Der Rechte Weg – Peter Fischli / David Weiss

Der Rechte Weg (Le Droit Chemin) est le deuxième film tourné par Fischli & Weiss. Les rôles principaux, un rat et un ours, sont tenus, comme dans leur film précédent (Der Geringste Widerstand, 1981), par les artistes eux-mêmes.
Ces deux animaux qui parlent et sont de même taille dans le film nous introduisent immédiatement dans un monde où nos repères sont bannis. Ainsi, Fischli & Weiss peuvent s’attaquer sans complexes à nos tabous, à nos valeurs et à nos règles de bienséance. Ils s’attellent à nous décrire avec humour et à travers un voyage initiatique les difficultés et les joies engendrées au quotidien par nos rapports avec les autres.

Au début, l’ours vient perturber la vie tranquille du rat au sein de son terrier. Celui-ci vit paisiblement, ne pensant qu’à se nourrir et à se reposer. L’ours l’a simplement suivi, car il trouvait qu’il chantait bien; c’est ainsi que naît cette relation. Le rat explique son lien fort avec la Nature, qui occupe d’ailleurs une place privilégiée dans le film : il ramène de ses promenades des racines qu’il dépose autour de son antre, afin de le protéger. Il déclare être lui-même issu d’une racine et souhaite montrer à l’ours comment y pénétrer. Ce sera le point de départ de leur voyage, ou plus exactement de leur errance, puisque leur périple est constitué d’une suite d’épisodes qui s’enchaînent sans véritable but. Les personnages se déplacent dans ce paysage de montagne sauvage et idéal, sans jamais se fixer d’itinéraire, mais en suivant leur instinct.

L’objectif émis au départ « d’entrer dans une racine », c’est-à-dire en quelque sorte de réintégrer le statut de fœtus, se trouve tout à coup réalisé sans qu’ils ne s’en rendent tout à fait compte. Ils vivent un instant de bien-être baignés par une eau chaude au sein d’une grotte, lieu secret et inaccessible, véritable matrice, dans laquelle ils pénètrent presque contre leur gré. Entraînés par un courant, ils seront expulsés de ce cocon et lâchés au milieu d’un grand lac à l’eau glacée. S’ensuivent des sentiments d’angoisse et de souffrance exprimés sans ambages : « je dois partir d’ici,  je ne veux pas mourir, je veux rentrer à la maison ».

Ils traversent ensuite toutes sortes d’épreuves marquées par les émotions les plus diverses : la solidarité et la toute-puissance («nous pouvons tout, nous avons tous les droits, nous sommes les êtres suprêmes »), mais aussi la trahison, lorsque l’ours fait croire au rat qu’il est malade et faible pour ne pas devoir aller chercher la nourriture quotidienne, ou encore la vengeance. Ils sont parfois sujets à des sentiments contradictoires: le rat souhaiterait être assez dur pour abandonner l’ours qui est affaibli et représente un poids pour lui, mais il n’y parvient pas. Ensemble, ils commettent le crime (ils tuent le cochon qui était devenu leur compagnon de route) et affrontent le châtiment (leur repas est finalement indigeste); ils ressentent de la compassion pour une tortue qu’ils remettent sur ses pattes, mais ne sont jamais remerciés pour leur sollicitude et se questionnent donc sur le bien-fondé d’une telle bonne action. C’est d’ailleurs le désir d’aider à nouveau leur prochain, des chiens errants, qui les conduira à leur perte : ils les suivront jusqu’à leur déchéance.

Véritable métaphore du chemin de la vie, Der Rechte Weg mêle les certitudes qui nous sont indispensables afin de surmonter les doutes qui nous assaillent constamment. L’aventure des personnages s’achève devant une mer de brouillard, symbolisant l’inconnu de la mort, où ils donnent un concert final.
La contradiction évidente entre le titre du film qui ne laisse place à aucune incertitude et son contenu, une errance qui était aussi symptomatique du film Der Geringste Widerstand, est une nouvelle démonstration de la recherche constante de Fischli & Weiss à ordonner le monde, mais aussi de leur échec dans cette quête absolue.

Upptrader med boktryckarmaskin – Lisa Boda

Black Book Black

• Black Book Black består av:
  Miles O’Shea: Skådespelare, dansare och konstnär.
  Alexia de Visscher: Grafisk designer och bok­makare.
  Olivier Deprez: Konstnär, träsnittsexpert och serie­roman­skapare.
  Fotografen Thomas Boivin dokumenterar turnén för en framtida utställning.
  Läs mer: blackbookblack.net

I dag är fransk-belgisk-irländs­ka konstkollektivet Black Book Black, BBB, inhyst i biblioteket på Kulturhuset. Där presenterar de en tryckeri­performance som de turnerar runt med på bibliotek i olika länder.

Influenserna och innebörden bakom verket ”A black is a black is a black” är komplext, visar det sig under samtalet med BBB-medlemmen Miles O’Shea, som nätt och jämnt hunnit landa i Stockholm och ta ett varv runt Kulturhusets bibliotek när DN når honom. Så vi värmer upp med något enklare, vad som händer under själva performancen: En bok trycks. På en träsnittsmaskin, enbart bilder, allting i svart.

Miles O’Shea kommer att vara posterad bakom den hemmabyggda maskinen för att svara på frågor.

– Det är en väldigt interaktiv performance. Människor blir alltid så entusiastiska, de vill lukta på bläcket, känna på det organiska papperet. Det är så mycket märkliga gamla redskap som används när man trycker böcker som ingen känner till.

Processen väcker också frågor om vad en bok egentligen kan vara.

– Och om hur bibliotek är organiserade, tillägger Miles. Om du har en bok utan titel, författare och ord, var i biblioteket ska du placera den? I konsthyllan, eller den för filosofi, litteratur? Går man tillbaka i tiden var det ofta ett anonymt kollektiv som stod bakom, inte en författare.

BBB känner stämningen och anpassar varje bok till det specifika biblioteket.

Vad har du fått för intryck av Kulturhusets bibliotek?
– Jag har inte sett så mycket än, men det som slog oss alla var: Var är alla blonda människor? säger Miles skämtsamt på sin sjungande irländska.

Titeln då, varför denna besatthet av svart? Miles svarar med att lista gruppens idoler. Dels kommer de från filmen, svartvita klassiker med Buster Keaton tillhör favoriterna. Konstnärerna Claude Monet och Kazimir Malevitj är också stora influenser. Monet för att han hävdade att svart är en egen färg, inte som många påstod avsaknaden av färg. Ryssen Malevitj gjorde avtryck i konsthistorien genom den abstrakta konstinriktningen suprematism, och sin målning ”Svart fyrkant på vit bakgrund” (som föreställer just det).

Black Book Black i sin tur jobbar vidare på sitt eftermäle som kollektivet som hyllade svart genom att trycka unika bilderböcker på bibliotek världen runt.

Paul Wilson

Robert Rauschenberg on his Erased de Kooning Drawing

knocked on his door,

I’d like to erase one of his drawings.

He said

he wasn’t going to make it easy for me.

And he didn’t.

Spent 4 weeks erasing that drawing,

15 different types of erasers..

And

there’s a drawing on the other side

Etienne Chambaud

Le Comble, 2007, peinture acrylique et magnétique sur toile, aimants et documents divers. (Collection Fonds National d'Art Contemporain)

BBB is everywhere II

BBB Self Portrait of The Horse in Holland

In June 2008 The BBB exhibited the first BBB Self Portrait of The Horse with the text “How To Make A Horse” in Haarlem, Holland at the Galerie 37 Spaarnestad as part of the Stripdagen Haarlem Festival.

