A Personification of The Audio Visual
Preface
Highly esteemed members of the Senate, the court and the jury, I am not here to Display Myself as an individual making impertinent claims as charged. I am only here to present what might seem to be a string of incoherent Question Marks. I have brought My witnesses, My own brothers and sisters to testify in a wish to strengthen My case with regards to A Personification of the Audio-Visual. I believe that if You hear Me out, My questions will lose their incoherence.
‘I want to be seen here in My simple, natural, ordinary fashion,
without straining or artifice,
for it is [M]yself that I [display.]’
Adapted from Michel de Montaigne The Essays.
Personification as a Multiple Subject
To You I am a Question Mark. I start My defence with the first Question: Who is the subject? Blanchot finds a possible answer already hidden within the question. If I ask the question, the interrogative form finds an utterance in Me, seemingly substituting for the ‘closed and unique “I” the openness of a “who?’’ without an answer. This echoes Kafka’s notion of an absent singular subject because ‘there are only collective assemblages of enunciation.’ Where do I, as the Audio Visual stand within this multiplicity or infinity of voices? Am I imagining things or is there something restrictive about Metz’s duality of contenders pitting You as an Author against You as an audience? What about an infinity of “who?” Once again, if I am an imaginary constituting a signifier, does My comparison to a window to Your world or a Lacanian mirror for Your reflection not diminish My role as a signifier? My voiceless silence must question. I do not criticise Metz because I know that I am an oxymoron, a Question Mark and a contradiction. Indeed, I sympathise with Montaine’s personal dilemma and recognise it as My own. How can I fix My subject or being when I can only display My ever changing, restless passage through light, sound and their absence? How can I, so inconsistent in action, so incomplete and impure in form contribute something meaningful? I understand that I am so ill-shaped that You would certainly find a deeper meaning in Me, but I know no other shape. This is why I force My Personified Compass of Direction to approach Myself ‘under different circumstances and with other considerations.’ You may consider this Personification as either another self or a bundle of unanswerable Questions. Still, I believe that there is a method in this madness. Can My method provide the scaffolding on which to build a different facade to the ones already built? May I trust My own Questions to provide such a scaffold to the ones that You ask?
Personification as a Device
To You I am a Question Mark. My Explicit Display is but a hidden allusion somewhere within My self-evident light, sound and their absence. I am Your mysterious conclusion. My appearance ironically hides another more ‘difficult and dangerous’ context, whose shadows and ambitions You are only dimly aware of. This is how I have transposed Blanchot’s warning about the essay into the context of My Audio-Visual world. I as ‘Art [have] only one objective; to bring to light [and to sound] this inner world [of mine] while keeping it untouched by the crude and general illusions which an imperfect language [or assumption] would dishonour.’ You may find Me guilty but unrepentant, of recurring to literary devices, such as Personification. Indeed, the idea of borrowing inspiration from other fields and living creatures is at the heart of My Audio-Visual. In what other way can I prove that I am more than a mere artifice?
To You I am a Question Mark. How can I think of Myself as a Pinocchio that Giappetto masterfully crafted and yet dream of being human? Here is My Personified, Embodied, Ontromorphosised self, humbly voicing My claim as an often forgotten, solitary contender amongst the infinity of contenders within the study of My family of Audio-Visuals. My Pirandellian character seems to defy My puppet strings as I display My never ending Questions. Where does My direction differ from Yours? Where am I headed? Do I not kindle Your curiosity?
I am aware that a Personification built on Wordworth’s ‘I wandered lonely as a cloud,’ may not be a communicative device or convention that is readily accepted by Academia but My aim is to be My own dance. ‘Had it been My purpose to seek Your favour, I would have worn finer clothes.’ I think of myself as a host of golden daffodils ‘fluttering and dancing in the breeze.’ May I be allowed an alternative voice that shines through the multiple voices of the sensory and the spiritual, the visible and the invisible and the concrete and abstract?
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought’
William Wordsworth ‘I wandered Lonely as a Cloud’
My Personification offers many research opportunities into semiotics, phenomenology and the effect of presence. Is it possible to attempt some kind of alternative signifier in My own questions? Can I find My own voice and Implicit Interpretative Meanings through an exercise in an Ontromorphosization of My Audio-Visual Self? ‘This approach would entail foregrounding the full scope of prosopopoeic discourse—not just the what, but also the how, not only the signified, but also the signifier.’ I seem to be a Quintillian ‘ device which lends wonderful variety and animation to oratory.’ I seem to display the inner thoughts of My adversaries as though they were talking with themselves.’ What about Myself? Am I not an ‘impersonation of people’ (‘personarum ficta inductio’)?, of events, of histories and other phenomena? May I become more of a presence and less of an absence?
