Repetition series 2023: Film image #73-88, or I had a dream
11 August 2023
Fragmented self-identity. The same image is repeated, not simply the same, not simply different, not simply inside, not simply outside, blurring the boundaries of identity - me and not me. It's raining, and the image is mediated. Even so, I have a tendency to create resolution, a solution, a coherent stable image, and a solution in which to dissolve that image. Dissolve, dissolution, fragment, disintegrate. My intention was to create a narrative that started with an unresolved or less resolved image and moved towards a more resolved image. This arch narrative for the series is also a repetition. Repetition within repetition, petition, solicit, pray, ask, aka also known as one subject, one object, many subjects, aka different identities, same body, different persons, or many identities making up one person, or many identities constituting many, but fewer persons? How to categorize? Does a person need an identity? Does each blade of grass require something that would identify it, make it different from all the blades? But I think identity includes everything that makes us the same as others and distinguishes us from others. Identity is inherent. With a person comes an identity always, a universal. The fragmentation part is the person's identity. Does that make anything clearer? My system of categorization? Is that going to affect the way I think about identity? I suppose so. Each fragment displayed as a neat little square, in a neat little grid, creating a sense of unease in me. 'What are you doing to us?' they seem to ask. Not screaming quite, but assertively questioning, asking, soliciting, inquiring. Unintentional aspects arising from the negative dialectic, tension and synthesis, repeating round and round, round after round. Gaining clarity? Getting lost in an endless sea? Despair and hope, round and round, repeating phases of despair and hope, flickering and snowing, appearing and disappearing repeatedly. She, Shem, really, my objet petit a, looks like that? My perfect life. Or does he just have a bit of a horse-like face? There is one that achieves something like a bronze metallic sheen, like that, the bronze mirror. The bronze mirror reflects ancient things. Another looks like an illustration from a children's book and makes me think of Westerns. The last one seems to beg other people to see me as normal, acceptable. Some are in daylight, some are in moonlight.
12 August 2023
I had a dream. I am writing an exam, but I am finished writing it, yet I still was required to sit and wait the entire three hours before I could leave. They are asking people to volunteer for something in another subject, something about coding. I raise my hand to volunteer. They say that it requires me to be there at three in the morning, and I have second thoughts. I walk out with someone I knew from high school who committed suicide. I check my results online, but I can't seem to focus. Is that 66, or 65, or 56? I realize that I am looking in the wrong column. I pass with 73.
The image on the screen, that configuration of pixels, that arrangement of pixels, how does it have such an effect on me? I'm red in the face, I feel hot, my heart beats faster. I feel safe; the image is safely in the screen. There is a barrier between us that cannot physically be overcome, yet I am not as safe as I maybe think I am. Something is piercing that barrier. Whatever I am looking at, I am not safe from its infection. It is not as sanitized, as safe as I would like to think.
Some of them seem like star constellations. Some of them seem to float in equilibrium.
11 September 2023
Fragmented - there is no unified space, destabilizing. No womb of comfort. Today, one of them is missing. Someone came into my room one afternoon while I was sleeping and removed it from the wall. Now there is a gap, a lack, a hole. It is difficult to experience them at once as a unified space. Is this good training? How to see things from different perspectives, from more angles, in more dimensions, letting go of my preconceived idea of a unified and stable image? The rain pelts down in all of them, and where there is rain, there is often lightning and thunder. The abject pressing in upon, becoming aware of the abject, and then rolling like thunder through my being. The white unicorn as an image of myself, pure white and good, disturbed by the lightning and thunder and fragmentation, destabilization, oscillation. Things start to snow and flicker, flicker and snow. A journey of self-discovery will perhaps result in a better, more nuanced understanding of reality and self-identity. At first, a centripetal movement, inward; then a centrifugal movement outward as the ego becomes more established, transcending the ego and engaging more broadly with the external world. But the image does not necessarily resolve into a clearer, more unified image. Rather, an awareness of the fragmentation and of the abject that constitutes the self. No more unicorns and goddesses, just a white pony. There is the Apollonian and Dionysian, but the rain speaks of a third entity, Jesus, and the latter is the only thing that keeps its unity throughout, able to appear unified within the fallen world of fragmented Apollonian and Dionysian detritus.
