Every
act fact or pattern of behaviour may be taken as equivocal (at least). Beyond
dry signs the plane of meaning lies spread out. Understanding and
interpretation. Appearance is but a torn skin and the slime of life is
throbbing from behind with fluid frivolity. I am getting absorbed into the
sticky obscurity. I give up deciding about my future - it is still ahead. I
give up defining myself - I am still here. I leave the past where it is. As I
am losing the sense of things I know something has started for me. That is my
point of departure, because I feel free and lost in the labyrinth of ambiguities, of virtual
meanings. Appearances cast quick glances in the pool of contexts.
Not
exteriors only turn out to be visible. A scalpel is cutting into stinking
illusions with burning painfulness, and deeper - castrating wishes, cutting out
eyelids of empty eyes: the scalpel of nihilism. A Whore and Madonna annihilate
and become one, memory and hope annihilate and become one, banality and poetry
annihilate and become one. White light is burning the retina, radioactivity
gives birth to mutants. I am moving through polished human shadows. Trying to
colour them with a kit of paints. The slippery surface gives me no chance. I
keep trying.
1995
V. Zankov
top
Anthropology of Everyday Life
Project
Some
Possible Reconstructions
Points of
Departure: everyday life - religion
everyday life - sex
everyday life - TV
everyday life -
death
1.
Everyday life - Religion:
A. a videosculpture “The Last
Supper” - reconstruction and performance of an event that possibly happened
(that’s what the Bible says) through the introduction of modern TV technologies
(TV screens, video players). The pattern of communication and the language are
updated, the meaning distorted and perverse.
(detailed
description of the project is enclosed);
B. a videoinstallation “Alice
in the Mirror World” - is it possible to find the face of God in the faces of
his exalted religious followers? How about your own face?
(detailed
description of the project is enclosed);
2.
Everyday life - Sex: back
A. videoinstallation and
performance “The Ecstasy of St. Theresa”. Reconstructing the ecstasy scene - a
way to make safe sex. Screened love. The TV screen in its capacity of
electronic condom. The electronic TV phallus: is possible; it is acceptable;
intimate; it works. Yet it is not real, it is not vulnerable, it is sterile: it
is an image, a derivative of flesh rather than the flesh itself. Reconstructing
the ecstasy scene with the TV screen as mediator. The ecstasy - erotic experience
with a fantastic image introduced, a result of the vow of abstinence. Suggests
a particular sexual experience:
‘Then
I saw the angel beside me...there was a golden arrow with a fiery edge in his
hand. He seemed to stick the arrow into my heart many times and I felt how it
made its way into my body. My suffering was so intense that wails escaped from
my lips, and the pain I felt was so incomparably sweet that I wished there were
no end to my pangs’
St.
Theresa
back
3.
Everyday life - TV:
A. image of desires “Who is
talking”, videoinstallation. The lips Of Betina Champoeva ( a popular TV
speaker and beauty) as an archaeological find. The lips of the TV speaker will
be shot with a camera from the TV screen, so that her lips, filling up the
whole screen, should move at slowed down
speed. The image is vague.
Description:
a male voice, coming from the screen (installed among archaeological finds) is
talking in a blurred and rambling manner, his voice now and then dying out,
getting lost among radio jamming, interfering with other voices...
back B. a videosculpture
“Reconstruction of Homo Sapience: 20th c.”. Accomplishing the collection of
archeological findings: the distinctive features of human social and sexual
behaviour are obviously getting blurred. On the other hand the phenomenon of
Television dematerialises and annihilates sexuality by creating electronic
objects of desire. TV absorbs us in virtual worlds and makes us feel them as
our real, all-encompassing, precise and exhaustive world picture. What we lose,
in the effort (and will) to trust this reality, is our ability for human
communication.
"Television signifies the
body-becomes-electronic, the body-without-sex, it is a practice for a role in
the world of no-body."
Ebda s17
Reconstruction of Homo Sapience: 20th
c.
Videosculpture
Description: Four TV screens, arranged in a column one over
the other, display different parts of a human body, so that the four screens
put the body together: standing still, with hands let loose beside the hips.
