NARCISO SPECTRUM. A MAP OF THE SELF PORTRAIT
Jordi Ferret, Vilafranca del Penedès, 14/12/2013 · actius.media@gmail.com · www.actius.org
language: català · english
Narciso by Caravaggio (1545)
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«The self reading operation is always under suspicion. It is hard difficult by anyone to create any kind of self criticism reading. Self reading is a bit morbid operation,
also sometimes an accommodating operation. It calls to the Narciso spectrum, evoking the disastrous end related to this character. To look at yourself at mirror is not always comfortable. It is a secret operation that almost all ever do with mixed feelings. Sometimes we even "make faces" in front of the mirror. We would not want anyone to surprise us in this kind of activity. We try, in any case, that the doors are securely locked with keys» Eugenio Trías Sagnier. Drama and identity (Drama e identidad, 1974).
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«And this is the part of my novel that now, reader, I will tell you, to continue explaining how to write a novel» Miguel Unamuno. How to write a novel (Cómo se hace una novela, 1927).
«Tout film est documentaire de son tournage» (Every movie is a documentary about its shooting)
Jean-Luc Godard
"Know thyself" was written on the forecourt of the Apollo's Temple at Delphi. This ancient Greek aphorism –that survived throught the centuries- summarizes much of the autobiographical impulse as a way to get decipher the world. By Fernando Sánchez Dragó, interviewed at Pienso luego existo: Luis Racionero (min 23), the “egographical literature” builds the main corpus of interest in the whole literature readings. This egographical literature genre promotes a memorial exercise, which finds its most illustrious predecessor on the Confessions of Saint Agustine (398 d. de C.), and stands forgotten during one thousand years, until the Renaissance. With the return of anthropocentrism, Benvenuto Cellini explains his fifty-eight lived years at his self-published memories called La Vita (1558-1566). The Essais by Michel de Montaigne (1572-1592) will be one ot the most influential texts written in this genre, that will be recalled in future writtings like the Confessions (1765-1767) written by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The Rousseau Confessions worked as a text model for Romantic autobiographies at XIX century, or also Benjamin Franklin Memories (1771-1890).
This genre -that might tend to egocentrism- has reached goals or irreverent parodies as "Groucho and me" (1959), written by Groucho Marx. It talks about the markets rise and fall on Wall Street in 1929, with great sentences like "I don't understand why I shoud worry about the future.. what has done the future for me?". He also said "Look at me. I've worked my way up, from nothing to a state of extreme poverty".
The philosopher and writer Rafael Argullol points out some great moments of autobiographical literature, starting from Saint Agustine Confessions and ending with the Thomas Mann Diaries (published in 1975, thirty years after his death). In Maldita perfección Rafael Argullol exposes the complex archipelago of confessions, memories, miscellaneous and diaries that build this genre. This first person narrative contains a kind of self-knowledge that is very original, related to the spontaneity, sincerity and thruthfulness degree and, specially, related to its authenticity degree. This appreciation matches with María Zambrano ideas, written in her philosophical study about The confession (1943/1965) as a literary genre. According to María Zambrano, the confession genre violates a secret area, a space where life reveals his heart. A sort of crisis genre, the path where life gets closer to the truth. Or, in any case, it should constitute a modulated approach to the truth depending on the level of authors' style, premeditation or spontaneity degree used in the text.