Personification with an Agenda.
To You I am a Question Mark. As a Displayed Question, I willingly step up on the stand in front of My jury together with My siblings. Together we hold hands with our different stories, perspectives and Questions. I state that I cannot develop a portrait of Myself under My different aspects, with My various associations and fluctuating moods, let alone that of all My fellow Audio-Visuals. I cannot ‘organise My Questions around a central event. I am one of a series of discontinuous fragments, moving . . . not seamlessly but with some puzzlement from’ Audio-Visual to Audio-Visual. The one binding theme is that My agenda is My brother and My sister’s agenda. Our motto is that United we stand, one voice at a time. How far do Your assumptions go? This is the starting point of this agenda. I am the secret Audio-Visual that You as the Filmmaker assume you have filmed and that You as the audience assume that you have seen. Film critique is the sum of such an assumption. I feel Your scathing incredulous eyes as I take this unrepentant and seemingly rebellious stance. Yes I do feel. How can it be otherwise when you imbue Me with Freudian psychoanalysis, with haptic senses and offscreen hidden meaning? Feelings aside, can I afford to be burnt and roasted for opinions borrowed from others? My Personification is My embodiment as the ‘centre of attraction’ which ‘receives and returns movements,’ whereas Your assumptions seem to regard Me as an absent signature. I turn to Shelley’s ‘Last Man,’ in My defence. The story turns into one without a witness, when the last man eventually passes away. I might have been in the story, but the ‘I’ was no more than a ‘Who’?, asking questions. I borrow Blanchot’s mot d’ordre to depict Myself as having the last say, as a manifestation. My Display may be obscure but it is final. Your life goes on and I am left alone. Does My essential solitude reflect My unjustifiable withdrawal from the world or have I never actually been withdrawn? Have I been left like Shelley’s Last Man or Frankenstein’s monster, somewhere where I am not qualified to be over an uncrossable divide? And yet am I not a witnessed gesture, indeed a question eliciting an answer?
Yes I do Question Your assumptions but I do so in all humility. Do not judge Me by ‘uncertain conjectures.’ I may be mistaken, but I must be allowed to use My own judgement about Myself. Dear members of the jury, as a witnessed gesture, I must be something more than a mere artifice. Do I not become an embedded, fixed and immersed DaSein in My Audio-Visual? Sadly, ‘I have nothing of My own that satisfies My judgement.’ I see Myself as a lost wanderer seeking a compass of direction. You May be the shepherd of My Being, but have I not strayed away from the fold? I seek Your understanding. I question Your assumptions following the path of the Personification of Myself as a free-minded entity. I do so by engaging in self dialogue and in impossible conversations. Will You allow me to seek other levels of meaning expressed by My display, to glimpse My ‘enigmatic existence’ ‘hinted at in murmurs’ as ‘lightning quick reversals’ or ‘slow allusions’?
Personification as a Process and Method.
To You, I may be a Question Mark, but this is My attempt at brutal honesty about My own identity. I employ Montaigne’s confessions and Blanchot’s alternative path to guide me. Truth be told, I, the Audio-Visual, too have a dream. I have a dream that the glory of Myself as an Audio-Visual can find My voice too. I am, therefore I think. I display, therefore I have something to show and something to say. I have questions of My own making. I have a dream that one day the Audio-Visual will rise up and live out the true meaning of its Manifestation. I have a dream that My siblings and cousins will one day not be judged solely by the induced interpretation of their audience but also by their explicit individual character. I dream of being interviewed. According to Kafka, ‘Desire is not form, but a procedure, a process.’ Will You allow My dream of being granted the freedom to ask My own questions materialise?