Fragmented self-identity. The same image is repeated, not simply the same, not simply different, not simply inside, not simply outside, blurring the boundaries of identity - me and not me. It's raining, and the image is mediated. Even so, I have a tendency to create resolution, a solution, a coherent stable image, and a solution in which to dissolve that image. Dissolve, dissolution, fragment, disintegrate. My intention was to create a narrative that started with an unresolved or less resolved image and moved towards a more resolved image. This arch narrative for the series is also a repetition. Repetition within repetition, petition, solicit, pray, ask, aka also known as one subject, one object, many subjects, aka different identities, same body, different persons, or many identities making up one person, or many identities constituting many, but fewer persons? How to categorize? Does a person need an identity? Does each blade of grass require something that would identify it, make it different from all the blades? But I think identity includes everything that makes us the same as others and distinguishes us from others. Identity is inherent. With a person comes an identity always, a universal. The fragmentation part is the person's identity. Does that make anything clearer? My system of categorization? Is that going to affect the way I think about identity? I suppose so. Each fragment displayed as a neat little square, in a neat little grid, creating a sense of unease in me. 'What are you doing to us?' they seem to ask. Not screaming quite, but assertively questioning, asking, soliciting, inquiring. Unintentional aspects arising from the negative dialectic, tension and synthesis, repeating round and round, round after round. Gaining clarity? Getting lost in an endless sea? Despair and hope, round and round, repeating phases of despair and hope, flickering and snowing, appearing and disappearing repeatedly. She, Shem, really, my objet petit a, looks like that? My perfect life. Or does he just have a bit of a horse-like face? There is one that achieves something like a bronze metallic sheen, like that, the bronze mirror. The bronze mirror reflects ancient things. Another looks like an illustration from a children's book and makes me think of Westerns. The last one seems to beg other people to see me as normal, acceptable. Some are in daylight, some are in moonlight.
12 August 2023
I had a dream. I am writing an exam, but I am finished writing it, yet I still was required to sit and wait the entire three hours before I could leave. They are asking people to volunteer for something in another subject, something about coding. I raise my hand to volunteer. They say that it requires me to be there at three in the morning, and I have second thoughts. I walk out with someone I knew from high school who committed suicide. I check my results online, but I can't seem to focus. Is that 66, or 65, or 56? I realize that I am looking in the wrong column. I pass with 73.
The image on the screen, that configuration of pixels, that arrangement of pixels, how does it have such an effect on me? I'm red in the face, I feel hot, my heart beats faster. I feel safe; the image is safely in the screen. There is a barrier between us that cannot physically be overcome, yet I am not as safe as I maybe think I am. Something is piercing that barrier. Whatever I am looking at, I am not safe from its infection. It is not as sanitized, as safe as I would like to think.
Some of them seem like star constellations. Some of them seem to float in equilibrium.
11 September 2023
Fragmented - there is no unified space, destabilizing. No womb of comfort. Today, one of them is missing. Someone came into my room one afternoon while I was sleeping and removed it from the wall. Now there is a gap, a lack, a hole. It is difficult to experience them at once as a unified space. Is this good training? How to see things from different perspectives, from more angles, in more dimensions, letting go of my preconceived idea of a unified and stable image? The rain pelts down in all of them, and where there is rain, there is often lightning and thunder. The abject pressing in upon, becoming aware of the abject, and then rolling like thunder through my being. The white unicorn as an image of myself, pure white and good, disturbed by the lightning and thunder and fragmentation, destabilization, oscillation. Things start to snow and flicker, flicker and snow. A journey of self-discovery will perhaps result in a better, more nuanced understanding of reality and self-identity. At first, a centripetal movement, inward; then a centrifugal movement outward as the ego becomes more established, transcending the ego and engaging more broadly with the external world. But the image does not necessarily resolve into a clearer, more unified image. Rather, an awareness of the fragmentation and of the abject that constitutes the self. No more unicorns and goddesses, just a white pony. There is the Apollonian and Dionysian, but the rain speaks of a third entity, Jesus, and the latter is the only thing that keeps its unity throughout, able to appear unified within the fallen world of fragmented Apollonian and Dionysian detritus.