Chris Marker 1921 – 2012
'No Memories. No Plans'.
Chris Marker: French resistance fighter. Poet. Filmmaker. Revolutionary. Time Traveller. Wizard.
Today we lost a time travelling poet, someone who could remember the future, sending and receiving messages through time, images of worlds not yet dreamed, and the words and voices of people long gone. The films of Chris Marker activate our memories and inspire our thoughts, and the CineTrain keeps rolling throgh all the manifestations of the moving image and the living word. Long live the Medvedkin group, long live the cats and the owls. Long live Magic Marker!
Today we lost a time travelling poet, someone who could remember the future, sending and receiving messages through time, images of worlds not yet dreamed, and the words and voices of people long gone. The films of Chris Marker activate our memories and inspire our thoughts, and the CineTrain keeps rolling throgh all the manifestations of the moving image and the living word. Long live the Medvedkin group, long live the cats and the owls. Long live Magic Marker!
DIATOMA
The Dive of the Bathyscaphe Trieste.
“For beauty is just the beginning of a terror we are barely able to endure.
And we wonder at it, because it so calmly disdains to destroy us.”
– Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies
“Few objects are more beautiful than the minute siliceous shells of the diatomaceæ.”
– Charles Darwin, The Origin of the Species
I
Under the cold, crushing weight of water. Under the oceans, under the world, there is stillness. Almost total darkness. A depth of blue like thickest indian ink. Aeons of lostness, coldness, collapse. Here, where the pressure crushes everything not made of living glass. Where the cold encases every living thing in crystal. Even here, under mountains of pressure, there is motion. Even here, there is life. Hunting, hiding, effaced by disguise, mysterious as ghosts. Some of it is monstrous, twisted into occult skeletons of bone and phosphorescence. And some of it, smaller than the eye can find, is sinking. Into an abysmal blackness. Into nothing else. Into years of silence, no currents, no lights. Movement downwards, descending by glacial degrees. Falling. Like everlasting snow.
Plankton. Phytoplankton. Prokaryotes. Eukaryotes. Flagellants. Algaes. Diatoms. Life specks. Limitless billions of shells of chlorophyll and silica. A diffuse cosmos of living molecules. Microscopic sprites, with colossal life cycles. Leading them from the upper seas where they billow through currents like aquatic pollen. Harvesting sunlight, fueling the world. And after life, shutting down, falling apart. Sinking into the depths. For ages, sinking down. An unchanging descent into the vast abyss. Losing coherence in the blackness. Dropping through the final fade of light and into nothing but the dark. Becoming invisible. Becoming residue. Crystallized. Molecular. And finally, after years of waiting. Falling in, touching the earth. Becoming part of the sea floor. A biotic carpet of silt and sediment. Crushed in the darkness, waiting for the light.
II
Deep in the western territories of the pacific ocean, between Japan and Papua New Guinea, lies the Mariana trench, an abyss embedded in the ocean floor. Lodged between a series of volcanic islands, the trench cleaves the mountainous seabed, running north to south in a near perfect half circle. The fissure is over two and a half thousand kilometres long, hollowing the thin chasm between two plates of oceanic crust. At the southern end of the scar, buried between the mountainous folds, the trench's lowest point. It has been given a name. The Challenger Deep. And in this secret place, undisturbed for millennia, obscurely evolved species have plotted the depths, surviving by sorcery and violence. Until one endless night, something alien breached this place, something from the world above. Life, searching for something, descended into the dark, under the world, and shined a light into it.
*
The Bathyscaphe Trieste was designed by the Swiss scientist and inventor, Auguste Piccard. In the 1930’s Piccard had flown into the high atmosphere using pressurized spheres attached to gas-filled balloons. He reached record breaking heights, and became convinced that the steel gondolas which housed the aeronaut during his ascents could be used for other purposes. After his journey into the stratosphere in 1938, Piccard turned his attention to the possibility of using similar spheres to withstand the immense pressures of the ocean deeps. With the help of his son Jacques, he began to design the first of the deep ships, the Bathyscaphes. Jacques Piccard had begun his career as an economist, but he soon left his university teaching position to follow his father into the sea. Work on the first Bathyscaphe, the FNRS-2, was halted by the outbreak of World War II, the world having decided to explore the abysmal depths between nations and people, rather than oceans or atmospheres. The Piccards, Swissfully neutral, waited for the killing to stop. In 1945, in the midst of the newest ruins of europe, work on the submersible was resumed.
