemptive Listening, Satz sat down with Rhodes to talk about ideas of notation and how films can be “scores.”
A recording of this conversation sound mixed by Panos Chountoulidis can be listened to here.
Aura Satz
It’s good to be here picking up on these threads of conversations we’ve had over more than 20 years now. One of them that recurs has been this notion of the score—and, as we often do, we get stuck on a certain word, trying to unpack what it actually means, what its definition is. Fortunately, we’re here surrounded by many books and several dictionaries in other languages, as well as a two-volume English dictionary and a legal dictionary. I’m reminded of when I was here and we were leafing through the dictionary, trying to find a definition of the word “score.” I don’t think we came up with one…
Lis Rhodes
One we liked. Because actually they were rather devastating meanings of competition, winning, and making sure someone else loses. And that comes back to neoliberal economics.
AS
Are we any closer to a definition?

LR
I think probably there isn’t a single definition of scores. But there is something underlying them. Most of the definitions bring up quite deep, universal problems, in the sense that language itself, particularly the English language, has been constructed [claps for emphasis] to reinforce extraordinary exploitation [taps table] of both women, and women of color, in particular. Again, the very word “score” is, to a degree, authoritarian. What is interesting is there were women trying to redefine that, both in verbal language and in music, to avoid having to do the European classical writing of a score. And what we’re looking at are, as usual, these rather hidden but systemic problems that underlie so many things that unfortunately slip into “natural,” in the most appalling sense of that word.
AS
This brings me to the next point, something we’ve talked about and you’ve certainly worked on for a very long time, which is: Can a film be a score? Of course I’m thinking about Light Music (1975) and other works, but I wonder whether maybe we could think of Light Reading (1978) as a score?

LR
That’s quite a difficult question because, in a sense, there are very many layers to a film and the editing of the sound to the image, which does bring up Dresden Dynamo (1971) and Light Music (1975), and work you’ve been doing, where one is questioning the systemic way of slipping sound to make certain meanings. In both Dresden Dynamo and Light Reading, the image is the score, the score is the image, the sound is the image, and the image is the sound. And in filmmaking there are several scores working at once. Would you agree with that?
AS
I do, and actually it made me think of some interesting work by some contemporary filmmakers, like Christine Sun Kim and Alison O’Daniel or Carolyn Lazard. People working with captions in their films, including text that is either a transcript of what is being said, in verbal language and maybe some audio descriptions for access needs, but also deflecting the ways in which captions and text are used in moving image. And that seems to complicate, again, this idea of language and scores, of the instructional.
LR
Yes, yes. I wrote a couple of things that maybe—would be OK if I just read them to you? I wrote these in September 2018 as part of Loose Pages. That’s a collection of my short writings.
to hear
is perception
inscribed
in sound
that eyes
can’t see
but ears can
hear
there is no
score
vibration
reads the ear
without
is silence
the vocal cords
revolt
can the said
be said again
even teeth won’t eat
the same words
yet again
AS
Beautiful.
LR
It’s very difficult, actually, for filmmakers to intervene on so much that is taken as “the given,” the way a film is “to be made.” I’m using quotation marks there again. I’m making a score as I speak, it’s extraordinary [laughs]. That’s how difficult it is to understand the complexity of the weaving of all of that together, that produces an extraordinary repetition of how a film should look and be and sound.
AS
Another thread that I wanted to bring back into the conversation: the ways in which we use language. You in particular helped me often unpack or break down or disassemble language. That in part is why we were referring to the dictionary, but also to challenge the ways in which this tool we’re using now to communicate is, as you say, systemically biased in certain directions. How do we release what we’re trying to say or do, using those tools? I want to circle back to the difficulty in the way that I’ve been trying to think of scores, certainly in terms of musical practice, as a kind of open, less hierarchical, less authoritarian invitation for a musician to respond, say, to a visual score or an instructional score. And then, on the other hand, as we discovered the more we leafed through the pages of the dictionary, there are these very negative, violent ways in which a score can be understood as a cut, as a parceling, you know, partitura in Spanish or Italian, means to break into parts. And so rather than this openness, which I know you’re very suspicious of, it actually cuts up, cuts into, or does something less generous than how I’m trying to make it operate, or how I’m hoping to think of scores, or the film as a score.

