The images

What I have therefore decided to do is shoot a lot of images. Some planned, some unplanned. In a variety of settings, in studio and on location. Using all the constructions of film grammar possible – camera movements, camera speeds, camera effects – sometimes conforming to them, sometimes distorting them, sometimes reinventing them. Here are a few examples, just an indicative list:



• A calendar hanging on a wall in one corner of the frame blowing in the breeze due to a pedestal fan running in another corner.

• A static camera in a lift. At every floor the doors open revealing a different scene.

• A full circular track with the camera constantly panning to point in the same direction. The subject remains static, and so moves from one edge of the frame to another, from the foreground to the background.

• Swish pans to nothing in particular.

• An orange being peeled by orange finger-nails against an orange background.

• A view of a tree, bottom-up.

• An extreme wide angle shot of a man smoking a cigarette. The cigarette butt and the head occupy the same amount of screen space.

• A section of space just above a TT table. A TT ball keeps going in and out of frame.

• A ceiling fan starting from rest, gradually building up speed and finally becoming a blur.

• A beetle on its back waving its legs frantically.

• Extreme close-up: the texture of a cinema screen.

• Mid close-up: a man doing a headstand.

• A drop of water sliding down a wall.

• A TV against the background of a colour bar.

• The spools of a cassette rotating.

• A dressing table in a bedroom. In the mirror, the camera photographing itself.

• Urinal stalls. A man takes a leak in one of them.

• Extreme close-up: an eye darting here and there.

• A road-roller coming towards camera and filling up the frame.

• A cat and a computer mouse.

• A clothesline with random objects hung from it – a carbon paper, a doll, a toothpaste tube, a rope, a racket, a leaf.

• A fully dressed woman holding up black rectangular boards at strategic parts.

• A view inside an open mouth.

• Two people on different levels of a staircase. Each shows the part the other is missing at every step.

• A cigarette in an ashtray turning into ash right till the end.



What however remains is that crucial shot – the shot where I’m saying I’m saying nothing. Saying it as an image is an option, but I have a feeling that it will get lost in the whole sequence of incomprehensible images. Therefore the best way out is to say it obviously as text – the quote from Cage itself. Now the question arises, when? Somewhere in the middle or right at the end? The ideal point would be at the moment when the viewer is at his most confused. But that would vary from individual to individual. The end, on the other hand, has the advantage of summation, the ability of drawing a collective Ah! from the audience. Right now, I’m inclined towards the end, but that’s a decision I’ll take at the editing table.

White Painting. Seven panels, 72" x 36" each, 72" x 252" overall.
(c) Robert Rauschenberg, 1951