In Maldita perfección first chapter, in parallel to the literary genealogy of self memories, Rafael Argullol suggests a genealogy of the self portrait in painting, emphasizing different goals: Albrecht Dürer, the first serial self painter, who seems fascinated by his own image, idealized (Self-portrait, 1498); Caravaggio, and his tendency to be self-decapited, representing the spiritual martydrom as a physical mutilation (David holding the head of Goliath, 1605); Diego Velázquez, with his powerful play of mirrors and perspective (Las meninas, 1656); Rubens (Self-portrait, 1639); Jan Vermeer (Workshop or allegory of painting, 1666);
Nicolas Poussin (Self-portrait, 1650); Rembrandt, who seems to include the mood in the Self-portrait (1659) Francisco de Goya (Infante Don Luis de Borbón's family, 1783); Gustave Courbet (L’Atelier du peintre, 1855), Arnold
Böcklin (Self-portrait close to death,
1872); Paul Cezanne (Self-portrait with palette, 1879); Pablo Picasso (Self-portrait with palette, 1906). As an autobiography, Van Gogh self portrait series are relevant, expressing the time lapse in the last days of his life: the Self-portrait painted in 1888, the Self-portrait with cutten ear painted in 1889 and also the Self-portrait painted in 1889. We can also add to this list a significant precedent created by Jan Van Eyck, Arnolfini wedding portrait (1434), where the artist is reflected in a mirror at the bottom of the composition. On the mirror, the inscription "Johannes de Eyck fuit hic", Jan Van Eyck was there.
On the other hand, we can mention the enigmatic self-portrait by Antoni Viladomat (1679-1775), who was saved from fire during the first Carlist war and recently has reappeared at @MuseuNac_Cat . (A dead revived: Viladomat's self-portrait)
On the other hand, we can mention the enigmatic self-portrait by Antoni Viladomat (1679-1775), who was saved from fire during the first Carlist war and recently has reappeared at @MuseuNac_Cat . (A dead revived: Viladomat's self-portrait)
Jan Van Eyck's Arnolfini wedding portrait painted in 1434
Van Gogh's Self-portraits (1889)
Self portrait involves creating an image where its subject is the artist who does the art work, which can take many forms whether in painting, photography, or also sculpture. It allows the representation of the artist own emotions, an external view of internal artist feelings, one way of self-analysis and self-contemplation. But self portrait is more than a mimetic representation, since it includes a space for creativity where the author proposes a certain look,
dramatized, on himself. So it is a self-exploring subjective genre, which gives the keys about how the artist looks at himself.
Art historian Albert Mercadé sees the self portrait as an spectral icon of modernity (Bonart, 2010). For Mercadé there are two possible trending views on self-portrait: in one hand the formalistic trend (Manet, Cezanne, Picasso, the cubists, the fauves), which is oriented towards the plastic interpretation, and in the other hand a deeper expression of human being, as a rigorous exploration of his individuality (from Albrecht Dürer and Rembrandt, first artists who had the courage to represent his face continuously throught their life, to Van Gogh and others...). Thus, loneliness, sickness, need, desire, anxiety, awareness of death, stands as some of the reasons for the pratice of self-portrait.
Art historian Albert Mercadé sees the self portrait as an spectral icon of modernity (Bonart, 2010). For Mercadé there are two possible trending views on self-portrait: in one hand the formalistic trend (Manet, Cezanne, Picasso, the cubists, the fauves), which is oriented towards the plastic interpretation, and in the other hand a deeper expression of human being, as a rigorous exploration of his individuality (from Albrecht Dürer and Rembrandt, first artists who had the courage to represent his face continuously throught their life, to Van Gogh and others...). Thus, loneliness, sickness, need, desire, anxiety, awareness of death, stands as some of the reasons for the pratice of self-portrait.
It may be interesting to see these approaches to self-knowledge thorught artistic thoughts and contemporary forms of cinema and digital arts (social media). Is it possible the cinematographic self-portrait?
This ideas are pertinent because of the recent viewing of Après Mai the movie by the french director Oliver Assayas (After may, 2012), in conjuction with the reading of Rafael Argullol's book Maldita perfección. At After may movie, the french filmmaker dramatizes his own biography in the teenager period of May 68th, a time of youth and radical transformation both in the personal, political and social context. Assayas had a previos approach to this earlier period of his own life at L’Eau froide (1994). This outside look back to the May 68th has been also filmed by other popular filmmakers like Bernardo Bertolucci (The Dreamers, 2003) or Philippe Garrel Les amants reguliers (2005). In any case, the autobiographical exercise in cinema could appear centered in turbulent periods, narrated in an idealized way throught the time lapse. It is a look at the own biography that runs throught the threshold of nostalgia and fetichism. And, of course, Assayas does not appear physically in his own self-portrait movie: this is therefore a symbolic way of self-approaching thourght a suggestive journey into their memories.