The whole body comprises of four different fragments, each of them recorded and
displayed with a separate video recorder. The body is slowly turning round. In
the beginning it is a dressed male body, which turning round and round
systematically loses parts of its clothes. When the part below the waist is
already undressed it turns out that in stead of the male genitals under the
clothes, pubic hair and shapely female legs appear. At the same time the two screens above display the torso of a
man, dressed in shirt. The metamorphoses of the body go through a variety of
stages:
a nude male body that suddenly acquires female breasts - a
nude female body - a dressed female body until it comes back to its initial
image. A hybrid hermaphrodite is composed, 25 years old (average age
top
back
The Ecstasy of St. Theresa
Performance
back
Description:
Seven TV screens, arranged in a row, first display the picture of slowly moving
clouds, lit by the afternoon sun, the blue sky around. A naked woman is calmly
sitting on the TV in the middle, her body covered with airy transparent
garment. Slowly almost unnoticeable the woman starts moving her knees apart.
Her body is twisting forward, her shoulders thrust back, her breasts come out
of the end of her white cover, which is
slipping down her body. Slowly. At the same time the vague image of an erected
phallus appears on the TV screen below her, gradually fills in the screen and
turns upward. Next comes the moment of ejaculation, played at slower speed than
normal. The woman is sitting with her eyes closed and her head, thrust back.
The clouds on the other TV screens are now replaced by a face in a close up,
displayed at different angles by the different TV screens. The lips of that
face pronounce the words of St. Theresa in different intonation, pitch and
diction so that her words are being woven into a blurred throbbing whisper,
dying out softly. The woman slowly takes her initial position. Tension relief.
A well-known TV speaker on display, wishing us good night, wishing love
tonight, a clock comes up, ticking the time left to midnight and to the end of
the program.
Headlines
follow: screened sex... high-tech sex...safe sex... happy end.
back
‘Simulacrum
does not hide Truth -
Truth can
guard the lack of truth
on its
own.
Simulacrum
is Truth’
A structuralist
interpretation of ‘The Ecclesiast’
The Last Supper
Videosculpture
Project
Introduction
When a few
years ago I decided to reconstruct a part from the Holy Bible, known as “The
Last Supper” using modern means of expression (like videotapes, monitors,
Videorecorders) I was aware of the difficulties that may arise from the
technical part only. It turned out that these difficulties can be bridged over
- and in fact they were. I had to write down and record on a separate videotape
any of the thirteen dialogues, so that when they are simultaneously played I
will have a normal table conversation as a result: with its main theme (or
leading thread) taken from the Bible and opened up. I did not have any idea at
that time that a similar reconstruction will inevitably clash two phenomena
against each other, either of which is powerful enough to influence the world
and to pretend ruling over it: the television and the Holy Bible (both having
transcended their original purpose).
The Holy
Bible, on the basis of words and using words, growing into narratives,
following events and describing stories, stands close to fiction yet rises
above writings with their typical limitations and becomes the Book of Books; It
is an instruction, it creates and suggests norms. It is more real and more to
the truth, It is more authentic than Life is in its manifestations, and Life
can only interpret it with a view to its needs and when the time comes to.
The
question is that Television also prescribes norms and suggests them in a way
that is at least as much convincing. It has developed form a witness, a
recorder, a transmitter of reality into our all-seeing “third eye” that makes
everything to be accessible here and now on live. The particular, personal,
daily life becomes part of the life of the big TV family: the world. And we
have to obey the norms that it prescribes and we have to follow the unvoiced
moral advice if we want to belong to that hiper-reality, that thousands of TV
cameras produce every moment. We look straight into the face of “GOOD” and
“EVIL”. No questions are to be asked. We believe all things are true. We follow
the events with the eyes of a witness. We follow fashion, sports, the black
chronicles, the gossip, the wars, and sinking deep in this hiper-realistic and hypnotic reality we turn into its
consequence....
The
question how to make a combination between these two phenomena, different in
the way they function, yet similar in their intentions and final goals, needs
no longer an answer. Because this final goal is Salvation: to be saved from our
selves dissolving all personal features into TV or religious dictates.
There was
one more question that had already found its practical solution, but I still
did not know the answer. How to make a stylistically coherent whole out of a
sculpturally defined image on the one hand, a text that is derivative from the
Biblical text on the other and a video image, derivative of the TV image. This
last sentence already provides the answer: into a derivative (to use the terms
in the Differential mathematics) with a view to Time as Historical concept.
I expanded
the Biblical text so that it adopted modern nuances and meanings: I made it
trite. Additionally I introduced the aesthetics of the all-seeing TV eye into
the Eve of Crucifixion and destroyed the whiff of fate and destiny coming out
of it and encompassing the whole episode.
I feel
that Leonardo pursued similar intentions with
the introduction of theatrical devices into this scene at large. The
ostentatious gestures, the displayed composition, the way the table was placed
- the action is as if performed on a scene. Suddenly time disappears and the
figures freeze in their most telling gestures and reactions, theatrically
performing the embarrassment and the excitement that the words of Christ
brought. Genuinely trite and aiming at the core of his time.