BBB Self Portrait of The Horse in France

During the process of making a horse in Rogues, France in the summer of 2008, we discovered in a number of photographs taken there were images or themes that seemed to have a direct link back to certain 17th Century paintings. The criteria for these BBB Self Portraits of The Horse were that all 3 BBB Operators should be present, or should have a presence within the image.

It worked best with this one. Op A photographing Op O photographing Op M sewing the body of the horse. The still and careful cats, the wooden chair, the mirror, the natural light from the window shining onto the stone floor of an old house suggested a composition by Vermeer.

BBB Self Portrait of The Horse

Captured on CCTV Camera entering a cinema in Sunderland, England.

BLACKBOOKBLACK

available from FRMK, amazon, Bruxelles bookstores etc.

BLACKBOOKBLACK

d’OLIVIER DEPREZ et MILES O’SHEA

ISBN : 9782350650234
Format cm. : 13,5 x 20,5
Impression : Noir & Blanc
Couverture : Souple, Jacquette
Nombre pages : 32
PVP : 9,00 Euros

Faits et gestes, c’est à dire successions d’aperçus et vues en gravures sur bois, de la vie de l’Opérateur. Celui qui imprime, imprimé, imprimant, un livre aux pages noires. Noires. Noir. BlackBookBlack, est le titre générique d’un projet où sont réalisés in situ et à la main des livres noirs composés de gravures sur bois noires. Le livre BlackBookBlack,décrit la naissance autant que le coeur du projet. C’est, tout en images, une lettre d’amour à la gravure, au bois, au Livre, à l’Art en tant qu’idéal ou technique.

Olivier Deprez :
Graveur, dessinateur, Olivier Deprez est né en 1966 à Binche en Belgique et vit maintenant dans le sud de la France. Membre fondadeur du collectif Frigoproduction, des éditions Fréons et FRMK, il est écrivain, théoricien, peintre. Il a enseigné dans plusieurs écoles supérieures d’Arts Graphiques. Grand lecteur de Proust, Dante ou Joyce, il travaille aussi autour de l’œuvre du poète américain A.R. Ammons. En 2006, il participe au projet théatral The Attendants gallery. C’est à cette occasion qu’il rencontre le comédien Miles O’Shea et crée avec lui la Rollertowertable. Cette machine à imprimer et colporter des gravures est au centre de BlackBookBlack, un projet dédié à la gravure et au livre, qui figure au rang des projets ALEPHèrèmka.

Virginia Woolf on reading

At this late hour of the world’s history books are to be found in every room of the house – in the nursery, in the drawing room, in the dining room, in the kitchen. And in some houses they have collected so that they have to be accommodated with a room of their own. Novels, poems, histories, memoirs, valuable books in leather, cheap books in paper – one stops sometimes before them and asks in a transient amazement what is the pleasure I get, or the good I create, from passing my eyes up and down these innumerable lines of print? Reading is a very complex art – the hastiest examination of our sensations as a reader will show us that much. And our duties as readers are many and various. But perhaps it may be said that our first duty to a book is that one should read it for the first time as if one were writing it.

One should begin by sitting in the dock with the criminal, not by mounting the bench to sit among the Judges. One should be an accomplice with the writer in his act, whether good or bad, of creation. For each of these books, however it may differ in kind and quality, is an attempt to make something. And our first duty as readers is to try and understand what the writer is making from the first word with which he builds his first sentence to the last with which he ends his book. We must not impose our design upon him; we must not try to make him conform his will to ours. We must allow Defoe to be Defoe and Jane Austen to be Jane Austen as freely as we allow the tiger to have his fur and the tortoise to have his shell. And this is very difficult. For it is one of the qualities of greatness that it brings Heaven and earth and human nature into conformity with its own vision.

The great writers thus often require us to make heroic efforts in order to read them rightly. They bend us and break us. To go from Defoe to Jane Austen, from Hardy to Peacock, from Trollope to Meredith, from Richardson to Rudyard Kipling, is to be wrenched and distorted, to be thrown violently this way and that. And so, too, with the lesser writers. Each is singular; each has a view, a temperament, an experience of his own which may conflict with ours but must be allowed to express itself fully if we are to do him justice. And the writers who have most to give us often do most violence to our prejudices, particularly if they are our own contemporaries, so that we have need of all our imagination and understanding if we are to get the utmost that they can give us. But reading, as we have suggested, is a complex art. It does not merely consist in sympathising and understanding. It consists, too, in criticising and in judging.

The reader must leave the dock and mount the bench. He must cease to be the friend; he must become the judge. And this second process, which we may call the process of after-reading, for it is often done without the book before us, yields an even more solid pleasure than that which we receive when we are actually turning the pages. During the actual reading new impressions are always cancelling or completing the old. Delight, anger, boredom, laughter succeed each other incessantly as we read. Judgment is suspended, for we cannot know what may come next. But now the book is completed. It has taken a definite shape. And the book as a whole is different from the book received currently in several different parts. It has a shape, it has a being. And this shape, this being, can be held in the mind and compared with the shapes the essays of other books and given its own size and smallness by comparison with theirs.

But if this process of judging and deciding is full of pleasure it is also full of difficulty. Not much help can be looked for from outside. Critics and criticism abound, but it does not help us greatly to read the views of another mind when our own is still hot from a book that we have just read. It is after one has made up one’s own opinion that the opinions of others are most illuminating. It is when we can defend our own judgment that we get most from the judgment of the great critics – the Johnsons, the Drydens and the Arnolds.

To make up our own minds we can best help ourselves first by realising the impression that the book has left as fully and sharply as possible, and then by comparing this impression with the impressions that we have formulated in the past. There they hang in the wardrobe of the mind – the shapes of the books we have read, like clothes that we have taken off and hung up to wait their season. Thus, if we have just read, say, Clarissa Harlowe for the first time we take it and let it show itself against the shape that remains in our minds after reading Anna Karenina. We place them side by side and at once the outlines of the two books are cut out against each other as the angle of a house (to change the figure) is cut out against the fullness of the harvest moon. We contrast Richardson’s prominent qualities with Tolstoi’s. We contrast his indirectness and verbosity with Tolstoi’s brevity and directness. We ask ourselves why it is that each writer has chosen so different an angle of approach. We compare the emotion that we felt at different crises of their books. We speculate as to the difference between the 18th century in England and the 19th century in Russia – but there is no end to the questions that at once suggest themselves as we place the books together. Thus by degrees, by asking questions and answering them, we find that we have decided that the book we have just read is of this kind or that, has this degree of merit or that, takes its station at this point or at that in the literature as a whole. And if we are good readers we thus judge not only the classics and the masterpieces of the dead, but we pay the living writers the compliment of comparing them as they should be compared with the pattern of the great books of the past.