This ideas are pertinent because of the recent viewing of Après Mai the movie by the french director Oliver Assayas (After may, 2012), in conjuction with the reading of Rafael Argullol's book Maldita perfección. At After may movie, the french filmmaker dramatizes his own biography in the teenager period of May 68th, a time of youth and radical transformation both in the personal, political and social context. Assayas had a previos approach to this earlier period of his own life at L’Eau froide (1994). This outside look back to the May 68th has been also filmed by other popular filmmakers like Bernardo Bertolucci (The Dreamers, 2003) or Philippe Garrel Les amants reguliers (2005). In any case, the autobiographical exercise in cinema could appear centered in turbulent periods, narrated in an idealized way throught the time lapse. It is a look at the own biography that runs throught the threshold of nostalgia and fetichism. And, of course, Assayas does not appear physically in his own self-portrait movie: this is therefore a symbolic way of self-approaching thourght a suggestive journey into their memories.
Après Mai by Oliver Assayas (2012)
Between self-portrait painting and self-portriat movie, there is a previous step in the nineteenth century. The self-portrait phenomenon trascends the pictoric limits with the first photographic essays. This photo thecnical innovation will allow better essays with this art of thyself image. Photographic technology, however, will incorporate a real element in the image. This element, often opens a look at everyday intimate life shown without the symbolic mediation of painting. So this is a visual mimesis, that includes the mechanisms of projection and idealization. Also self-portrait genre elements like loneliness and self-introspection, showing the several diversity faces of Self. The identity.
Some pioneers of photo self-portrait are Roger Fenton (UK, 1819-1869), Nadar (Gaspar-Félix Tournachon, France, 1820-1910), Francis Frith (UK, 1822-1898), and the Self portrait (1839) shot by Robert Cornelius (USA, 1809-1893). This last one is a daguerrotype that transmits an entirely contemporary image, with the author in crossed arms and a spontaneous and relaxed posture. So while self-portrait painting often requires the use of a mirror, photography allows to be free from this tool. The use of reflections, shadows and other light games allows the artist to shot himself in a freestyle way, integrated with the world.
The presence of the photographer in a real environment shows the trace of the subject, a subjective view, a testimony. Photo self-portrait has survived until present time throught the contribution of Lee Friedlander (USA, 1934), with himself shadows included in the pic, Imogen Cunningham (USA, 1883-1976), Francesca Woodman (USA, 1958-1981), Cindy Sherman (New Jersey, USA, 1954) and Vivian Maier (USA, 1926-2009) at United States, and also contemporary authors like Kimiko Yoshida (1963) or Tomoko Sawada (Kobeh, 1977) in Japan. About this photo tecnique here is a complete report published at Self-portrait and photography by Oscar Colorado Nates. You can also have a look at "Seeing themselves: photographers' self-portraits" published in NewYorker.
Self-portrait by Robert Cornelius (1839) - Self-portrait by Vivian Maier (1950)
Modern subjectivity introduces a gap between the subjective ego and the objective real world. In this sense, it is really significant that cinema and psychoanalysis were born together at same time. In 1895, Lumière brothers made the first public screening in cinema and Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) published his Histery studies and the Project for a scientific psychology. Influenced by Schopenhauer and Nietzsche readings about the concept of will, also influenced by the founding Edward von Hartmann's book Philosophy of the Unconscious (Philosophie des Unbewußten, 1869), Freud formulated his concepts about the unconsciuos throught suggesting the idea of a mind divided into layers or levels, dominated by primitive desires, hidden to the consciousness, which are revealed throught gaps and dreams.
The film historians have introduced a boundary line between realistic documentary by Lumière and the magic fiction by Méliès, althought when Lumière brothers filmed the factory exit they did several shots, with its correspondning staging. The key fact is that, while Lumiére brothers used cinema as a way to record the world, films shot by George Méliès explored other variants in cinematography in the field of magic and illusion, in well known films like Le voyage dans la lune (1902), with another illusionist and more dramatic vocation. We can also mention pioneer examples like The great train robbery (1903), by Edwin S. Porter, including the well known last shot of the gunman pointing towards the camera (or the public).
