| Abstract (english) | The aim (purpose) of this theoretical research is to deepen the understanding of the phenomena and concepts mentioned in the title in relation to the relevant artistic discourses and works and, in turn, in relation to the author's own artistic work. The theoretical part comprises twenty chapters, divided into seven thematic units: "Image, screen and frame", "Video media, installation art and spectator", "Realistic and symbolic in artwork", "Repeating and multiplying images, screens and actions". "Time and space in video / film and video installations", "View" and "Own artistic practice". After establishing a theoretical framework in which key concepts and phenomena are defined, there is an attempt of recognizing these concepts and phenomena as materialized in examples of works of art. The keywords, i.e. repetition, realistic and symbolic (largely based on the approach established by Jacques Lacan and the reviewers of his work ), image, time, interval, view, spectator and video media are approached interdisciplinary because of the complexity and conceptualism of the works of art that reflect the various paradigms of artistic, philosophical, scientific and media realms. The works considered, in the form of serial images, single-channel experimental film / video and single- or multi-channel (multi-screens) film / video installations are related via the imperative of repeated repetition or multiplication of exactly the same or similar (varied, modified) visual and / or sound elements in the continuum(s) of time or / and space. Authors such as Bruce Nauman, VALIE EXPORT, Ragnar Kjartansson, Wolf Vostell, Shirin Neshat, Paul Sharits, Harun Farocki, Dalibor Martinis, Andy Warhol, Douglas Gordon, Bill Viola, Frank Gillette and Ira Schneider, and Marina Abramovic problematize, in different ways, the concept and procedures of multiplication - repetition, but not in the sense of "copying" and "repetition" of reality or of the original, but of repeated repetitions of the simulacrum. The term "multiplication" focuses on a dual issue. On the one hand, this is a multiplication of images in space presented through a number of movie / video screens (or multiple graphic prints of the same motif in serial images by Andy Warhol). Multiplication, on the other hand, is present in time as motion or static video / movie images that are successively repeated on a single screen. The categories of Real and Symbolic mainly refer to Lacan's registers of reality, where the trinity of the Imaginary - Symbolic - Real represent the orders within which human subjectivity is established. Referential works of art are often connected by the theme of the traumatic. Repetitions of images and situations are a response to the traumatic (experience) - repetition 19 itself is a symptom of trauma. On the other hand, repeating and multiplying traumatic images results in a new traumatic effect or cancels it. Within the boundaries of Lacan's registers, the real is the subject of anxiety, that is, the "missed encounter with the real" is manifested in the form of trauma, as Dylan Evans writes in An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis (1996, p. 163). Some of the questions to which answers are being sought are: What are the reasons, modes and effects of repeating and multiplying images and screens in a work of art - primarily in video, film / video installations and serial images? How can simple forms of expression such as multiplication, variation and repetition - simple movements, situations, gestures and phrases - as symbolic equivalents of reality - express the complexity, multilayer quality and multiplicity of social and individual realities? What are the reasons and effects of repeating and multiplying traumatic images / scenes / situations in works of art? In what ways can I relate the categories of Real and Symbolic to works of art that assimilate the repetition, multiplication and seriality of images and screens? How does the viewer / spectator experience time in video and video installations, in video / movie loops, in a repetitive video, and in installations with multiplied screens and images? How are time and space intervals present, and what is their role in works of art that assimilate repetitions or multiplications? In what way does the performer in the video relate to the camera, what is the "outside view", and in what relation is the viewer's (spectator's) view in relation to the human character in the video? In the unit entitled "Image, Screen and Frame", these categories are analysed as well as the category of multiple and multiplied screens, which initially developed from a film experiment and the appearance of expanded cinema. The theoretical background is found in the texts written by Robert Mitchell and Jacques Khalip, Kresimir Purgar, Gilles Deleuze, Michel Chion, Noël Carroll, Meyer Schapiro, Lev Manovich, Ann Fridberg and Ante Peterlić. The term image here implies various modalities and appearances: visual images, sound images, verbal images (prime, primary, and so-called prime verbal images - prime verbal images and verbal images proper) and their inter-combinations (audio-logo-visual images, according to Michel Chion), then material, mental, moving and immobile images. Repeated images are evident as movie / video frames, frames, as larger time-series sequences, as assembly circuits, movements, situations, actions, motifs or sounds - sometimes they are exactly the same (as endless cycle loops) or they are similar, varied or modified. For example, the coherent interaction of