Thus, then, when the moralists ask us what good we do by running our eyes over these many printed pages, we can reply that we are doing our part as readers to help masterpieces into the world. We are fulfilling our share of the creative task – we are stimulating, encouraging, rejecting, making our approval and disapproval felt; and are thus acting as a check and a spur upon the writer. That is one reason for reading books – we are helping to bring good books into the world and to make bad books impossible. But it is not the true reason. The true reason remains the inscrutable one – we get pleasure from reading. It is a complex pleasure and a difficult pleasure; it varies from age to age and from book to book. But that pleasure is enough. Indeed that pleasure is so great that one cannot doubt that without it the world would be a far different and a far inferior place from what it is. Reading has changed the world and continues to change it. When the day of judgment comes therefore and all secrets are laid bare, we shall not be surprised to learn that the reason why we have grown from apes to men, and left our caves and dropped our bows and arrows and sat round the fire and talked and given to the poor and helped the sick – the reason why we have made shelter and society out of the wastes of the desert and the tangle of the jungle is simply this – we have loved reading.

BBB Fahrenheit 451

Protocole de l’action BBB Fahrenheit 451.

1. L’action BBB Fahrenheit 451 consiste à étudier par cœur un livre entier.
2. Le livre est librement choisi par chaque membre du BBB.
3. L’action BBB Fahrenheit 451 est individuelle.
4. L’action BBB Fahrenheit 451 ne donne lieu à aucun spectacle.
5. L’action BBB Fahrenheit 451 est une action solitaire.
6. L’action BBB Fahrenheit 451 ne doit pas être vérifiée ou évaluée par quelque moyen que ce soit ; seul le membre du BBB est à la fois acteur et spectateur de cette action qui ne peut être théâtralisée.
7. L’action BBB Fahrenheit 451 n’a pas de fin.
8. L’action BBB Fahrenheit 451 accompagne le projet BBB de façon implicite. Il va désormais de soi que chaque membre du BBB est la mémoire vivante d’un livre (et de plusieurs au fil du temps).
9. La langue du livre choisi est celle de la langue originale d’écriture du livre

The BBB Dictionary

from the notes of Op A…

1.
Op M buys a english-french/french-english dictionary from Charing Cross Road, London on Wednesday 10th December 2008.
The dictionary’s pages cannot be wider than the width of Op M’s printing machine in the BBB-Hotel. It will have to have sewn pages to allow Op A to take it to pieces (and put it together again).
It should be as comprehensive as possible. How many words is that ?

2.
Op M sends it to Op A at the BBB Apartment. By post.

3.
Op A then takes the dictionary to pieces, removing each “booklet”, a number of pages that are sewn together in the dictionary; for example if there are 1,600 pages in the dictionary and each booklet has 16 pages, there will be 100 booklets. This example is important as it will be referred to later in the notes.

4.
Op A sends two 16 page booklets, each four double-sided sheets of the dictionary; one to Op O, one to Op M. Op O will receive the first booklet from the english-french part of the dictionary, Op M will receive the first booklet from the french-english part of the dictionary.
Op A will also send with the booklets to Op O and Op M each four double-sided sheets of blank paper, identical in size to the double sided sheets of the dictionary. Op A will send the booklets and the double-sided sheets of blank paper at the same time in the same envelope by post.
Op A is responsible for the choice of paper.

5.
On receiving the booklet and paper Op O will take a pen in his hand and beginning with the first word on the first page of the first english-french booklet, record on the first page of the blank paper all words Op O recognises as being identical to the word in french. Op M will do the same beginning with the first word on the first page of the first french-english booklet, recording on the first page of the blank paper all words Op M recognises as being identical to the word in english. They will record after each word on the blank paper the number of the page on the dictionary, thereby creating an index.
for example:
Op O will write on the blank paper, Alligator Page 1
Op M will write on the blank paper, Alligator Page 800
(presuming the dictionary is english/french – french/english consisting of 1600 pages and that the dictionary is exactly divided into two halves and “Alligator” occurs identically on page 1 and 800)
The criteria for “identical” are thus:
Words that have identical spelling and not words that have identical meanings or non-identical meanings. For example, the english word “sensible” is spelt identically as the french word “sensible” so this word will be recorded. The BBB-Dictionary’s criteria is not to record words that have the same meaning in french and english. The BBB-Dictionary’s criteria is to record words that are the same in french and english.

6.
All identical words identified and written onto the blank pages completed, Op O and Op M will then print over the pages of the booklet. The woodcut should be cut to meet the measurements of the border of the words printed in the dictionary but not the page number. If through error or intention the page number of the dictionary is obscured then ah thats how it is ah. When dry, a minimum of two days, the booklet and recorded pages will be sent back to Op A. By post.

7.
On receiving the booklets and pages from Op O and Op M, Op A will then send the second booklet and second four double-sided sheets of blank pages to Op O and Op M. Naturally, due to the inconsistency of time and the postal service and workrate of Op O and Op M, Op A will send the second booklet and second four double-sided sheets of blank pages to Op O and Op M at different times. Also, Op A’s workrate is to be considered.

B
B
B

8.
Op A’s next step will be to take the completed black-printed pages of the dictionary from the envelope and resew them back to their original format, a 16 page booklet. Op A will take the four double-sided sheets of paper with the recorded words on them and sew them into a booklet which will become part of the BBB-Dictionary’s index.
Op A’s other indispensible part in the process of the creation of the BBB-Dictionary will be to create the BBB-Dictionary Website.
Op A shall, on receiving the recorded blank pages type them onto a specially created website listing the words that appear on the blank pages posted to her by Op O and Op M. For example Op A receives Op O’s first, there will appear on the website;
Alligator 1 (page number)
Anathema 1
Attack 1
If the viewer is to click on the word, on the screen will appear the image of the black-printed page of the dictionary that it is taken from (with page number 1 if it is not by error or intention obscured).
For example if Op A receives Op M’s first, there will appear on the website;
Alligator 800 (page number)
Anathema 800
Attack 800
If the viewer is to click on the word, on the screen will appear the image of the black-printed page of the dictionary that it is taken from (with page number 800 if it is not by error or intention obscured)
A computer programme will automatically sort words arriving onto the website posted by Op A alphabetically.For example Op A receives Op O’s first, there will appear on the website:
Alligator 1 (page number)
Anathema 1
Attack 1
and when Op A receives Op M’s it will appear thus:
Alligator 1
Alligator 800
Anathema 1
Anathema 800
Attack 1
Attack 800
Again this consistency all depends on the inconsistency of time and the postal service and workrate of Op O, Op M and Op A, not to mention the beforementioned error or intention. But the BBB-Dictionary is not concerned with consistency or inconsistency or error or intention. Also this chosen example only consists of six words, or to be accurate, three words. In this chosen example the dictionary consists of 1600 pages.
Op A is responsible for the content and design of the website but should comprise of a list of the words and links to each relevant black-printed relevant page.
An example of a website consisting of a list of words, with links, although not exactly reflecting the BBB-Dictionary website is this :
http://www.stefanbruggemann.com/textpieces.htm

9.
Op A will send, over the years, a total of 100 booklets and blank pages to Op O and Op M, who will then send them back to Op A, to be collected into a list on the website. When complete, Op A will then reassemble the dictionary, with all its pages reinstated and a hand printed index at the back which will send the reader of the BBB-Dictionary to the correct page where each word occurs. Naturally through error or intention, pages, words, numbers will be lost.

10.
All contact between Op O, Op M and Op A concerning the BBB-Dictionary will be made by post. In english-french/french-english.

Questions and queries in an envelope to;

Op M
The BBB-Hotel
rue marché au charbon 91
1000 Bruxelles
Belgium

Op O
The BBB-Center
Les Anglades
30120 Rogues
France

Op A
The BBB-Apartment
rue e. bouilliot 19
1050 Bruxelles
Belgium

Reception. Perception. Deception.

Scientists distinguish between the sensation of black and the perception of black. Theories have been advanced to explain both aspects, one espoused by a group of physiologists whose best known representative  was physicist and polymath Hermann von Helmholtz, the other developed by physiologist and brain expert Ewald Hering. For Helmholtz, the sensation of black derived from the absence of light, from the lack of light stimuli. By contrast, Hering claimed that all visual perception including seeing black involved light, explaining the perception of black as the result of contrast. Von Helmholtz discovered that the human retina has three different kinds of cone enabling us to see colours and that these do not register stimuli at night. For Hering, this did not delve deeply enough. Incorporating the brain into his theory, he proposed that both the sensation and the perception of black result from a physiological-chemical reaction taking place in a nerve fibre. The two theories were eventually reconciled. For the perception of black this meant that first, a surface appears black when it does not reflect the light striking it, that is, when it absorbs waves that the eye can register; and secondly, although we register phenomena with our sense organs, lack of information received by the rods and cones in our retina does not make it impossible to see black, because ultimately we perceive with our brain.

Nevertheless, it has not been established how exactly the brain enables us to perceive black. We possess nerve cells that react to red and green, to circles and triangles, and to moving bars, but none of our nerve cells register black, which our brain processes in the areas reserved for shapes and movement.

a Black is a Black is a Black is it ?

There are many different kinds of black.

Ad Reinhardt distinguished between “a black which is old and a black which is fresh. Lustrous (brilliant) black and matte black, black in sunlight and black in shadow. For the old black one must use an admixture of blue, for the matte black an admixture of white; for the lustrous black gum (colle) must be added. Black in sunlight must have grey reflections.”

Not all shades of black encountered in works of art contain black pigment.

As the painter and picture restorer Max Doerner explained in 1921, some blacks can be obtained from a mixture of dark blue and red. Doerner distinguished six black pigments: bone black, plant black, lampblack, manganese black, slate black and ferric oxide black.

BBB-Bela Tarr

Esquisse d’un scénario pour un court métrage muet

Première partie

Premier plan

Les fenêtres closes du village (filmé en caméra subjective un peu comme le plan-séquence de “L’Année dernière à Marienbad” quand la caméra s’attarde longuement à filmer les moulures du plafond), les bas-reliefs moyenâgeux sur les façades, juste au-dessus des fenêtres.

Deuxième plan.

Une main qui agite une cloche.

Troisième plan.

La troupe de la RTT arrive au village (un village reculé, des maisons de pierre, une végétation aride, sur les façades des visages de pierre sculptés, style roman). La RTT en première place suivie du cheval et du graveur. Dans les rues, personnes. Atmosphère hivernale. La troupe est filmée comme si elle était vue par les visages de pierre.

Quatrième plan.

La RTT, seule, abandonnée par ses servants, le vent qui agite les gravures. La machine est perdue dans le décor désertique. On a l’impression de n’entendre que le vent qui siffle dans les fils électriques. Des gravures jonchent le sol, certaines déchirées ou roulées en boulettes de papier.

Deuxième partie

Premier plan

La caméra filme les gravures accrochées au cheval avec le rythme posé qu’un lecteur attentif prendrait pour lire l’ensemble des images gravées. Le cheval demeure immobile ; on dirait une statue de bronze. La caméra opère ce faisant un mouvement spiralé autour du cheval de manière à ce que toutes les gravures soient vues et lues.

Deuxième plan

L’opérateur’s grimpent dans la montagne accompagné par le cheval revêtu de son harnachement de gravures. Buissons et pierres qui roulent. Vues des feuilles qui tremblent au vent. Montée saccadée à cause du terrain difficile : montée, arrêt, reprise de la marche, etc.

Troisième plan

Plan fixe d’un pic montagneux.

Quatrième plan

Le cheval seul au sommet de la colline avec une seule gravure noire accrochée à la corde qui entoure son cou. Il tourne autour d’un ancien fortin installé jadis au sommet de la colline. Le cheval est filmé du centre du cercle, la caméra le suit comme si un fil reliait le cheval à la caméra. Au centre du cercle, un monticule de pierres.

Cinquième plan

Les nuages en vue subjective, ensuite coupure et la caméra redescend vers les visages de l’Opérateur’s, et des visages vers les mains.

Sixième plan

Dans une pièce sombre, les mains du graveur en gros plan occupées à graver l’image d’un cheval et dans le fond de l’image la RTT, l’Opérateur qui imprime.

Fin

I believe in nothing

In August 2007, the city of Cologne unveiled Gerhard Richter’s startling new window for the south transept of Cologne Cathedral. The original window had been destroyed during the second world war and replaced with clear glazing in 1948. Nearly 60 years later, Richter elected to fill in the sections of the Gothic tracery with thousands of gridded, vibrantly coloured squares which suggested that the early, stained-glass images of Magi and saints had been pushed through a processor to the point of hyperchromatic digital breakdown.

The seemingly arbitrary distribution of colours at Cologne was generated using a specially developed computer programme, and his renewed interest in using chance to determine composition led Richter to develop the idea for 4900 Colours at the Serpentine.

In this most recent work, acrylic chips are chosen at random, spraypainted, and glued to an aluminium sheet. “The random programme presents an instantaneous and apparently countless collection of coloured groupings,” the catalogue explains, adopting the tones of a public service announcement. “The computer executes instructions without conscience or discernment, without intuition or will, without feelings or inductive thought. We are in the finite and infinite universe of numbers where the calculation process is transformed into a production role.” All human agency has been removed.

Why would a painter present a series of 49 identically sized, identically gridded panels made of industrially manufactured paint chips and present them as a single exhibition ?

As long ago as 1966, Richter wrote: “I steer clear of definitions. I don’t know what I want. I am inconsistent, noncomittal, passive; I like the indefinite, the boundless; I like continual uncertainty. Other qualities may be conducive to achievement, publicity, success; but they are all outworn – as outworn as ideologies, opinions, concepts and names for things.”

And two years earlier: “I consider belief of every kind, from astrology to every elevated religion and all great ideologies, to be superfluous and mortally dangerous. Now that there are no priests or philosophers left, artists are the most important people in the world. This is the only thing that interests me.”

BBB is everywhere

Korea

Nouvelles Impressions d’Afrique et le livre noir

Malgré une forme graphique décevante, Nouvelles Impressions d’Afrique édité chez Léo Scherr est associé à une réflexion théorique très éclairante sur l’œuvre de R. Roussel. Jacques Sivan, concepteur de cette édition et auteur de la postface, met en lumière le processus d’écriture de R. Roussel et sa conception du livre.

Le dynamisme de la langue de R. Roussel se déploie au travers des couleurs qui sont tour à tour attribuées au texte (texte coloré en blanc, rouge, vert, noir ou jaune). Chaque teinte donnant une impression différente, le texte se dote de qualités perceptives en sus de sa forme typographique et de son positionnement dans la page. R. Roussel met ainsi en place une logique interne au texte où la couleur intimement liée à celui-ci, devient un élément d’interprétation et révélateur d’un processus d’écriture. 

Jacques Sivan met en relation les théories de Wittgenstein, Claudel, Kadinsky et d’autres écrits réflexifs à propos de la couleur pour étayer son propos. Dans le désordre, on retiendra: la description de la couleur “bis” ou la couleur d’un certain gris, celle de la neutralité, du non événement, du passage constant entre le blanc et le noir ; le bleu concentrique et le jaune excentrique, qui à la rencontre de leur tournoiement respectif créent la couleur de l’équilibre : le vert. On lira: la neutralité immobile (le gris) vs l’équilibre dynamique (le vert). D’autres couleurs (le rouge, le blanc, et le noir) viendront colorer la langue de R. Roussel comme fonctions actives permettant de passer d’un régime d’écriture à un autre.