Le Repas de bébé (Lumière, 1895), one of the films that were screened at the first session of the Indian Hall Grand Café in Paris at december 1895, is the first family-film self-portrait were appears Auguste Lumière, with his wife and his daughter. However, the non obviously division of functions between Lumière brothers as directors and the cameraman functions, with their own family playing a main role, is a factor that let us think about a non conscious staging of cinematographic self-portrait.
Le Repas de bébé (Lumière, 1895), one of the films that were screened at the first session of the Indian Hall Grand Café in Paris at december 1895, is the first family-film self-portrait were appears Auguste Lumière, with his wife and his daughter. However, the non obviously division of functions between Lumière brothers as directors and the cameraman functions, with their own family playing a main role, is a factor that let us think about a non conscious staging of cinematographic self-portrait.
Le Repas de bébé (Lumière, 1895), with Auguste Lumière / Man of the camera (Dziga Vertov, 1929)
The camera man (Chelovek’s kino-apparatom, 1929), by russian filmmaker Dziga Vertov, seems to be one step closer to this kind of cinematographic self-portrait showing the camera operator as a main character. The film is a manifesto: as Vertov thought, psycological dimension of images does not allow humanity to be accurate in the seeing exercise. Vertov advocates for a new cinema, far away from cine-drama, a factory of facts without actors and outside the commercial circuit. The film is not a product destined to allow the mind escape or evasion. It is a tool to reflect the critical and poetic conscious of people. Vertov diaries express the desire to create a singular cinematographic art, independent synthesis in the arts spectrum: music, literature, theater... And to do this, he built the first film in cinema about cinema, the movie inside the movie (DELEUZE, 1985, 107).
In any case, if one author works on this subject apotheosis this is Orson Welles. His work is characterized by the hypertrophy of the enunciaton subject. A day dream factory, where in Citizen Kane (1940) calls throught a word, "Rosebud", a complex plot where the beginning is the end and the end is the beginning (according to the formula proposed by Eugenio Trías at The thread of truth (El hilo de la verdad, 2004).
Citizen Kane (1940) by Orson Welles
A staging classified as a mise en abyme as the film, throught photographs, news, images, copies and doubles, it doesn't stop to show itself as a film in process and it is presented as such kind of documentary interview.
In a more advanced stage of his career, Orson Welles filmed F for Fake (1973), a crucial thoughts about ambiguity, in the relationship between truth and falsehood, about the magic fascinating power that occurs in art and representation. Orson Welles himself build an enigmatic personality, misunderstood and rejected by the film industry. The director introduced his filmmaker career starring the Martian invasion at War of the worlds (1938). Welles plays in his works to confuse the audience, narrating events as a documentary reality that it is a second level of fiction. It works as a research of truth throught playing with double meanings, parodies, and imitations. The film starts with an analysis that Welles makes about himself, that it can be understood as a kind of allegorical cinematographic self-portrait, where the director appears as a demiurge.
Another example: Guido's dream (Marcello Mastroianni), at Otto e mezzo (1962) by Federico Fellini first scene, where the main character shows his fears as a movie film maker working in his greatest film ever shot, because he is willing to “put all inside”. But an inspiration crisis paralyzes him. So this a double side film build as the director conscious exam: despite there is no physical appearence of Federico Fellini, the film contains autobiographical elements to build a psychological self-portrait
with creativity crisis elements, economic problems, love matters and difficult relations with the press and mass culture.
At Otto e mezzo
first scene we can see the director's dream. This dream expresses the anxiety and claustrophobia against the prospect of an unwanted way: the guilty feeling of the director that emerges because of a creativity crisis. The film
uses the dream aesthetics to allow the mise en abyme
technique (where the film about the film is the film itself, according to the Christian Metz definition, 1968), able to thematize the affinity between dream and reality, , cinema and life (COSTA, 1993, 75). Fellini makes the real transform to spectacular, to fascinate, reaching the confusion between real world and dreamed world, blurring the disctintion between spectator and spectacle (DELEUZE,1985, 16).