disjointed, self-contained and equal visual and sound images appears in the structuralism film T.O.U.C.H.I.N.G. (1968) by Paul Sharits. Sound elements also contribute to the visual impact. By contrasting and quick exchange of the 20 same and similar images, colours and a rhythmic repetition of sounds (speech), a powerful emotionally irritating effect was achieved. First-rate primary verbal images in the field of experimental film and video art are recognizable, for example, in Zorn Lemma's experimental film Hollis Frampton (1970) - in the first part through speech, and further through the presentation of various New York street signs in alphabetical order. Verbal imagery is also evident in the aforementioned film T, O, U, C, H, I, N, G (1968), when the spoken words destroy, amplify, intensify and direct the reception of inserted frames with invasive scenes. The categories of screens, frames and formats, and situations inside / outside the frame and the orientation of the projected image are the spatial components of video installations. The term screen refers to all forms of presentation of images - images presented through various media. Lev Manovich (2001) distinguishes among classic screens (with still images, such as easel or mural), dynamic (with moving television, movie or video images), real-time screens and interactive screens. This paper mainly focuses on the so-called dynamic screens that are non-material (projections on a flat surface) or material (television, video and computer monitors). Visual artists, as well as video and film authors, experimented with frame sizes and proportions, but also with slanted images or screens, set upside down, rotated ninety degrees, or angled. Although such practices can imply a variety of symbolic meanings (for example, visualisation of the metaphor of an "upside down world" or evoke psychological (disturbed) personality traits, emphasize quirkiness or defamiliarization quality, etc.), such upside down, at a sharp angle or vertically rotated screens or images almost always disorient the viewer as they are set "wrongly" in space relative to its vertical axis. When screens (such as "monitor-screens" or "projection screens") are multiplied in space (multi-screens), simultaneous or successive projections are reproduced, it causes simultaneous viewing and attention is divided among multiple and juxtaposed projected images, which reflects very complex and chaotic contemporary reality of life where many things happen simultaneously and simultaneously on multiple levels. In the realm of film, the simultaneity of events was shown on a single screen by means of the “parallel editing” (crosscut) technique, double exposure or split screen. For Ann Friedberg, "parallel editing" is the cinematic equivalent of "meanwhile" because it treats sequential images as simultaneous events (2009, p. 146). In multi-channel video installations, the viewer compares opposing, sometimes conflicting and contrasting video images or simulates simultaneity. The unit “Video medium, installation art and spectator” defines the stated installation strategies, their genealogy, specificities and types through the texts of Claire Bishop, Chris 21 Meigh-Andrews, Michael Rush and Kate Mondloch. In the process of spotting and discovering the interrelationships and interactions of all segments, which make up the installation as a whole, the spectator is inevitably involved, as it is often literally physically present in the work (immersion). In a multi-screen art and video installation, the spectator independently selects objects of perception and, in the process of "mental assembly", connects and decodes separate fragments of the whole. In line with the spectators’ characters, appearances or actions, they sometimes participate in the installation as its constitutive element. This activation of the spectator was also considered as emancipation because it is analogous to the viewer's participation (engagement) in the world. Chapters on the activated spectator and the ego of the body are referenced by Claire Bishop, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Kaja Silverman. The spectator is especially aware of their proprioceptive or sensory body when perceiving video / film works where the author turns the picture against natural laws. The spectators seek to adjust, align their body in space (i.e. their view) with respect to that altered image - they lean in, watch from a distance ... The examples are Bruce Nauman's performance films, such as Bouncing in the Corner # 1 (1968) and Slow Angled Walk, i.e. Beckett Walk (1968). The spectator responds to film and video installations physically and with regard to screen dimensions, parameters of real (physical) space, screen layout, static / dynamic relationships; with respect to all pictorial (i.e. color, movement,...) but to sound elements as well. The concept of the Real and the Symbolic, in terms of the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, are sought to be defined within the unit "Real and Symbolic in Artwork" so that their manifestation or latent presence can be "recognized" or implied in the poetics of works that assimilate repetitions. The concept of the Real, according to Jacques Lacan, is not easy to define because Lacan himself develops, supplements, modifies and contradicts it over the years. There are different interpretations of Lacan's observations that, even at key points, are fundamentally different. It is difficult to determine precisely and unambiguously due to the fact that Lacan speaks the least about it - the Real thus remains the most unreachable and mysterious of all three orders. According to Dylan Evans (1996), the Real becomes "a place of radical indeterminacy". The aforementioned thematic unit overviews and compares several different views of the concept of the Real in an effort to identify and find an acceptable interpretation based on which the referential works of art will be interpreted and decoded. Ultimately, theoretical support was found in the related contributions of Dylan Evans, Slavoj Žižek, Bruce Fink and psychoanalyst Leslie Chapman that "allowed" to recognize and "incorporate" something like the "ineffable"- namely the Real - into the interpretation of audio- 22 visual-spatial works. His own interpretations are also inspired by analytical studies in which, through their category of punctum, the authors (Hal Foster, Slavoj Žižek and Roland Barthes) directly associate works of art with the category of the Real. Žižek says that the Real is not some external phenomenon that cannot be caught in a symbolic network, that is, which cannot be included in the symbolic order, but the Real is, however a "crack", a "gap" in that symbolic network - more precisely, the Real is the effect of these cracks and gaps. (Žižek, 2012, p. 98, 99). In the book Watching Distortion, Žižek speaks of the Real as being on the surface, which is not always the "inaccessible nucleus hidden beneath layers of symbolization", but manifests as "excessive distortion of reality" - like a "grimace of reality," like the Joker's stiff smile in Batman (Žižek, 2013, p. 56). An artist who wants to indirectly disguise himself by "talking" through a multi-part work of art, as if "circulating", "touring", bypassing the "core of the problem" or works in order to avoid directness and to initiate multilayer quality. The separate segments of such a unit can be compared to separated and mixed words that "beat around the bush" and do not strike the core (messages) and "serve as a bridge between the Symbolic and the Real." It is only by their totality that the outline of what is intended is (partly) outlined. It is just partly, because even then one cannot speak of a “properly articulated sentence”. Attempts to articulate will take place in the viewer's spectator’s consciousness (or below the threshold of consciousness, at an intuitive level). The Real appears as a "fragmentation" of the symbolic order in a multi-part work of art. Fragments of an artistic wholeness, such as a multi-channel video installation, can be substantively linked (e.g. cause-and-effect as parts of a narrative or associative or conceptual level) and thus constitute the "words" of an "articulated sentence". Since the fragments form a whole (belong to the marking chain), we can treat them as markers-in-relation. On the other hand, some video installations may also include a screen that appears to be out of context, to behave on its own and has an "intruder" function - these could be dubbed markers-in-isolation. Being of a multi-part quality, such a whole is fragmented and can be treated as ‘"cracked Symbolic"’. Fragmentation can also be interpreted as a traumatic situation. Žižek (2013) refers to coincidence as the "response of the Real", and in this case such a coincidence (tyche) can be represented by non-synchronized images, whose combinations are unpredictable and the result of coincidence. Lacan's Real (according to Slavoj Žižek) is also invisible, hidden, implicit sense; something beyond the Symbolic; as an area of irrelevance that cannot be reduced; "Between" or "below" 23 visible images; "Between the lines" of visible text; "Outside" space, as amplification, intensification, rendering - rendu; as a "grimace" of reality, as a return through the traumatic; as anger, discomfort, insecurity; as a stain on the surface; as restraint; as a coincidence, as a rift effect; as “off-image” and “off-sound”,... The unit "Repetition and Multiplication of Images, Screens, and Actions" connects philosophical reflections on the phenomenon of repetition - notably the reflections of Gilles Deleuze and Søren Kierkegaard - with video works and video installations by Bruce Nauman, Ragnar Kjartansson, VALIE EXPORT, Wolf Vostell and Shirin Neshat. Deleuze's understanding of the term repetition describes works of art in which repetition is manifested as repetition and difference, repetition as a step change, repetition "as the highest object of will and freedom", repetition as a compulsive "¸obligation", repetition as "contestation and indulgence" and repetition both as irony and as humour. In the context of a work of art, one can talk about the idea-concept-term-intention expressed by the artist by using various forms of repetition (external, material, visible repetition, i.e. "naked", according to Deleuze). Such repetitions of elements (images in space or moving visual and sound images in time) suggest a "covert", "latent" ("dressed") repetition – i.e. "hidden", "latent" term-intention-idea. Repeating in this way reveals a "deeper truth" that the viewer needs to decode, and which is hidden "under" the technical manifestation of the multiplied images. It is not only images, sounds and screens that is repeated - something else is repeated through them as well, even if in some cases the very idea of repetition is repeated. In repeating "the same", for example, it is "obsessive ritual" or "schizophrenic stereotype". What is mechanical in such "bare" repetitions, i.e. the "element of seeming repetition" (in the video installation God, 2007, by Ragnar Kjartansson it is a repetition