James Leo Cahill - Anacinema

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The InstantRne Thoreau Bruckner, editor, Spectator 28:2 (Fall 2008) 90-101.

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Ananema: Peter TserkasskysCinematic BreakdownsTowards the Unspeakable Film

James Leo Cahill

itin order to cultivate the power of the imagealone.4 Dulacs modernist phantasy, casting a

beam of light into a dark future, evokes a singularsecret cinematography, a crypto-cinematography,

yet to comeconstituting thefilm that must notbe able to be told.5

Peter scherkasskys (b. 1958) films offercompelling responses to Dulacs calls for amedium-specific cinma pur and her search forthe film that must not be able to be told, giving

viewers glimpses of something unspeakableemerging at the moment of celluloids twilight.

scherkasskys cinematography, engaged in self-conscious explorations of films essence at thehistorical conjuncture of its apparent obsolescence,operates through techniques that break down,break apart, and break from film. scherkasskys

workespecially his handmade, camera-less,recycled footage 35mm CinemaScope trilogy:LArrive, Outer Space, and Dream Work (1997-2001) and Instructions for a Sound and Light

Machine (2005)enacts a practice of cinematicbreakdown that applies an extraordinary pressure

to the film frame and its temporal economy ofthe instant, understood here as both the basic

Now a real lm must not be able to be told Te future belongs to te lm tat annot be told.

[Or, un vrai lm ne doit pas pouvoir se raconter Lavenir est au lm qui ne pourra seraconter] Germaine Dulac

Te epigraph to this essay comes from GermaineDulacs (1882-1942) polemic Visual and Anti-

Visual Films (1928), part of her ongoing projectto imagine, on the page and in her films, a properlycinematographic form of expression, a cinma pur.1Dulac asserts the necessity of cultivating only thoseproperties irreducibly specific to the medium, itscinematographic essence.2Her prose draws a senseof urgency from its opposition to the emergenceof the talkie (le film parl), perceived as inevitablyreducing the expressive range of cinematographyto forms of canned theater. Te realization of the

artistic potential of the medium, she argues, requiresa film practice independent of all non-cinematicart forms, particularly literary conventions suchas narrative, plot, and dialogue. A real film, inDulacs idiom, can only exist outside of words(hors les mots).3 It requires a cinematographyan expressive system of writing, a language ofcinemawhose immediacy evades the constraintsof verbal and written language, in order to present(to make present), at the scene of projection, that

which can neither be spoken nor written. Te

visual film will break free from the logos andphonos of language, create a break in itbreak


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content of the photogram and the interval thatmarks its exteriority. Considering the productivityof scherkasskys cinematic breakdowns bysuspending together several instances of breakagefrom his films Freeze Frame(8mm, 1983) Motion

Picture (La Sortie des Ouvriers de lUsine Lumire Lyon) (16mm, 1984) and Outer Space (35mmCinemaScope, 1999), this essay offers a tentativetheorization of an unspeakable language ofcinemaan anacinemathat applies criticalpressure to the very possibility of its own linguisticmetaphor, and, in asserting an essence, finds itselfradically transformed.

Like Dulacs aesthetic-theoretical projects in1920s Paris, scherkasskys oeuvre has developed

over the past thirty years (1979-2008) throughthe interpenetrations of his work as a filmmaker,film theorist, and programmer/promoter in the

vibrant avant-garde film cultures of Austria.6Tecurator and critic Alexander Horwath situates

scherkasskys workalong with that of othermembers of the third generation Austrian avant-garde filmmakers, such as Lisl Ponger, DietmarBrehm, and Martin Arnoldas ineluctablymarked by the crisis of avant-garde cinema inthe 1970s, instigated by the impasse and sense

of exhaustion effected by structural cinemas zerodegree reductions as well as the rise of video.

scherkassky and his peers began working in themedium at the moment when film acquires themelancholy aura of a death row prisoner.7Many ofthese filmmakers took to the grainy textures of thesuper-8 format (unmistakably filmic in appearanceand relatively unexplored in relation to 16mm and35mm gauges) and to recycled footage, makingentries into the avant-garde film practices that often

traversed its perceived deadlock between structuralcinemas ontological examinations of the mediumand representational/semiotic approaches toavant-garde filmmaking: engaging simultaneouslystructural and representational concerns.8One ofthe unique aspects of scherkasskys films is theirclose attention to the specificities of the film framein relation to film gauge, be it super-8mm (Aderlass,

Erotique, Freeze Frame, tabula rasa); 16mm (MotionPicture); 35mm (Manufraktur, Parallel Space: InterView, Happy End); or 35mm CinemaScope (thetrilogy: LArrive, Outer Space, Dream Work, plus

Instructions for a Light and Sound Machine).

scherkasskys films take the mediumsunique materiality as a central concern: I attemptto create art works that can only be made withfilm. In other words, if there were nothing otherthan the computer, hard disk and magnetic tape,

then these works would simply not exist.9Tisontological assertionever precarioustakesform in his films exacerbation of ClementGreenbergs teleological assessment of modernistproduction as self-definition with a vengeance.10

scherkassky often uses an idiom of breakage andbreakdowns when reflecting upon his work and itseffects, a tendency crystallized in his neologismmanufrakture, created to describe his hand-made, frame-based, contact printing dark room

process. A play on the word manufacture thatcombines manu (hand) and fracture (to shatter,to break apart), manufrakture emphasizes thecreative and productive forms of breaking thatenergize his work. He also makes the more generalclaim that an interest in breakingthe aestheticbreakthrough in the breakdownsubtends all ofhis work from the very start: Perhaps one couldsay that from the outset I wanted to unravel anddissolve the medium, destroy is not the rightexpression, but, yes, some type of breaking, and

in breaking, allowing something else to becomevisible.11

scherkasskys work engages three interrelatedmodes of cinematic breakdownphysical,psychological, and (psycho)analyticeach of

which places considerable critical pressure on thefilm frame as the basic unit of the filmic economy.12First, it stages the physical breakdown or failureof the medium and the apparatus, making theseinstances a primary event of the work. Freeze

Frame (1983, super-8mm blown up to 16mm)exemplifies the filmic apparatuss immanentpotential to malfunction and even self-destruct.