Fellini shows a carnival staging. For Julia Kristeva this kind of aesthetic is closer to the dreams world and closer to the structure of desire. This carnivalistic structure is like a cosmogony that doesn't know its substance, its cause, its identity out from relations where nothing else exist except but relationship. The carnival is essentially diaolgic, made by distances, relationships, analogies, not excluding oppositions. Who participates in carnival is an actor and also an spectator at same time: he loses his own counsciousness as a subject to get the ground zero of carnivalistic activitity, where the disctintion between spectacle subject and game object is blurred. According to Julia Kristeva, in carnival the subject is annihilated: in carnival the author work is anonymous, as a man and as a mask. In the dialogic film, points of view get blurred between them, they get disperse with the main film forces. In this sense, the knowledge that the movie has about his coordinates is developed by more than one gesture, glance or voice. Each signal is an open door where text can think about himself. This is how it is possible to build a psychologic self-portrait as a cilminating exercise of introspection throgth an idealized figure of Fellini projected on Marcello Mastroniani. A true confession open to a mass audience, as it was the public of cinema modernity
Otto e mezzo (1962) by Federico Fellini
Zerkalo by Andrei Tarkovsi (1974)
According to Jesús González Requena and Amaia Ortiz de Zárate, Zerkalo installs a temporary dialectic: on one hand, the images of an enunciated past; on the other hand, a voice over that speaks to us and a gaze that calls us to look from present time. A dialectical confrontation, between the present enunciation and the past were the narration comes from, which is one of the most radical efforts to articulate the first person voice who has known the history of cinema.
We can also have a look at screen cameos that Alfred Hitchcock made in his works starting from The Lodger (1926). The appearnce ritual became an habit, expected by the audience, reason why Hitchcock decided to place it at every film beginnig, in the first five minutes of the movie (not to distract the attention from the spectactor). At François Truffaut conversations recorded in 1966, Hitchcock recognized that this habit was undertaken for utilitarian reasons (to fill the screen), it continued as a superstition, and it eventually became a well-known gag that audiences expected every new Hitchcock movie.
Popular screen cameos: To catch a thief (1955) by Alfred Hitchcock
We can also remember the iconic appearence of Lars Von Trier at Europa (1991), playing the secundary role of a jewish who forgives Lawrence Hartmann, as the Zentropa train company owner who collaborated with nazism.
However, this brief review of what could be a history of cinematographic self-portrait, it should not ignore the work of Woody Allen. In different genres, drama, suspense, tragedy, comedy (the most often times), Woody Allen
has built a prolific film works where he is often the main character, so he offers his own body as a director to build a psychologic self-portrait open to mass audience of cinema. Allen gives us his innermost thoughts about Manhattan
(1979) in a draft script way, a film project shown as a temptative.
One cinematogràfic self-portrait variant may be the documentary exercise under the fake suspiction, as the Werner Herzog Grizzly man
(2005) movie, filmed by his own main character Timothy Treadwell, who leaves civilization to share life with bears during thirteen years in Alaska. El film shows the burgeois vision of nature, where are projected humanistic values. An ecological view about the relationship between man and nature, throught Timothy Treadwell self-portrait (see Santiago Asorey's blog). With some rescued footage Herzog builds a "true history" narration. At the same time, he offers the author's view, with his own appearence and (acusmatic) voice over.
Grizzly Man (2005) by Werner Herzog
This excentric proposition by Herzog remembers, with precatuions and licensing, The Blair Witch project (1999) horror film, in order that both movies are sustained by the accidentally recovering of abandoned archival materials. These both movies are construted under two differnt modes or genre prisms, but they give to the hand standing camera the main character role as a witness. They are, then, an unwanted self-portrait movie, where the dramatic intensity depends of the spontaneous degree of filming technique. Obviously, this builds a kind of disappearence narrative of these characters who play as involuntary witness. This formula wins also with the audio soundtrack, that gives intensity to the last confession made by the main character standing the camera herself. It's a memorable confession scene without lights, in the dark wood: the main character (Heather Donahue) thinks she is close to die, filmed in the dark only with audio self-portrait sound-track.