of the same verses and melody), has the role of "a curtain for a deeper repetition that plays in another dimension, (...).” (Deleuze, 2009). For example, in Nauman's films such as Bouncing in the Corner, No. 1 (1968) and Walking in an Exaggerated Manner Around the Perimeter of a Square (1967/68), the challenging issue for the artist is mastering "default" actions, "perfecting" them through rhythmic repetition. He chooses "temptation" - which means: a given activity which he overcomes through repetition. Reflections on repetition as a temporal and spatial phenomenon are in line with the chapters of the unit "Time and Space in Video / Film and Video Installations" that link philosophical 24 considerations of space and time and experience temporality with their manifestation in works of art. The observations about time and the relation of perception and memory are, in accordance to Henry Bergson and his conception of duration (durée) as "quality of quantity", furtherly substantiated through video installations and performances by Ragnar Kjartansson. In the experience of a musical phrase, when each new stimulus, that is, new notes are added to the previous ones, there is a constant change in the quality of the whole (in totality); in the same way there is a constant qualitative change while viewing the performance (or the performance video) in which repetitions of almost the same or similar elements occur (the repetitions of difference, also discussed by Žarko Paić). This "qualitative impression" of the work is constantly changing as the performance progresses until the final impression that comes to an end with the end of the work. The video works intended to be displayed as a video loop, express the idea of infinite duration ("pure time," according to Bergson). The Loop wants to be present at all times - to fixate in time. Wholeness is unrecognizable because the intention is to make the effect infinitely cyclic. The unit on the relationship between repetition and time through the past-present-future relationship is based on Deleuze's thesis on the three syntheses of time. Deleuze's theory seeks to apply the analysis of the complex film / video conceptions of Shirin Neshat, Andy Warhol and Dalibor Martinis. In his discussion, Deleuze says that the succession of moments does constitute time but dissipates it as well. "Time," Deleuze continues, "is constituted only in the original synthesis which refers to the repetition of moments." (Deleuze, 2009, p. 124). In this synthesis, consecutive independent moments are contracted one in another. Synthesis thus creates an experienced living present in which time takes place. According to Deleuze (which is supplemented by Bergson), the present comprises (contracted) moments of the past (the previous moments) and the future (which is present through expectation), and thus the time in the present (living present) unfolds. Deleuze thinks that this synthesis must be called "passive synthesis" (as opposed to "active synthesis of memory and reason") - though constitutive, it does not make it active because it is not realized by the mind but appears in the contemplating mind - "it precedes every memory and every reflection" (Deleuze, 2009, p. 124). Passive synthesis (or contraction) is essentially asymmetric because it "goes from the past to the future in the present," which means from the individual to the general and thus determines the direction of the time arrow. (2009, p. 125). 25 While in the context of passive synthesis (habit) one can speak of the repetition of video loop, active synthesis of memory is vividly present in the video installation Turbulent (1998) by Shirin Neshat in which speechlessness is repeated. The left screen, which shows a man as he is silent and listens to a woman singing on the right screen, somehow reflects the "former present" - in which the silence "belonged" to the woman. The third, final synthesis of time, which establishes the future in the way the future is "that which is repeated" and the present and the past are only dimensions of the future; the synthesis is thus literally present in a closed-circle video installations with a time-delay. The camera captures in real time and the images are then displayed a few moments later. The video medium is characterized by specific time structures (some of which are also present in the film medium), such as: real time, looping, decelerated and accelerated time flow. For example, by slowing down and decomposing the image onto the primary structural units, images can be "fixed" in the viewer's mind that the spectator would miss at a realistic speed. The spectator's attention is directed to the structure, lowered to the level of paradigm. Synthesis is impossible at the level of experience of the whole film (the whole is incomprehensible), but it is achieved "with a holdback" at the level of individual frames - as it is the case with Douglas Gordon's 24 Hours Psycho video installation. Unsynchronized video projections in multi-channel video / film installations (especially if they contain an audio component) are characterized by unexpected and unplanned outcomes (Žižek speaks of a "real answer"), which can be recognized through the possibility of using them and incorporating them into the structure (conception), which can be recognized through the possibility of using them and incorporating them into the structure (conception). , such as random harmonic sound and sound harmonies or anarchic audio / visual cacophonies that produce a powerful expressive, often disturbing, effect. The images