PDF des gesamten Heftes (5MB) - Institut für Theorie ith

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84
and we spent a year making a film out
of the 60 hours of footage we got. No
script, just a desire to be there and keep
something so that what happened
would neither be forgotten nor allowed
to dominate the lives of ordinary people.
So it was a personal motivation
— doing something when my friend
was hurt — that turned into a massive
learning experience. I learned to make
a longer film (the ArtClips and the
Bourgeois films were all short and
based on a simple concept), but more
importantly, I learned about narrative
and ‹voice,› which had been a theoretical
preoccupation early on in my career.
Story-telling as a collective endeavour,
the way images tell stories, the
desire to be seen versus discretion, pride
and shame, fear and relief. We got
to ‹document› it all, in its performances.
The politics? There is not a single thing
or image in this film that does not have
political resonances.
SL Writing is a lonely activity; filming
is impossible without collaboration.
How has filming influenced your academic
field of interest, your methodology,
your pedagogical activities, and
especially your writing?
MB So, no, these films are not case studies
of a previously elaborated theoretical
point. Instead, they partly contradict
and partly make concrete the halfbaked
theoretical insights that are never
finished, never completed.
I strongly feel that I am a better
theorist since I have been making films,
even if I have not written as much as I
used to. I also think the films are not
theoretical in the sense in which this
phrase is usually deployed — i.e. they
are not illustrations of a theory — but
they ‹do› theory; they help with theorizing.
Hence, just as they are more,
rather than less political for not spelling
out the party line, they are also
more, rather than less theoretical than
any writing can be, because the theory
of collective life, of social interaction
between people, spaces, and powers,
happens in front of your eyes.
The teamwork necessary for filmmaking
is the most appealing aspect.
This is also an aspect of the performativity
that comes with relinquishing
authority. I get really, really excited
when I see, in retrospect, when translating,
that something has happened
during a shoot that is important to the
people yet would not have been possible
without the filming. The team, then,
does not consist of the collective of the
filmmakers, but it includes the ‹subjects›
as well.
This becomes very clear in the
video installation Nothing is Missing.
Here, the viewer sits in the living room
installed in the gallery in front of television
screens where the mothers of
migrants talk about their experiences
of seeing their child leave, not knowing
if or when they will ever see them again.
These mothers, first of all, have things
to say that the books on migration do
not say. Not only because no one has
bothered to research the mothers, but
more importantly, because granting
me the filming was their gift to the faraway
child. The emotional ambivalence
would never be spoken out loud, but it
shows in the conversations. Double
messages, hidden anger, and endless
maternal love, sacrifice as a way of life,
and the realization that when the son has
to eat, all is well, «nothing is missing.»