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The recently
developed film theory (based on the psychoanalytical theory by Jacques
Lacan) considers the screen as a mirror, wherein the viewer is under the
impression that he himself is creating the film through an identification
with his own (inherent voyeuristic) act of watching.
In fact there are specific conditions which make this way of looking
at film possible. tabula rasa accounts for these preconditions,
swinging from figurative to the abstract, which as a visual irritation
does not allow itself to be understood as one`s own creation as a viewer.
As object of the look serves the most common one: the female body. It`s
this body, which moves back and forth between revealing (as a picture)
and covering. Behind the power of the imaginary reality of classical film
one can find the symbolic discourse of the Other (the author/filmmaker)
in which the power of film as imagined reality is revealed.
Peter Tscherkassky
The target of tabula rasa is the heart of cinema. Voyeuristic
desire as the precondition for all cinema pleasure is at stake here. What
Christian Metz (based on the psychoanalytical theory by Jacques Lacan)
has established in theory is rendered as film in tabula rasa. At
the beginning we can recognize only shadows from which the picture of
a woman undressing herself hesitantly emerges. But exactly at the point
when one believes one can make out what it is, the camera itself is located
between our gaze and the object. The body of the woman keeps moving back
and forth between revealing (as a picture) and covering, swinging from
figurative to the abstract. tabula rasa takes distance, the fundamental
principle of voyeurism, literally, as it shows us the object of desire
but continually removes it from our gaze.
Gabriele Jutz
Cinematheque Royal, Bruxelles/Belgium, acquired tabula rasa
for their permanent collection. |
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