Te filmed footage, a dense and textured series ofoverlapping views of construction sites and heavymachinery (cement mixers, an excavator claw arm)as well as trash dumps and explosions, superimposeconstruction with destruction, creation andobsolescence. Te style of shooting (over- orunder-exposed, blurry, and incredibly grainy), theprinting effects (multiple superimpositions, handscratched negatives), and the inscribed presence ofthe film projector (flickering and fluttering images,


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slipped frames), present what scherkassky refersto as the paradise of malfunctions that hauntthe medium.13Te film crescendos with a frozenframe melting in the gate of the projector. Tearrest of the motion pictureand the intense focuson the stasis of an isolated frame, a frozen instantof timeproves to be an impossible image tosustain for very long. Te cinematic instant resistscontemplation, only yielding to a sustained regard

in the form of denatured immolation. o breakdown the material of film in the act of projection isto ultimately break down the apparatus. Te footageof the chemical blisters of a melting celluloidimage (the true accident cannot be mechanicallyreproduced14) also reveals what Mary Ann Doanedescribes as the relentlessly linear, irreversibletemporal economy of the cinematic apparatus: youcannot defrost time.15

Te burning film frame, the emblem of theimpossibly experienced instant that announcesthe presence of the projector, inspires a momentof reflection on the scene of projection and

the idealized architectural and psychologicalarrangements of classical cinema spectatorship,often beginning with the simple act of looking tothe back of the theater at the projection booth or atother spectators. Te second cinematic breakdownin scherkasskys work applies pressure to therelationship between spectator and spectacle,and the suture model of psychological cinematicidentification. scherkassky performs a double-breakdown in this regard: his work breaks from theidealized modes of classical cinematic immersion,but also invites spectators to break down thefacile distinctionsin industrial and avant-garde

cinema and theory alikebetween the rigorouslycritical and the affective and sensual forms ofreception.16 Even his most explicitly theoreticalexaminations of the structure of the gaze and thestatus of the cinematic signifier, such as tabularasa(1989) and Parallel Space: Inter-View(1992),interweave a temporality of reflection with oneof sensual immersion in instants of cinema.17One often finds in scherkasskys work passagesthat bring together Mulveys critical unpleasure

with intense moments of what Leo Charneysummarizes, in relation to Dulac, as a hedonisticimmersion in the present tense of experience.18

Fg. 1. (top left) Peter Tserkasskys Motion Picture (1984),openng frame. copyrgt sxpaklm.

Fg. 2. (top rgt) Motion Picture frame stll. copyrgtsxpaklm.

Fg. 3. (bottom left) Peter Kubelkas Arnulf Rainer(1960) mountedat te centre Georges Pompdou, summer 2006, potograpedby the author.


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Tis complex operation is perhaps most clearlyexplored in Motion Picture (La Sortie des Ouvriersde lUsine Lumire Lyon)(1984), his first recycledfootage, camera-less darkroom film.

scherkassky made the conceptual film

Motion Picture by projecting a single photogramfrom August and Louis Lumires first film, LaSortie des Ouvriers de l Usine Lumire Lyon (1895),onto 50 strips of unexposed film mounted on the

wall of his darkroom (a veritable camera obscura)to produce an exposure distributed throughout theindividual frames of the film strips. (Figs. 1-2) Hethen spliced the exposed film strips together in aserial fashion. Te films projection thus presents thesingle stillquite literally theexemplary cinematic

instantin a particularized fashion: the Lumirephotogram, previously flashed on the screen for1/16thof a second, when distributed amongst thegrid of film strips, takes 3 minutes and 23 seconds(3:23) to pass through the projector. Te effect, as

scherkassky explains, is to allow the spectator toperceive this photogram as a picture in motion,a motion picture.19Tis imagesimultaneouslyabstracted (as a conceptual film) and magnified inmaterial terms to the level of the particularappearsas successive black and white forms that rapidly

flutter on and off the screen.Motion Pictures visualpalette is densely intertextual. Both in its form asa veritable screen of film strips mounted on a walland as a succession of black and white images,

Motion Picture recalls two pivotal films from thefirst generation of the post-war Austrian avant-garde that lay special emphasis on the assertionof filmic instants: Peter Kubelkas self-proclaimedimmortal metrical film Arnulf Rainer(1960)afirst or primary film in its own right (Fig. 3); as

well as the rhythms and textures of close-up shotsof 48 newspaper portrait photographs transformedinto distinct photograms in Kurt Krens48 Kopfe ausdem Szondiest [48 Heads from Szondiest,1960] (Fig. 4). Although the viewer is presented

with a representation of the 50 film strips mountedon the wall bearing the inscription of the originalLumire photogram (a representation of the entirefilm we are about to view piece by piece), oncethe film begins in earnest it is almost impossibleto place the fragmented images into their originalpattern, infer a clear metonymic relationship,or discern any independent visual or rhythmic

formula, as one can (theoretically) do with metricaland structural films upon repeated viewings. Tespectator is invited to attempt a nearly impossibleconceptual task, but also given an opportunity tofocus on the sensuality of the very motion of each

instant passing through the gate of the projectorand onto the screen. Te representation of theprofilmic is abstracted into a representation of thefilmic, exemplified by the flutter of each distinctphotogram and the interval that articulates them.

