Anagramatic ABC

Vision

Sources

Vision has always been a cornerstone of art and aesthetics. Perhaps more than in any other historical period, in today’s global age the circulation of images has proved essential for the control of social reality; it is no less crucial if we want to understand, explore, or indeed generate a new reality. All these issues pose formidable questions: who is allowed to see? Whose gaze or viewpoint is privileged? Why do people often refuse to see? Why do some people blind others, or prevent them from seeing?

Genealogies of practice

  • In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni (Damos vueltas de noche y el fuego nos consume).  (Francia / France) Guy Debord, 1978
    A Latin palindrome "In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni" (said to describe the behavior of moths) is the title chose by Debord for one of his chief cinematic oeuvres. A critique of modernization that begins with shots of a movie theatre where mesmerized viewers fix their mute, contented gaze on the light reflected on the silver screen.

  • Ici et Ailleurs (Aquí y en otro lugar).  (Francia / France) Jean Luc Godard & Anne-Marie Miéville, 1974
    A 1976 film by Jean-Luc Godard and Anne-Marie Miéville, made using footage from Jusqu'à la victoire, an unfinished, never publicly realeased 1970 pro-Palestinian film made by Godard and Jean-Pierre Gorin as part of the Dziga Vertov Group. Ici et Ailleurs marks the beginning of the period when Godard moved away from militant politics, and provides a disillusioned critique of the Dziga Vertov Group's ideas and methods.

  • Loin du Vietnam (Lejos de Vietnam).  (Francia / France) , 1967
    An agit-prop, anti-war documentary film directed by Joris Ivens, W. Klein, C. Lelouch, A. Varda, J. L. Godard, C. Marker and A. Resnais. Divided into 11 chapters (plus an introduction and an epilogue), this collective manifesto seeks to counter US media and government propaganda on Vietnam, but also offers a reflection on the global impact of war, indifference to the suffering of people from other cultures, and the construction of selective memory.

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