To The Girl Of Eighteen

Some passages from Irene Claremont de Castillejo's 'Knowing Woman: A Feminine Psychology', some images from Philippe Garrel's 'The Phantom Heart', and a few memories of myself at eighteen. A collage on the themes of love, hate, and indifference—and the blossoming of unique relationships.

‘A House That A Guest Has Entered’

I guess one makes films with what one has. Some people have ideas, money, ambitions, heroes, well-meaning intentions, a positive message, virtuosity, a voice, friends to call forth, stories to tell or to steal, attachment to a genre, striking images, charms and spells, subterfuges. I have none of these things. This film is made with my suffering, with words that came to land in my heart, with music and images that rose from the pool of my tears.

Blood Ties: My Most Wicked Childhood Act

Once, I told my brother that he was adopted. I might have been around 12 or 13—my brother being three years younger than me. During that time, I was facing an important quandary in my life: I wanted to become an actress, but this is something I never dared to express aloud. There were two things that stood in my way and that I couldn't overcome—two things that made of my wish a secret that I was even ashamed to entertain...

Out of the Blue: Remembrance of Dresses Past

The only memory I keep from kindergarten is from Carnival day. We were all gathered at the playground, waiting for our pictures to be taken. A girl came toward me and, out of the blue, slapped me in the face. I remember her name: Natalia. I remember her princess costume: a silky dress in royal blue and dark turquoise. And, of course, I remember her brutal slap—and not just for its violence (that still stings) but, above all, for its arbitrariness (which hurts even deeper)...

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...

Dreams I Don’t Have

A few years ago, I read C. G. Jung's autobiography, 'Memories, Dreams, Reflections'. At that time, I was purposefully trying to remember my dreams. Instead of just fantasising myself into oblivion (which is my most natural attitude when I go to bed), I attempted to get into a state of receptiveness and relaxed attention (quite an endeavour for a person like me!). I don't know how I came up with this idea: I guess it seemed more respectful with the unconscious than just trying to control every thought by driving it exactingly where I wanted it to be...

Petty

This is the picture from my current ID card. It was taken in August—a month before my 41st birthday and a few days before my renewal appointment. I remember the day because I woke up early: I didn't want to cross the village when the sun was high; I didn't want to have my picture taken while in a terrible mood and sweating like a pig. But each season has its whims and, this past summer, I used to wake up in dread and despair. So, that morning, I had to undergo a few hours of crying therapy (or whatever that is) until I could compose myself...

‘Birth’ (P.S.)

This is a post-scriptum to my previous entry (which includes my latest film). I've never done one of these before, but when there are discoveries triggering such effusions of belated emotion and refracted recognition, it's only fair that one acknowledges them. Thanks to a beautiful book on translation by Kate Briggs, I've come upon a brief essay by Elena Ferrante about a sentence in (Gustave Flaubert's?) 'Madame Bovary' that has pursued her throughout the years since, at fourteen, she read the novel in the original French...

‘Birth’

This is the first film I've made using, entirely, digital superimpositions. I guess you could say that this is a film about my birth. My mother told me once that my father became another person the moment I was born. I believe her because, if I try to remember a time when I might have felt any connection with my father, I can't: it's as if there was never any. I've heard details about that period before, but I've never had a full-on narration by her to which I could re-listen...

Nothing

I've met people who weren't depressed, yet wouldn't detect a strand of humour even if it was showed right up their asses. That's just to say, by way of introduction, that I am not, in fact, surprised that depression is associated so often with some sort of nihilism on account of the nothing to which the depressed clings. Because the depressed—above all—clings. She clings onto nothing and the nothings she feels, and sees, and utters, seem completely incomprehensible to anybody else...

‘The Burning House’

Last summer—when I was at my most depressed and in the midst of a long relocation process—I painted, over black cardboard, a blue, female figure standing at the threshold of a house already in flames. In my mind, there's no doubt that the house is in flames because I am in flames, and that I stand at the threshold of a future already ravaged, already lost...

Le moi et le je: ‘Jane B. par Agnès V.’ (Agnès Varda, 1987)

Singing a Gainsbourg song isn't easy. He likes his syllables unnaturally stressed or flattened, lengthened or sharpened; he enjoys writing with unequal, undulating metric; he's fond of enjambements that break—across different verses—single sentences and, sometimes, even single words. Many of his lyrics frolic in wordplay; they delight in polysemic and homophonic terms—disseminating multiple meanings and messing with similar sounds...