Tis foregrounding of the obscured instants thatconstitute the limits of each film frame, engagesKubelkas claim that it is between the f rames wherecinema speaks20setting the scene for a cinematictalking cure founded in the inexpressible. Te

breakdown of the different modes of spectatorshipthat accompanies the breakdown of the unitaryphotogramthe integrity of the instanthereenacts the third cinematic breakdown at the levelof the (psycho)analytical.

Analysis is etymologically rooted in the act

Fg. 4. Kurt Krens 48 Kopfe aus dem SzondTest (1960).copyrgt sxpaklm.


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of unloosening or undoing: forms of breaking downthat concern the separation of complex objects intoconstituent parts or elements as well as processes ofcritical investigation.21In keeping with this doublesense, scherkasskys CinemaScope trilogy

exemplified by Outer Space (1999)produces avisual form of film analysis. Composed of frame-by-frame analyses of recycled footage, these filmsgive special attention to the material repressionsof the filmic image. Tey bring to visibility thephysical components of films temporal economyof the instant, the interval, the film frame, andits time frame, the sprocket hole. scherkasskysanalytic breakdown collapses the stable thresholdsof the basic unit of the cinematic signifier and

its material conditions of possibility. Under suchcritical pressure the integrity of distinctionsbetween individual frames, the transparency andopacity of the medium, the interior and exteriorlimits, the explicit and latent contents, and thefilmic conscious and unconscious elements beginto come visibly undone.

Tis third cinematic breakdown takes upDulacs desire for a breakage that detaches cinemafrom its anti-visual components, making itunspeakable by separating that which is deemed

truly cinematographic f rom the elements of drama,plotting, narrative, etc., and their formalizedconventions of execution that comprise the recycledsource footage. A certain violence subtends andenergizes this impulse. Dulacs contemporary,

Jean Epstein, conceptualized this force (theactive ingredient of the mediums essence; itsanalytic solvent) as concentrated within the wallsof its forbidden city, its own exclusive domain,autonomous, specific, and hostile to anything

that does not belong.22

Epsteins metaphor of thewalled-off forbidden city emphasizes the mannerin which films concerned with the properly filmicengage in questions of enframing, the pursuitof a metaphysics of boundaries through whichdefinition and legibility are secured.23scherkassky srecycled footage films explore such boundariesby foregrounding the inherent tension betweeninteriority and exteriority. Outer Spacein particularthematizes thresholds and limits, engaging with

what Jacques Derrida theorizes as the parergon[par: by, ergon: the work]. In his reading of KantsCritique of Judgment(a text concerned with the un-

nameable24), Derrida argues that the parergon isthe central concern of philosophical discourses onart, a discourse on the limit between the inside andthe outside of the art object, in this case a discourseon the frame.25For Derrida the frame acts as both

a physical/tangible boundary (as in the framearound a painting, that serves as an inseparableboundary between the work and the context in

which it exists: a wall, a museum, the world) andas a limit(ing)-concept between inner and outerspaces, essences and supplements, hermeneuticsand eruptive forces. Derrida writes that the frameis absorbed simultaneously into the work againstthe context, and into the context against the work.

Te frame effaces or auto-obliterates itselfwith

a vengeance, one might sayin the process of itsmost arduous exertion of energy.26Te question ofthe frame raises questions about the incision, thedecision, the break that serves as the conditionof possibility and limit of the work, and rendersimpossible the total exclusion of the exterior fromconsideration of the interior, the improper fromquestions of the proper, the question of what lies

within the most secretive heart of films forbiddencity and all that is supposedly kept out. Tinkingof a cinematic parergon in scherkasskys work, as

the site of his most radical interventions, requiresconsideration of the films multitude of f rameworksand frameworkings: the work of the frame. OuterSpace, as but one example, involves the analyticbreakdown of: individual film cells as discrete units;individual film cells as representative of a time framebased upon the temporal economy of the instant;the framing of the camera (cinematographicframing, the act of inscription and the productionof film language); the two economies of framing

that come together through the appropriationof recycled footage (Sidney J. Furies Hollywoodnarrative Te Entity (1981) and scherkasskysreworking of it); and the ontological frame of the

work against other media, as well as its cinematicand extra-cinematic contexts.27

scherkassky describes his oeuvre as anongoing attempt to create a kind of meta-cinemathat invites the viewer to consider the buildingblocks of the medium.28 scherkasskys workacknowledges the traditions of metrical andstructural filmmaking exemplified by Kubelkas

Arnulf Rainer, but it departs from strict structural


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approaches both in methodit is not whollycalculated in advance by a conceptual scoreandin the turn to an explicit (as opposed to evacuative)confrontation with the representational codes

of narrative cinema. He made the CinemaScopetrilogy by hand in a darkroom in his home inEnzersfeld, lower Austria, through a process ofsingle frame contact printing. He worked on apiece of cardboard one meter in length with nailspunctured through the bottom to hold unexposedfilm stock in place by the sprocket holes.29 Heplaced the found footage on top of the raw stockand uses an Opemus III light cone from a photoenlarger and more frequently a red laser pointerlike a hybrid paintbrush/writing instrument toselectivelyoften intuitivelyproduce hisexposures, creating shimmering pools of exposed

Fgs. 5-7. (above); gs. 8-11 (rgt). Peter Tserkasskys Outer

Space(1999). copyrgt sxpaklm.