I have to
come out of the triteness, because it has already turned into an indispensable
feature of the TV imagery. I am forced into introducing mythic quality in the
communication between the thirteen TV screens around a long table. I can not
rely on the text either: it is almost depersonalised. The funny thing, the unease, the unusual, the mystic quality is
already contained in the communication among the thirteen TV screens that
display the image of one and the same person: thirteen TV sets that chat with
each other around a table with white spread on it: a single face resolved into
thirteen images is talking to...himself. Self-isolation, Self-sufficiency - the
visitor feels isolated, he feels a stranger and unwelcome, nobody invites him
to this funny, almost incomprehensible and secret dialogue among TV sets...
The texts
that follow this one have been written for several years now. They differ in
style, expression and approach: these are rather fragments than parts of a
whole. I will hardly do without any of them. Complementing one another they
build up the puzzle that I called “The Last Supper”.
Sofia,
1995 Ventsislav
Zankov
The Last Supper
Project
'...language can hardly present thought at once in its coherence: it has to set it
out in parts and in accordance with a certain linear continuity...'
M.
Faucault
Possible
Interpretations of the videosculpture “The Last Supper”:
1. Getting
over the linear temporal continuity of the videoinstallation through composing
a branching and stratified language labyrinth, limited in the framework of the
temporary existence of the installation ( its limited duration in time lends
completeness to its temporal and spatial image and defines it as a sculpture
image).
Getting
over this separate, concrete and linear expression through simultaneous
matching of dialogues, that provide possible interpretations of one and
the same theme and that overlap and
grow out of one another.
2.
Illustration of a possible ramifications of personality. The multiplied image
of the “speaker” (the only participant in the growing language labyrinth)
builds up an enormous monologue out of the dialogues among himself and his
images. This monologue is in fact a typical feature of the psychology of any
individual, simultaneity being inherent to human psychological existence. When
the balance between simultaneity and discrepancy is distorted by the pathologic
growth ramifications the individual faces schizophrenic experience.
3.
Political Interpretations: the conventionality of communication keeps balancing
at the seeming barrier beyond which sense is being lost. The variety of levels
and meanings of the linguistic expression of meaning cause its dissolving in
the labyrinth of formal and virtual meanings.
The
videoinstallation “The Last Supper” transcends the boundary, over which
communication presents obviously a simulacrum.
4.
Reconstruction of a virtual supper (present or future and by all means secret*)
on the basis of TV technologies. (Food and having supper are both a symbol and
a token).
"Electronenstrahl
wirft via Bildschirm die Bilder auf den Betrachter, der Zuschauer wird selbst
zum Bildschirm... "
"The
viewer functions as a screen, a simulation of "self". Television
confirms the diagnosis that the boundaries between inside and outside are
blurred: the diagnosis that "self" is an out-rated concept"
Acconci
"Video
und sein Sozialsystem Fernsehen inklusive seiner Objekte ist eine Technologie
der Fiktionen: "Television is a rehearsal for the time when human beings
no longer need to have bodies.
Ebda s17
5. A usual table conversation between lots of people.
6. The Biblical text is in opposition defined as fiction.
The aspects of interpreting the videoinstalation described
above are neither complete nor final. Together with other possible aspects they
are to give shape to the simultaneous, coherent and complete idea about “The
Last Supper” as truth.
The Last Supper
Project
Introductory Questions: What is the news
Who is
the Speaker?
Who is
the Spectator?
Who is
the Listener?
Who is
the Traitor?
What is
the Price?
And the
Message?
The Last Supper
Project
The TV image of the TV
Speaker is:
- a image we know;
- a decent image;
- a image that films well;
- a paragon;
- a image we long for;
- an Icon.
He
is always present at dinner time, he informs us, he makes observations on us.
He is everyday life, he is the embodiment of everyday life, he is a paragon of
good conduct, he is a symbol of the normal, the sigh of prosperity. He brings
comfort, safety and home cosiness. He is watching us, he is amusing, he is
admirable, instructive, he gives us advice, he joins us and we feel we belong,
he is attractive, he is part of us and we are used to him. He makes us forget
about time, about how lonely we are, he makes us forget that we exist, he is a
seducer. We exist through him. We live through him and for him. He is god.
this is mysterious
The Last Supper
Project
cosiness
voice
talking
conversation
food
dinner
conversation
drink
TV
speaker
news
The Last Supper
Project
reality
reality-----TV-----TV reality-------
reality /reproduced and multiplied TV REALITY - LIVE/
The last Supper and the attaining of its total discretion
(secrecy):
in the distorted
communication
with the lack of
communication
in the simulated communication
The Last Supper
Project
The image of the TV Speaker's human existence - the
anthropomorphous image of the TV Speaker is but a shadow of the image from the
TV screen.