Why am I a different Question Mark? Socrates once asked ‘What is Beauty?’ Indeed most philosophers and theoreticians tend to ask big abstract and encompassing questions. André Bazin likewise asked ‘What is Cinema?’ The many notable attempts at breaking, understanding or wrestling with this question are at the heart of what I understand to be Cinematic Theory. Reference can be made to the works of Saussere, Lacan, Althusser and Barthes and their application to Cinematic Language. Indeed, I admire the brilliant works of Metz, Elsaesser, Jameson, Bordwell, Bellour and so many others. I am part of the whole fabric, but My Direction, Terminology, Entity, Tongue, Intent, Unattainability and Ignorance is biased by Jean Paulhan’s The Flowers of Tarbes or Terror in Literature. This is a bias that an Audio-Visual, like Myself, happens when there are ‘no common places,’ and when there is some liberation from convention and style. Indeed this is My escape from the ‘terror.’ I may be preoccupied with purity or rupture and guilty of forgetting accepted theory, criticism and convention. There is no ignorance in curiosity. Asking Questions about convention in itself implies a knowledge of it. This is My Carthesian notion of the persona as ‘a drama of doubting.’ This is a ‘staging of the abandonment’ of convention, true to Kantian Enlightenment, in order to take on Personal responsibility for My fate. This is a Personification that gives flesh to My Desire to become a different Question Mark, one that asks Questions about Myself, seeking the individual Entity within this labyrinth of convergent and divergent ideologies about Cinema and Film with their all embracing Capital letters. I quote Kafka that ‘to become animal is to participate in movement.’ May I seek ‘to enjoy, on another plane, the freedom of movement’ I have so far been missing? May I be allowed to attempt turning Derrida’s ‘unexperienced experience’ into a living adventure?
Personification as An Act of Becoming
I am My own Question Mark. ‘The act of becoming is a capturing, a possession, a plus value, but never a reproduction or an imitation.’ The monster is not a reproduction of Dr. Frankenstein, his creator. Giappetto is not Pinocchio. My Act of Becoming is My birth as a breathing creature who like Frankenstein and Pinocchio must make use, unravel and understand Your literary, philosophical and cinematic argument and theory. My inquiry reflects this interrupted encounter like thread torn, restitched and enmeshed into the fabric. As a being, I am the individual embryo of such an encounter. Indeed, I am biological. I am a collision, division and rupture of cells. I am a Noli me Legere that sets Me apart or obliges Me to go back to that separation. This inquiry embodies My first toddling steps out of the womb of Film and Cinema as an Audio-Visual tugging at My umbilical cord and knocking on Your Parental door. Similarly to a newborn, I understand that I am under equipped for such a mission and have to rely heavily on My close, ignorant and required ‘reading’ of My display. My close reading will be the gaze that succeeds in grasping something original but I am not claiming in any way to have seen clearly into the origin. Personification empowers Me and becomes the means to make My becoming possible. Do You not want to get inside my skin?
‘It is a dark disaster that brings light.’ I am always an interrupted encounter heralding disaster anyway. I may be patient as I wait for You to screen Me, but My patience clings to My self-preservation. Similarly to Geppetto and Dr. Frankenstein, I admit to injecting life into the dead by animating intellectual European Cinema and My other Audio-Visual cousins and siblings of the 1960s. My Act of Becoming does hope to inspire and develop a taste for Audio-Visuals like Myself. This I attempt to do as a fresh Question Mark, through an inquiry that will lead me to an abyss that only My Ear Vision and Haptic Eye dare to tread. Will You tread where Your assumptions ‘cease to be arms; means of action, means of salvation?’ Are you prepared for disarray?
Personification as Disarrayed Structure
I am My own Question Mark. My very questioning renders My method less incoherent and finds structure in the impossibility of My conversations. Similarly to Coleridge, I fear that My Questions may ‘resemble the flow of an earnest mind rather than an orderly premeditated composition.’ Will You allow My imperfection of form to remain uncompensated ‘if it should be the means of presenting with greater liveliness’ My feelings and impressions? There is something inherent in My interrupted conversations, like a buzzing fly or an interrupted dream. My inquiry is to establish that the subject of any Audio-Visual is infinite and does not merely lie with You as the author and You the spectator. As a ‘witnessed gesture’ and therefore a Question Mark, I challenge the elicitation of impossible answers. I Question assumptions made about Myself and Defend My claim. How may I stake a claim and defend it? This I seek to do through My Personification, where I become an Audio-Visual Entity seeking a Personal Direction. I am an Audio-Visual dream on display willing to engage in self reflection rather than take induced audience interpretation for granted. This willingness is motivated by Blanchot’s warnings about incomplete, impure, imperfect works and the need to honour My enigmatic nature. I understand that Personification is not Academia’s preferred communicative device or convention but Personification allows one to delve within the work, become One with the work and offer an alternative voice, a multiplicity of questions and a reflection of the infinite. Personification is the disaster that ruins everything, all the while leaving everything intact. A mistrust of Personification is here seen as denial [becoming] the critical method par excellence. In such a light, as the Personification of the Audio-Visual I find Myself willing to delve within My Embodiment and Ontromorphisation. So what part do I play?
