Ritournelle et fatrasie
 

about opera mundi

 

1. For quite a while, I didn't like standing in line in supermarkets. It hasn't been that long since I started appreciating such an experience. A moment without movements (suspens), simply a minimal, automatic sliding of people and things. (A new cash register opens, everybody runs, I stay where I am.) A moment of relaxation, of observing your fellow man, his always surprising neck, his relationship to commodities. A moment of forced slowness, with secret plenitude and beauty.

You will hear: A litany of surgical instruments from an army depot.

2. For the 1920s avant-garde, filming the world meant filming machines. (Vertov, Richter, Ruttman). Even if the ideal world they composed in their films didn't exist, it was to come. Faith was intact. But the machines went wrong. What about the avant-garde ?

3. Subject doesn't matter. Grab moments of reality; follow your desires, without first judging the coherence of the whole. Wander. Trust the pictures Ð and the sounds.

You will hear: A woman from a sports club denying me authorization to shoot on their premises.

4. It's at work everywhere, functioning smoothly at times, at other times it fits and starts. It breathes, it heats, it eats. It shits and fucks. What a mistake to have ever said the id. Everywhere it is machines Ð real ones, not figurative ones: machines driving other machines, machines being driven by other machines with all the necessary couplings and connections. Hence we are all handymen: each with his little machines. And rest assured that it works. (É) Something is produced: the effects of machines, not mere metaphors. (Gilles and Felix, happy philosophers)

5. Slowly, confront the first pieces and discover what your desires meant. Put aside certain shots that donÕt fit. Shoot more; complete the composition, trying not to reduce it to a "story". Reconsider the elements you left aside. Keep going.

You will hear: A girl named Mathilde asking "her" Nico to call back, although sheÕs not sure of the number.

5. A memory : work equals force times displacement.

You will hear: Someone named StŽphane trying to reach another Nicolas Rey for obscure reasons.

6. The first three seconds of a shot the meaning jumps out. For those whom only information matters, those three seconds are enough to create trompe-l'Ïil thinking.

7. The "really upside-down world" stands behind our eyes. Each of us is the social body.

You will hear: An old woman trying to reach a friend of hers to let her know a painter has an exhibit in the fancy part of town.

8. It would be one of those action films, only the action would be contemplating. To sit and consent to watch what someone else has seen. Nothing is sensational except the photographer being right behind you.

You will hear: A doctor trying to explain to a patient that his appointment is on Thursday, and not on Tuesday.

9. Corpus and socius are together in a boat. Corpus falls in water. Who's left ?