Is it possible to create a cinema
stripped down to only the movement that eludes it? To attempt a Beckett-style
cinema that claims not to reproduce reality, but to “bore one
hole after another in it, until what lurks behind it—be it something
or nothing—begins to seep through.” Would this cinema project
onto the screen the basic mechanics of the spectator’s phantasy?
Could this technique reconstruct a secret archive, a memory of repression,
a repression of a reality the camera originally prohibited? To offer
a radiographic analysis of what is under the skin of the image, an x-ray
of motion pictures.
By analyzing films with custom software, I begin with subtraction. Realising
cinematic time is only half of the time of reality, and cinematic movement
is only a series of static moments, I subtract frames from each other
in search for the movement that passed in between the frames—the
movement that existed in between moments. In order to do this, I use
a negative theological strategy; that is: to move towards the invisible
through cancellation. The result reveals new frames for a new film,
a reconstructed film composed only of interframes not illustrating colour
or form, but illuminating the invisible movement.
Three films have been produced using this technique: