Self-portraits: Through A Glass, Darkly

A collection of twelve self-portraits that share one element: glass or crystal surfaces. Little mirrors, big mirrors, bathroom mirrors soaked in steam; dirty or sprayed windows; bottles and lamps.... Though some of these images look like composites, there are no digital overlays here: just the magic of natural reflections and textures.

Wilde x 2: ‘Salomé’ (Carmelo Bene, 1972)

In this text I discuss a three-minute sequence placed at the start of Carmelo Bene's 'Salomé' which is sourced from another play by Oscar Wilde: 'La Sainte Courtisane'. First, I analyse the specific cinematic treatment that Bene gives to this sequence; afterwards, I dwell on the parallels between said sequence and the ending of the film (which is different from that of Wilde’s play) in order to understand what Bene gains by criss-crossing these two sources.

Sneak Peek at ‘Sensation and Sex’

In 2021, I started a film inspired by a chapter in Lucretius’ 'On the Nature of the Universe'. I was quite excited about the making of this film, but I had to put it off due to… well, life. Earlier this year I returned to the film with some new ideas, but essentially respecting the original impulse that drove me to the project. After some months of frantic work, I’ve completed an 18-minute film titled 'Sensation and Sex'.

Souvenir: ‘Proximidades y resonancias’

During the latest edition of SACO 2022, Adrian Martin and I had our first museum exhibition ever: from 10th to 20th of March, 'Proximidades y resonancias', a videoinstallation of eight of our audiovisual essays, was playing in loop at the Museo de Bellas Artes in Oviedo. We spent four days there and saw it all happening with our own eyes! Since this is something rare and worthy of celebration, I'll scatter here a bit of memorabilia for the grandchildren I won't have…

A Window of One’s Own

This window is a natural collager: a magnet coalescing the reflections of a double-sided mirror into a new, often chaotic, aesthetically challenging, and pictorially fascinating (albeit probably just to me) whole. This is the only screen in the world that grants me a place in its universe for, when I look at it, I am in it. And, when I photograph it, I am—again, imaginatively speaking—with the world and in the picture...

The Long Road: ‘Liberté et Patrie’ (Jean-Luc Godard & Anne-Marie Miéville, 2002)

The 'and' functions to always carry the links forward—but it also operates across each pair ("freedom and fatherland, fatherland and freedom": the visual and aural back-and-forth is a constant in the film). It's the movement effected by the 'and' that frees the terms from themselves, and frees the pairs from themselves—threading relations that multiply and amplify, that give substance, background and meaning, that constellate a veritable cosmos out of those two initial notions...

Successive Slidings of Pleasure: ‘L’Après-midi d’un jeunne homme qui s’ennuie’ (Jean-Claude Brisseau, 1968)

There's a draft of a story in 'L'Après-midi d'un jeune homme qui s'ennuie'. The filmmaker plays a filmmaker hanging out in a room, poised – as it were – between the May 68 revolts (taking place in the streets) and his erotic reveries (just … taking place, I guess). The first section of the film builds on this pun: a back and forth, between the protests and the fantasies, with an increasingly (and hilariously) anguished Brisseau in the middle...

The Outline: Milner/Watkins/Munch

A word/image collage on the outline. With quotes by Marion Milner, Peter Watkins, and Edvard Munch...

An Experiment in Non-Smoking (IV): July’s Drawings

These drawings don't strive for perfection, they just push to be completed — and, perhaps, this is why it feels so good doing them. I understand that it may be only to me that they are so incredibly fascinating. But isn't that always the risk (and most of the times even the case), after all? It is as if I trusted that, no matter what I do, the drawing will show something to me. I know how awfully esoteric this sounds, but …

An Experiment in Non-Smoking (II): Six Stabbings

Not conventional drawings (I also do those), but compulsive carving and scratching. I've started calling them 'stabbings' since the gestures performed when I make them resemble, I think, the act of stabbing someone (perhaps oneself). This series of six stabbings, made in one of those tiny notepads found in hotel rooms, were executed successively during a particularly difficult evening of the last week in Antwerp...

Looking and Seeing: Lang/Decker/Magritte

A word/image collage on de difference between looking and seeing inspired by images of Fritz Lang, John Decker, and René Magritte...