The Living Name - Fragment - Chapter A
The living name begins with an A, it begins by becoming something else.
In many places now you will hear its being said that there is something happening which cannot be understood by anyone. Something new is beginning to unsettle the temples and the estates. Its not a god, they say. Its not another god but it moves like one. In one place they said it went through their homes one by one in the night asking quietly if it could stay. In one other place they say it spoke to a woman and that now she won't speak to anyone. She's crazy they say. She walks around all day collecting flowers, the most beautiful ones you have ever seen.
Not for nothing are we without words again. In this time when things have lost their names and names are looking for their things, we find ourselves together but unapproachable, invincible within ourselves. Blindness has affected many of us. A kind of cleansing blindness, as if we were born prematurely. The blind people sit quietly in their homes, all delicate, dainty, pretty, like a kind of fish. Everyone else is out looking for food. The gods and the masters have taken away their bread and are charging a lifes worth for even enough to eat. Everything else is not edible, even amongst all this divine splendor. People have been eating a kind of plant, it makes them feel deep, bottomless. Many are trying to move towards a point in silence, towards healing. Many are collecting gold, its safer they say, than expecting your neighbor to feed you when there's a famine, or a seige. Many of us are wondering how to live without gods or masters.
Elsewhere states are forming out of the wars. They tell us that gold is a gift from the gods. Funny that they should try to sell us a gift. The men in the agoras speak about democracy, about their money, freedom and their duty, about taxation and security, liberty and right thinking. Women, children, slaves, foreigners have no rights, no words, no bodies. Most people just work in the world, accepting their fates, giving offerings to the government and the cults. Kings rule, or rulers rule, and the rulers change, but they still rule. Sometimes they fill small islands with gold and priests. These men and women swan around in communion with the gods. Together they will sacrifice us one by one to their fates. Endless wars and torments, sacrifices, rapes and tortures. And still they try to sell us some money. The gods want blood and the army gold, they say, to keep us safe, they say, to stay healthy. They feed us cursed blessings; old wine, poisoned bread, sleep and death.
Elsewhere states are forming out of the wars. They tell us that gold is a gift from the gods. Funny that they should try to sell us a gift. The men in the agoras speak about democracy, about their money, freedom and their duty, about taxation and security, liberty and right thinking. Women, children, slaves, foreigners have no rights, no words, no bodies. Most people just work in the world, accepting their fates, giving offerings to the government and the cults. Kings rule, or rulers rule, and the rulers change, but they still rule. Sometimes they fill small islands with gold and priests. These men and women swan around in communion with the gods. Together they will sacrifice us one by one to their fates. Endless wars and torments, sacrifices, rapes and tortures. And still they try to sell us some money. The gods want blood and the army gold, they say, to keep us safe, they say, to stay healthy. They feed us cursed blessings; old wine, poisoned bread, sleep and death.
The gods told us yesterday: Bring us a goldfinch, a nettle, a spine, a thorn, and a kind of mite, very tiny. This will be your healing remedy. We went out and searched until we returned with the offerings. We gave them to the priests and they gave them to the gods. They said they would heal us. But they told us, first you must pierce yourself with this darning needle. We thought it would be ok. It seemed fair of course, we would be healed of the aches and pain that follow us all day and night, not letting us sleep, and all they want is for us to pierce ourselves once, for one moment to be poor and needy. So we did. We took the needle and we pierced ourselves, one by one, through the ear and through the palm. The wounds were small but remained open, not gaping but somehow they wouldn't close. Achille said to us: You have been healed of your blindness and your terror, but you have poisoned your blood with this needle, fate. With that the priests shut us out of the house, and we left. We screamed and we cried out. We cursed the gods and the priests who had tricked us. We went home and tried to heal ourselves but gloom penetrated the darkness of the evening, turning the shadows to chaff. We were froth, overwhelmed and colorless. Under this weight the gods' healing for the sickness they had given us began. It began like a burden. Like a bag of chaff or bran carried under the shirt, or wearing rough clothes fitted with a point, a small barb hidden somewhere in the cloth.
