RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
A1 Kočtář, Kryštof
T1 Sadism Against the Film SpectatorLiminal Experience and Modulation of Perception in the Performance Our Purgatory (Martin Ježek, 2021)
JF Iluminace
YR 2024
VO 36
IS 1
SP 29
OP 70
DO 10.58193/ilu.1772
UL https://iluminace.cz/en/artkey/ilu-202401-0002.php
AB Some filmmakers choose not to convey a narrative to their viewers, but to attack their senses directly. In this study, we will examine the experimental filmmaker Martin Ježek's expanded cinema performance Our Purgatory (2021), which uses various techniques to target precisely this type of bodily and affective spectatorship. It is designed for three projectors and three screens, which can only be encountered in the form of a performance. For this reason, we will draw on the work of theater scholar Erika Fischer-Lichte, who has developed a concept of the aesthetics of performativity that offers a suitable theoretical basis for research on artworks as events. First, however, we have to come up with arguments as to why her thoughts can be applied to the medium of film. Using Fischer-Lichte's notion of liminality, which she uses to grasp the transformation of the audience's bodily and sensory experience through performance, we will then attempt to explore the various ways in which Our Purgatory modulates the perception of members of its audience. Our research question can be formulated as follows: what are the specifics of the audience's mode of perception of the expanded cinema performance Our Purgatory and which particular - whether intentional, dependent on Ježek's "sadistic" conceptualization, or completely accidental - elements condition this liminal sensory experience? In addition to Fischer-Lichte's texts, the works of phenomenology and the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze will also be relevant for us, as they will help us to grasp that mode of bodily experience that defies the order of signification. In the analytical part of the thesis, we will turn our attention to the visual components of Our Purgatory, working, among others, with the aggression of stroboscopy typical for structural film and the flash and freeze technique of spontaneous film, and to its chaotic soundtrack, and then we will explore the moment of intentional silence and darkness implemented in this film performance, which offers the potential for the emergence of a specific temporality.