images against completely unexposed, pure blackfields.30 Whereas Motion Picture distributes thecontents of a single photogram amongst roughly4,800 distinct frames, the CinemaScope trilogy is

marked by a process of radical condensation thatscherkassky realized through techniques of opticalcollage.31 Each image in Outer Space containsas many as five simultaneous superimpositionsof material from the original footage, and thefollow up film Dream Work contains as many asseven layers. Tis condensation (a process evenmore explicitly addressed in Dream Work) alsoenacts temporal compressions and overlaps.32Notonly does it reduce a feature length film to anintense ten minutes, but its superimpositions andfragments appear to both disrupt and compoundthe successive unfolding of distinct instants, and


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the various profilmic scenarios they index. Heinscribes an intensification and multiplication ofthe filmic instant in excess of the singular timeframe of his raw stock. Te chronological passageof one frame to another, through scherkasskys

fragmentations and superimpositions, takes onthe blurred temporal forms attributed to theunconscious, dreams, and hauntingwhichDerrida describes as breaking from a linear chainof presents, remaining historical, to be sure, butnot dated.33

scherkassky claims he chose to rework TeEntity based solely upon its plot summary: aninvisible force sexually terrorizes a woman in herCalifornia ranch house. Te selection of footage

combined meticulous observation and chance.He carefully studied a VHS copy of the film,searching for significant details and latent contentto appropriate for his version. He memorized thestructure of the original film and then composeda new narrative based around the notion of thefilm material integrating itself into the narrative,attacking the protagonist, as if explicitly actingout Epsteins and Dulacs notions of cinematichostility. Each day scherkassky aimed to produceseveral meters of contact prints (which he carefully

cataloged as he went along). He would beginwork the following day reviewing the work of theprevious 24 hours (a meter of negative film takesovernight to dry), allowing him to revise and repeatelements as he went along and develop the filmscontent day by day.

Outer Spaceresists being told with any finality.Te images and sounds evade easy transpositionto verbal or written language, and yet theorizingits effects requires an attempt to do just that.

Te following discussion of the film analyzes itaccording to two primary movements of 4 passageseach (Figs. 5-11; Figs. 16-18), joined together by apivoting passage in which the film folds over itself,seemingly turning itself inside-out (Figs. 12-15),but does not claim such a structure is inherentto the film itself. Te first movement begins withblack leader and the audible hiss of the soundtrack.A canted establishing shot of a ranch house atnight flutters on screen (Fig. 5) as bits of eeriemusic play on the optical soundtrack, produced inthe same manner as the image track: by selectivelyexposing fragments of it with his laser pointer.

A woman (played by Barbara Hershey) faces the

house and enters it, through an extremely cantedshot of a door, the threshold between the originalfilms diegetic inner and outer space. As the womanexplores the interior space of the house, the imagesbegin to flutter and divide into ghost images: boththe womans body and the house itself begin tomultiply and split (Fig. 6). Images begin to divideand ghost at a faster pace, as the soundtrack beginsto flutter (Fig. 7). Suddenly the images explode witha violent, rapid paced montage using footage of the

woman being pursued by the invisible force, re-cutto appear like she is fleeing from the film itself. Teimage tears apart, kaleidoscopes, and the edges of

Fgs. 12-15. (above) Outer Space. copyrgt sxpaklm.


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the frame begin to slide violently towards the centerof the image, as if attacking the woman (Figs. 8-9).

Te womanin fact almost all representationalcontentis chased from the images as the housebegins to destroy itself (the shattering of glassand smashing of furniture in the original film),set to a fragmented soundtrack of breaking glass,disconnected tones from underscoring, and thebeginnings of an inarticulate scream. Te frames

of the film appear to move horizontally, as sprocketholes, leader, and the optical soundtrack slideacross the frame in rapid succession, recallingGeorge Landows Film in which there appearsprocket holes, edge lettering, dirt particles, etc.(1966). Te image begins to flicker and polarize,eventually reducing content to superimpositionsof sprocket holes and optical soundtrack (Figs. 10-11). Te violence of the attack subsides into therhythmic beauty of an embedded flicker filmamodality that Philippe-Alain Michaud describesas emphasizing the discontinuity between filmedtime and projected time, the rhythm of projection

apparatus, the reflective surface of the screen,the dark interval between frames, and our ownperceptive apparatus.34Te soundtrack reduces totape hiss and signal noise, the irreducible noise ofthe audio recording apparatus.

Te first movement ends and the pivot/entracte begins with a slight re-stabilization of theimage and a return to the shot of the house fromthe beginning of the film emerging from withinthe flicker film. Te images of the house echo theset up of the beginning, but begin to superimposeimages of the inside and outside of the house ontop of each other. Mirrored images of bay windowslook from inside onto the exterior of the house,suggesting an impossible, invaginated space where

interior and exterior fold into each other (Figs. 12-13). Te edges of the frame of the filmstrip movetowards the center and cross over each other, as ifthe entire film has been inverted. Te horizontalinversion of the filmstrip is continued with amirrored image of windows that fold over eachother (Figs. 14-15).

Te second movement begins with a clear imageof the womans face, pressed up against a mirror andreflected in another mirror on set, creating a mise-en-abyme of representational violence. Te image

is deeply disturbing: the original footage depictsthe woman being raped by the unknown force(Fig. 16). Tis image solarizes and inaugurates asecond flicker film, set to a soundtrack loop ofthe woman moaning and a loud thud keeping thebeat. Next, a rapidly repeating loop of the womanbeginning to fight back ensues. She faces thecamera and violently swings the base of a lamplike a weaponas if attacking both the apparatusand the material base of the film itself. Once again

the image tears and fractures. Tese images arecut against a reverse-shot of the woman smashingall the mirrors in the house.35 Te terrorized

woman now unleashes her own destructive force.Cubist-looking images of empty domestic spaces,superimposed in overlapping panels, fill the f rame,cutting together a steady-cam shot showing a bed,dresser drawers, clothing scattered on the floor, andeventually tilting up to a vanity with a prominentlyplaced mirror, showing the reflection of the woman.During this, the soundtrack features music andscraps of dialoguebroken down into nonsensicalphonemestaken from a conversation between a

Fgs. 16-18. Outer Space. copyrgt sxpaklm.