LR
You’ve undertaken a difficult subject, and, as you say, I am very suspicious of the word “score”, because it means you’re setting up an actual rather violent, if not a very violent, duality. And that is something that I feel is basic to the problems we’re looking at, in the sense that it becomes an ethical instruction - particularly under capitalism. Which I think is something, Aura, that you are trying to break down through using “score” in the more open, musical approach. Whether that can be done is a very exciting start for a film. And quite a difficult one, because you are taking on all those layers. And I hope it works [Aura laughs], because we sure need it.
AS
As you know, I’m hugely inspired by the work you have done. It was very formative in my thinking years and years ago, as a student even, and in our collaborations since then. Thinking back to Light Music, which you’ve talked about as a score, I do recall you were also saying that it was in part a response to the lack of women composers.
LR
Yes, absolutely, definitely. And I think that, unfortunately, persists. On the other hand, I would say that there is an enormous movement on the part of women to get their composed works heard. So we’re doing well, but it’s taking a lot of time and a lot of work to break into that system.
AS
Thinking back to Light Reading and the structure of that film, which starts in darkness with a voice, with the recurring motif of “She begins to read, she begins to reread.” And I felt like what happens is that the spoken word at the start, with no image, then echoes throughout the way in which you’re looking to the other part of the film, which has no sound and is just a sequence of images. Again, I don’t know if “score” is the right word, but it’s this idea of planting a certain set of words, or giving some kind of directions or even just orientations, and then allowing those to percolate through the rest of the film. Which is how I think of Preemptive Listening. [Lis: Hmm, interesting] It starts with a certain way of redefining what a siren might be and how to listen. And then you have these listening experiences that are still haunted by what was said at the start. I don’t know if that resonates or if that’s how you were thinking?
LR
Yes, I think it does resonate. It’s interesting bringing together two very different works, but in a sense very similar at the same time. This again brings up the problem that you often talk about, which is listening. First, obviously, the problem of actually being able to hear—and I’ve got an audio test coming up as, being rather old, my ears are not quite what they used to be. Coming back to this very important question: How do we hear something? And this is where the question of instruction comes back to sirens. We’re talking about instruction, instruction to be followed, and I think that’s extremely interesting. It’s why I made, in the light of what you were working on, my film on warning, where the warning was given after the action, instead of before. So something that’s called a warning is not a warning. I am referring to the atom bomb in Japan.
AS
In Preemptive Listening I started by trying to define a “siren,” and then coming up with a tentative way of defining it. Similarly, the word “warning” is another one that I am not trying to pin down, but I’m using it to think through something, and then it kind of slips. Also because so many warnings aren’t actually warnings. Like the title of your piece, The Warning That Never Was (2020), we see now in Gaza and Lebanon, these warnings are not warnings; they are performances of warning to deflect human rights abuses. In another sense, they’re deflecting the responsibility of safety onto the citizens because if they do not heed the warnings, then their death is their own fault. Coming back to this problem of understanding what a warning is, who’s issuing the warning, in the name of what authority, and whether they can be trusted, whether they’re in our best interests, and what obedience to that warning entails, do you want to talk a bit more about The Warning That Never Was? We started thinking just before the pandemic about this notion of warnings, and I went through your book Telling Invents Told (2019) and highlighted all the sections where you talk about warnings, historically, because you have been thinking about this for a very, very long time.
LR
Yes, we both have. Absolutely, I agree with that. And it obviously has a quite lengthy history, where warnings are given that are not warnings—it’s a lie. And this is where it gets really very complicated in the sense of language. So often questions are already embedded in a presupposed answer, the thing is back to front, or even worse, in several rotations of covering, maneuvering, pushing it this way and that. And this is where we’re again up against the same problem: Can a film be a score, a warning? Can it be? I’m asking you... Maybe it can, but I’m uncertain.
AS
It’s a question that keeps giving. But I do think of my work on sirens as an unlearning, a rereading, and a kind of re-inscription, re-scoring. . .
LR
Mmm, I agree with that.
AS
. . . that I’m attempting, and maybe not succeeding. But I have to keep trying. This idea of a prompt, so it’s not necessarily a question with a predetermined answer as much as—and again, I know I use these words and I’m hesitating even now, I can see in your eyes [Lis laughs] that I need to be careful with my language—a suggestion or…
LR
I wish it was your language, Aura.
AS
Yes.
LR
Because in a sense, that’s the very problem we’re talking about, isn’t it? Is that it isn’t our language. Now, you are a very good linguist. . .
AS
Not really.
LR
. . . which I’m not, but in a funny way, I’m not sure that we’re not talking about quite a lot of languages, which move almost immediately into that problematic area of “score,” which is authority, control, and violence, which is what we’re coming to so often and trying to break through that inevitable set of meanings. We’re not rewriting it. I think we’re thinking completely differently. So we write it. We don’t rewrite it, we write it.
AS
Yeah, it’s very hard.
LR
It is immensely hard. And your talking about Light Reading (1978) is actually a very interesting way of bringing some of those problems to the surface. It was based on Amanuensis (1973) and the position of women in relationship to having to type men’s words. So, a very literal exploration in a Soho dustbin to find typewritten tape, back in 1973. 1Our work has been interestingly very close, and we approach it perhaps differently. Is that sensible?

