Four Theses on Contemporary Art

12. Non-imperial art must be as rigorous as a mathematical demonstration, as surprising as an ambush in the night, and as elevated as a star.

13. Today art can only be made from the starting point of that which, as far as Empire is concerned, doesn't exist. Through its abstraction, art renders this inexistence visible. This is what governs the formal principle of every art : the effort to render visible to everyone that which for Empire (and so by extension for everyone, though from a different point of view), doesn't exist.

14. Since it is sure of its ability to control the entire domain of the visible and the audible via the laws governing commercial circulation and democratic communication, Empire no longer censures anything. All art, and all thought, is ruined when we accept this permission to consume, to communicate and to enjoy. We should become the pitiless censors of ourselves.

15. It is better to do nothing than to contribute to the invention of formal ways of rendering visible that which Empire already recognizes as existent.

- from Alain Badiou's Fifteen Theses on Contemporary Art. Longer excerpt here

fixed firmly on the object in view

"We must try to keep the mind in tranquility. For just as the eye which constantly shifts its gaze, now turning to the right or to the left, now incessantly peering up or down, cannot see distinctly what lies before it, but the sight must be fixed firmly on the object in view if one would make his vision of it clear; so too man's mind when distracted by his countless worldly cares cannot focus itself distinctly on the truth."
- Basil of Caesarea

cross-posted to Unspoken Cinema

Nights and Weekends (trailers)

Joe Swanberg and Greta Gerwig's new film.

"co-written, co-directed and co-stars Greta Gerwig, [...] and it was shot by Matthias Grunsky, the man behind the camera on both of Andrew Bujalski’s features." - Spout, where you can also find a brief Q+A with Greta

These are beautiful:

escaping our proud and lonely immensity

"The magic of the microscope is not that it makes little creatures larger, but that it makes a large one smaller. We are too big for our world. The microscope takes us down from our proud and lonely immensity and makes us, for a time, fellow citizens with the great majority of living things. It lets us share with them the strange and beautiful world where a meter amounts to a mile and yesterday was years ago." - Mites of Moths and Butterflies (via)

this loving relationship of night and day

(via The Film Desk, U.S. distributors of Philippe Garrel's J’entends plus la guitare)

ambition and the young actor

“I don’t know how long I’ll live,” he said when asked what his own future may hold. “But I’d like to make communist films with Ken Loach, libertine films with Almodóvar, esoteric films with Kaurismaki. That’s not bad for a start.”

- Louis Garrel (via)

Love Songs (Christophe Honoré, 2007)

Full review available at The Auteurs.

Cuore

Rita Pavone

On the Unification of the Yin and the Yang

for Jen


Joseph Campbell's Ten Commandments for Reading Myth

1. Read myths with the eyes of wonder:
the myths transparent to their universal meaning,
their meaning transparent to its mysterious source.
2. Read myths in the present tense: Eternity is now.
3. Read myths in the first person plural: the Gods and Goddesses
of ancient mythology still live within you.
4. Any myth worth its salt exerts a powerful magnetism. Notice
the images and stories that you are drawn to and repelled by.
Investigate the field of associated images and stories.
5. Look for patterns; don't get lost in the details.
What is needed is not more specialized scholarship,
but more interdisciplinary vision. Make connections;
break old patterns of parochial thought.
6. Resacralize the secular:
even a dollar bill reveals the imprint of Eternity.
7. If God is everywhere, then myths can be generated anywhere,
anytime, by anything. Don't let your Romantic aversion to
science blind you to the Buddha in the computer chip.
8. Know your tribe! Myths never arise in a vacuum;
they are the connective tissue of the social body
which enjoys synergistic relations with
dreams (private myths) and rituals (the enactment of myth).
9. Expand your horizons! Any mythology worth remembering
will be global in scope. The earth is our home
and humankind is our family.
10. Read between the lines! Literalism kills;
Imagination quickens.


via

Free Time

Apologies for the unplanned hiatus, but there's been some major uncertainty in my life of late. I've (temporarily) settled into a busy schedule of not working (which entails heavy amounts of trying to work mixed with bits of actual working). As for where I'll land, it's all unclear, but it's certain to be in the realm of moving pictures in the broader sense. I'm open to suggestions...

Portrait d'une jeune fille de la fin des années 60 à Bruxelles (Chantal Akerman, 1994)

Above: Paul (Julian Rassam) and Michèle (Circé), the young girl of the title.
Image courtesy: Arte.

Last night, MoMA played two installments from the series "Tous les garçons et les filles de leur âge...", a series of one-hour television episodes "in which French directors were asked to contribute films based on their recollections of adolescence" (BFI). The first episode shown was Chantal Akerman's PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG WOMAN AT THE END OF THE 1960S IN BRUSSELS, followed by Claire Denis's U.S. GO HOME. Denis's film (which was co-written by Anne Wiazemsky) is a rich portrayal of the emotional components of being on the cusp of maturity, of the moments of striving for your maturity to be recognized - and of the moments when both that recognition and its lack leave you wounded. It's a film to be savored.


Akerman's episode is an achievement of an entirely different level. It moves beyond being one of the great coming-of-age films; it is simply one of the great films. A moving, multifaceted, and magical hour, presented with honesty and subtle artistry.

The film's nuances are beyond summary. So, some sketches:
A girl has decided to ditch school forever; she tears up her report card. At the movies, a boy next to her touches her leg with his; they talk, they kiss. They spend the day together. The girl makes plans to attend a party. They steal a Leonard Cohen record. She breaks into a relative's house so the boy has a place to sleep.

Things happen beyond these sketches, but I will leave them aside. These simple events are full of poetry, of confusion, discovery, ambivalence, insecurity, beauty.

The title character is played by Circé Lethem (who, incidentally, is the daughter of Belgian filmmaker Roland Lethem). She is luminous. Her character thinks that her friend is much prettier, but even though she's right she's also wrong and it's the boy who's right, the boy who thinks she's beautiful.

I'm overwhelmed by everything in this film. It's the film I'd like to watch, the moments I'd like to remember, the movie I want to make. It's perfect.


And it's playing again on Wed, Feb 6 at 6 PM at MoMA in New York.

violence to the cinema

The specificity of the medium must not be forgotten: the sculptor who works with wood has to know about the features and behaviour of the wood he is working with, to even be aware of chance. But everything has a limit; the specificity of the cinema, like that of video, goes beyond what we have been given to understand so far. I think that a deep knowledge of the most specific nature of a language is the only system that allows a genuine work. That allows it to be violated. A poet must have a deep knowledge of language… In the cinema the best films are the ones in which violence to the cinema itself is perpetrated; Dreyer violates cinema, just as Artaud violates writing. That raises a final question: what does mastering the specificity of a language mean, what does knowing a medium mean?
- Pere Portabella, from Introduction Pere Portabella, 1980

Die Stille vor Bach / The Silence Before Bach opens January 30 for a two-week run at Film Forum