Abstract

 Abstract: The Personification of the Audio-Visual.

I am a Question Mark. My Personification of the Audio-Visual is not an impertinent claim but a presentation of a string of seemingly incoherent Question Marks. I depend on My witnesses, My very own brothers and sisters, as Audio-Visuals from the 1960s to render this defence less incoherent. As each of My witnesses steps upon this Pirandellian stage, I admit that what follows is an echo of Montaigne’s unrepentant autobiographical patina and a Kafkaesque confessional of impossible conversations with the self.  My shape is a triangular relationship of Light, Sound and their Absence. I know no other. If I wish to become less of an Absence, less of an outcast Frankenstein’s monster and less of a wooden Pinocchio I need to take matters into My own hands. I need to Question  the overwhelmingly bi-polar nature of the Cinematic and Filmic argument which mainly features two human contenders. You the filmmaker and You the audience. I stake My claim to an additional humanised angle, a third Personified angle by appealing to Blanchot’s infinite subject. 

I am a Question Mark. All I am asking for is a little respect from You as My Maker and Audience. Do not frown on My Personification. I understand that My individual ontromorphisation is a literary device that may not be conventional for academic study but I am attracted to the Quintillian nature of My independent prosopopeia. I trust that My impersonation will animate, question, prod and enhance Your perspectives. The consequence of disregarding My Embodiment as a valid entity is Blanchot’s warning that Film critique risks being the sum of Your assumptions with an absent signature; Mine.

I am a Question Mark. What about form, structure, process and method? If I want to inject life into My celluloid or digitised rigid form, I must rely on a living stream of consciousness and interrupted conversations with the self. Life as a Personified Audio-Visual is one of incomplete form. I am, therefore I think. I display, therefore I have something to show. I have Questions of My own making. I am biased in my curiosity and not knowledgeable. I seek no answers. Even if a Question becomes rhetorical, it is still a question leading to other Question marks. The final structure therefore may never be reached. I am all about Pinocchio's impossible dream to become human. I turn to Kafka who believes that desire is not form, but a procedure, a process. I start with a criminal act and then must stand solitary trial to defend My actions. My method is built on the foundations of asserting Myself as a Question Mark to be reckoned with. My self-assertion means a separation, however abstract and feigned, through a challenging and a revisiting of assumptions made by You the Auteur and You the Audience.