AS
Totally, there’s all these resonances and echoes. When you read the poems and some of the texts we’ve written over the years, you quoted me saying something about my voice that I was, in fact, saying about yours [laughter].
LR
[laughter] Could well be. I wouldn’t be surprised at all.
AS
But just coming back to found materials, especially in many of your recent works, you do use citations of Home Office legal documents. There’s often this space between reading, and then sometimes you speak into or over or across the film, and the voice is perhaps saying what is appearing as text on screen. But there is this real tension between what is spoken, what is seen, what is read, and what is heard. I don’t know if you want to talk a little bit more about that in Journal of Disbelief (2000), The Warning that Never Was?

LR
That’s very true. I think you made a very good description there. And certainly the positioning of the legal texts, the authoritarian direction of those, is something I wanted to make very clear and attempt to upset that meaning within my own voice and choosing carefully what I could use to try to move [rubs table] that set of misleading authority. And Disquiet (2022) is very much about warning, too, of the corporate takeover of government and nuclear weapons in space. And I think this is incredibly disastrous. Disquiet, which is a mild title for what I’m actually talking about, is trying to use language and image—well, it’s another set of warnings I’m doing. I’m trying to do it in as simple a method as I can think of. And I suppose that comes back to: “Does loss have an image?” Loss of control. Loss of control of your life, just to be alive? Does it have an image? I don’t think so, other than symptomatically. You can take your photo of a dead body, but you can’t get to the systemic underlying of that that justifies it.
AS
I actually do think some of your films operate as warnings, when you say: “Does loss have an image, other than symptomatically?” And this is a line in my film I am thinking about a lot now, having finished the film, which is: “When does the symptom become the alarm?”

What even is a siren, or what even is a warning, and things that maybe we don’t designate as warnings, but they are. I’m thinking out loud there, but that implies some notion of temporality, whereby we think that, in reading something or being told something is a warning, there is a future we can somehow interpolate, or that somehow we might have the possibility of interjecting into that future or what will come to pass. So even within the rage and disgust and repulsion that one is feeling for the state of things, if you reconceptualize some symptoms as warnings, maybe there’s a way in which one actually isn’t fully despondent and thinks that there is some future that can be affected or can have some level of agency?
LR
Oh, yes, very much so. Absolutely, I do. I don’t think these things are inevitable; they’re constructed. They’re systemic, and that can be undone. It’s very dangerous to do that, obviously, because it upsets those in control—in control of the money and the army. And that goes for many others I know who feel exactly the same. I don’t call that either optimistic or pessimistic. One gets into the dualities that are imposed upon us. One can feel all sorts of ranges of those—they’re not just two positions. It’s absolute rubbish. And, of course, one gets depressed sometimes. But most of the time one is working, we don’t have time. So, let’s get on with it and turn the world right over.▪︎
Experience Preemptive Listening for yourself when it screens at the Walker on April 18, 2025 with the artist in attendance. Learn more about the screening and get tickets here.