Brain Massage

Usually, I would have cringed in disbelief and horror at the mere suggestion of a vague link between "what I feel" and the state of the world at large. (It's a long story, but to make it short: if you've lived feeling acutely the separation between you and others, between you and a world without a place for you, this idea just does not make much sense; in fact, this idea is deeply offensive.) I've learnt that this belief in the separation between oneself and the world is a quite common delusion. But knowing I am delusional doesn't stop me feeling how I feel...

Notes on Film Criticism (IV): Singing With

In written film criticism, it is quite common to refer, too, to the critic’s voice. But what is understood to constitute that voice? Is it that the critic likes to embed sentences within sentences within sentences? That he tends to start paragraphs with a question and tends to end them with a blow? Is it his preference for using three adjectives in a row, for turning nouns into verbs, for certain rhetorical devices? Is a chosen vocabulary – an attachment to certain words – part of the critic’s voice?...

Love Yourself (?)

Lately, I've been seriously thinking about seeing a shrink. It's difficult to choose, because there are so many different approaches, methods, therapies that, when I begin to think about it, the pressure to choose wisely adds another level of anxiety to my everyday, general anxiety, and that makes me backtrack. Then, of course, there's this other problem: I have to like him (him, let's be straight). I'm told that this – to like him – is actually not mandatory. But it is mandatory for me...

F

In 2009, I became fascinated by a young man – I'll call him F – who lived in the streets and used to beg for money near my workplace. The year before, I had walked past him several times. There was a group of about ten people – mostly Eastern-European women – who used to line up at the front and back doors of a cathedral, asking for money from the visitors (sometimes, also stealing wallets via tricks that were so crude I could not believe tourists let themselves be fooled so easily). Amongst these people was F, whose looks and manners were different...

Defiled Garden: ‘The Invention of Morel’ (Adolfo Bioy Casares, 1940)

There's a passage of the novel I’ve always liked. Amongst the group of tourists, there's a woman – Faustine – who every evening contemplates the setting sun. The hero, who has fallen for this woman just by looking at her from the distance, decides to give her something. First he tries – I've tried it, too – the good old, conventional approach: conversation. But he's not seen, he's not heard. And, so, he makes an offering to her: a garden of flowers – which he refers to as his "last poetic recourse". Well, writing is this garden of flowers...

Notes on Film Criticism (III): Prematurely Hostage to Our Coming Biographies

This is going to be about film criticism, I promise. But I have to begin where I have to begin. That is: with a homework assignment I got when I was 9 years old. As soon as the teacher tells the class that we have to write about the most important day of our lives, I'm elated. I know what the most important day of my life is, and I enjoy these writing exercises very much. I wish I could present you here what I wrote that day. But this particular piece of paper disappeared, with many others, somewhere around 2001 – after my parents got divorced...

On Doubles and Revelations: ‘The Double Life of Véronique’ (Krzysztof Kieślowski, 1992)

My mother and brother were standing there, with their backs to me. I must have walked very stealthily, because they remained unaware of my presence. "Hey, what are you doing?", I asked. They both shuddered and turned towards me. What I remember most is their looks of astonishment. As happens in the movies after a character has seen a ghost, they were awestruck and could barely speak. "We … thought … you were there", mumbled my brother signalling the window. He invited me to come closer so that I could see it for myself...

89%: WordPress Stats, Social Media, and Other Catastrophes

There's a genre of story I've always enjoyed: those about famous writers receiving letters from their readers. The letters are often nice, but not especially profound or refined. And, yet, the very gesture of writing a letter, stamping it, posting it in the mail, is endowed with a ceremonial aspect that carries its own significance. This has been lost with the arrival of e-mail, social media, online blogs and magazines. You would think that, now that the specialness of the gesture is gone, the writing itself – even if only in an attempt to make up for this loss – would become richer...

Running with Keith Jarrett

It's winter, 2014. I have resolved to start running. There's a very green park, next to where we live in Frankfurt. I observe a Japanese woman training. It occurs to me, now, that she could have been a world champion of some sort of running-related sport. But, that day of 2014, for some reason, I decide to take her as the average person on whom I will model my running. She runs so fast, so vigorously, that it's almost obscene. I do not know how to run, so I copy her. That is a manner of speaking – for, after a few minutes, I feel like I'm going to die. I'm exhausted, I can't breathe, my chest is burning. I cry...

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...

An Experiment in Non-Smoking (I)

Smoking doesn't make stress and anxiety go away, but it masks them. Entangled in the smoke of a cigarette I can stand unpleasant situations and unwanted meetings. To inhale and exhale smoke is to cope with a world whose air you cannot breathe. Smoke makes some images go dim, it loosens up links, it makes life liveable by turning it into ash...