A QUESTION: 1.
Which is the true image?
2.
How can the TV image take shape without the spectators?
3.
What will be the image if the spectators come also from the
TV screen?
Impressiveness will be destroyed.
Representation will be lost.
doubt
is coming to the surface
uncertainly
is ahead
lost
sense is wanted
The Last Supper
Project
Description of the Videosculpture
Thirteen
video monitors on stands together with their video players are placed round a
long table and are playing at one at one and the same time records of
questions, answers and remarks of a
multiplied man - speaker. The remarks from the dialogues match one
another, so that a formal table conversation comes as a result ( and may be a
Biblical one?) The character of the speaker is built up out of the 13th TV
versions of its image. He is a spectator, a speaker, and his own and only
partner in this normal scene of authentic conversation that is going on now.
Any of the 13th records is almost identical to the others: the behaviour of the
speaker, his pitch of voice, intonation, pauses and facial expression are
similar; the discernible difference is in the remarks that have to form a
dissonant, indifferent, vapid, clumsy and boring table conversation among lots
of people. This conversation starts over again unnoticeably every 20 minutes,
and this cycle may be endlessly repeated.
Every
separate TV image is shot in a close-up, (the shoulders included), his
movements are shot with fixed camera and the record lasts for 20 minutes (as
long as one cycle of table conversation). If possible the image should be
natural size (it depends on the size of the TV screens). The table, lit by the
TV screens will be surrounded by gentle semi-darkness, the space around will be
large enough to encompass the composition of the table with the TV screens. The
access to 'The last Supper" to be limited. Silence at work - desirable!
Place of
the reconstruction - The Archaeological Museum
The Last Supper
Project
Audio- Video Puzzle
The image
of the puzzle - articulated in n parts. Every part provides information about
the Image, but is not the Image itself; every part builds up the image.
A
Question: Is the image to be found in every part?
The
Image in "The Last Supper' installation is a one whole, but many-sided,
composed out of its parts (not details) that a similar in form and their form
makes them fit each other. Fitting together happens in the time duration of the
installation.
The
remarks from the dialogues are in fact the parts to fit. Every TV screen
(speaker) has its own form, its own remarks, its own part in the dialogue. The
image comes up with the fitting of parts to one another. The appearance of the
Image is the Sacrament. What will the image be? That will be clear when the
13th video recorders and TV sets start their interaction and fill in the space
of the table with the texture of “rapport” among similar images. Then the Image
will be real.
I
construct the parts of the puzzle so that they can fit together.
I have my
idea about the puzzle and I suppose how it should look like,
But the
Image will not take shape unless I run the parts together.
Because It
is the Image of the Puzzle.
The Last Supper
Project
The Last
Supper
Labyrinth
of the Multipersonal
Christ
created his disciples.
Every
disciple reflects part of the image (Of Christ)
Every
disciple interprets part of the Personality (of Christ)
Every
disciple holds part of Christ
Every
disciple improves his own part
Question: -Where is the image (of Christ)?
Answer: - The Image is real.
- The image
is a labyrinth of the multipersonal /the personality of the disciples/
The
disciples build up Christ.
this is
secret
The Last Supper
Project
How can we
make an audio-video puzzle?
Instruction
1.
Choose a random text and if possible well-known to the public (you can pick up
one from the Bible) like 'The Last Supper' for example.
2.
Carefully expand the text in its parts, keeping to the authenticity of the
original text. You can rewrite the remarks from the dinner scene, making them
simpler and putting a modern touch to the biblical context, for example.
3.
Mix the parts.
4.
A few days after you can give to any part the shape you want to. Take for
example whichever remark you chose and enrich it.
5.
When you complete the processing of the different parts you come to the most
important thing - to give them their final shape so that every part will fit
every other we choose ( that is to work out dialogues out of the appropriately
modified remarks).
6. Now you
can put the image together.
The Last Supper
Main Dialogue
1 /S - 2/ Today is the first day
2 /S - 11/ Of the Holiday
3 /S - 10/ We are all present
4 /S - 7/ No one is absent
5 /S - 8/ It feels good to get together
6 /S - 7/ Get going
7 /S - 12/ We need this supper
8 /S - 7/ We've got one important thing to discuss
9 /S - 8/ ...a pressing question...
10 /S - 4/ It's
about all of us
11 /S - 9/ ...and
it's pressing, isn't it?