On notera également l’intérêt de R. Roussel pour la question du livre en tant que processus génératif, mode d’impression et objet tri-dimensionnel:

– bis, en plus de la couleur grise, évoque aussi la notion de répétition. Pour R. Roussel, la répétition – le dédoublement – est un processus fondamental par lequel toute chose se génère, et qui produit du mouvement par la récurrence dans le temps. On assiste donc là à une double déclaration: la répétition est la condition sinequa non de l’existence de toute chose (l’identité ne peut se révéler que par rapport à un double) et l’origine d’un mouvement. Par l’usage de la couleur bis comme teinte de fond au texte R. symbolise le dédoublement perpétuel de son texte, c’est-à-dire la possibilité d’un sens nouveau et de lectures plurielles du réel sans cesse renouvelés.

– La mécanique textuelle de R. Roussel fait référence à la mécanique des cinq sens (plus particulièrement celui de la vision) et s’apparente à un processus optique révélateur. (Ce n’est pas par hasard si dans les titres de ses œuvres les mots impressions, vue, doublure apparaissent.)

Nouvelles Impressions d’Afrique se compose de 59 pages de textes et 59 pages d’illustrations qui s’alternent, créant ainsi un livre double, un livre à double foyer au sens optique du terme. Le livre constitue par ses variations de textes colorés un dispositif optique permettant au sens de s’impressionner (on entend ici par le terme impressionner: laisser une image sur une surface sensible, par le biais de la lumière par exemple en photographie) mais aussi, par ses différents niveaux de lecture et de sens qu’il produit, Nouvelles impressions d’Afrique est un œil, un catalyseur optique, une expression de la vision au sens Raimbaldien du terme. Le poète est le visionnaire et le livre constitue le dispositif de lecture de la vision.

– R. Roussel conçoit son écriture comme un processus matériel qui va jusqu’à générer l’objet-livre dans sa tri-dimensionalité même. Par la structure qu’ils désignent, cahiers, nombre de page et plis architectent le livre. En cela, R. Roussel rejoint Walter Benjamin qui prône une écriture dont les formes typographiques et graphiques seraient un relais au texte (in Expert-comptable, Sens Unique), condamnant le livre-texte au profit du livre-objet.

Mais si l’on y regarde de plus près, R. Roussel tente de nous proposer un livre-monde dont la prégnance du chiffre 4 dans le processus de fabrication désigne symboliquement: la totalité. Les cahiers sont des cahiers de 8 pages, c’est à dire des in quarto, qui constituent en eux-mêmes des unités, des mondes. La totalité est également symbolisée par les 4 chants qui structurent les Nouvelles Impressions d’Afrique. On retrouve ainsi, à l’instar de Borgès  le concept du monde inclus dans un autre monde, lui même inclus dans un autre et ce à l’infini. Un monde qui se répète à travers les miroirs générés par les plis: ils créent des verso vierges qui réfléchissent (dédoublent) des recto pleins.

Nouvelles Impressions d’Afrique s’auto-opère selon une mécanique, un dispositif très précis. L’auteur en est l’opérateur, c’est à dire, celui qui n’est pas à l’origine de “sa” création, mais qui est l’agent provisoire, et à un moment donné, de cette création (ou selon les mots de Mallarmé “l’oeuvre pure implique la disparition élocutoire du poëte qui cède l’initiative au mot”. )

Dans le dispositif mis en place par le BlackBookBlack, les opérateurs cèdent la place non seulement aux pages noires (impressions noires), leur rendant ainsi leur autonomie propres, mais également au livre (tous les livres sont uniques, ou sont “potentiellement” différents), et au lecteur (les lectures sont plurielles et ne dépendent que du lecteur qui les construit). Les opérateurs deviennent ainsi les révélateurs (cf. le révélateur photographique) d’une création qui tend à exister. L’opérateur participe à la transmutation de la matière, donnant corps à un autre corps pour que celui-ci devienne visible, l’opérateur-alchimiste participe au passage du noir à une nouvelle forme d’existence.

Nouvelles Impressions d’Afrique se compose de 2 x 30 illustrations qui se répondent de façon symétrique et que l’on peut lire de manière centripède (des extérieurs du livre vers le centre) ou centrifuge (du centre vers les extérieurs du livre). Avec la particularité que la 30e image constitue l’image pivot qui renvoie vers toutes les autres et par laquelle le principe de symétrie peut s’opérer. La 60e image, elle, est l’image absente ou bien, celle inventée par le lecteur. Il y a donc 59 illustrations dans le livre, dont 29 répondent à 29 autres par l’intermédiaire d’une 59e placée au centre.

Cette image pivot n’est pas sans signification: elle est la seule à renvoyer sa propre image à elle-même (puisqu’elle est la seule à ne pas avoir une autre image qui lui réponde) et constitue la clé de voûte du livre. Elle dévoile la grille de lecture de l’ouvrage: on y voit un homme glisser un guide-âne sous une feuille de papier. Cet outil – qui sert à partager un segment en plusieurs parties de même longueur –  est une surface réglée à intervalles égaux. Dans sa représentation, les réglures qui le dessinent sont à l’égal des illustrations qui composent le livre: placées à intervalles réguliers. Ce n’est pourtant qu’au travers une certaine transparence que cette grille peut nous apparaître (puisqu’elle est placée sous une autre feuille de papier), dévoilant ainsi tous les aspects sous-jacents de l’œuvre de par les lectures plurielles qu’il propose. R. Roussel nous parle encore ainsi de couleurs, puisque transparence et opacité sont des qualités qui participent également à leur description.

Le livre  se voit ainsi considéré comme un espace de réalisation de la vision, devient l’oeil-livre qui pour mieux re-centrer sa vision, nous propose une structure de lecture double, une lecture à double foyer, constituée de 29 couples d’images dont l’écart (l’image centrale, le pli) sont ces espaces où la vision peut avoir lieu.

Il est l’espace de projection envisagé comme chez Duchamps, le mécanisme qui permet le “passage ” de la 2e dimension à la 3e dimension et de la 3e à la 4e. Lecture linéaire et lecture croisée, mouvement et temporalité, s’inscrivent tour à tour dans la lecture, opérant de passages constants, d’aller et de venues entre toutes les dimensions de par l’espace de projection que constitue le livre.

Un livre noir intitulé (même s’il n’est pas titré) “Hommage à Raymond Roussel, Nouvelles impressions d’Afrique“, constitué de 59 pages noires imprimées recto seul, pliées en 4, devenant ainsi 59 cahiers à assembler à partir d’un cahier central pivot de tous les autres, symbolisant la lecture symétrique proposée chez R. Roussel sera le prochain livre noir du BBB. Il ne sera pas rogné (pour garder le pli) et les marges blanches seront préservées. 

Alan Thurwell on Reading

The other day, mooching, I began to reread an essay by the Argentinian novelist Alan Pauls, called “The Borges Factor”. The essay is about the poet, critic and writer of stories, Jorge Luis Borges. I love this essay. I’d first read it a couple of years ago, and now, for no good reason, I began to reread it, haphazardly. At the beginning of chapter 5, “Small Writing”, I discovered this sentence by Borges: “Every time a book is read or reread, something happens with this book.” And I began to think. I’ve never really gone for theories of reading. I’ve never really believed that as a reader I have much power. Nor have I really wanted to, perhaps. As a reader, I’ve always been in love with writers, and the purity of form. But the more I read of Borges, the more I wondered if I was wrong.

