David Claerbout: L'oeil inifini

Corinne RONDEAU, David Claerbout : L’œil infini, Noème 1, 2013, FR

MAINTENANT p9

LE PRESENT DU PASSE p26

ECARTS DE TEMPS p40

THEATRE OPTIQUE p56

L’IMAGE “DE TOUT TEMPS” p75

L’HEURE IMPRECISE p93

L’OEIL D’ARGENT p118

FLUIDITE ET METAPHORES p150

This are automated/roughly corrected translations of my notes from French.

MAINTENANT (NOW)

In David Claerbout's work, duration expresses the coexistence of the image on a screen and the effect of it on the spectator’s vision. Images are dependent between a time of consciousness (what I see) and an unfolding of time (what is realized) (p11). DC’s image weaves stillness and motion (Analogue + Digital) (p15). Framing is a way to stay out of the chaos of the world, out of the permanence of movement, it is isolation (p16). The constantly changing boundary. The image is oxymoronic: still-motion, and it is of disjunctive’s nature.

LE PRESENT DU PASSE (THE PRESENT OF THE PAST) "Cat and bird in peace"

We find in the image what is in the title. The viewer's expectation does not come true (the idea of predation). Cat and bird shows the preponderance of a form-action-perception. Conditioning forms the expectation. To decondition, you need a time where what has to happen may not happen at all. DC suspends any causal logic. The image becomes a memory form, the image of a temporality without action (p29). Composing an image with these two movements simultaneously: what is unexpected in the world is contained in what we don't know about it.

"BOOM" 1996

DC establishes reality as an image in a temporal continuum. There is movement in the fixity of the recording (p29). The space of images: real world + world of images, an encounter between a projection and a memory. Memory transforms, recovers, reconfigures souvenirs (recollections) over time; modifies, reacts to stories (p31)

Memory moves: it creates new perspectives. Memory manipulates images: fixing, moving. Memory leads to potentialities within what it makes us recognize/recall. What does not happen is what happens = create a memory that contradicts the evidence of the already existing (Memory + Image of life). Splitting and doubling of time: physical time of movement and immobility; lived time and time of the image. To operate a duality between the known and the unexpected, between causal logics and disappointment and between reality as an image and image as a memory.

"Ruurlo, Bocurloscheweg, 1910" 1997

The present of moving time (film) and the present of the frozen past (photo). On the BW postcard the photograph comes to life subtly, the leaves of the tree start to move only for the patient spectator. The duration creates porosity/encounter. The leaves of the tree move by the passage of a digital breath (p34) (digital/vital wind/breath). The digital activity on really small surfaces, leaves, shadows, pixels.

DC opens the gaze. He shows / insists on/ the simultaneity between memory and perception (p36). It is because of simultaneity/contemporaneity that we look at the images: Remembrance/perception Past / Present

The new comes from the encounter / contact / interaction between these two temporalities, it brings together the spontaneity of sight and the construction of vision (p38)

The only certainty that assures us of possession is to modify a first meaning, to make the thought plastic by continually transforming what is behind our backs, and that we must call the world.