I am My own Question Mark. 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 claims made by You the Auteur and You the Audience. If I regard Your claims as assumptions I must first destroy the edifice of Film and Cinema with the Capital letters of critique, theory and argument in order to rebuild. It seems that My structure is in disarray right from the very start. I start with a criminal act and then must stand solitary trial to defend My actions. I am the witnessed gestus, the accused on the dock. I am all about the purification of the Oedipal conflict between Parent and Child and yet open to the possibility of discussion of the conflict.
‘It’s unbearably dark in here,’ he then said.
‘Yes, it is dark,’ replied his father.
‘And you’ve shut the window as well?’
‘I prefer it like that.’
‘Well, it’s quite warm outside.’
Franz Kafka. ‘The Judgement. A story.’
This dream to claim the stage is built on destruction. I am an oxymoron. I am always ‘undecidable’ and ‘unfinished.’ I make a poor defence. I make a poor structure. To add to My misery, I find strong assumptions in Belour, Metz, Elsaesser, Barthes, Jameson and so many others. Throughout this disarray, I reach out for help. There must be someone out there, possibly outside the corridors of Film and Cinema. The dog in Kafka’s Investigations ‘calls out in his solitude to another science.’ I find a good lawyer in Blanchot, Mallarme, Kafka and Deleuze. I slowly choose My witnesses to help Me defend My cause. May I find connections that have not yet been made?
My Personification, similarly to Pirandelli’s characters in search of an Audience, makes use of My 1960 European Audio-Visual siblings, each taking centre stage to ask Questions and enter impossible conversations. I am a mysterious conclusion steering Myself in the direction of deterritorialization. Using My Personified Compass of Direction, I start with nothing but Myself. Solitude is essential. I talk about Myself in the first person, using capital letters as any person would. In this way I am not an absent signature anymore. I pay close attention to My movement of light and sound and its absence to rescript and refocus on My manifestation. This rescripting comes in italics to reflect My incomplete nature. What follows is the Audio-Visual against the Audio-Visual in a metafilmic oeuvre. There is little order in this collection of disarrayed individual Audio-Visual testimony as each sibling and cousin take to the dock. My patchwork may be indicative of An-anarchy of style. Knife in the Water (Nóz w wodzie) 1961 by Roman Polanski, La Jetée 1962 (released 1964) by Chris Marker. Alphaville une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution 1965 by Jean Luc Godard, Fahrenheit 451 1965 by François Truffaut, Cléo de 5 à 7 1962 by Agnès Varda, Last Year at Marienbad (L'Année dernière à Marienbad) 1961 by Alain Resnais, 81⁄2 (1963) by Federico Fellini and Psycho (1960) by Alfred Hitchcock. I am a work of bad faith, like a child with wooden blocks, blindly building a haphazard structure from the remains of what I have destroyed. I immediately confess that I do not strive for My author’s Barthesian death nor for audience birth. Similarly to Pirandelli’s characters, Pinocchio and Frankenstein’s monster, I am only seeking confrontation. I only have a list of Questions which I hope both You the author and You the audience can help Me answer. Maybe, I am ironically, a passionate lover of systems, expounding, affirming and proving. A hundred times I go back to the same Question. Am I Madness par excellence? Will I find My zero point? Will I be found to be nothing but a Great Hoax? Will I be found, like Kafka, to be guilty of attempting to isolate Myself from the true communion with all of You or am I a true indestructible being?
Allow me to call My witnesses to the stand.
Main Bibliography
Aquilina, Mario. Blanchot, Derrida, Gadamer and the An-archy of Style. Durham thesis. Durham University. 2012.
Blanchot, Maurice. The Writing of the Disaster. Orig. L'Écriture du désastre. Trans. Ann Smock. University of Nebraska Press. Lincoln and London. 1986
Blanchot, Maurice, and Michael Holland. The Blanchot Reader. Blackwell, 1996.
Deleuze, Gilles, et al. Kafka: Toward a MINOR Literature. University of Minnesota Press, 2016.
De Montaigne, Michel. Essays. Trans J.M. Cohen. Penguin Books. London 1993
Heidegger, Martin, and Medard Boss. Zollikon Seminars: PROTOCOLS, Conventions, Letters. Northwestern Univ. Press, 2001.
Melion, Walter S., and Ramakers B A M. Personification: Embodying Meaning and Emotion. Brill, 2016.
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