A novelist, Borges explained, over a series of multiple and singular events, creates a unified work – which will then be read, once more, over a series of multiple and singular events. The act of reading therefore exists between two poles: on the one hand, a book is an object that is always the same: and on the other hand, it is fleeting, rooted in the chance manifestations of paper, typography, the reader’s distracted feelings. His example of this problem was Don Quixote – which he’d read in the Garnier edition, with red covers, on which a gilded title was embossed. One day his father’s library was dispersed, and when he read the novel in another edition, with different covers, he felt as if it wasn’t the true Quixote. And yet, obviously, it was.

But although I was charmed by this admission by Borges, I began to wonder if the problem wasn’t even worse than he had said. It’s not just that a novel exists in two realms – the permanent realm of form, and the fleeting realm of a book. The real oddity is more perplexing. A novel is always the same, but we live lives too distracted to comprehend it. Every composition is always too long to be read accurately.

Sadly, I began to think about the haphazard oddness of my reading, of my book buying. The recent record, as I considered it, seemed crazy in its formlessness. Recently I bought Raul Hilberg’s The Destruction of the European Jews, and The Chronicle of the Lodz Ghetto 1941-1944, edited by Lucjan Dobroszycki. As soon as I got them, I read the introduction to the Hilberg, and random aghast entries from the Chronicle. I put them aside. I read the first four chapters of John Osborne’s collected autobiographies, Looking Back, and loved them. But for some reason I’ve paused there, at the beginning of chapter 5.

I reread some of Saul Bellow’s novel Herzog, at random. I read William Corbett’s memoir of the American artist Philip Guston – Philip Guston’s Late Work. I read too many articles on the web about Euro 2008. I read too many articles on the web about the new money in cricket. I read Ian Buruma’s article about Philip Gourevitch and Errol Morris’s book on Abu Ghraib, Standard Operating Procedure, in the New York Review of Books. This made me remember I still hadn’t got round to reading Gourevitch’s book on Rwanda, We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families, which I’d bought a while ago. I read it, and felt distressed. The book haunted me. A triumph of technique, yes, but an upsetting triumph. I therefore decided not to read about the Lodz Ghetto for a while, nor the destruction of the European Jews.

I read and reread some poems by Mayakovsky, in a cool new selection of writing by and about Mayakovsky, Night Wraps the Sky, edited by Michael Almereyda. I read a story by Deborah Eisenberg from her recent collection Twilight of the Superheroes, a collection I’d read already. I don’t know why I did this. The book was just there. I read a review in the TLS of Rosemary Hill’s new book on Stonehenge, which reminded me I needed to buy it.

I reread “Spring in Fialta”, the great story by Nabokov, in his collection Nabokov’s Dozen, which I’d been given as a present. Then Elsa Morante’s novels History: A Novel and Arturo’s Island arrived in the post, which I’d bought because an Italian friend had told me she was the greatest Italian novelist of the 20th century. I put them to one side. History: A Novel, in particular, seemed far too long. I read a story by Edmund White called “Skinned Alive”. I read a copy of Vogue which was lying around. Sadly, I wondered if I had read this with more concentration than I had read the story by Nabokov.

And all the time the book I actually thought I was reading, the book which I told my girlfriend I was reading, was John Osborne’s autobiography. There it nestled, unfinished, among this ugly list. I felt ashamed. And I felt worried.

Perhaps all novelists dream of the close reader: perhaps every reader tries to be one. But no reader, however perfect, reads a text as closely as the novelist would want, with the adequate amount of concentration. And even if a reader has concentrated, so much is lost, because memory is so defective. The art of reading, like every art, is an art of detail. (That’s why they’re arts.) But no one can retain all the details, nor the details’ thematic form. Mostly, what remains is an impression, an isolated sentence.

The only hope is rereading. “A good reader,” said Nabokov, “a major reader, an active and creative reader is a rereader.” The only hope is continuous repetition. How else, after all, can anyone see the form? And if you can’t see a work’s form, then it isn’t really reading at all. But who, therefore, has the time to really read?

I measured, sadly, the constant overtaking of books actually read by the crescendo of books I had bought or borrowed or been given. The books I had abandoned. And I began to think about all the novelistic techniques – of recurring characters, counterpoint, minor characters, thematic echoes – which depend on a work’s grand length and the reader’s prolonged concentration. All these small techniques seemed clues to a larger disquiet, a repressed truth.

Every novel – this is my worry – is invisible.

A Critique of The BBB masquerading as Basho

its a little bit stupid

and a little bit serious

because its a little bit stupid

its a little bit serious

and a little bit stupid

because its a little bit serious

its a little bit stupid

and a little bit serious.

The Nature of the Physical World by Arthur Stanley Eddington, 1929

I am standing on the threshold about to enter a room. It is a complicated business. In the first place I must shove against an atmosphere pressing with a force of fourteen pounds on every square inch of my body. I must make sure of landing on a plank travelling at twenty miles a second round the sun – a fraction of a second too early or too late, the plank would be miles away. I must do this whilst hanging from a round planet head outward into space, and with a wind of aether blowing at no one knows how many miles a second through every interstice of my body. The plank has no solidity or substance. To step on it is like stepping on a swarm of flies. Shall I not slip through ? No, if I make the venture one of the flies hits me and gives a boost up again; I fall again and am knocked upwards by another fly; and so on. I may hope that the net result will be that I remain about steady; but if unfortunately I should slip through the floor or be boosted too violently up to the ceiling, the occurrence would be, not a violation of the laws of Nature, but a rare coincidence…
Verily, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a scientific man to pass through a door. And whether the door be barn door or church door it might be wiser that he should consent to be an ordinary man and walk in rather than wait till all the difficulties involved in a really scientific ingress are resolved.

Cogitations

Le livre noir est l’une des facettes du projet. Un commentaire, une glose qui ne renverrait à rien d’autre qu’au procès en cours. Ou bien, le livre noir serait l’expression la plus opaque d’un scénario, car, à tourner les pages noires, on perçoit à travers la noirceur quelque chose qui tient de la séquence. Il y a dans le BBB une fascination pour le mouvement du processus cinématographique et l’idée du photogramme.    

D’une certaine manière, c’est comme s’il s’agissait de faire du cinéma avec des outils élémentaires et sans caméra. Faire du cinéma avec une machine faite de bois à graver, de papier et d’une presse. Littéralement la presse se transmue en « projecteur », elle projette, au sens ambivalent du terme, l’espace dans lequel se déploie l’objet. 

Le cinéma est l’une des influences génératrices du projet. Il ne faut pas oublier que l’un des membres du BBB, Miles O’Shea, est un acteur. Les films de Buster Keaton, et notamment Le mécano de la générale, nourrissent la plate-forme BBB. 

