Instruction 4: Fire and Ice—The Photo Narrative

In his article entitled “Fire and Ice”, Peter Wollen establishes a binary correlation and disparity between film (fire) and photography (Ice). He uses the opposing metaphor to show the dynamic complexities of both visual media forms by stressing their function and audience response. He begins his discussion by drawing attention to two types of individuals: lovers of photography and lovers of film. He states that the lover of photography “is fascinated by both the instant and the past. The moment captured by the image is of near zero duration and located in an ever-receding then”. Conversely, he says that with film “the spectator is aware of a predetermined duration and his/her opportunity to view the film is only available at a fixed programme time” –108. The spectator of both forms of media experiences them differently because of their time base. The ability for photography, to borrow Wollen’s words, to freeze time suggests that photography has the uncanny ability to capture, trap and localize time—to literally freeze a moment. While, its counterpart, due to its obsession with narrative congruency, must elongate time in a way to make sense of the moments and sequences of events it places on the screen. If we were to take this analogy further and compare it to narrative forms and structure, we could say that photography allows the viewer to imagine various narrative possibilities, events and contexts while film seeks to give the viewer a concrete chronology of events—an actual narrative. 

This little aside brings me to Jullien’s comparison of Eastern and Western metaphysics. As mentioned in previous post, Jullien establishes a binary between Chinese notions of drive and tendency to that of the Western notion of cause and effect and chronology. With Jullien’s binary construction in mind, film and photography have the same disparity. While photography may be interested in causal relationships it does not seek or strive to present them to its viewers.  “Still photos, then, cannot be seen as narratives in themselves, but as elements of narratives. Different types of still photograph correspond to different elements of narrative.  Thus, different types of genres of photography imply different perspectives within durative situations and sequences of situations”—Pg 110. In other words, images from a still photo can be placed in the context of multiple narrative forms: documentaries, newspaper, even film. It is not the image that changes as it is placed in the context of one of the these media forms but the medium of media itself, that is, the image, as it is placed within a narrative context, is used to manipulate the larger narrative as a whole.

Before I get into the instruction that I see permeating through this section of the text, I would like to talk about the use of photography to function as narrative. Wollen states that a photo, to achieve narration in the context of minimal narrative, three photos, not one singular one, must carry the stages of process, event , and stage. Wollen offers this example:

                Image 1: A man watering a the garden (process)

 

                Image 2: A child steps on the hose (event)

 

                Image 3: The man is soaked and the garden is empty (State)

 

By arranging images in such a way, a narrative can be told even though the narrative fails to offer the complex back story and history that a film desperately needs to make apparent with viewers. With this difference, the images allow for the viewer to build and write and imagine their own context of events. For example, the viewer is left to imagine why the kid stepped on the water hose.  This sort of narration of images makes Lacan’s notion of drive (libido) and Jullien’s notion of  shi more understood, as all three: Shi, libido, and the still photo, suggests this unexplained tendency or interest in something without explanation.  With Wollen’s sequence of photos we are perhaps left asking, why these images and not others. Why this moment and not the one before the child stepped on the water hose?

 

Instruction 4: Take three photos and create a minimal narrative of them. Label each photo with its corresponding part: process, event, and state. Conclude with a brief explanation of what is occurring in each photo, but say no more than ten words.

Instruction 5: Fetish, Photography, Film, and the Shi(bido):

-----"Film is more capable of playing on fetishism, photography more capable of itself becoming a fetish"

Metz



A realization of lost, A sense of longing

 

I want to make an attempt to synthesis the three texts we have read as a class with the notion of fetish. In his article, Christian Metz describes the fetish as a dual functioning term. In one way, he refers to fetish as being "related to death through the terms of castration and fear, to the off- frame in terms of the look, glance, or gaze"—128. On the same page, but in a different conversation, Metz states that the fetish "alludes to the contagious place of lack and it is equivalent to the penis in Freud's castration complex as the primordial displacement of the look aimed at replacing an absence by a presence". The place of semblance or perhaps synthesis with at least Metz's text and Lacan’s text is the "gaze". The gaze, as Metz describes, seems to suggest more about the subject, spectator, looking to obtain something, which may presumably conflict with Lacan's notion of gaze which deals more with awareness of constitution being projected on the subject. 

More specifically, I think Metz's idea of gaze as a part of fetish relates to the notion of lost, longing, and fear of losing—nostalgia. With this idea, Metz states that the fetish occurs in photography and film differently. Film activates fetishism while photography simply becomes fetish (object). However, the photo is only potentially fetish when recognition of absence and longing occurs, which Metz compares to the image of a dead loved one. But it is not only the capturing of the subject, the person in the picture, that suggest a death, but also, the fact that the spectator does not know the scene, the environment, or the circumstance the encapsulates the individual or event in the image. His/her range of vision is limited as he/she can only see what is in the frame—not what is outside of it. Unlike film, which sequences frames, it gives the illusion that the viewer knows what happens prior to and after the frame has passed out of view.  