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Freudian psychoanalytic concepts such as Pleasure,Economics, Dynamic, and Wish, which literallyrip themselves away from the dictionary andordinary language.39Abraham describes anasemic

words as attending to the unthought nonpresence

central to psychoanalysis: Tey are ways ofspeaking, means of disclosing the unspeakable innonsense and contradiction.40 Abraham furtherdevelops a closely related form of this conceptin an essay written with Maria orok, offering atheory of the unspeakable and the secret at thecenter of melancholia (and here it is useful to recall

scherkasskys own positioning of his work asresponding to the death of film), an inexpressiblemourning fed by what they refer to as the fantasy

of incorporation.41

Incorporation is a defensiveaction against topographical transformationsnecessitated by the loss of a love object that Freuddescribes as the healthy work of mourning.42

Trough symbolic transubstantiation, the bodyswallows the lost love object by means of thede-figuration and withholding of specific words,

which take on the status of things.43Incorporationeffects an annulment of figurative language:

If we are determined to see a form of

language in the processes governing thistype of fantasy, we will need a new figureof speech in our traditional inventory,namely the figure of an active destructionof representation. We propose to call thisfigure antimetaphor. Let us make clear thatit is not simply a matter of reverting tothe literal meaning of words, but of usingthem in such a waywhether in speechor deedthat their very capacity for

figurative representation is destroyed.44

Anasemia and the fantasy of incorporation describelanguage disorders that break (from) language inorder express the inexpressable, that which wouldseem to be exterior to available language, that

which occupies its outer space.In the essay Acinema, Jean-Franois Lyotard

argues that the coherence of classical cinema isconstituted through the exclusion, effacement,and repression of nonproductive movementsand expenditures: banishing the instants of theacinematic to the exterior of the film frame.45

man and a woman, the only words uttered clearlyare the first time was different, I was raped. In theoriginal film, these snippets of conversation comefrom a psychoanalytic session between the BarbaraHershey character and her bearded male analyst

(who, in an act of inverted transference, falls inlove with the patient he mistakenly diagnoses assuffering from hysteric sexual repression). Te finalsection of scherkasskys film presents a series ofimages of the gaze, beginning with the reflectionof the woman in the mirror followed by a series ofsuperimposed close-ups of eyes without a face (Fig.17) and finally the slow reveal of the womans facereflected in three mirrorsthe reflection in thecenter mirror gazing directly into the cameras lens

(Fig. 18). Te soundtrack features tape noise andfragments of backwards speech (the last clustersounding like the word cinema). Te imageslowly fades to black.

Outer Space acts out the violation anddeformation of films frames, presenting itsinstantaneous implosion and explosion. In itsdestruction of the illusionary articulations ofnarrative cinemathe language of cinemaandthe frame that contains it and makes it legible,the film is nothing short of apocalyptic. In the

original Greek sense of the word, combining apo(off) and kalyptein(to cover), the apocalyptic is aform of revelation, a revealing, and an uncoveringthat brings something to visibility.36scherkassky scameraless cinematographic technique overlaysinscription (writing with light) with uncovering:the bringing forth of something from the dark.His exposures uncover unexpected details from theoriginal footage, which he combines to create themomentary appearancethe becoming visible, the

becoming visualof an unspeakable film; Dulacsstrange visual film of the future, the film thatcannot be told.37

Te chaotic visuals of scherkasskys film,seeming to tap into the energies of a filmicunconscious, produce a disorder and disfigurationof the conventionalized language of cinema. Tisdisorganization resonates strongly with the French-Hungarian psychoanalyst Nicolas Abrahamsnotion of anasemia [anasmie], elaborated inhis essay Te Shell and the Kernel.38 Abrahamcoined the term anasemiafrom anti-semanticsto describe the singularity and originality of


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James Leo Cahillis a Ph.D. candidate in Critical Studies at the University of Southern California. He ispresently in Paris conducting research for his dissertation, Une hallucination vrai, on Jean Painlev andthe impact of the scientific film in documentary and avant-garde film practice, film theory, and film culture,c. 1924-1946. His other research interests include early cinema, conceptions of technological accidentsand specters, and critical theory. He also works as the managing editor for the journal Discourse.

Notes

Te author would like to thank Ren Toreau Bruckner for his critical insights, Daniel Herbert for sharing his work and ideas onscherkassky and the Austrian avant-garde with me, and Dietmar Schwrzler at sixpackfilm for help with several film stills.

1Germaine Dulac, Visual and Anti-visual Films, trans. Robert Lamberton, inGermaine Dulac, Visual and Anti-visual Films, trans. Robert Lamberton, in Te Avant-Garde Film: A Reader of Teory andCriticism, ed. P. Adams Sitney (New York: New York University Press, 1978), 33-34 (translation modified); and Dulac, FilmsVisuels et Anti-visuels, incrits sur le Cinma (1919-1937), ed. Prosper Hillairet (Paris: Paris Experimental, 1994), 115-121. Fromthe latter volume, hereon referred to ascrits, see also Quelques Rflexions sur le Cinma Pur (1926), 73-74; and Nos Enqutessur le Film Parl (1928), 114.