Si la bibliothèque est le lieu idéal de la performance, il est d’autres sites possibles. Le BBB se propose en effet de faire un remake du film de Buster Keaton lors d’une performance. Cette performance consisterait à reconstituer un élément du film de Keaton. Ce fragment du film serait le décor d’une mise en scène de la table roulante. La table roulante devientun équivalent de la locomotive de Keaton. Sur la table roulante est fixée une caméra qui filme le travelling du point de vue de la machine tandis qu’une caméra fixe filme l’arrivée, de l’autre côté du tunnel, de la table roulante et de l’opérateur. Lors de la présentation, deux écrans, l’un à côté de l’autre, montrent ce double mouvement, l’un montre le travelling et l’autre l’arrivée (comme le train des frères Lumière).

De le conception de la table roulante comme équivalent (toute proportion gardée) de la locomotive de Keaton, il découle une seconde image, l’image du cheval contenue dans la métonymie du cheval-vapeur (le cheval-vapeur étant à la locomotive ce que la voile est au navire).

Le cheval est le symbole même du mouvement. Il hante l’espace du BBB. D’où la création d’un personnage ambigu, un personnage forain : un cheval en toile de jute.

Le cheval devient l’emblème du BBB. Un cheval de cirque, de foire, un cheval en toile de jute qui est l’objet d’une troisième performance à caractère promotionnelle. Les deux opérateurs errent aux abords des foires d’art revêtu de leur tunique grotesque.   

Le projet BBB est un work in progress qui n’a pas de fin bien déterminée. Néanmoins la création d’un meuble portable, une bibliothèque de voyage, rempli des livres noirs créés tout le long des pérégrinations du BBBpourrait représenter une somme, un aboutissement qui signalerait l’arrêt plus ou moins momentané du processus.

Le BBB explore un territoire imaginaire et réel ; imaginaire, car il puise dans les images ses caractères, réel, car il montre littéralement un processus de création. 

Enfin, la dernière facette du projet peut être déclarée. Car, en effet, que serait un tel projet s’il ne portait avec lui l’espoir d’une métamorphose.

De cette aventure de création, il sera tiré un film. Un film d’artiste en noir et blanc et en super 8 (processus mécanique proche de la gravure sur bois en un sens) qui montrera l’autre côté du projet, non pas le processus, mais les opérateurs perçus dans leur rapport à l’objet qu’ils auront créé.

Le film sera tourné à Rogues, en France, et comprendra aussi des séquences à propos des performances. La main qui tiendra la caméra sera à la mesure de l’utopie du BBB puisque c’est Ophélie Deprez, ma fille de douze ans, qui tiendra la caméra et filmera les opérateurs. Ce sera donc une aventure de création vue du point de vue de l’innocence (relative, certes), mais surtout d’un point de vue décalé. Une manière de préserver ce mélange savant d’absurde légèreté et de grave réflexivité à tendance littéraliste qui est le socle même du projet de Miles O’Shea, Alexia de Visscher et Olivier Deprez. La création de ce film sera une manière d’exemplifier l’utopie BBB. Une utopie à usage familier et convivial qui consisterait simplement, à travers une création en commun, à redistribuer et à changer les rapports non pas entre les hommes, cette entité abstraite et excessivement générique, mais entre quelques individus dont la raison d’être puise son sens dans l’opacité magique et néanmoins transparente des pages noires des livres noirs (transparente puisque littérale, le noir ne déclarant que le noir).    

Cette utopie est symboliquement étendue au monde par le biais des voyages et des performances effectuées dans les bibliothèques du monde entier. De ces voyages, il résulterait un réseau de bibliothèques et un réseau de lecteurs. Au fond, c’est tout simplement de relier des fils perdus qu’il s’agit. Les fils perdus entre les artistes eux-mêmes, entre les lecteurs et les auteurs et entre les individus qui participent à ce projet. 

En ce sens, la reliure qui se tient au cœur du projet prend une nouvelle dimension. La reliure est un art paradoxal qui cache pour mieux montrer.

La tension entre les pages, le pli, l’arrondi de la tranche, aucun de ces aspects du livre ne pourrait exister s’il n’y avait, caché sous la jaquette et le tissu, la puissance quasi secrète de l’art de la relieuse. Pas tout à fait secret cet art cependant, puisque la tension, la garde, la tranche, le pli nous parlent de lui, certes indirectement.

Faire accéder l’invisible au visible, rendre concrètement présent ce qui ne se voit pas, relier des personnes, des pages noires, des bibliothèques, les différents plans de la plate-forme, tout cela, c’est tout un et c’est l’un des sens, peut-être, du projet BBB.

Olivier Deprez, Rogues, mai 2008.

The BlackBook reader

THE BBBHORSE

Hundreds of miles of desolate, monotonous, burnt – up steppe cannot

induce such deep depression as one man when he sits and talks, and

one does not know when he will go.

Anton Chekov

THE BBBCENTRE

The BBBC is one of the most ambitious and challenging project’s the BBB has undertaken so far. When it opens in 2009 the BBBC will be the vortex through which all BBB idea’s pass.

Originally a “sheep house”, the BBBC is situated in Rogues, a mountaintop village near Montpellier in the South of France. Extensively renovated, the BBBC is fully equipped to create and exhibit the work’s of the BBB, along with offering an international artist-in-residence programme to produce work connected with the region.

Whether it be painting or printing, bookmaking or filmmaking, writing or reading, the BBBC has the tools and iniative to realise any and all aspects of the above.

It can be said the BBB began it’s “marche créer” here, with the invention of the RTT and the first steps towards the BBBMythology.

The BBBHorse was made here.

With it’s beautiful sunset’s while buzzards circle high overhead and midnight foxes slink padding by past medieval farmhouses peopled by J. Tati extra’s, Rogues made the BBB come alive in unexpected and unawaited ways. It has fine local produce; wine, cheese, sausage and a daunting yet ultimately exhilarating five-hour-round-trip bicycle ride to the nearest tobacconist. Down the mountain, then… up the mountain.

It’s the BBBC

Ah come on ah !

PRINTING BLACK PRINTS

Op M prints black prints with the RTT in a faded hotel room in downtown Bruxelles. Op M scoops out with a spatula a dollop of black ink from the tin of black ink (Noir Vignette Luke RSA PBK7 – PB27)

Op M “softens” the ink by plying it back and forth on a slab of smoothed marble. Applying it in strips with the spatula, Op M then proceeds to rolling it onto a roller.

Back and forth goes the roller until it is uniformly covered with black ink.

Op M places the woodcut face up on the RTT and rolls the black ink on to it.

Holding the woodcut at an angle to the light, Op M checks to see if it is completely covered in black ink. Satisfied, Op M then places it face down onto a piece of white paper which lies on the printing machine. Covering both with a stiff piece of grey cardboard, Op M turns the spokes of the printing machine, like a ship’s wheel, which turns the heavy iron printing roller.

The paper, woodcut and grey cardboard pass under the roll to the other side. The woodcut makes a slight cracking sound as the pressure of the roll weighs upon it.Changing direction of the ship’s wheel, Op M sends the paper, woodcut and grey cardboard sandwich back to it’s point of departure.

It is now returned.

Removing the grey cardboard, then the woodcut, Op M surveys the black ink which has been transeferred from the woodcut to the white paper, which is now a black print. Op M attatches the black print to a wooden clothes peg and hangs both from one of the lengths of brown string strung about the welded rusted metal rods of the tower of the RTT in the faded hotel room.

Op M begins the process again by scooping out with a spatula a dollop of black ink from the tin of black black ink (Noir Vignette Luke RSA PBK7 – PB27).

This time will be different.

