The degree Zero of the screen

 The Degree Zero of the Screen: The Eye Body in a Summer Home

©By Abdel Hernandez San Juan

Written and composed in English 

by Abdel Hernandez San Juan

  I should speak in only five minutes, I written a paper on the movie Non Siting the Site, but it is to letlee time not only to read that paper but even to maintain a lecture of only five minutes constrained by a longer paper, from this point I will try to discuss some new issues while also doing some relations between this issues and the paper. 

 I am interested in a concept trying to continue my theory on a certain relation between Deutzman movie an the effects of the eye of the camera in earlier surrealism, that one of the optical unconcient developed by Rosalind Krauss.

 Certainly this concept of the optical unconcient is related not with the idea of the optical provided by op art when all we have in front of us visually are the lines, colors, surfaces and special effects of oculars phenomena’s physically illustrated as an optical illusionism in front of the eye since such an optical effects repit in front of the viewer eyes which can be your, mine or the eye of any one, ocular effects of many complex visual illusionism that the eye can recognize in his memory as a recording of its own capability to focus, distort, relate, mix, diffuse.

  All this effects even when displayed out in a complete abstract form without referentiality to any representational reality are recognized by the eye in the field of its own voluntary activity, it consist on top to the viewer eye about comparitions between the recognition of its own ocularism and certain things the use of technology of special effects can unfold in front of the eye as oculars, because even when the concept of the optical unconcient reference the eye it is regarded to and related with instead a field that is not defined by the eyes focus capabilities or technology developments around it, but with all the things the eye remnants.

  This remnants are not by the way things the eye intentionally remnants, but things the eye is being seen when many things are simultaneously happening and the eye can’t focus and or retain it, such an unconcient is then being cumulated as a memory in the eye body, it is about things the eye seen and unseen or seen without focusing to seen it or seen without time to see it or to focus it by a moment, seen it but without memorizing it because of the velocity and then all that is being cumulated goes to be a collection.

  There is however another thing to be pointed regarding the optical unconcient, far to contrast how it suppose a cumulated field distinct to that of the ocular effects of opticals it mainly consists like a visual unconcient out there that can be discussed in images and is usually related with the eye images of velocity and simultaneity. 

  The major reference here is the image of the velocities of the consumer society in current neoliberal capitalism so called by somes as late capitalism when everything around is a field of constant images passing in a very accelerated velocity of merchants and publicities, spots and commercials in the television and the internet, but also in the city when all the building shows big publicities and everything around walking are visual images of bodies, sensations, sensorialities, objects, lights and colors with movements, cars, people sailing and buying, all this fast images of very modern technologies velocities and visuals things of simultaneity supposes to the eye to many things happening at the same time that the eye can’t simply retain, the eye have to usually focus but at the same time the eye can’t elude all this things happening around, all this are also taking place and being cumulated by the eye body memory creating a whole field of sensoriality and sensations to the body.

  My point to call this concept here is to say that there is a certain work with the optical unconcient in Deutzman movie while and this is my main point paradoxically Deutzman is exploring it in a form toward a concept I would like to propose here to short approach aspects of the movie defining it as the degree zero of the screen when the screen the computer one at the internet, the screening of everything in the cities merchant publicities I already mentioned in consumers, but also the cellular wireless one screen and the television one is one of the major channels and ways to discuss all I previously explained, a symbol if we can say of such a visual field

  What I am point here is about that in a movie as this one which reference a hotel and a certain story between a douther, her mother and her grandphater with all the dramatic effects of the very strong focused photography and the symbolism of memory, the visual alutions and use of the screen have a conceptual reason when by the way the screen is majorly evoqued and constantly used in the movie more in regard to the screen of the connected wireless cellular phone, here the screen is being related with how the light of the phone light and illuminates Karin faces along the movie and is conceptually also related environmentally with the voice as both narrative and environment in the movie. 

  I will then like to theorize this symbolic relation between the screen, the voice and the lighting of the face, I think we can discuss interesting conceptual issues on this relation considered mostly not out of my previous discussion of a field of full sensoriality and sensation related to the body memory. 

  While we don’t have images of the wireless screen, it is evoqued all the time by light and the electronic sound of the cellular, the voice and Karin face, we have Karin body sensoriality all the time accent and specially on this regard there is a certain relation also accent between how she projects her voice toward body sensoriality and how she expresses to feel her relation with the phone and light.

