27062022

¡Muerte a lo real! Taller de práctica documental y pensamiento radical

Centro de la Imagen. Junio-Julio 2022. Sesión 1. 27/06/2022

Mirada, medios, memoria

“Es necesario recrear la realidad, porque la realidad huye, la realidad niega la realidad” Minh-ha

“It’s about that interplay of these layers of looking” Ben Rivers

“For me, there’s a dance between both fact and fiction, and between the filmmaker and the filmed. At the same time, and this is something totally different, we’re increasingly interested in the non-human, which has an agency of its own, even if we tend to overlook or deny it. We’re interested in the mutual constitution of the human and the non-human, whether animal, technological, or natural. Humans have increasingly receded from getting pride of place in our films. We try to relativize and resituate them in a much wider ecological sphere” Verena Pavarel

“We also have a profound attachment to the real, as something, a kind of surplus or excess that exceeds the maker’s intentions, that is different from most artists and even most documentarians. It’s an aesthetic as well as an ethical attachment” Verena Paravel

“Once you recognize that it’s impossible, then you’re freed of this burden of trying to say or show everything about someone” Lucien Castaing-Taylor

“And then there are all these ways in which the moment somebody becomes aware of the camera, then they start performing for it. But rather than being false, this can actually reveal aspects of the person that would never appear if they were indifferent to the camera (…) The difference between the social actor and the filmic actor is really intricate. It can be subtle or complex, a difference of degree or kind. There are an infinity of performativities in life, and in all our films (…) These selves blend and merge into each other. It’s not as if one is true and one is false” Lucien Castaing-Taylor

Estéticas de la objetividad y políticas de la verdad

Políticas de la mirada

“The documentary mode is a transnational language of practice. Its standard narratives are recognized all over the world and its forms are almost independent of national or cultural difference. Precisely because they operate so closely on material reality, they are intelligible wherever this reality is relevant (..) A transnational documentary jargon is now connecting people within global media networks. The standardized language of newsreels, with its economy of attention based on fear, the racing time of flexible production and hysteria, is as fluid and affective, as immediate and immersive as Vertov could have imagined. It creates global public spheres whose participants are linked almost in a physical sense by mutual excitement and anxiety. Thus the documentary form is now more potent than ever; it conjures up the most spectacular aspects of the language of things and amplifies their power” (Steyerl, 2008)

“Meaning can neither be imposed nor defined. Although every film is in itself a form of ordering and closing, each closure can defy its only closure, opening onto other closures, thereby emphasizing the interval between apertures and creating a space in which meaning fascinated by what escapes and exceedes it” TMH

“Yet such illusion (the quest for meaning) is real; it has its own reality, one in which the subject of knowledge, the subject of Vision, or the subject of meaning continues to deploy established power relations, assuming Himself to be the basic reserve of reference in the totalistic quest for the referent, the true referent that lies out there in nature, in the dark, waiting patiently to be unveiled and disciplined correctly: to be redefined. Perhaps then, an imagination that goes toward the texture of reality is one capable of playing upon the illusion in question and the power it exerts” TMH

“Desconfiar de las imágenes…”

Cierre de Fuego Inextinguible:

62. WORKER: I’m a worker and I work in a vacuum-cleaner factory. My wife could use a vacuum cleaner.

63. WORKER: That’s why I take one part with me every day. At home I want to put together the vacuum cleaner, but no matter what I do, it always turns into a submachine gun.

65. STUDENT: I’m a student, and right now I work at a vacuum-cleaner factory, but I think that the factory is making submachine guns for the Portuguese. But we could really use some proof.

66. STUDENT: That’s why I take one part home with me every day. At home, I want to put the gun together, but no matter what I do, it always turns into a vacuum cleaner.

68. ENGINEER: I’m an engineer and I work for an electrical corporation. The workers think we’re making vacuum cleaners. The students think we’re making submachine guns. This vacuum cleaner can become a useful weapon. This submachine gun can become a useful household gadget.

69. ENGINEER: What we manufacture depends on the workers, students and engineers.

Ejemplos de cuaderno que contiene 145 fotografías recortadas de marca, modelo y color exacto de cada coche que fue utilizado como coche bomba entre 1975 y 1991.

Radicalidad como método

• Poética de la información
• Arte documental
• Pedagogía centrífuga