Akerman and Space-Time by Ella Harris, Eve Marguerite and Keifer Taylor

An ongoing collaborative research project on space and time in Chantal Akerman's films between Ella Harris, Eve Marguerite Allen and Keifer Taylor.

Spaces of Refraction - Ella Harris

Three Geographical Encounters

Premises:

1.       “The site is defined by relations of proximity between points or elements”

2.       “one could describe, via its network of relations, the closed or semi-closed sites of rest—the house, the bedroom, the bed, et cetera. But among all these sites, I am interested in certain ones that have the curious property of being in relation with all the other sites, but in such a way as to suspect, neutralize, or invent the set of relations that they happen to designate, mirror, or reflect.”

(Foucault, Of Other Spaces, Heterotopias and Utopias)   

The mirror is a semi-real/semi-unreal site. It is real because it takes up a literal portion of spacetime, it occupies an actual site in a given room. However, the mirror is also virtual because it has the potential to take on countless images, and unreal because it shows things where they are not. In ostensibly displaying you in your own real site the mirror actually transports your image over there – reframing it in a curious elsewhere, where it is given a new site and takes on a whole new set of relations and therefore characteristics, changing your image before you have a chance to catch it. The mirror is therefore a not a space of reflection: its surface is one which refracts, bends and distorts what it shows by a process of theft and motion, taking what is and transfiguring it into something else, in its passage via the virtual.

For Foucault, there are certain spaces, which he names ‘heterotopias’, that function like mirrors, in that their relations with other sites have a transformative effect. The relational connections that heterotopias have with other sites are not relations of affirmation or propping up, a neighbourly proximity that secures each’s place – they are relations of questioning and destabilisation; relations which cast a critical light upon all spaces and their relations.  As Foucault suggests, even the most seemingly circumscribed of sites, ‘the house, the bedroom, the bed’ can have this transformative power.

Akerman’s early work demonstrates a fixation on the interiority of precisely these places, the bed, the bedroom and the apartment. This is spelled out in La Chambre but more acutely explored in Je Tu Il Elle and Saute Ma Ville and 15/8.

La Chambre - Eve Marguerite Allen

Persona: Time & Proximity by Keifer Taylor

Persona: Time & Proximity

To this day the close-up remains a unique aspect of the cinematic experience. On the big screen its nuanced details and poetic properties widen our anthropological understanding and breathe life into inanimate objects. In abstract terms the close-up holds a strong affinity to time. In her intriguing (though maddening) article ‘The Close-up: Scale & Detail’, Mary Ann Doane believes the close-up is “always at some level an autonomous entity” operating “synchronically rather than diachronically.” As a synchronic element, which hinders narrative progression, this intimate component creates a “temporality of contemplation,” allowing the audience to examine the subject in frame. Ingmar Bergman’s volatile 1966 feature Persona contains a plethora of close-ups of its voiceless protagonist Elisabet Vogler (Liv Ullmann). Two scenes in particular relate to, and contradict, Doane’s argument of the close-up as a separate, synchronic entity.

From the eerie vacuity of Ullmann’s face in the psychiatric ward to the climactic sequence of dual-sided revelations Persona denies clear explanations. Having watched the film innumerable times I have managed to untangle threads of its complex web of enigmas whilst revelling in its opacity. If the typical dose of hyperbole demonstrated by many actors was present then the meaning behind  Ullman’s spiritless visage could be easily deciphered. Doane highlights the inherent opposition between “exteriority and interiority” suggesting that there is always something beyond our visual understanding. When confronted with an indefinable stare in close-up, the spectator is encouraged to contemplate its presence on screen and “dismantle it as a pathway to the soul.” Thus the face itself becomes a sight of subjectivity, granting viewers a bottomless supply of interpretations.

Analogous to Doane’s statement, Bergman himself exalts film as the only art form that “goes beyond ordinary consciousness” into “the twilight room of the soul.” With the taciturn Elisabet, including the unhinged nurse Sister Alma (Bibi Andersson), Bergman employs the camera as a tool that transcends the exterior limits in order to reveal the characters’ hidden imperfections.