Oh Desire! I love you so badly! I found you in an odd manner the first time we met. It was as if you knew already my way of looking. I was so impressed. It just happened in a familiar space, floating on a cloud of madness. You taught me a lot. Then I started looking for a colateral place, more intimate than the first one. As I found it, my gaze was placed, yes, you already knew it, so I looked a bit further...
Film my Desire (first sequence-voice over)
Oh Desire! I love you so badly! I found you in an odd manner the first time we met. It was as if you knew already my way of looking. I was so impressed. It just happened in a familiar space, floating on a cloud of madness. You taught me a lot. Then I started looking for a colateral place, more intimate than the first one. As I found it, my gaze was placed, yes, you already knew it, so I looked a bit further...
Film my Desire
As Lacan’s term for the Imaginary suggests, with a simple connotation of the term as casual form of fiction, the amount of optical language that happens between projection and identification, turns out to be the link of the encounter between image and observer's desire. In other words; the assumed fragmented body of the self opposes to the whole body of the Other, and therefore elaborates the wholeness of his own body as an image of the desired Other. So then the optical language happening between the projected image and the observer’s identification must correspond later to the observer’s desire of a whole-body. Following this idea, the body does not disappear without physicallity, but more than that, it turns to be outlined by the means of images. Sexuality and desire are, therefore, inscribed as drive forces of the subject in the field of the visible, laying out the reached dynamic of the visual. We possess a body without body or an image of a body: we are another. Is there not a key role cinema has been playing and in a way the Internet seems to be expanding?
My intention is, on one hand, to interrogate the lacanian concept of the mirror in the construction of the subject as it is one of the main topics in cinema theories to explain the situation of the viewer in front of the film projection. The model of the „mirror stage“ was actually conceived by Lacan to categorize the psycho-sexual development of the child as recognition of the Self from the visual. Cinema therefore finds in this stage a way to analyse the spectator-screen event as the imaginary production between screen-camera-look. In doing so, the media (cinema) sexualize its discurse, becomming itself the object petit a: cinema itself becomes then „that shiny object of desire“ (twisting a little bit the name of Buñuel’s classic film). On the other hand, I will confront the concepts of language and image through mass-media phenomena (like cinema and the Internet) in order to research on sexuality. The new digital technologies -where images have lost its materiality (ink, oil colors, photo-sensible emulsion, etc) as they have been completely structured by mathematic language (binary codes)- urge us to rethink the psychoanalitical terms of the Self, sexuality and language from a more complex scenario that inevitably shifts the Other from its past position. If images become manifestations of a language of codes, a technologize mirror faces us with a codified reflexion, which is not ours nor of the Other; it is actually placed as a „cyber-image“ somewhere in the middle. Where is then the sexual drive that causes the construction of the subject in such a situation?
The project aims at diverse experiences in contemporary sexual relations, apparentely liberated of the old repressions but, at the same time, unattached of the corporeal act of sex by means of mass media. I will interrogate the position of cinema in today’s subjectivity, when the cinema theories on the lacanian mirror stage seem to be merely outdated. Using diferent audiovisual formats such as HD video, film or cell-phone movies to mediate between me and the other, I will record my encounters with different strangers which I will meet through internet’s sexual networks. My avatar (my character) in this online-spaces and in the film will be named „mirror_stage,“ stressing the lacanian problematic of this action inside the cyber-space. Since any kind of physical sexual contact between both bodies is, in such spaces (chat-rooms, internet-forums or social networks), imposible -being instead replaced by text and visual representation- I will agree with each stranger, before the meetings, to remain with our avatar’s identities in order to make a film out of our encounters. On location and in this very sexualize context, I will challenge them to direct me as a camera-man for making a short-film about their alter-egos. In this fashion, the pro-filmic image will be made up of several elsewise situations, directed by sundry virtual identities, which will be trying to configurate the concept of sexuality with their visual bodies –being in front of the camera- and my imposibility to have a body –being behind the camera. From this tension, the project „Film my Desire“ will be dealing with a very difficult task to achieve, i.e. the existence of the language of the body as manifestation of sexuality in contemporary representation, as a media-based reflection of the Other’s body emerges on the surface where we find our own image, the tension arising from this situation will be as important as the film themself.