A Defence of the BBB. By Andrei Tarkovskij

A.Tarkovsk

Clearly the hardest thing for the working artist is to create his own conception and follow it, unafraid of the strictures it imposes, however rigid these may be. It is far easier to be eclectic, to follow the routine patterns which abound in our professional arsenal.

I see it as the clearest evidence of genius when an artist follows his conception, his idea, his principle, so unswervingly that he has this truth of his constantly in his control, never letting go of it even for the sake of his own enjoyment of his work.

Black Prints as a Refrain

When we come across a refrain in poetry we return, already in possession of what we have read, to the first cause which prompted the poet to write the lines originally. The refrain brings us back to our first experience of entering that poetic world, making it immediate and at the same time reviewing it. We return, as it were, to its sources.

Art is by nature aristocratic, and naturally selective in its effect on the audience. For even in its ‘collective’ manifestations, like theatre or cinema, its effect is bound up with the intimate emotions of each person who comes into contact with a work. The more the individual is traumatised and gripped by those emotions, the more significant a place will the work have in his experience.

The aristocratic nature of art, however, does not in any way absolve the artist of his responsibility to his public and even, if you like, more broadly, to people in general. On the contrary: because of his special awareness of his time and of the world in which he lives, the artist becomes the voice of those who cannot formulate or express their view of reality. In that sense the artist is indeed vox populi. That is why he is called to serve his own talent, which means serving his people.

I cannot in fact undestand the prolem of an artist’s so-called ‘freedom’ or ‘lack of freedom’. An artist is never free. No group of people lacks freedom more. An artist is bound by his gift, his vocation.

On the other hand he is at liberty to choose between realising his talent as fully as he can, or selling his soul for thirty pieces of silver. Was the frenzied search of Tolstoy, Dostoievsky and Gogol not prompted by their awareness of their vocation, or their ordained role ?

I am also convinced that no artist would work to fulfil his personal spiritual mission if he knew that no one was going to se his work. Yet at the same time, when he is working he must put a screen between himself and other people, in order to be shielded from empty, trivial topicality. For only total honesty and sincerity, compounded by the knowledge of his own responsibility towards others, can ensure the fulfilment of an artist’s creative destiny.

Black Prints Without Reason

Art affects a person’s emotions, not his reason. Its function is, as it were, to turn and loosen the human soul, making it receptive to human good. When you see a good film, look at a painting, listen to music you are disarmed and entranced from the start – but not by an idea, not by a thought. The author cannot therefore reckon on his work being understood in one particular way and according to his own perception of it. All he can do is present his own image of the world, for people to be able to look at it through his eyes, and be filled with his feelings, doubts and thoughts . .

The artist cannot make a specific aim of being understandable – it would be quite as absurd as its opposite: trying to be incomprehensible.

I have always been infuriated by the formula, ‘people won’t understand’. What does it mean ? Who can take it upon themselves to express the ‘peoples opinion’, making declarations on their own behalf as if quoting the majority of the population ? Who can know what people will or won’t understand ? What they need or what they want ? Has anyone ever conducted a survey or made the slightest conscientious effort to discover the people’s true interests, their ways of thinking, expectations, hopes – or, indeed, disappointments ?

All the artist can offer the audience is to be open and candid in his combat with his material. And the audience will appreciate what our exertions mean.

If you try to please audiences, uncritically accepting their tastes, it can only mean that you have no respect for them: that you simply want to collect their money; and instead of training the audience by giving them inspiring works of art, you are merely training the artist to ensure his own income. For their part, the audience will continue, their contentment unalloyed, to feel they are right – seldom a well-founded conviction. The failure to develop the audience’s capacity to criticise our own judgements is tantamount to treating them with total indifference. Pushkin:

You are a king. Live alone. Take a free road
And follow where your free mind leads you,
Bring to perfection the fruits of well-loved thoughts
Ask no reward for noble deeds accomplished.
Rewards are within you. Your supreme judge is yourself.
None will ever judge your work more sternly.
Discriminating artist, does it please you ?

BBBBlackBooks

A book read by a thousand different people is a thousand different books. The reader with a vivid imagination can see beyond the most laconic account, far further and more graphically than the writer himself has envisaged (in fact writers very often expect the reader to think on further). On the other hand, a reader who is restrained, inhibited by moral strictures and taboos, will see the most precise, cruel description only through the moral and aesthetic filter that has built up inside him. A kind of revision takes place within the subjective awareness, however, and this process is inherent in the relationship between writer and reader; it’s like a Trojan horse, in whose belly the writer makes his way into his reader’s soul. Hidden in it is an inescapable obligation on the reader to have a part in the authorship of the work.

If we turn to painting we find there is always a distance between the picture and the viewer, a distance that has been marked out in advance and which makes for a certain reverence towards what is depicted, for an awareness that what is in front of the beholder-whether he finds it comprehensible or not- is an image of reality: it would never occur to anyone to identify a picture with life.

I cannot imagine my life being so free that I could do what I wanted; I have to do what sems most important and necessary at any given stage. And it’s only possible to communicate with the audience if one ignores that eighty percent of people who for some reason have got it into their heads that we are supposed to entertain them. At the same time we have ceased to respect that eighty percent to such an extent that we are prepared to entertain them, because we depend on them for money and for our next production. A grim look-out !

Van Gogh, who declared that ‘duty is something absolute’, would never have thought of trying to please anyone in particular or make anyone like him. He took his work far too seriously, fully aware of its social import; and saw his task as an artist as ‘fighting’ with all his strength, to the last breath, with the material of life, in order to express that ideal truth which lies hidden within it.He wrote in his diary:

When a man expresses clearly what he wants to say, is that strictly speaking not enough ?When he is able to to express his thoughts beautifully, I won’t argue that it’s more pleasant to listen to him; but it doesn’t add much to the beauty of truth, which is beautiful in itself.

Results

Art symbolises the meaning of our existence. As for the results, we answer not for them but for choosing to fulfil or not to fulfil our duty. Such a starting-point lays on the artist the obligation to answer for his own fate. My own future is a cup that will not pass me by – consequently it must be drunk.

I believe that it is always through spiritual crisis that healing occurs. A spiritual crisis is an attempt to find oneself, to acquire new faith. It is the apportioned lot of everyone whose objectives are on the spiritual plane. And how could it be otherwise when the soul yearns for harmony, and life is full of discordance. This dichotomy is the stimulus for movement, the source at once of our pain and of our hope; confirmation of our spiritual depths and potential.

It occured to me that excessive formal simplification could run the risk of appearing precious or mannered. In order to avoid that I tried to eliminate all touches of vagueness and inuendo, those elements that are regarded as the marks of ‘poetic atmosphere’. That sort of atmosphere is always painstakingly built up; I was convinced of the validity of the opposite approach-I must not concern myself with atmosphere at all, for it is something that emerges from the central idea, from the author’s realisation of his conception. And the more precisely the central idea is formulated, the more clearly the meaning of the action is defined for me, the more significant will be the atmosphere that is generated around it. Everything will begin to reverberate in response to the dominant note: things, landscapes, actors’ intentions. it will all become interconnected and necessary. One thing will be echoed by another in a kind of general interchange: and an atmosphere will come into being as a result of this concentration on what is most important.

Finally, I would enjoin the reader – confiding in him utterly – to believe that the one thing that mankind has ever created in a spirit of self-surrender is the artistic image. Perhaps the meaning of all human activity lies in artistic consciousness, in the pointless and selfless creative act ? Perhaps our capacity to create is evidence that we ourselves were created in the image and likeness of God ?

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