STRIPTEASE PROFISSIONAL (QUANDO ELAS NUNCA SE DESPEM, POR NÃO SE DESPIREM NUNCA DA SUA PROFISSÃO)
(…) There will therefore be in striptease a whole series of coverings placed upon the body of the woman in proportion as she pretends to strip it bare. Exoticism is the first of these barriers. (…) Feathers, furs and gloves go on pervading the woman with their magical virtue even once removed, (…) the nakedness which follows remains itself unreal, smooth and enclosed like a beautiful slippery object (…)

STRIPTEASE (ONDE ELAS SE DESPEM MESMO)
(…) this meticulous exorcism of sex, can be verified a contrario in the ‘popular contests’ (sic) of amateur striptease: there, ‘beginners’ undress in front of a few hundred spectators without resorting or resorting very clumsily to magic, which unquestionably restores to the spectacle its erotic power (…)

MOULIN ROUGE (O STRIPTEASE INCORPORADO)
(…) And yet, at the Moulin Rouge, we see hints of another kind of exorcism, probably typically French, and one which in actual fact tends less to nullify eroticism than to tame it: the compere tries to give striptease a reassuring pent-bourgeois status (…) and this is how, in France, striptease is nationalized.

in Striptease, de Mythologies (Roland Barthes, 1957)

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Illustration for Edgar Allan Poe's story "Descent into the Maelstrom" by Harry Clarke (1889-1931), published in 1919.

How often we made the circuit of the belt it is impossible to say. We careered round and round for perhaps an hour, flying rather than floating, getting gradually more and more into the middle of the surge, and then nearer and nearer to its horrible inner edge. All this time I had never let go of the ring-bolt. My brother was at the stern, holding on to a large empty water-cask which had been securely lashed under the coop of the counter, and was the only thing on deck that had not been swept overboard when the gale first took us. As we approached the brink of the pit he let go his hold upon this, and made for the ring, from which, in the agony of his terror, he endeavored to force my hands, as it was not large enough to afford us both a secure grasp. I never felt deeper grief than when I saw him attempt this act –although I knew he was a madman when he did it –a raving maniac through sheer fright. I did not care, however, to contest the point with him. I thought it could make no difference whether either of us held on at all; so I let him have the bolt, and went astern to the cask. This there was no great difficulty in doing; for the smack flew round steadily enough, and upon an even keel –only swaying to and fro, with the immense sweeps and swelters of the whirl. Scarcely had I secured myself in my new position, when we gave a wild lurch to starboard, and rushed headlong into the abyss. I muttered a hurried prayer to God, and thought all was over.

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Ragnar Kjartansson, Weltschmerz 2007 (4 Day Performance at voltaSHOW03)

This performance was a homage to the great German word “Weltschmerz” and the extreme romanticism and expressionism that goes along with it and that is also present in heavy metal music. Therefore, a single bass guitar player stands inside the booth titled “Weltschmerz” and plays a lonely tune – a feeling portrayed in a tableau vivant.

Claire Fontaine, Passe-Partout (San Antonio) , 2007

Uma peça à pirata e bastante funcional. Um kit de arromba para arrombar casas, galerias de arte, ou qualquer outro estabelecimento com trancas na porta. Uma peça que funciona!

Rosa Chancho, Mosh (Oct 24-25, 2008)

Palco para mosh organizado pela artista. Vejam mais fotos aqui.

Nevin Aladag, Familie Tezcan, 2001, 6'40"

Uma família turca que reside na Alemanha. O pai é um breakdancer profissional que também ensina dança. Durante o filme, os vários elementos da família Tezcan dançam, cantam e conversam tanto em Alemão quanto em Turco, Árabe ou Inglês. Numa troca rápida entre as linguagens que se faz sem esforço e de modo natural, os vários membros da família transparecem carinho, conforto e uma total amenização com os diferentes “pacotes culturais” que tendem a performar diariamente.

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Performing the local would then be a joint performance in which hosts and guests improvise intuitively to make their sense of humour chime and find ways of provoking and taking pleasure in each other. (…) The international and local approximate each other precisely in the moment when they mutually realize their respective marginality. And margins can touch, overlap, rub up against each other, but due to the different shapes of their limits they are bound to never fit into each other completely.

