CONTRA LA INERCIA AGAINST INERTIA - granada cultura

In a charcoal drawing titled Mondragón (2006)
[p. 41], Pomet synthesizes the problem of inertia
with his accustomed lucidity. A small group of people
are playing table-football and one is making a
mocking gesture towards his opponent, pointing his
finger, but he, just as all his companions, is unaware
of the metal rods stuck through his waist. This is,
therefore, part of another game whose rules and
purpose are unknown to him. If we consider that the
title of the image refers to a well-known Spanish
psychiatric institution, we can see these figures as
inmates or patients, and provisionally restrict the
meaning of the image to disturbance of the mind and
the invariably striking effect of the mise en abyme. If,
on the other hand, we view the piece in the critical
trend of Pomet’s most recent work, the image takes
on a much more complex meaning. In Jan Svankmajer’s
introductory words to Sílení (Dementia)
(2005), this film-maker expresses his doubts about
the convenience of a psychiatric model based on the
“obsolete, but tested method of surveillance and punishment”
and another based on “absolute freedom.
(…) But there is a third way that combines and summarises
the worst aspects of the first two. This is the
asylum in which we are all living at present.” One
does not really need to see the whole film in order
to understand that wherever the dilemma between
oppression and freedom tends to blur the boundaries,
the need to deal with it is all the more urgent. Just as
in Marat/Sade (Peter Brook, 1967) the psychiatric
environment can only operate as a symbolic concretion
of the universal conflicts of the self in relation
to the social apparatus. Indeed, I can recall no work
by Paco Pomet in which the mise en abyme operates
in a merely spatial sense, as he always places the human
figure as the object of that repetition and vertigo
(La partida, 2007; Los últimos días, 2007 [p. 22];
Herencia, 2009). 29 However, if the mise en abyme
can be conceived as a visual technique that introduces
us into the terms of the inevitable by illustrating
an inertia towards the infinite, Pomet manages to
stand back from that inertia by materializing it and
offering it up to be viewed. But as Valeriano Bozal
noted: “the grotesque thus acquires a certainty from
which we cannot escape: the other appears as a
thing (…). By contemplating the other as thing, by
reifying it, we can become aware of our superiority,
but this does not last long – only the time it takes us
to realize that we are they,” 30 and all because, “the
comic always includes the other, even though the
other is oneself. However, that is not reflexive splitting,
but an action that in turn is contemplated by
a third person. And the audience laughs precisely
because of the grotesque unawareness, unable to
see that it is one and the other.” 31 So, is it we who
are portrayed in Mondragón, are we those that
(29) While Svankmajer’s film owes much
to Peter Brook’s Marat/Sade, we must
remember that this film was in turn an
adaptation of the play by the German
playwright Peter Weiss: Die Verfolgung
und Ermordung Jean Paul Marats
dargestellt durch die Schauspielgruppe des
Hospizes zu Charenton unter Anleitung
des Herrn de Sade (The Persecution
and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat
Interpeted by the Inmates of the Charenton
Asylum under the Direction of the Marquis
de Sade) (1963), thus closing – or opening
inwards – another new mise en abyme of
references and echoes that bring out more
clearly the importance of the critical knot
around which these works centre. Equally,
the fact that in a piece such as Herencia
(2009) we find both mise en abyme in the
composition and the already mentioned
theme of (genetic or cultural) heritage
once again contributes, I believe, to put the
solidity of a pictorial discourse where form
and content are seamlessly entwined.
(30) Valeriano Bozal. “Cómico y grotesco”,
in Charles Baudelaire. Lo cómico y la
caricatura. Madrid: Antonio Machado
Libros, 2001. p. 71.
(31) Op. cit., p. 59.
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