I want to return to this idea of nostalgia, which in my opinion relates more to what Lacan suggests about desire.  Metz states that the spectator, when viewing a photograph and not knowing what happens off frame, is more likely to assume or imagine a setting, a narrative—to invent that which may have never been.  By doing so, the spectator shows that he/she wishes to gain access to the world that has been cut off—castrated from view. There is a desire from the spectator to gain access to more than what the photo has to offer. I think, in a way the spectator's desire to glean more about the time the photo freezes and the narrative it may be concealing leads the spectator to make assumptions—to arrive at a sense of acknowledgement but accept his/her limited view. Because the image stimulates a sort of drive towards understanding, acceptance, and connection, the photo can become fetish as it occupies the space for which the spectator can never have access to and what he/she is afraid of losing. 

Instruction 5: Find an photo, could be a family portrait or a picture of an object that you unexplainably adore. Write a 100 word response as to why you cherish this image.

Instruction 1: I am The Analyst and The Analyst is Me: What is My Unconscious Desire?

To begin this set of blog post, as a means to generate a working metaphysics for electracy, we were asked to read The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis by Jacques Lacan. This text would functions as our reference point for building a sound and constructive theory from the CATT generator. As modeled through the use of Jullien’s text, the following posts will draw from aspects of Lacan’s theory that I believe can be applied to the discourse of electracy. In addition, and likewise, each post will end with an instruction, which I hope, will help my audience to put electracy into action. Before I get into Lacan’s notion/ construct of reality, I wish to mention some key terms that I think will help us to understand why Lacan defines reality in the way that he does. Moreover, these will be and remain terms of key interest regarding the concept of electracy and its progression from literacy to viral space, and they will be referred to continually during the duration of this post and the ones to follow. Some terms to make mention of are:  gaze, subject, object, transference, analyst, patient, unconscious, and anamorphosis. This post will give attention to the gaze, subject and object relationship, and transference. I will aim to address the other key terminology in subsequent post as they relate to other points of concern.

Lacan’s notion of reality suggests that subjects, us—the individuals within—are constituted by and reflected by the things (institutions, art, and communities around us). I would even go as far to suggest, through Lacan’s concept of the gaze, that we are also a reflection of those things previously mentioned.  The gaze is the term that is used to draw the aforementioned conclusion about how reality functions. To expound on this further and to elaborate on Lacan’s notion of “gaze”, I would like to turn our attention to what I think is a vital example of the gaze in practice.

On page 159 of his text, Lacan refers to a scene from the film Viridiana. In the scene, a group  of peasants are being photographed mimicking the last supper, but what is interesting here is not that the peasants are being photography nor is it that Viridiana is absent from the scene, but the act of taking a photo—the snap shot. In this scene and this is where the gaze comes into recognition, the peasants mimic an image—a narrative—that has been filtered through their conscious. They are, by mimicking the image, being constituted by their own representation of “The Last Supper”. The gaze makes several appearances, but I want to talk about how it appears for the audience and characters.  As a viewer of this scene, I am expected to be aware of what is being mimicked because in some way or form this religious institution has impacted me or should I say collectively, us. Initially, the characters in the film are subjects studying and engaging with the narrative of the last supper, but once the characters take interest in mimicking this aspect of Judeo-Christian history, they become “objects” the image that the camera , captures and freezes in an unseen photo. As a result, transference occurs.  .To understand the relationship that I am gesturing to between the analyst and the patient, I turn my attention to the analogy that Lacan offers readers on page 269 of his text.

Lacan recounts an episode from his childhood. He use to read a cartoon script about a beggar who would feast his nose on the smell of the roasting meat [in a Chinese restaurant]. Lacan states that on occasion, the smell is the menu, that is to say the signifier…And this is [his] fable. “The menu is written in Chinese, so the first step is to order a translation from a patronne. If it is the first time you have come to a Chinese restaurant, [you notice that] the translation does not tell you much more than the original, and in the end you say recommend something, which means that  the patronne should know what [you] desire” or want—269

The above example is a metaphor used to describe the relationship between the analyst and the patient. Furthermore, it shows the transformation that occurs from patient to subject to object, which is labeled as transference. This exemplifies that the patient and analyst relationship is one of desire. Both desire to know the other and yet both expect the other to tell them something. Using Lacan’s relationship between the two, I think that the analyst stands as a metaphor for the things that influence us and the patient stands as (our individual being) desire to know more about ourselves, which it does inadvertently.

Instruction 1:

Look through some old family photos and record what you remember from the scene. What is happening: who is in it, who is taking the photo and what are you doing in the photo and why?