The only reason for living is being fully alive;
and you can't be fully alive if you are crushed by secret fear,
and bullied with the threat: Get money, or eat dirt! —
and forced to do a thousand mean things meaner than your nature,
and forced to clutch on to possessions in the hope they'll make you feel safe,
and forced to watch everyone that comes near you, lest they've come to do you down.
Without a bit of common trust in one another, we can't live.
Without a bit of common trust in one another, we can't live.
In the end, we go insane.
It is the penalty of fear and meanness, being meaner than our natures are.
To be alive, you've got to feel a generous flow,
To be alive, you've got to feel a generous flow,
and under a competitive system that is impossible, really.
The world is waiting for a new great movement of generosity,
or for a great wave of death.
We must change the system, and make living free to all men,
or we must see men die, and then die ourselves.
appearance disappearance reappearance
*
The appearance of a man among the trains and waiting people, waiting for the appearance of their world. An appearance somewhere between one train and the next one, between one waiting for the appearance of the next one, disappearing behind each departure, empty carriages and the platform in the darkness. The appearance of a word in the world, amidst thoughts appearing frozen upon those waiting, upon one waiting for a man who might appear, slowly, clothed in snow, between his suitcase and his train.
The apearance of this man, unannounced, in the thoughts of a woman who is not waiting for him, but who is waiting, who is dressed in a fur coat for winter, who lives amidst desire, who waits while snow falls, while a man appears before her, just arrived. The appearance of a world in winter, lost in snow, no light, slow, the world appearing cold between the trains, and this woman, running, undone, rushing with blood towards the city. The appearance of a man without desires, who threatens beauty, falling cold upon the ground.
The apearance of this man, unannounced, in the thoughts of a woman who is not waiting for him, but who is waiting, who is dressed in a fur coat for winter, who lives amidst desire, who waits while snow falls, while a man appears before her, just arrived. The appearance of a world in winter, lost in snow, no light, slow, the world appearing cold between the trains, and this woman, running, undone, rushing with blood towards the city. The appearance of a man without desires, who threatens beauty, falling cold upon the ground.
**
The appearance of a woman in the street, between the snow falling on the concrete and her feet, her face lost amongst the snow wet hair upon her head. The appearance of her desire in a word, clouded by branching arms of weather, set upon by the season that clothes her with the appearance of the world with each dawn. The appearance of the word and disappearance of the world with each breath. Between the woman and the world appears a word, desire. A river appears beside her as she walks, a city appears inside her as she gazes at the wind, leaves floating in the river through her city where she goes to disappear.
The appearance of a body in the river. Branches scratch at the world, breached behind her heart words fall under snow. The city appears frozen into stone, leaves crushed beneath her rushing, breathless disappearing down each street. The body appears cold, appears and disappears with each breath, leaves blown under river through her breast. The appearance of a woman as she walks, as streets of bloody leaves fall through her hair.
The appearance of a body in the river. Branches scratch at the world, breached behind her heart words fall under snow. The city appears frozen into stone, leaves crushed beneath her rushing, breathless disappearing down each street. The body appears cold, appears and disappears with each breath, leaves blown under river through her breast. The appearance of a woman as she walks, as streets of bloody leaves fall through her hair.
***
The appearance of a child pierced by a tree, a face of clouded eyes and snowed in throat, leaves upon the ground inside the childs mouth, an appearance between life, behind a tree. And blood appears as if soaked in cotton wool, cotton wool as if buried in snow, and snow, melted, withdrawing into earth, dispersed by wind. The child stirs, the wind's stirring stirs the leaves and the child appears to breathe, appears pierced by a tree, grown over with ivy.