2 A fuller discussion of Dulacs complex concept of the essence of cinemawhich may indeed be nothing cinematiclies beyondA fuller discussion of Dulacs complex concept of the essence of cinemawhich may indeed be nothing cinematiclies beyondthe scope of the present discussion. I plan to take up this question in a subsequent essay. For a foundational study of Dulacswriting, activism, and filmmaking, see Sandy Flitterman-Lewis, o Desire Differently: Feminism and the French Cinema, 2nd ed.(New York: Columbia University Press, 1996).3 Dulac, Films Visuels et Anti-visuels, 116.Dulac, Films Visuels et Anti-visuels, 116.4 Dulac, Visual and Anti-Visual Films, 34; Films Visuels et Anti-Visuels, 120.Dulac, Visual and Anti-Visual Films, 34; Films Visuels et Anti-Visuels, 120.5 Dulac, Films Visuels et Anti-Visuels,115 (my translation). Dulac opens her essay with a description of the productive work ofDulac, Films Visuels et Anti-Visuels, 115 (my translation). Dulac opens her essay with a description of the productive work ofpolemical film theory as Jetant un rayon lumineux sur lavenir obscur . . . Te concern for both the cinema of the future and thefuture of cinema recur throughout her writing. See especially LEssence du CinmaLIde Visuelle (1925), and LAvenir duCin: Une Interview Avec Germaine Dulac, par Paul Guiton (1927), in crits, 66, 81-83.6 Biographical information primarily comes fromBiographical information primarily comes from Peter scherkassky, ed. Alexander Horwath and Michael Loebenstein (Vienna:SYNEMA, 2005). From here on referred to as P. For an economic and critically insightful overview that contextualizesscherkasskys film work alongside his rsum as a film programmer and promoter, see Daniel Herberts review of Peter scherkassky

in Film Internationalno. 1 (2008).7 Alexander Horwath, Singing in the Rain: Supercinematography by Peter scherkassky, inAlexander Horwath, Singing in the Rain: Supercinematography by Peter scherkassky, in P, 12-14. See also scherkassky,Te Light of Periphery: A Brief History of Austrian Avant-Garde Cinema, inAustrian Avant-Garde Cinema, ed. Martin Arnoldand Peter scherkassky (Vienna: sixpackfilm, 1994), 11-19.8 scherkassky, Te Light of Periphery, 19, 24. For an analysis of structural film and its impasses see the chapter Pure Film inscherkassky, Te Light of Periphery, 19, 24. For an analysis of structural film and its impasses see the chapter Pure Film inDavid James,Allegories of Cinema: American Film in the Sixties(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989).9 scherkassky Epilogue, Prologue. Autobiographical Notes Along the Lines of a Filmography, trans.Aileen Derieg, Eve Heller,scherkassky Epilogue, Prologue. Autobiographical Notes Along the Lines of a Filmography, trans. Aileen Derieg, Eve Heller,and Vivian Heller, in P, 160. He makes a similar remark in his enlightening essay Comment et Pourqoui? Quelques remarquessur la ralisation technique de la trilogie Cinemascope, trans. from German to French by Pierre Rusch, rafic, no. 44 (Hiver 2002).He describes his films as works of art indissociable from the material of classical cinematography, works that would have been, infact, impossible to produce in this formby digital means, or they would lose all their meaning and as works that could not in anycaseoccur in another medium (86, my translation).10 Clement Greenberg, Modernist Painting, (1960) Modern art and modernism: A Critical Anthology, ed. Francis Frascina and

Charles Harrison with Deirdre Paul (New York: Harper & Row, 1982), 6. I am indebted to Carlos Kase for calling my attentionto this strain of sadism in Greenbergs writing.11 scherkassky, Te Man without a Movie Camera: Anthony Wagner in dialogue with Peter scherkassky,scherkassky, Te Man without a Movie Camera: Anthony Wagner in dialogue with Peter scherkassky, Peter scherkassky:

scherkasskys singular manner of attending tothat which is exteriorized from cinema (acinema)by virtue of the delimitations of its essence, mightbe considered a form of anacinema: a cinema that,in asserting its essence, becomes something other

than itself. scherkassky s anacinematicbreakdownspresent flashes of a filmic entity that attends toboth irreparable loss (the death of film) and

the production of the new, an opening to radicaltransformation. It addresses simultaneously whatthe relentless present of the instant would seemto refuse or repress: the what-has-been of thehistorical and the uncertain yet-to-come of a future

unnamed, which demands the expansionor eveninventionof expressive and critical languages.


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ANACINEMAFilms From A Dark Room, DVD booklet (Vienna: Index, 2004), 8.12 For a consideration of the breakdown and its relation to the compulsion to repeat in the work of Martin Arnold, see my TeFor a consideration of the breakdown and its relation to the compulsion to repeat in the work of Martin Arnold, see my TeCineseizure,Martin Arnold: Te Cineseizure, DVD booklet (Vienna: Index; Paris: ReVoir, 2006), 2-10.13 scherkassky, Epilogue,Prologue., 124.scherkassky, Epilogue, Prologue., 124.14 Filmmaker Luis Recoders provocative performance Te Death of Structural Film:Notesoward a Filmless Cinema,presentedFilmmaker Luis Recoders provocative performance Te Death of Structural Film: Notes oward a Filmless Cinema, presentedat the Deaths of Cinema conference at the University of Southern California (24 March 2007), was meant to be accompanied

