VIDEO, BY GHASSAN SALHAB

Video

Where images disappear, they must be replaced by images; if not, loss threatens.

Ernst Jünger

The image has shown us that we are a mutant species. We are, and have been since the first projected image, the real impossibility of men-images. They have since multiplied: they are occupying the surface of the world.

Jean Louis Schefer

Now, more than ever, the question of the image poses itself. What are these images that we produce, that we invoke, that we look at and that look back at us? What is this movement of images, which incessantly haunts the world? The different works of Iris Tenkink and her proposition of « the fighting of the spirits », put forth, in their own manner, the question of image, or at the very least question the image in its essence: they put to test the powers and limits of the movement of images, both concretely and practically. What is then this gesture, if I may call it so? What are the capabilities of this gesture (in the way Spinoza mused about the capabilities of a body [1] ) ? This gesture is even more captivating in Iris’ work, as she puts her own body to the test, « in gestures » more precisely. It brings into play this strange thing that is the human figure.

After a series of cultures had formally excluded it, the human figure appeared with the first testimony made of composed scenes and accounts; it was still characterized by its propensity to gesture - the first human form, as silhouette, dances (free from its constraint of opposition and of animal theories of the Paleolithic age). (I refer here to the remarkable work of Jean Louis Schefer, Du monde et du mouvement des images.) For a long while, man as such remained invisible. It’s true that he’s since caught up. Now we see the human being, or his figure at least, in all its shapes, under all angles, in all sorts of situations, stories and fictions... Images that represent what is real, that proclaim « this is real, this is life »… Images that even make up reality. “What this profusion of images creates as world, as universe, and what it makes us live is also our frustration, since we are not these images. We are also really a subtraction in the extended, ever-increasing advertising surfaces of the world,” writes Jean Louis Schefer. “And we realize that the advertising of the times has replaced time itself.” [2] That is to say images have become more real than reality. Is that to say that any gesture is henceforth predestined to failure? That any attempt will be compromised? Useless? It would be underestimating the images themselves, and their mystery, which persistently, even relentlessly prevails.

             Yes, mystery of the image, despite everything, despite itself, to tell the truth. Image is its own enigma.

And video is, perhaps, that place where, by the strength of strokes, alterations and deletions, the human figure would reinvent itself; that place where time and the notion of time would be replayed. Let’s remember that the word Video has its roots in Latin. Video: I see. From the verb Videre: To see. Unlike photography and the cinematography, video has no negative. It is in a sense, if I may say, positive. Chemistry is cancelled. Thus, I see, but if I unravel a videotape in my hands, be it analog or digital, I will see nothing. Its revelation is pure technology. (Let us not forget that photography and film are children of the so-called industrial revolution.) No matter how close as I may get to the material, I will see nothing.

And blind, we forge on, and blind perhaps we will know how to see.

Perhaps.    

Ghassan Salhab [3]