****
Dear reader,
I am not writing this. To be precise, these are my words, but someone else is writing this because I cannot write it. I need his presence because I cannot be present. His hands move across the keys, his breath holds hands aloft. But these are my words you see, my voice. And I have no choice. I compel him because I too am compelled to speak, and, having no voice of my own i need another's voice. Another's body. These are my words. These are his movements.
I am not writing this. To be precise, these are my words, but someone else is writing this because I cannot write it. I need his presence because I cannot be present. His hands move across the keys, his breath holds hands aloft. But these are my words you see, my voice. And I have no choice. I compel him because I too am compelled to speak, and, having no voice of my own i need another's voice. Another's body. These are my words. These are his movements.
That it is now him is chance. Right place, right time. I don't know how it came about. I cannot say he knows either. Does he know he writes? This, or this? I cannot be sure. If you look at him, whom do you see? If you listen to him, whom do you hear? When he writes I it means me. I. It is his hands that move, unless they are still, but if they are not still, who moves them? I do. You read this now, his hands his breath his movements, striking the keys, my keys, my words. It is my voice now. This is my voice. I write with his body, and he speaks with my voice.
But, for instance, when he sighs I do not sigh. I wait until he has finished and I continue. He continues. It is not always this way, that I write with him, speak through him, use him. I cannot become him. I am always I. I am I. He is not. Though where his I is I cannot say. Nor should I like to try. Too dark, I suggest. Too deep. Where he is cannot be nice. He is absent, lets say. He has presence, pure, sure. But where he is does not concern me. My I, his body. For instance now I am making him cry while he writes this. I am making him sigh while he types. The drama relieves the tension between us. Yes, there is tension. But too dark, too deep to know. I won't investigate it. But I know how to ease it. To relieve it I simply have to make him cry or laugh or sigh or something. Bodies have needs too, you know. But simple gestures are enough to bury him again. But his body is never my body. I compel him to move, and he moves. But his body has its own demands.
In the beginning I could only say very little. I could only produce small eruptions, little squeaks that interrupted his flow. He would speak, with others, he would converse, and whilst speaking I would interrupt him. Stop him sometimes. Introduce myself to those present. He would introduce me, say I with his voice, and it would be me, my I, with his voice. Slowly, his I became mine. My I, his body.
But sometimes I wonder. I am also compelled to speak, to write. I too can remember, although I do not like to (too dark, too deep), another I, not mine, behind me, above me. I sense sometimes an I not my own at work within me, compelling me to speak, to write, as if I possessed the body needed to act. So compelled do I feel sometimes that I obey, and I take this body, not my own, and I use it. I bury him, he who now writes, who breathes, and where he is I cannot say and I do not care to. I make him write, and then I let him cry and he is gone.
I dream that he is dark and deep, possessing another, compelling them, like him, to speak. Their body, his I, his voice. His body, my I, my voice. Where his I is I cannot know. Who my I is I do not care to. He speaks for me, and I let him sigh, and i wonder where am I when he is here.
But, for instance, when he sighs I do not sigh. I wait until he has finished and I continue. He continues. It is not always this way, that I write with him, speak through him, use him. I cannot become him. I am always I. I am I. He is not. Though where his I is I cannot say. Nor should I like to try. Too dark, I suggest. Too deep. Where he is cannot be nice. He is absent, lets say. He has presence, pure, sure. But where he is does not concern me. My I, his body. For instance now I am making him cry while he writes this. I am making him sigh while he types. The drama relieves the tension between us. Yes, there is tension. But too dark, too deep to know. I won't investigate it. But I know how to ease it. To relieve it I simply have to make him cry or laugh or sigh or something. Bodies have needs too, you know. But simple gestures are enough to bury him again. But his body is never my body. I compel him to move, and he moves. But his body has its own demands.
In the beginning I could only say very little. I could only produce small eruptions, little squeaks that interrupted his flow. He would speak, with others, he would converse, and whilst speaking I would interrupt him. Stop him sometimes. Introduce myself to those present. He would introduce me, say I with his voice, and it would be me, my I, with his voice. Slowly, his I became mine. My I, his body.