My intention is, on one hand, to interrogate the lacanian concept of the mirror in the construction of the subject as it is one of the main topics in cinema theories to explain the situation of the viewer in front of the film projection. The model of the „mirror stage“ was actually conceived by Lacan to categorize the psycho-sexual development of the child as recognition of the Self from the visual. Cinema therefore finds in this stage a way to analyse the spectator-screen event as the imaginary production between screen-camera-look. In doing so, the media (cinema) sexualize its discurse, becomming itself the object petit a: cinema itself becomes then „that shiny object of desire“ (twisting a little bit the name of Buñuel’s classic film). On the other hand, I will confront the concepts of language and image through mass-media phenomena (like cinema and the Internet) in order to research on sexuality. The new digital technologies -where images have lost its materiality (ink, oil colors, photo-sensible emulsion, etc) as they have been completely structured by mathematic language (binary codes)- urge us to rethink the psychoanalitical terms of the Self, sexuality and language from a more complex scenario that inevitably shifts the Other from its past position. If images become manifestations of a language of codes, a technologize mirror faces us with a codified reflexion, which is not ours nor of the Other; it is actually placed as a „cyber-image“ somewhere in the middle. Where is then the sexual drive that causes the construction of the subject in such a situation?
The project aims at diverse experiences in contemporary sexual relations, apparentely liberated of the old repressions but, at the same time, unattached of the corporeal act of sex by means of mass media. I will interrogate the position of cinema in today’s subjectivity, when the cinema theories on the lacanian mirror stage seem to be merely outdated. Using diferent audiovisual formats such as HD video, film or cell-phone movies to mediate between me and the other, I will record my encounters with different strangers which I will meet through internet’s sexual networks. My avatar (my character) in this online-spaces and in the film will be named „mirror_stage,“ stressing the lacanian problematic of this action inside the cyber-space. Since any kind of physical sexual contact between both bodies is, in such spaces (chat-rooms, internet-forums or social networks), imposible -being instead replaced by text and visual representation- I will agree with each stranger, before the meetings, to remain with our avatar’s identities in order to make a film out of our encounters. On location and in this very sexualize context, I will challenge them to direct me as a camera-man for making a short-film about their alter-egos. In this fashion, the pro-filmic image will be made up of several elsewise situations, directed by sundry virtual identities, which will be trying to configurate the concept of sexuality with their visual bodies –being in front of the camera- and my imposibility to have a body –being behind the camera. From this tension, the project „Film my Desire“ will be dealing with a very difficult task to achieve, i.e. the existence of the language of the body as manifestation of sexuality in contemporary representation, as a media-based reflection of the Other’s body emerges on the surface where we find our own image, the tension arising from this situation will be as important as the film themself.
mirror_stage (note 2) -Der Schmetterling des Tschuang-Tses
In einem Traum ist das Subjekt ein Schmetterling. Was besagt das? Es besagt, dass das Subjekt den Schmetterling in seiner Realität als Blick sieht. Was wären all die Figuren, Zeichnungen, Farben -wenn nicht ein geschenktes Zu-sehen-Geben, in dem sich für uns die essentielle Primitivität des Blicks abzeichnet. Ein Schmetterling, meingott, nicht mal so verschieden von dem, der den Wolfsmann terrorisiert- Maurice Merleau-Ponty weiß genau, wie wichtig das ist, er verweist darauf in einer Anmerkung, die nicht in seinen Text integriert ist. Tschuang-Tse kann, nachdem er aufgewacht ist, sich fragen, ob nicht der Schmetterling träume, Tschuang-Tse zu sein. Er hat recht, und zwar in doppelter Hinsicht, denn erstens beweist das, dass er nicht verrückt ist, er hält sich nicht für absolut mit Tschuang-Tse identisch -und zweitens, weil er sich nicht bewußt ist, dass er mit seiner Aussage so genau ins Schwarze trifft. In der Tat, als er eben Schmetterling war, erfaßte er sich an einer Wurzel seiner Identität- war er und ist er in seinem Wesen dieser Schmetterling, der sich in seinen eigenen Farben malt- und deshalb ist er im lezten Grunde Tschuang-Tse.