As an anecdote, we can remember that Heather Donahue was invited at the Festival Internacional de Cinema Fantastic de Catalunya a Sitges premiere, year 1999. But to see herself infront media and journalist could break all the magic in the film disappear exercise, so the film fest organization decided to hide Heather far away from the fest. As compensation, Heather Donahue was invited to return and be part of the jury at Sitges year 2000 fest edition.
The Blair Witch project (1999) by Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez
Pulling this thread of recovered film materials (improvised autobiographies?, rebuilt confessions?), we can remeber also the particular film by José Luis Guerín Tren de sombras (1997). It build a complex narration made by forbiden materials, by lost footage refound.
Another case of autobiographical film enunciation are the Joaquim Jordà documentaries, especially the docs made after his agnosia illness. It highlights the movie El encargo del cazador (1990): one doc where tha familiy of the main character Jacinto Esteva ordered to his friend Joaquim Jordà as a director. Like Scottie's James Stwart character at Vértigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958), where he recived the order to follow Madeleine -and will try to resurrect her from death-, Joaquim Jordà recived the request to shot his friend life from his own writtings and movies. He rebuilds this way the personality of his filmmaker friend, who was also a writter and a hunter, in an open way as a "work in progress", that puts lights on 1970ths years at Barcelona. Jacinto Esteva last will comes to us as a film. “Even just to satisfy the vanity of a dead”, the hunter looks at her daughter Dària, who rebuilds and deconstructs the lights and shadows of the emblematic figure of his father. At the same time, the movie allows a panoramic view at Barcelona and the times that Esteva and Jordà lived.
Més enllà del mirall by Joaquim Jordà (2006)
Integrated into the history, Jordà works on the mise en
place, works on every scene, but he lets the camera at the operator. A situation cinema style where what it matters is the overall look, not sensationalism.
This way Joaquim Jordà starts the biographical self-analysis, clinical and patological, that will be the main subject of his next movies. At Mones com la Becky (1999), De nens (2004) or Més enllà del mirall (2006), Jordà puts the look where nobody wants to look throught his own first person views.
Finally, we can jump back again to photographic genre, to have a look at the contemporary selfie phenomenon at digital media and networks.
Cosmos by Joan Fontcuberta (1997)
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Photographer Joan Fontcuberta suggests some thoughts at “A
través del mirall” (Throught the mirror). Before, Rafael Argullol pointed on self-memories writtings, that the main power of these texts depend on the random and spontaneity degree how they arrive to the audience. If we apply this criteria to the social network, Facebook, Twitter o Instagram became key facts of this selfie rise. With the social network advent it appears the selfie, generated holding the phone with one hand and pointing it to yourself. |
People makes several shots and immediately chooses the material capable of social diffusion. A widely popular variant of self-portrait, which can be relatid to narcisim amd postmodern culture. Thus selfie is a sign of self-confidence, and it reaffirms the author against the audience. Selfie leaves the artistic reflexion context, to be part of the image ocean that fills pop culture, the postmodern society. And also it is often a pop celebrity self-promotion exercise (Madonna, Miley Cyrus, Justin Bieber...).
At "A través del mirall" art performance (Centre d'Arts Contemporànies de Vic, year 2010), the great photographer Joan ontcuberta is interested in what he calls "reflectogrames": photos made by somone in front of the mirror shot alone by himself. Also Fontcuberta points out the dispersion that defines the big internet mirror and the self-image that people uploads at social network. Fontcuberta works on a performance where we can see some selfie images shown between experimentation, exhibitionism, fun and the desire to be observed, countinously projected on the walls as a kind of prehistoric cave.