But sometimes I wonder. I am also compelled to speak, to write. I too can remember, although I do not like to (too dark, too deep), another I, not mine, behind me, above me. I sense sometimes an I not my own at work within me, compelling me to speak, to write, as if I possessed the body needed to act. So compelled do I feel sometimes that I obey, and I take this body, not my own, and I use it. I bury him, he who now writes, who breathes, and where he is I cannot say and I do not care to. I make him write, and then I let him cry and he is gone.
I dream that he is dark and deep, possessing another, compelling them, like him, to speak. Their body, his I, his voice. His body, my I, my voice. Where his I is I cannot know. Who my I is I do not care to. He speaks for me, and I let him sigh, and i wonder where am I when he is here.
There’s a man in the desert, and of course its a man. And he’s good. He’s got to be good. If he weren’t good he’d be dead. And in this town, and he runs this town, in this town he’s gentle and slow. He’s a good man, he doesn’t shout. He knows not to shout, and he’s good at it. He’s a good man, obviously. He's funny, speaks slowly and is unclear. He says hello, he bids farewell.
He used to be a pianist. He was very good. He was a famous pianist and played all over. People used to tell him he was good, and he knew it, and he said nothing much. He smiled, slowly, thank you. Very, very good. So beautiful. So true. He played all night, so beautiful, thank you. This was before the desert. Before the desert he could be good at that, at playing the piano. He could be good at sitting and smiling slowly saying thank you. But what of now? Why now? How? Now he knows what to do. He had to adapt. The desert now, his life now, slow, gentle, brutal. He knows when to sleep, and with whom. He lies very well. His lies are true. He tells them what he wants them to know. So gently, slowly, so well. He waits, talks, falls down. He fucks with them from behind and tells them he loves them. He tells his wife he loves her. He tells her when she hates him, when he’s weak, when she calls him a coward. Because he does this she does what he wants. And because he knows what he wants, he knows how to get it. He tells her he loves her when she hates him, and it makes her furious. It makes her fuck things up. This is what he wants.
And he’s a cop. Jesus fucking Christ, a Cop. And he’s the only cop. And he’s no good at being a cop. He never arrests anyone. Especially not the white people. Not the man who beats his wife on the street. Not the pimps who yell too much. He doesn’t arrest anyone, and he’s good at hiding from violence. He walks slowly and mumbles something, says nothing, and they laugh at him when he’s gone. He’s good at that. He mumbles something and then he leaves. He makes a joke and leaves. Even his gun is invisible. He doesn’t use it. He uses their guns. When he murders the man who’s wife he's fucking he blows him away with his own shotgun, kicks him in the stomache and tells him how good it is. When he shoots the young man who helped him bury the body he shoots him with the corpse's gun, and tells him how good it is. God. Jesus fucking Christ. He’s so good at not being a good cop. He doesn’t want to be a good cop, but he knows what he wants. And he knows that by being the cop he can have what he wants.
the realization of dreams
The conceptual auto-disaster. The volunteer panels were shown fake safety propaganda movies in which implausible accidents were staged. Far from eliciting a humorous or sardonic response from the audience, marked feelings of hostility were shown towards the film and medical support staff. Subsequent films of genuine accidents exerted a notably calming effect. From this and similar work it is clear that Freud’s classic distinction between the manifest and latent content of the inner world of the psyche now has to be applied to the outer world of reality. A dominant element in this reality is technology and its instrument, the machine. In most roles the machine assumes a benign or passive posture - telephone exchanges, engineering hardware, etc. The twentieth century has also given birth to a vast range of machines - computers, pilotless planes, thermonuclear weapons - where the latent identity of the machine is ambiguous even to the skilled investigator. An understanding of this identity can be found in a study of the automobile, which dominates the vectors of speed, aggression, violence and desire. In particular the automobile crash contains a crucial image of the machine as conceptualized psychopathology. Tests on a wide range of subjects indicate that the automobile, and in particular the automobile crash, provides a focus for the conceptualizing of a wide range of impulses involving the elements of psychopathology, sexuality and self-sacrifice.
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