Opus IX: Abode of Chaos / Demeure du Chaos 1999-2013

photo Ingrid Janssen
36 37
We scatter ashes, as if it is only
once death has been declared that
we can envisage the body multiplied
and its absorption by the
world.
The only double we generally
accept is that we see reflected in a
mirror. Yet, imagine that a flash
suddenly brings it to life and the
thought is unnerving. One
wrapping defines one individual
­step past this symbolic frontier
and you can envisage the floodgates
opening to a terrifying
expansion of the boundaries of
thought and all the realms of
possibility…
The Internet is precisely such a
space apart, where, having finally
become virtual, the body can,
without risk, divide, dilute itself
and imagine itself ubiquitous.
Nothing then remains but the
substance, the originator, the
individual who produced the first
impulse.
E.T. plunged into a virtual world
as if into an experience which
echoed his own from 1983 ­an
experience of legal non existence
which forced him to endlessly
redefine himself on the edges of
reality.
The legal guardianship of mentally
incapacitated adults, laid down
as a postulate of life, effectively
equates to erasure from the social
record, to a removal from the
world which electrifies the essence
of the individual, in other words,
the body and soul.
Leaving judges to take on the
responsibility of enshrining his
existence in law, that of an
individual under legal control and
his other self, its mirror image, his
deepest inner part, who, of course,
they could never control, E.T.
marked out, on this dual track on
which he traveled incessantly back
and forth, the boundaries of a
space where, under the weight of
coercion, he found freedom.
For this was ­and is­ a search, a
quest, that E.T. conducts on the
line between the social and the
religious, weaving together the
paths of all mysteries.
He lived with dark ways residing
in his flesh, he threw his whole
physical being into his secret
quest, experiencing dangers at the
surface of his emotions and
bringing the infinitely sacred to
the surface of the legal.
Freedom to lead his life with full
knowledge of how things really
are ­crossing a minefield or an
obstacle course, he embarked,
with enormous self­discipline, on
obsCurum
Per
obsCurIus
a path where the law was weakened
by being too present.
This was a journey of initiation
which put the body to the test, in
as much as the battle and
resistance became constant, each
action in the end leading inevitably
(like a disability) to its
continuation into the legal sphere.
It was in this undefined area that
E.T. was to enact his experience.
So films, like referees, play the
role of witnesses, and at the limit
of the impression made by the
body in reality, their single
viewpoint is duplicated as it is
bounced back to them. From the
fissure emerges the point of
non­return for the "I".
"I", which beyond its psychiatric
manifestation, experiences the
irreducibility of the "being".
E.T. accompanies his journey with
symbolic images ­on one hand the
great book of the law, on the other
the Great Book which is the Bible.
Between them, with neither god
nor master, but always seeking
meaning and direction, walk his
flesh, his thoughts and his
relationship with society. Each
time, he is tested, the end molded
by suffering, in self­abnegation.
Leaving the outer body, dissolving,
becomes just another way of
rediscovering his essence. It is in
the multiplicity of images, their
accumulation over the time that
actions last, that he deconstructs
and reconstructs himself.
For his approach is utopian. By in
effect questioning the position of
the individual facing the legal
system, the news and economic,
political, social and religious
groupings, he reveals what is
possible and the networks that
can give him genuine freedom to
imagine the world.
In 1980 E.T. came of age ­the age
they call carefree, when people
usually rush to take their place in
the social order. It is difficult
though, in this day and age, to
take side roads in all innocence.
The end of this century looks after
itself, it dreams of finishing with
utopias and marks the death of
the avant­garde.
Finding reasons to hope then
becomes an impossible battle.
So E.T. decided to go his own way.
However, in choosing to become a
legal guinea pig, a laboratory
animal to be dissected, he did not
in any way allow the law to
restrict him.
On the contrary, he put himself
under its constant gaze. The
freedom he gave himself was still
only that of the freedom to weigh
up the tiny part where it could
continue to function within
himself.
As Cain under a staring eye
constantly on watch from the
shadows of the tomb, he thus
moved forward, reflecting an
image whose strength was to lie in
transgression and thus in
humanity.
It was while under supervision
that he questioned the system,
constantly doing things that
clashed directly with the machinery
of the legal system; so that he
can now relate this absurd story in
which each setback underlined the
flimsiness of the original case.
This picture of life under legal
guardianship can only belong to
tragedy. Indeed, to think of
yourself as experimental terrain
implies a huge degree of honesty,
so it is to be expected that this
initiatory chapter will be written
with savagery.
sCarIFICatIon