by projections of clear film leader slowly melting in the gate. Alas, technical difficulties prevented the apparatus from properlymal-functioning. See Recoder, Te Death of Structural Film, Spectator: Special Issue: Deaths of Cinema, vo1. 27 (Supplement2007): 26-30.15 Mary Ann Doane,Mary Ann Doane, Te Emergence of Cinematic ime: Modernity, Contingency, Te Archive(Cambridge, MA: Harvard UniversityPress, 2002). For one of the best reflections on the indispensability of the interval (the instant of darkness between frames), seeRen Toreau Bruckner, Te Instant and the Dark: Cinemas Momentum, Octopus2 (2006): 21-36.16 For a groundbreaking approach to scherkassky and Arnolds work with respect to the question of audience accessibilityFor a groundbreaking approach to scherkassky and Arnolds work with respect to the question of audience accessibilityand what one might call these filmmakers special affects, see Michele Pierson, Special Effects in Martin Arnolds and Peterscherkasskys Cinema of Mind,Discourse, 28.2-3 [still in press at time of this publication].17 For a gloss of scherkasskys theoretical debts to Lacan, Metz, and Mulvey in these films, see Horwaths Singing in the Rain,For a gloss of scherkasskys theoretical debts to Lacan, Metz, and Mulvey in these films, see Horwaths Singing in the Rain,in P.18 See Laura Mulvey, Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,See Laura Mulvey, Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, Screen16.3 (Autumn 1975): 6-18 (a text which produces a radicalcritique of the arresting power of the gaze); and Leo Charney, Empty Moments: Cinema, Modernity, and Drift(Durham: Duke

University Press, 1998), 127. See also Jean Epsteins elusive discussion of photognie, which stresses the instant and its necessaryephemerality: the value of the photogenic is measured in seconds and the photogenic is like a spark that appears in fits and starts.Jean Epstein, Magnification and other writings, trans. Stuart Liebman, Octobervol. 3 (Spring 1977): 9.19 scherkassky, Te Man without a Movie Camera,6.scherkassky, Te Man without a Movie Camera, 6.20 Peter Kubelka Te Metrical Teory of Film inPeter Kubelka Te Metrical Teory of Film in Te Avant-Garde Film: A Reader of Teory and Criticism, ed. P. Adams Sitney(New York: New York University Press, 1978), 141.21 See theSee the Oxford English Dictionary.22 Epstein, On Certain Characteristics of Photognie inEpstein, On Certain Characteristics of Photognie in French Film Teory and Criticism, Volume 1, 1907-1929, ed. RichardAbel (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), 314. For the original French see Epstein, De Quelques Conditions de laPhotognie [1923-1924] incrits sur le cinma: 1921-1953, vol. 1, 1921-1947 (Paris: Seghers, 1974), 137. Dulac also speaks of anecessary hostility in her essay PhotographieCingraphie (1926): I am as hostile to the idea of a novelistic or dramatic scenarioin the cinema as I am hostile to photographic effects that remove from the art of the screen its spontaneity in movement. Seecrits, 80 (my translation). For an engaging reading of Outer Spacethat also turns toward the theorists of the French avant-garde,

bringing together Jean Epsteins notions of photognie and the close-up with considerations of the classical film body, see ChristaBlmlinger, Found Face: on Outer Space, trans. Alice Lovejoy, Senses of Cinema[2002], posted at: http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/03/28/outer_space.html. For a discussion of scherkassky in relation to surrealist cinema of Dulac and Artaud, seePierson, Special Effects in Martin Arnolds and Peter scherkasskys Cinema of Mind, cited in note 16.23Tis line of thought can be understood as informed by and treading delicately towards Martin Heideggers notion of EnframingTis line of thought can be understood as informed by and treading delicately towards Martin Heideggers notion of Enframing[Ge-stell] from his essay Te Question Concerning echnology, in Te Question Concerning echnology and Other Essays, trans.William Lovitt (New York: Harper orchbooks, 1977), 3-35.24 Tanks to Samuel Weber for bringing this aspect of Kant to my attention.Tanks to Samuel Weber for bringing this aspect of Kant to my attention.25 Derrida, Te Parergon,Derrida, Te Parergon, October, vol. 9 (Summer, 1979): 12. Tis discussion could also be expanded through an engagementwith Andr Bazins provocative discussion of the relationship of the frame to the screen-surface, in Painting and Cinema, thoughit should be noted that Bazins argument is ultimately rooted in an engagement with a complex realist aesthetic that holds lessvalence with regards to the avant-garde cinemas under consideration here. See Bazin, What is Cinema, vol. 1, trans. Hugh Gray(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 164-169.

26 Derrida, 26. It is worth recalling that Greenbergs above-mentioned thesis on modernist production begins with Kant.Derrida, 26. It is worth recalling that Greenbergs above-mentioned thesis on modernist production begins with Kant.27 Daniel Herberts Remaking Film (and) History:Te ransformational Cinema of Peter scherkassky,given at the Society forDaniel Herberts Remaking Film (and) History: Te ransformational Cinema of Peter scherkassky, given at the Society forCinema and Media Studies annual conference, March 2007, Chicago (unpublished), discusses scherkasskys work with regards tothe broader cinematic phenomenon of the transnational remake.28 scherkassky Epilogue,Prologue, 114.scherkassky Epilogue, Prologue, 114.29 Information on scherkasskys filmmaking practices draws upon the roundtable discussion with Peter scherkassky and EveInformation on scherkasskys filmmaking practices draws upon the roundtable discussion with Peter scherkassky and EveHeller moderated by Akira Mizuta Lippit at the University of Southern California, February 2006; scherkassky, Epilogue,Prologue, 148-158; scherkassky, Comment et pourquoi? 83-87; and George Clark, Arnold, Brehm, Deutsch and scherkassky:Four Contemporary Austrian Avant-Garde Filmmakers, Senses of Cinema[2003], posted at: http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/03/28/4_austrian_avant_garde.html.30 scherkassky, Comment et pourquoi? 84. scherkassky emphasizes the tension between calculation and contingency: Tescherkassky, Comment et pourquoi? 84. scherkassky emphasizes the tension between calculation and contingency: Tespecific charm of these films is born for me from the encounter of an extremely precise compositionconcerning the choiceand new arrangement of the original materialand a mode of manual production carrying an unforeseeable element, resolutely

aleatory. Te work of the laser pointer in fact allows for neither a precise determination of exposure times (and thus the densityof the image) nor the exact delimitation of the portion of the image reproduced [recopie]. Te spectator is thus confronted witha continuous fluctuation of the components of the image, which recall their mode of manual production. Added to this internal