(Lacan, "Vier Grundbegriffe der Psyschoanalyse", 1964, S.82)
(Lacan, "Vier Grundbegriffe der Psyschoanalyse", 1964, S.82)
Spiegelstadium Recherche 1.0
the classic theory of cinema that the camera is an impartial instrument which grasps, or rather is impregnated by, the world in its ‘concrete reality’ is an eminently reactionary one. What the camera in fact registers is the vague, unformulated, untheorized, unthought-out world of the dominant ideology. Cinema is one of the languages through which the world communicates itself to itself. They constitute its ideology for they reproduce the world as it is experienced when filtered through its ideology’. (Conolli and Narboni 1969, 46)
Scientific criticism has an obligation to define its fields and methods. This implies awareness of its own historical and social situation, a rigorous analysis of the proposed field of study, the conditions which make the work necessary and those which make it possible, and the special function it intends to fill. It is essential that we at Cahiers du Cinema should now undertake just such a global analysis of our positions and aims. (Comolli and Narboni 1969, 43)
Robert Lapsley and Micheal Westlake isolate two aspects of Lacanian theory, which were to prove crucial to film studies. The first is Lacan’s reversal of the Cartesian notion of subjectivity. Rather than the subject creating and naming the world, Lacan states that is in fact language itself, which creates the world, ‘the concept…engenders the thing’ (Lacan 1989, 72). This idea has many implications for filmic criticism, as speech can thus be conceived of as already saturated with the predominant ideology, making it difficult or even impossible to utilise speech to criticize ideological norms. In fact, Lacan even goes so far as to say that language can never fully articulate what the subject wishes to say: the unsignifiable order of the real is evidence of this.
The second of Lacan’s theories that proved indispensable for film studies is his re-reading of Ferdinand de Saussure. Lacan reverses Saussure’s formula for the sign, placing language above reality (S/s). He states that, ‘[f]or the human being the word or the concept is nothing other than the word in its materiality. It is the thing itself. It is not just a shadow, a breath, a virtual illusion of the thing, it is the thing itself’ (Lacan 1987, 178, my italics). Language murders the thing and takes its place. In this model of the sign, there is an endless sliding of signifiers over signifieds, which is temporarily halted by the point de caption. The graph of desire (Lacan 1989, 335) articulates succinctly the complexities inherent in signification. The horizontal vector represents the signifying chain, and intersects with the vector ΔS at two points. The first point of intersection denotes the constitution of the signifier from ‘a synchronic and enumerable collection of elements in which each is sustained only by the principle of its opposition to each of the others’ (Lacan 1989, 336). In short, this point represents the signifier, which attains its status through its difference from other terms in the system of language. The second point of intersection denotes the moment of punctuation, in which the signifier at the first point of intersection attains its full meaning retroactively. The two points of intersection are not symmetrical, nor are they intended to be. The first is ‘a locus (a place rather than a space) and the second is ‘a moment (a rhythm rather than a duration) (Lacan 1989, 336). The elementary cell of the graph cited here is simplistic, but serves to illustrate the relationship between subject and meaning. (http://intertheory.org/psychoanalysis.htm)
Scientific criticism has an obligation to define its fields and methods. This implies awareness of its own historical and social situation, a rigorous analysis of the proposed field of study, the conditions which make the work necessary and those which make it possible, and the special function it intends to fill. It is essential that we at Cahiers du Cinema should now undertake just such a global analysis of our positions and aims. (Comolli and Narboni 1969, 43)
Robert Lapsley and Micheal Westlake isolate two aspects of Lacanian theory, which were to prove crucial to film studies. The first is Lacan’s reversal of the Cartesian notion of subjectivity. Rather than the subject creating and naming the world, Lacan states that is in fact language itself, which creates the world, ‘the concept…engenders the thing’ (Lacan 1989, 72). This idea has many implications for filmic criticism, as speech can thus be conceived of as already saturated with the predominant ideology, making it difficult or even impossible to utilise speech to criticize ideological norms. In fact, Lacan even goes so far as to say that language can never fully articulate what the subject wishes to say: the unsignifiable order of the real is evidence of this.
The second of Lacan’s theories that proved indispensable for film studies is his re-reading of Ferdinand de Saussure. Lacan reverses Saussure’s formula for the sign, placing language above reality (S/s). He states that, ‘[f]or the human being the word or the concept is nothing other than the word in its materiality. It is the thing itself. It is not just a shadow, a breath, a virtual illusion of the thing, it is the thing itself’ (Lacan 1987, 178, my italics). Language murders the thing and takes its place. In this model of the sign, there is an endless sliding of signifiers over signifieds, which is temporarily halted by the point de caption. The graph of desire (Lacan 1989, 335) articulates succinctly the complexities inherent in signification. The horizontal vector represents the signifying chain, and intersects with the vector ΔS at two points. The first point of intersection denotes the constitution of the signifier from ‘a synchronic and enumerable collection of elements in which each is sustained only by the principle of its opposition to each of the others’ (Lacan 1989, 336). In short, this point represents the signifier, which attains its status through its difference from other terms in the system of language. The second point of intersection denotes the moment of punctuation, in which the signifier at the first point of intersection attains its full meaning retroactively. The two points of intersection are not symmetrical, nor are they intended to be. The first is ‘a locus (a place rather than a space) and the second is ‘a moment (a rhythm rather than a duration) (Lacan 1989, 336). The elementary cell of the graph cited here is simplistic, but serves to illustrate the relationship between subject and meaning. (http://intertheory.org/psychoanalysis.htm)
Glaukos
To be inscribed beneath a tableau.
I want to describe the charming Glaukos, gently gathering up a heap of his love letters in a ray of sunlight. All written on fine perfumed paper, some already old, some from a few months ago, all of them beginning with: My dear little Glaukos, or my darling Glaukos, or oh you, the best of my friends, or little soft flesh of mine, or my little beloved.
Glaukos smiles at the memory of great violent passions that stirred him in days gone by, his lovely clear eyes, blue flowers, dimming for a moment, drawing him back onto his sleepless bed, filling his mind with foolish fancies and infinite despairs.
All his hopeless dreams of being loved as distractedly as he loved, by this person or that person, he had realized almost all of them. But satisfied love flies elsewhere. Today his heart is calm. But he has so many male friends and by some he is loved boundlessly. All of them are very beautiful, and delight in subtle thoughts. Often seated on the muscular knees of one of them, cheek to cheek, bodies entwined, he discusses with him Aristotle's philosophy and Euripedes' poems, while they embrace and caress each other, making elegant and wise remarks in the sumptuous room, beside magnificent flowers...
I have described Glaukos dreaming alone, nearly naked to show off his beauty before dressing in precious linen. He smiles and the sun warms him.
M. Proust
Written before 15 October 1888.
I want to describe the charming Glaukos, gently gathering up a heap of his love letters in a ray of sunlight. All written on fine perfumed paper, some already old, some from a few months ago, all of them beginning with: My dear little Glaukos, or my darling Glaukos, or oh you, the best of my friends, or little soft flesh of mine, or my little beloved.
Glaukos smiles at the memory of great violent passions that stirred him in days gone by, his lovely clear eyes, blue flowers, dimming for a moment, drawing him back onto his sleepless bed, filling his mind with foolish fancies and infinite despairs.
All his hopeless dreams of being loved as distractedly as he loved, by this person or that person, he had realized almost all of them. But satisfied love flies elsewhere. Today his heart is calm. But he has so many male friends and by some he is loved boundlessly. All of them are very beautiful, and delight in subtle thoughts. Often seated on the muscular knees of one of them, cheek to cheek, bodies entwined, he discusses with him Aristotle's philosophy and Euripedes' poems, while they embrace and caress each other, making elegant and wise remarks in the sumptuous room, beside magnificent flowers...
I have described Glaukos dreaming alone, nearly naked to show off his beauty before dressing in precious linen. He smiles and the sun warms him.
M. Proust
Written before 15 October 1888.
Erschrocken
Heute habe ich über den Tot eines Kerles erfahren, der genau so alt wie ich war (28) und bin erschrocken. Er war ein Filmkritiker aus Thailand.
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