Jan Verwoert, extractos de ‘Forget the National: Perform the International in the Key of the Local (and vice-versa)! On the Experience of International Art Shows’

(Vídeo: casal a ensaiar tango no meio de uma exposição de fotografia no Centro Cultural de São Paulo, numa tarde de um dia de semana)

A estrutura do filme acaba por ser infectada pelo conteúdo: o filme sobre fazer um filme sobre epidemia que acaba por ser infectado também. A epidemia que se inicia enquanto história estende-se aos actores, realizadores, técnicos de câmara e à própria película do filme.

1) Situations are nothing more, in their being, than pure indifferent multiplicities (…)
2) The structure of situations does not, in itself, deliver any truths. (…) A truth is solely constituted by rupturing with the order which supports it, never as an effect of that order. I have named this type of rupture which opens up truths ‘the event’. Authentic philosophy begins not in structural facts (cultural, linguistic, constitutional, etc.), but uniquely in what takes place and what remains in the form of a strictly incalculable emergence’ xii-xiii

‘Being and Event’ – Alain Badiou, London: Continuum, 2005

“An android,” he said, “doesn’t care what happens to another android. That’s one of the indications we look for.” “Then,” Miss Luft said, “you must be an android.” That stopped him; he stared at her. “Because,” she continued, “your job is to kill them, isn’t it? You’re what they call— ” She tried to remember. “A bounty hunter,” Rick said. “But I’m not an android.” “This test you want to give me.” Her voice, now, had begun to return. “Have you taken it?” “Yes.” He nodded “A long, long time ago; when I first started with the department” “Maybe that’s a false memory. Don’t androids sometimes go around with false memories?”. Rick said, “My superiors know about the test It’s mandatory.” “Maybe there was once a human who looked like you, and somewhere along the line you killed him and took his place. And your superiors don’t know.” She smiled. As if inviting him to agree.

Phillip K. Dick ‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?’

(…) As if there were an opening, an opening like a gathering together, like a world, where something can happen, many things can happen, where there’s a lot, there’s a swarm of possibilities, where everything tingles with possibilities, where the person I can vaguely hear walking around next door might ring the bell, might come in, might burn the place up, might climb on the roof, might throw himself screaming out the window. Might everything, anything, without choosing and without any one action preferred over any other. (…)

[Might, might, might.] p.197, Darkness Moves, an Henri Michaux anthology 1927-1984. translated by David ball. 1994 University of california press. Berkeley and LAin With Mescaline, “Miserable Miracle”, Henri Michaux

Este filme poderia ser uma adapatação para cinema de uma reunião do antigo grupo Oulipo, hoje-em-dia.

No filme, Von Trier obriga Jorgen Leth – o seu antigo mentor e realizador que sempre admirou bastante – a re-fazer ‘The Perfect Human’ um dos primeiros filmes realizados por Leth. ‘The Perfect Human’ terá que ser re-feito cinco vezes: cada vez através de uma grelha complicada e obtrusiva de novas obstrucções e constrangimentos imposta por Trier. Cada etapa provoca no velho realizador momentos de crise criativa que se tornarão quase catárticos.

Von Trier tenta forçar em Leth a espontaneidade e regresso a modos básicos de consciência. O realizador mais velho não falha e consegue entregar soluções plausíveis, mas também seguras e arreigadas em muitos anos de experiência.

No final do filme, entendemos que a estructura “realizador que dirige realizador” não cai longe de qualquer outra estrutura de criação artística: discernimento de escolhas e decisões / começar de novo / escolha de formas e formatos / aplicação de enquadramentos de representação.

Durante o Festival de Cannes 1982 Wim Wenders equipou um quarto de hotel com uma câmara de 16mm e uma lista de perguntas. Entre essas: “Is cinema a language about to get lost, an art about to die?”. Wenders convidou alguns dos realizadores seus contemporâneos a enfrentar a câmara e a responder às suas questões, um-a-um. Spielberg, Herzog, Fassbinder, Godard e Antonioni foram alguns dos contribuidores.

Wenders aproveitou o contexto do festival de cinema enquanto campo rico de criação contemporânea e orquestrou uma documentação da sua perspectiva pessoal, não em relação ao futuro do cinema (enquanto pergunta retóricamente especulativa) mas à condição daquele formato nesse mesmo momento.