12 /S - 5/ ...and
important...
13 /S - 6/ Please,
everybody, we need absolute majority on this
14 /S - 13/ We
will hopefully reach consensus in the course of discussion
15 /S - 1/ What’s
it all about?
16 /S - 13/ It's
about tomorrow
17 /S - 11/ What
day is it tomorrow?
18 /S - 10/ Today
is Thursday
19 /S - 12/ Tomorrow
is Friday
20 /S - 7/ There’s
an important event tomorrow
21 /S - 5/ One
of us will be betrayed
22 /S - 9/ For
what sake?
23 /S - 2/ It
is not up us to know that , I am afraid
24 /S - 9/ I
see
25 /S - 4/ We
didn't get together to find out what makes sense and what doesn't
26 /S - 6/ We'd
rather find out a solution
27 /S - 2/ The
important thing is who is to be betrayed
28 /S - 13/ To
me the important thing is who will turn to be
the
traitor
29 /S - 1/ Will
the event be televised?
30 /S - 12/ In
what way?
31 /S - 7/ I'd
rather want to know the price for which I will be betrayed
32 /S - 8/ What
makes you think you' ll be the one?
33 /S - 7/ I
was let to know that
34 /S - 10/ Let
us assume you are right. Still from a historical point of view it is at least that important to know who is the
traitor
35 /S - 6/ Surely
not I, Lord
36 /S - 9/ How
about me, Lord
37 /S - 10/ Maybe,
it's me after all...
38 /S - 5/ It's
surely me, Lord
39 /S - 4/ To
me it will be the one who dips the ends of his sleeve into the main dish
40 /S - 3/ I
don't think this is the appropriate way to find out
the
truth
41 /S - 11/ It
makes no difference how you will find the truth
42 /S - 2/ The
thing is to find out the truth whatever it may be
43 /S - 13/ To
me all that is beating about the bush. We didn't come here tonight to do that
44 /S - 1/ We
should have things put straight: I mean find the reasons about this betrayal
45 /S - 12 / Come on there's a single reason and it's very
simple:
the
Son of Man will go just as it is written about him
46 /S -
3/ Where
is that written?
47 /S - 10 / In the Script, the New Version
48 /S - 11 / The Supper Scene
49 /S - 6/ There's
also a hint in the text about the traitor:
woe
to that man who Betrays the Son of Man
50 /S - 8/ Yes,
but he is also to remain in history as both admonition and instruction to future generations
51 /S - 9/ Do
you think a traitor will appropriate serve
as
instruction?
52 /S - 4/ It
is not important if the example is appropriate: the important thing is that examples
should play their roles the
right way: examples should be examples
53 /S - 7/ It
would be better for him if he had not been born
54 /S - 3/ Please, we still don't
know who will make the betrayal
55 /S - 2/ To
me the price of betrayal is essential to the
betrayal
itself
56 /S - 1/ The
lower the price, the worthier the betrayal
57 /S - 13 / ...and will lend clarity to all this...
58 /S - 12 / Let's take the practical aspect: what is the
price?
59 /S - 5/ The
price is already on the price list and we shouldn't care about this, should we?
60 /S - 4/ When
was it put on the price list?
61 /S - 9/ Yesterday
or this morning, I suppose
62 /S - 3/ I
hope the price is two-penny - half-penny and we don't have to waste our time on it here
63 /S - 10 / Be sure that is the case
64 /S - 8 / Today
nobody may be sure about anything
65 /S -
7/ One of
us will denounce his deeds. Three times
66 /S - 6/ How
come that you know that?
67 /S - 7/ I
told you I have my own sources of information
68 /S - 8/ So
you should also have information about the one who will betray?
69 /S - 4/ I
think I do
70 /S - 11/ Will
you let us know if it's not too secret
71 /S - 7/ It's
too interesting to be understood now
72 /S - 12/ It'
ll be too boring to make everything clear today
73 /S - 3/ The
curious thing is that the traitor is among us
74 /S - 2/ Surely
not me, Lord
75 /S - 1/ You
said it
76 /S - 11/ I
think it's high time we stop discussing this question
77 /S - 7/ You'
re right: it's not a long way off till tomorrow, and tomorrow everything will come clear
78 /S - 6 / We'
ll have clear whether tomorrow, I suppose
79 /S - 5/ It's
high time we get started
80 /S - 9/ I
suggest that you try my bread: this bread is from me
81 /S - 10/ Let's
make a toast
82 /S - 12/ Let's
drink to all of us who sometimes fail in our judgement and always try hard to
live to i