of two or more screens are sometimes randomly timed in an "amazing" way, and such situations can be experienced very intensely (such as "recognition" that is inexplicable in words or occurs in the realm of the intuitive). The thematic unit on time and space ends with considerations about the occurrence and effects of time and space intervals as places and moments "between" – the points of connection and separation, of continuity and stopping - by reference to the "interval theory" of Soviet filmmaker Dziga Vertov. The scale of opportunities that can be explored in interval mode is wide. Intervals represent the perception of time and space in the form of pauses, interruptions, breaks (e.g. emotional, dramatic or rhythmic) denote emptiness or silence, distance, proximity, interstitial space or a gap between various states. Video installations, which are a practical part 26 of this research, include performative video, in which the issue of view is one of the key components. The view is present as the performer's view: in relation to the camera, to the supposed viewer and in relation to their "returned" views, i.e. to the spectator's view to the image. The theoretical starting point for these reflections (within the thematic unit "View") is found in Kaja Silverman's The Threshold of the Visible World (1996), especially in the chapters on Lacan's points of view, where each view of the object always finds a mediating screen or image. In Seminar XI, Jacques Lacan states that the subject's visual identity rests on his / her external representation, which he / she views through the category of "screen". For the subject to appear within the visual field (to manifest itself as a visual phenomenon, as a character), it is not enough that the identification only is identified with the screen, but in that phenomenon it must be captured through a gaze (Silverman, 1996, p. 18). In this sense, the view occurs as a dual phenomenon – as an "out-of-subject view" (gaze), that is, a gaze of the Other and a "look of the subject-as-spectator". Unlike Sartre, who defines the gaze of the other as the gaze of another subject, Lacan understands the gaze of the Other as a symbolic order, that is, look-gaze can be understood as an intrusion of the symbolic into the visual field. (Žeželj, 2013, p. 292). According to Lacan, we are not determined by how we see ourselves or as we would like to see ourselves, but by how we are perceived by the cultural gaze. (Silverman, 1996, p. 18). We can influence the modification of our screen (the notion of the screen called Lacan screen) as a socially and culturally conditioned one through poziture. The performer through their poziture (through a particular postural body model) can represent the desired intentional body ego, that is, the desired body. The postural aspect of the performer's body then plays the role of the Symbolic, the role of a mask. Pozitures, according to Silverman, as well "evoke an explicit or implicit frame that separates the entire representation from the 'real'" though we cannot know precisely the position of that frame (Marina Abramovic explicitly draws that frame around her performance space, in The Artist is Present, 2010). However, the body itself has the ability to accurately mark that frame - for example, by its dramatic shrinkage or expansion, it can evoke the character of an imaginary space, which can be expressed as a "smaller-or-larger-than-ordinary" physical, real space. (Silverman, 1996, p. 202). In discussing how we are seen and how we view gazes, the question of gender, age, and race in video performances also arises here (because, through the screen, which is a "culturally generated image" of subjects differ "by class, race, sexuality, age and nationality"). Even when it is intended, the performer can hardly become neutral, e.g. gender neutral. Gender neutrality is particularly problematic when it comes to a female perfomer who is never perceived as any- 27 human- being, as any-person-of-any-gender, but always as a woman (or as a member of a race - which usually prevails over the characteristics of "femininity"). The concluding section of "Own Art Practice" (of the author of the research) discusses one's own artwork that forms a practical part of the research, namely: video installations No Reason to Panic, Nema mjesta panici, (2015), Fun for the King, Zabava za kralja, (2018) and En ten tini (2018); there were also a video loop Laughing, Smijanje, (2016 - 2018) and video Dying in the Studio, Umiranje u ateljeu, (2019). Video installation No Reason to panic was realized as a standalone audio-video environment and was publicly presented at the Academia moderna gallery in the December of 2015. Other videos and installations mentioned above belong to the same thematic box entitled Fun for the King. They are designed as standalone works but, united by a common idea, are at the same time segments of a unique exhibition unit. In the video installation Entertainment for the King (2018), one action is performed many times - one continuous time in the past is shown where similar, “almost the same” actions (like repeating the difference) are repeated. In the context of Bergson's theory, it is the quality of quantity, the "qualitative impression produced by the whole series" - each new stimulus, i.e. repetitive action, is added to the previous (stimuli), whereby the whole acts on us to produce the effect of a musical phrase, which is constantly at the end point. By adding some new notes (repetitive actions), the whole is constantly changing in its totality. |