  Such a degree zero is also obvious with the image of the moment when the television screen is being in stand by not in off, on, but without channel transmissions, without images when it produces also a sound of nothing like the noise of nothing and visually all the screen seen to be gray.

  A certain concept of the grain of the screen I have pointed previously can be also mentioned here as probably related with such a degree zero of the screen because if we can say that beyond a visual grain when to me there is also at any screen if not literally or almost visually diluted but supposed a visual grain from the moment an screen evolve to be always something like another surface between us and reality or a surface to our bodies that to a certain point Tamiz or Philigrane, but a grain that also translate and or communicate visual, tactile and sound, like the grain voice of the screen that to me is also the voice of this sensorial field when simultaneously is reestablished an the idea of quotidian domain, but a grain also visual in this gray moment of suspended screen without images transmission.     

  Why is then Deutzman letting the screen in standby when his movie will supposes to explore some of the certain of the eye in earlier surrealism and also something of this optical unconcient.

  This effect of the screen is being used in the movie not only when the girl Karin entrance to her room and is surprised when she see that the television is on with this screen effect, the wind moving the curtains and she touch the screen with her left hand saying shadow people, but also, it visually run several times in the movie as a flashing unexpected effects in several scenes, related for example with sound of the  sky before raining and is also used as a flashing effects in certain dramatical moments of the movie.

  Why the optical unconcient, we have a site very well placed in the movie a hotel in Florida with a certain story and all the accent on it, but we also have the non siting of it the cellular phone relating two voices inside and outside, we have the flashing screen and we have a sequence of photography’s creating a symbolism while all this is related in a form certainly toward a certain critique to linear narrative as predominant in experimental cinema something explored in a unique form in this film

  I focused and proposed in fact in my paper this concept of non siting the site as pivotal as well as I discussed certain issues of multisite when doing comparation of this with site specific installations starting by the fact that the movie play all the time with the hotel as site including exhibits of the hotel drawings inside it in as a shopping show case. 

     

Notes

  I have to many theoretical development around the the visual issue and phenomena of the screen but focused in the internet connected environment of the computer screen mainly books such as An Expedition to the Threshold. By Abdel Hernandez San Juan, an experimental book I composed in Houston, Anthropology Faculty at Rice University and after that my books The Given and the Ungiven and The Presentational Linguistic, 

  This paper was a Conference I lectured at the arthouse an space directed by Brian Deutzman and Helena as a guest of Grisel Antelo, 2018 

  I commented to Deutzman regarding my concept of the eye body cumulated field of sensoriality and unseen seems that this is not about a deep unconcient like in old psychoanalysis but a superficial one and poslacanial, 

  I becomed attracted by this concept the optical unconscious revising in the library in Houston at borders book and Barness and nobles a  book of Rosalind Krauss,  my development of the concept are my own ways of theorization on the issue, since I only did  a general revision of Krauss book reading some pages while without yet reading it fully since I don’t have the book, but attracted and interested in the possibilities of the concept, while I will read it fully to a future completion of a more near comparative analysis between my perspective and the way Krauss has discussed it. We are both from different perpectives interested and working in poslacanian criticisim and in that sense our perspectives are related, but Krauss original concept seems to be more related with photography. There is however Krauss paper I fully read which can be instead mentioned, Video Art: The Aesthetics of Narcisism as well as another one II also full read History of the Eye, the book in question is The Optical Unconscious (October Books) Paperback – July 25, 1994 I started to use the concept in a paper I written in Chicago and I lectured at the lake forest faculty of sociology and anthropology, 99, mentioning Krauss.

Bibliography

Abdel Hernandez San Juan, Art Pizte paper, conference lectured at the panel Maya Art and Anthropology, written and conceived by Abdel Hernandez San Juan in Chicago lectured at the lectures auditorium of the Faculty of Sociology and Anthropology as a guest of the faculty in the lake Forest College, an invitation and program coordinated and  introduced by Quetzil Eugenio, the paper writing was also translated by Quetzil Eugenio, Assistance Professor of anthropology in the Faculty, Lake Forest College, Chicago, USA, 1999

Rosalind Krauss, "Video: The Aesthetics of Narcissism" (October, spring 1976),

Abdel Hernandez San Juan, The Posmodern Work, Paper, Transart Foundation of Houston Collection, Translated by Gabriel, Houston, Texas, USA, 1995