Cold @jane-suzy - Tumblr Blog

thecrystallisedvoid

inneroptics

DAISUKE YOKOTA

equatorjournal

A Portrait of Eliane Radigue

barcarole

Chantal Akerman filming A couch in New York in 1995 by Carl De Keyzer.

lichtschimmer

Africa, Kenya, Kwale, Diani Beach - webcam

biscodeja-vu

thecrystallisedvoid

jane-suzy

Pearlie Frisch

henridecorinth-deactivated20190

Aurore by Marc Hurtado and Eric Hurtado, 1989.

art-o-rama

PM8, Vigo

ART-O-RAMA 2015

©Jean-Christophe Lett

psyche8eros

“Le plus profond en nous: la surface.”

Ce qui’il y a le plus profond dans l’homme c’est la peau…. Et puis moelle, cerveau, tout ce qu’il faut pour sentir, pâtir, penser …. être profond (…), ce sont des inventions de la peau! Nous avons beau creuser, docteur, nous sommes … ectoderme. “ (Paul Valery, 1932 Oeuvres complètes)

„The deepest thing in us: the surface.“

„The most profound thing in man is his skin. Our marrow, our brain, everything we need to feel, suffer or think… to be profound […], all these are inventions of the skin!… However deep we dig, doctor, we are… ectoderm.“

„Was in unserer tiefsten Tiefe liegt: die Oberfläche.“

Was am tiefsten im Menschen liegt, ist die Haut.« “Und dann Mark, Gehirn, alles, was man zum Fühlen, Leiden, Denken … in die Tiefe gehen (…) braucht, sind Erfindungen der Haut. .. Wir können graben, Doktor, aber wir sind … ektoderm«

> Didier Anzieu, Le moi-peau, The Skin-Ego, Das Haut-Ich, (S.85)

dhrupad

AMRIT GANGAR: Whenever I see your film Kalighat Fetish, I remember Mahatma Gandhi’s visit to the Kalighat temple. He was quite disturbed by the killing of animals there. He asked his host, “How is it that Bengal with all its knowledge, intelligence, sacrifice, and emotion tolerates this slaughter?” (Source: Gandhi’s autobiography The Story of My Experiments with Truth). In your film, you give so much time and space to the ‘violent’ images. Is it your ‘experiment with truth’?

ASHISH AVIKUNTHAK: Kalighat Fetish is contemplation on two ideas - transgression and morbidity. They are connected by the act of transformation, leading to death. Both the violence of sacrifice and the performance of transformation for me are transgressive acts performed as an engagement with morbidity. They are part of the same act of reverence and anguish. For me, Kalighat Fetish is an outcome of my own interaction with the memory of death and dying. The ‘brutality’ of the sacrifice is for me a meditation on the morbidity of death.

Personally, the film is a cinematographic rendition of memory. The film has been shot in two spatial formations that are an integral part of my memoryscape - the house I was raised and the famous neighbourhood Kali temple in Kolkata - the Kalighat.

My home has been an ambivalent space for me - I don’t really have very fond memories, nor do I have any terrible memories of the space- it has always been, and very simply, the house where I spent eighteen years of my life from 1973-1991. My parents don’t live in that house any more, but we still own it. Over time, it has virtually become an ossified memory space, where I have shot other films too, Dancing Othello and End Note. Whenever I go to Kolkata, I spend a lot of time in this house.

Kalighat Fetish is a manifestation of these recollections - more an experiment with memories than with truth. And unlike Gandhi I do not claim to inhabit any moral universe. Gandhi’s comment originated from the Vaishnava sectarian belief that he firmly held and was raised in. He was unable to appreciate the ritualistic necessity of the sacrifice within the domain of the Tantrik Shakta cult of Kalighat.

[In conversation: Ashish Avikunthak with Amrit Gangar “Cinema Prayoga: Indian Experimental Films 1913-2006”]