TAKING VERTICAL LINES
PLEASED TO MEET YOU. Autumn
PLEASED TO MEET YOU. Winter
PLEASED TO MEET YOU. Spring
PLEASED TO MEET YOU. Summer
THE ABSURD. VIDEOGRAPHY OF.
Based on autobiographical ideas and using the video format, The Absurd. Videography of. brings to light the reflective, consciously filtered through the stupid — that which has no rationale, but does not for that reason have to cease to exist. A series of autovideographical work in progress pieces that salute the absurd with an almost logical rigour.
After working on a couple of projects in which ‘the other’ was invited to look at her/himself, to reflect on what s/he was witnessing (works: Happy People and Fan), in The Absurd. Videography of. the genre of autobiography was chosen as a mechanism for narrating everything that runs parallel to the life of the narrator; as Philippe Lejeune has noted,1 ‘the autobiographer observes himself and opens himself to the gaze of the reader, the observer, in a desire to recover and construct the gaze of the other on oneself’.
This process of converting subject into subject allows one to recognize oneself while also seeing oneself as anyone else, a simile of looking in the mirror, a process regarded by Jacques Lacan as an act of some significance in the formation of the I. 2
This reflective act of knowing oneself by way of the gaze that defaces — or to put it another way, an I seen in a distorted form — is vitally important in this project. The decision to choose myself as the protagonist of a series of video pieces was prompted both by practical reasons and by an interest in exploring my own I rather than an attempt to narrate or describe a subject talking about his life. As Paul de Man said, ‘the I would be not so much the support for a life, but the result of a narrative’.3 In this conception of an encounter between figuration or mimesis and what is real, the autobiographical, which is usually overlaid with the true or false patina of veracity, and the disfigurement, fiction, is the terrain on which the project is constantly moving The Absurd. Videography of. is in constant movement.
Every art project is to some extent autobiographical, and in this approximation to the absurd, autobiographical language is used to represent in symbolic form the multiple faces of an I that, in a conjunction of memory and metaphor, presents a narrative of life and with a life of its own independent of the I itself.
The autobiographical I is a final excuse for addressing from a real I certain aspects of the vital modus operandi that dodges the illogical in pursuit of a guarantee of success, a kind of felicity. In The Absurd. Videography of. the intention is to generate 13 video pieces: precisely the number that various superstitions usually regard as uncomfortable becomes the goal in this project, the object to be achieved.
Text completed in Barcelona
Tuesday 13 October, 2009.
(biographical+real datum)
1. Philippe Lejeune, Le Pacte autobiographique, Seuil, Paris, 1975.
2. Jaques Lacan, ‘The Mirror Stage as formative of the function of the I as revealed in psychoanalytic experience’, Écrits, Tavistock/Routledge, London, 1977.
Forthcoming pieces:
MAKING LITERAL USE OF THE WORD (3 pieces)
On the compatibility of being strict and absurd at the same time.
1 - Back in 1 second
2 - Back in 1 minute
3 - Back in 1 hour
TRY THIS YOURSELF AT HOME Not being afraid of the mass media (series)
Pieces that set out to experiment once and for all with all the things, real or imaginary, that advertising has told us not to do, or which never turn out the same way in real life, with the same timing.
The legendary warning issued on TV:
‘Do not try this at home. Filmed by professionals in controlled conditions’.
1 - Putting obstacles in one’s own way (or making a circle with banana peels and walking on it)
On the end of goals on the basis of the obstruction of the path itself.
2 - Quit Smoking Smoking (real advertising campaign)
A video loop in which increasing and subsequently reducing the number of cigarettes to be smoked, as a method for stopping smoking, turns into a vicious circle with no end.
Músic in Hacer Rayas Verticales: Consequently Eccentric and Delicate-Original Mix / Artist: Loco Dice / Album: Dunham Place / Label: Desolat.
Músic inn Pleased to Meet You: Cocoa B (CD Edit), Blue B (Cd Edit)2, Pistacho A, Rubine Red B (Cd Edit) / Artist: Donacha Costello / Album: Color Series / Label: Minimise