According to Fontcuberta there is a global desinhibition, a break between the intimate and private. He points out the importance of the images growth, the proliferation of authors, the easy way to create digital images, the lose of control on this digital images, the potential for dissemination and spread of viral network, and the lost of privacy in front of the public exhibition of privacy.
Fontcuberta notes a change on the aesthetic and social uses of photography, more focused on being a biographical mark (I was there),
rather than evaluating the content of the image (for example, in live shows or close to celebrities). This performance compiled some images of people that shot themselves in front of the mirror, and then published their photos at social networks.
By Fontcuberta, the mirror points out our era: “We live in the mirror age. This age is food by mass image production. The challenge now is to find any way to survive them”, he says. In Fontcuberta ideas, Internet is our mirror. He thinks that new technologies allow deep changes in communication and art practices.
We must point out a new variant of self-portrait performance as a protest tool. it is very interesting Jordi Balló appreciation about the mirror visual theme, applied in this case to pro-European protests in Ukraine last january 2014. According to Balló, this image of women sustaining mirrors
is productive and intriguing. It confirms the trend in contemporary protest forms in politics: the use of gestures close to art performace as a way to crete a complex and meaningful image, that can be understood immediately by all the world. The police agent dos not want to confront his own reflection, does not want to think, does not want any doubt. But the protester belives that any change is still possible. The reflection works as a mechanism for self-counsciousness awareness. I refers to Jacques Lacan mirror stadium, that stage defined by Lacan where children builds their own image looking at themselves for the first time.
This is the end of the fragmented thoughts around the self portrait idea seen from diferent views, open to wide perspective like sculpture variants and others... see for example Zarko Baseski, born at Macedonia in 1957).
Jordi Ferret, Vilafranca del Penedès, 14/12/2013 . actius.media@gmail.com . www.actius.org
At "A través del mirall" art performance (Centre d'Arts Contemporànies de Vic, year 2010), the great photographer Joan ontcuberta is interested in what he calls "reflectogrames": photos made by somone in front of the mirror shot alone by himself. Also Fontcuberta points out the dispersion that defines the big internet mirror and the self-image that people uploads at social network. Fontcuberta works on a performance where we can see some selfie images shown between experimentation, exhibitionism, fun and the desire to be observed, countinously projected on the walls as a kind of prehistoric cave.
According to Fontcuberta there is a global desinhibition, a break between the intimate and private. He points out the importance of the images growth, the proliferation of authors, the easy way to create digital images, the lose of control on this digital images, the potential for dissemination and spread of viral network, and the lost of privacy in front of the public exhibition of privacy.
Images from Més enllà del mirall performance by Joan Fontcuberta (2010)
«The mirror age is deterimed by internet and the image mass production. Internet is an universal mirror that splits our experience: we can choose to exist in the real world or on the net. The screen is the gate that allows us to cross from one side to another –like Alice in wonderland– . But it is a such permeable membrane that is impossible to avoid two-way contamination» Joan Fontberta. Catàleg 2010.
By Fontcuberta, the mirror points out our era: “We live in the mirror age. This age is food by mass image production. The challenge now is to find any way to survive them”, he says. In Fontcuberta ideas, Internet is our mirror. He thinks that new technologies allow deep changes in communication and art practices.
Pro-European protesters in Ukraine using mirrors in front police, returning policemen their own image (2014)
«What these women do showing the policemen their own reflection is to demonstrate the intimate conviction that policemen still have feelings. This fact remembers the Pier Paolo Pasolini popular poem (Il PCI ai giovani, 16th june 1968) where he said that during violent confrontation between students and police, he felt closer to the policemen, because they were born in poor families» Jordi Balló. Culturas. La Vanguardia. 22th january 2014, page 28.
This is the end of the fragmented thoughts around the self portrait idea seen from diferent views, open to wide perspective like sculpture variants and others... see for example Zarko Baseski, born at Macedonia in 1957).
Self portrait of myself, Zarko Baseski (2013)
Jordi Ferret, Vilafranca del Penedès, 14/12/2013 . actius.media@gmail.com . www.actius.org
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Popular selfie in the 2014 Oscars ceremony supported by Samsung
