InRO Weekly — Volume 1, Issue 16

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the other to make sure they didn’t fall overboard. But even in that case, whoever was the least exhausted would hold the camera. But that also had sound. In this case, we added a microphone to the camera, so we’d alternate without rhyme or reason. It was also exhausting; we’d get up and bike to the hospital an hour/hour-and-a-half every morning at 5 AM. Then we’d get back at midnight. Whoever was least exhausted would usually hold the camera and the other one would do the sound. Do you often find your two approaches and ideas are simpatico? Or do you find yourselves disagreeing about what the movie should be? LCT: There’s almost invariably antipatico. They’re not at all sympathetic. We fight like cats and dogs. VP: C'est complètement faux [translation: That’s completely wrong]. LCT: She’s already disagreeing with me. At the end of a day, one of us, especially during editing but even during filming, will feel one way and the other will feel the other. Then, when we meet again in the editing studio the following morning, I will have changed position and come to her point of view. And she will have come to mine. Then we’re like “fuck” because each of us thinks the opposite. So it’s a constant—sorry, it’s a big, stupid word—dialectic going back and forth between the two of us. We never come to any particular consensus. Every spectator makes up something different than every other spectator according to individuality, nationality, gender, race, class position: multiple different variables that are uncontrollable. Even us, we never have a singular intellectual perspective; the film still means different things to us. And what it means to each of us changes through time. We’re still learning about the film by interacting with audiences. VP: I agree… I almost agree, actually. You’re completely right about the fighting or dialectical process. Can you imagine agreeing with yourself and being alone? Since we edit [ourselves], it’s two brains rather than one. It’s like having a conversation. Somehow, we need the other to trust what we’re doing. But also, especially when we look at our footage, there is a common sensibility that is sometimes mind-blowing. Very often we’re having the same reaction at the same half-second, 5
vibrating in front of the same images. There is a shared sensibility that is extremely important in our work and collaboration. LCT: Even if I don’t vibrate as much as you. You talked about how Benjamin’s metaphor of the Optical Unconscious was a starting point, and you talked about how you’ve never fully bought into it. I’m wondering how the process of making the movie and thinking back on making it have changed your understanding of Benjamin’s metaphor? LCT: It’s complicated… it would take ten pages. Even in ten years when [the movie] will be in the past, but especially now when it’s been out for only a couple months in France or almost a year in festivals. Though we haven’t been to many festivals because it’s absurd post-COVID in the climate crisis to travel to all these festivals. But it’s not as if now we’ve reached a certain particular understanding of either Benjamin or the body. When we started filming in Paris, not only did the seven-part structure go out the window but so did the interrogation of that metaphor, partially. Our understanding of the body and medicine was, and is, in constant flux. I still don’t think [Benjamin’s] metaphor holds that much water. He’s a terribly authoritarian writer who’s completely à la mode in American universities. To think there’s an optical unconscious equivalent to the instinctive/psychic unconscious that Freud was exploring… I don’t think that holds up. He thought painting could only represent the world from the outside; it was destined or doomed to have an exterior regard on the world, whereas film would blow the world asunder in the dynamite of a 16 th of a second, as he called it. Then, in the detritus of what it captured: a new vision of the world. It was still very teleological and very technofilic and romanticized the camera’s vision. The camera’s vision is as flawed and partial as human vision. In many ways, it’s not a superhuman vision as Vertov thought; it’s less than human vision. It’s a constant struggle to work with these audio-visual technologies, to give us a new perspective on reality and to perceive the world in ways our own eyes don’t. Or to augment that apprehension we have of the world. It’s not easy and it’s not as if there’s one methodology or technology you can pursue that would allow for that. VP: Wow… LCT: We should write on this at some point because, honestly, it’s a super interesting question. VP: As I was listening to you, I said, “This is exactly telepathic. When you were talking I thought, ‘we always refuse to write, but why?’” LCT: Because we can’t write. That’s why we use images and sound… You can write, but I can’t write. VP: I cannot… you can. LCT: I also think there’s a political imperative to look at the body, especially now. With COVID, it’s terrifying how little humanity seems to have learned from that pandemic. I was really optimistic during it that there’d be a radically different relationship to the environment, to the world, to the extra-human. But I do think we have been fragilized about our bodies, our mortality. Now is the time to contemplate our relationship to other species and to the natural world through the prism of our bodies. The hope is that people like Alice [Diop] who watch this film, which is very violent in many ways, will perceive an incredible kind of tenderness. Paradoxically, perhaps, they’re able to reconcile — as you were — with their bodies. It’s not disgusting, it’s not gory. People often compare it with Cronenberg’s film [Crimes of the Future]. It’s the opposite of Cronenberg’s film. But I still think there’s this prohibition about looking at one’s body that has to be interrogated. And if we’re going to have a healthy relationship to the rest of the world, other species (animal, plant, and mineral), that has to start with a capacity for reinterrogating our own relationship to our bodies. VP: I was talking about the hospital as a microcosm of society, but the body itself is. It’s a place of multiple cohabitation between viruses and bacteria. It’s also a place that cannot be sustainable if you want to push the metaphor of being alive. There’s no body that can survive without the care of other bodies. — INTERVIEW CONDUCTED BY RYAN AKLER-BISHOP 6
Page 1 and 2: IN REVIEW ONLINE FEATURES RE-INTERR
Page 3 and 4: were lots of original ideas. One of
Page 5: were performing, according to the h
Page 9 and 10: KICKING THE CANON In the '80s, afte
Page 11 and 12: KICKING THE CANON Kurosawa's classi
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Page 15 and 16: FILM REVIEWS For much of the film
Page 17 and 18: FILM REVIEWS Bruce Campbell through
Page 19 and 20: FILM REVIEWS have been bleached and
Page 21 and 22: FILM REVIEWS Theoretically, this is
Page 24 and 25: FILM REVIEWS impressive technical w
Page 26 and 27: FILM REVIEWS worth of episodes seep
Page 28 and 29: FILM REVIEWS mass shooting is indee
Page 30 and 31: FILM REVIEWS something undeniably a
Page 32 and 33: ALBUM REVIEWS feature that “ninet
Page 34: Photo Credits: Cover - Courtesy War

InRO Weekly — Volume 1, Issue 16

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