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cAhiLLinstability is an inevitable crowd of impurities, scratches, etc., which constitute nevertheless an integral visual element of the generalphysiognomy of film (86, my translation).31 Ibid.Ibid.32 For an engaging discussion of condensation inFor an engaging discussion of condensation in Dream Work, see Christa Blmlinger, Le P.O.E..: rve et film, rafic44 (Hiver2002): 103-106.33 Derrida,Derrida, Specters of Marx: Te State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the New International, trans. Peggy Kamuf (New York:

Routledge, 1994), 4; and Derrida, Spectres de Marx(Paris: Galile, 1993), 22.34 See Philippe-Alain Michaud, Flicker: le ruban instable, inSee Philippe-Alain Michaud, Flicker: le ruban instable, in Sketches: Histoire de lart, cinma(Paris: Kargo & Lclat, 2006),120-134.35 In a question and answer session at Film Forum Los Angeles, February 2006, scherkassky claimed that this set of imagesIn a question and answer session at Film Forum Los Angeles, February 2006, scherkassky claimed that this set of imagessuggested to him a feminist response to the medium and as an internal response to theories of the violating cinematic gaze. On thecrypto-feminist aspects of the film, see Pierson, Special Effects in Martin Arnolds and Peter scherkasskys Cinema of Mind,cited above. For a cogent review of the film that takes a slightly skeptical position with regards to such a reading, see Alice Lovejoy,Space Invaders, Film Comment38.3 (May-June 2002): 31-32.36 For the etymology of apocalypse see the Oxford English Dictionary. One might also here note reverberations with HeideggersFor the etymology of apocalypse see the Oxford English Dictionary. One might also here note reverberations with Heideggersargument that the essence of technology is revealing-as-Enframing. He argues that Enframed revealinga mode of calculationis potentially world-ending, in a sense, apocalyptic. Heidegger, Te Question Concerning echnology, 27.37 scherkasskys work,made without a film camera, can be conceptualized as part of an aesthetic and technological trajectory thatscherkasskys work, made without a film camera, can be conceptualized as part of an aesthetic and technological trajectory thatdiverges from the conceptualization of cinema through the supposed antipodes of the Lumires and Mlis. Tis practice draws

considerably from animation and decoupage and can be traced from mile Reynauds hand-drawn Ttre Optique animated strips(1888), Man Rays Rayographic Le Retour la Raison(1923), Peter Kubelkas Arnulf Rainer(1960), Stan Brakhages Mothlight(1963) and his later hand painted films, to name but a few instances. scherkassky made Dream Workin homage to Man Ray.38 Nicolas Abraham, Te Shell and the Kernel: Te Scope of Originality of Freudian Psychoanalysis, in Abraham and MariaNicolas Abraham, Te Shell and the Kernel: Te Scope of Originality of Freudian Psychoanalysis, in Abraham and Mariaorok,Te Shell and the Kernel, ed. and trans. Nicholas . Rand (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 79-98. For the originalFrench see Abraham and orok, Lcorce et le Noyau(Paris: Flammarion, 2001), 203-226 (originally published in 1977). For anadjacent discussion of Abrahams concept of the phantom in relation to Martin Arnolds digital video installation Deanimated: TeInvisible Ghost, see my and Afterwards? Martin Arnolds Phantom Cinema, Spectator: Special Issue: Deaths of Cinema, vo1.27 (Supplement 2007): 9-25.39 Abraham,Te Shell and the Kernel, 85.Abraham, Te Shell and the Kernel, 85.40 Ibid., 97 (my emphasis).Ibid., 97 (my emphasis).41 Nicolas Abraham and Maria orok, MourningNicolas Abraham and Maria orok, Mourning orMelancholia: Introjection versusIncorporation in Te Shell and the Kernel,125-138; Lcorce et le Noyau, 259-275. Introjection is the process of broadening the ego. Te original process of introjection

emerges from the childs empty mouth in the absence of the breast. Words come to fill the void, giving a figurative expression tothe absence of the mother and the emergence of ones own sense of presence.42 See: Sigmund Freud, Mourning and Melancholia,inSee: Sigmund Freud, Mourning and Melancholia, in Te Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud,vol. 14, ed. and trans. James Strachey (London: Hogarth, 1957), 239-260.43 Abraham and orok, MourningAbraham and orok, Mourning or Melancholia, 127.44 Ibid., 132.Ibid., 132.45 Jean-Franois Lyotard, Acinema, trans. Paisley N. Livingston, inJean-Franois Lyotard, Acinema, trans. Paisley N. Livingston, inNarrative, Apparatus, Ideology, ed. Philip Rosen (New York:Columbia University Press, 1986), 349-359; and Lyotard, LAcinma, in Cinma: Torie, Lectures, ed. Dominique Noguez (Paris:Klincksieck, 1973), 357-369.

Documents

James Leo Cahill - Anacinema