Conversation Project with Victor Valqui Vidal: E-mail #4

Last Friday I went to an opening where I received a tip: Jonathan Crary is currently teaching a course named ”Origins of Visual Culture” at Columbia University. I asked if it was possible to attend, when you're not student at Columbia. I was told ”yes, but he wants to meet you then”. Early monday morning I took the Q-train then the 1-train to Columbia University. I have studied and used Jonathan Crary's writings a lot during my master. Especially last semester where I did a video project followed up by a verbal and theoretical presentation.

My investigation was centered around the kaleidoscope as a way of seeing. I asked following question: How does the kaleidoscope influence on subjectivity, the human vision and our perception of reality?

 

A kaleidoscope is a collection of narrow mirror pieces that are put together inside a circular tube. In the tube and between the mirror pieces are loose beads and other colorful small objects. When the subject keeps kaleidoscope up to the light, looking through one end of the tube while rotating it, a symmetrical dynamic and imaginative patterns can be seen. The word 'kaleidoscope' comes from the Greek words 'kalos', which means 'beautiful', and 'eidos', which means 'form' and 'skopein', which means 'see'. So overall 'vision of a beautiful form'. The optical device was invented in 1816 by David Brewster and is today most often used as toys. At that time, the kaleidoscope was used as a tool for philosophical wonder and amazement. Since its birth the kaleidoscope has found its way into the language as a metaphor for an expansion of consciousness, which "Lucy in the Sky with Diamond" by The Beatles (1967) is an example of:

"Picture yourself in a boat on a river / With tangerine trees and marmalade skies / Somebody calls you, you answer quite slowly, / A girl with kaleidoscope eyes"
 

 

The words "kaleidoscope eyes" have later - and especially with the release of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967) - developed to describe the state you are in when you are high on drugs. The poet Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867) used the kaleidoscope as an image of modernity's emergence, where being a "kaleidoscope gifted with consciousness" was the goal for "the lover of universal life" (Crary (1992) 113).

The kaleidoscope as a visual form builds upon the mathematical concept of the Cartesian perspective, which has dominated the human vision and our ideas of perception since the Renaissance. In the Renaissance the visual arts became realistic, the surrounding physical world was rediscovered, religion superseded by science, and mathematics was available as a tool for the painter, why the Cartesian perspective was invented. With the Cartesian perspective the artist could create a window directly to reality through precise, mathematical markings. The same counts for the Albertian window and Dürer's grid. But the Cartesian perspective, the Albertian window and Dürer's grid also established an ideal towards the relationship between the observer (in this case often the painter) and his object with the observer placed in the center, totally focused on the object. Feminist theorists refer to this as 'the male gaze'. This kind of passivity has since been both criticized and challenged.

 

In the book Techniques of the Observer Jonathan Crary describes how these historical and technical changes in visual culture is inseparable from a major restructuring of subjectivity.

 

With my video project I wanted to examine how the kaleidoscope as both a visual form and a way of seeing affects our perception of reality, our self-understanding and behaviour. It was my hypothesis that the kaleidoscope provides a non-hierartic way of seing, which expands the human vision and decentralizes the human subject. As Jonathan Crary, I prefer to use the word 'perception' instead of 'the gaze' and 'beholding', since the word allow to involve other senses than vision.

 

The video project is called Let Him Eat Cake is pieced together from various fragments of personal memories.  Let Him Eat Cake is about unrequited love and the relationship between fantasy and reality, to re-use the image from The Beatles; being in love is like being on drugs.

What happens to my self-understanding and perception of reality when I'm both the observer and the observed and when I write a fictional text upon my own biography?

You can read the text which's being read aloud in the video here:

Sidst jeg var hjemme hos dig, havde du igen købt gulerodskage fra Netto. Det var den der med råhvid ostecreme og noget, der ligner knuste nødder eller ristede havreflager, drysset ovenpå til 18,95 kroner. Du havde kun spist lidt af den. Du ved sikkert ikke, at jeg bemærkede, at den lå på gulvet ved din seng og var pakket ind i plastik. Det gør ikke noget, at du ikke tilbød mig et stykke.

Gulerodskagen var af mærket Coolmore Foods. Den indeholder valnødder og hvedegluten og æg og mælkeprodukter og soja og cirka 13 procent revne gulerødder og bør opbevares i køleskabet efter åbning. Den var mindst holdbar til mandag d. 30. marts 2012.

Du havde en skjorte på med en, to, tre, fire, fem, seks knapper, som jeg knappede op.

Persiennerne var rullet ned foran det ene vindue, og der stod flyttekasser stablet ovenpå hinanden og ved siden af hinanden i det aflange rum.

Hvis mine øjne var en altan hvorfra du kunne stå og se ud på verden, ville du så være i stand til at se det samme som jeg kan se?

Jeg kan huske dine hænder og bilen og Museumsgade.

Jeg kan huske, at vi drak rosévin og Gyldne Damer på Dronning Louises bro i de sene timer i oktober, mens vi så på stjerner, der faldt.

Jeg kan huske, at du var træt af at blive sammenlignet med John Mayer.

Jeg kan huske brevet til Berlin og trusserne og citatet af PJ Harvey.

Jeg kan huske, at jeg sad bag på din cykel iført en kort orange kjole, og du var i Flower Power sæt med voldsom vidde, og at fuglene var begyndt at synge i parcelhuskvarteret i Århus, og dit dæk var fladt.

Jeg kan huske, at jeg lagde mærke til dig, og at du kom hen og spurgte, om vi skulle følges, og at vi stod af på Kottbusser Tor og delte morgenmad på et fortovshjørne på Oranienstrasse, og at vi senere kyssede på Mariannen Platz i 26 graders sol.

Jeg kan huske den nat i din opgang, og at det regnede med konfetti.

Jeg kan huske kjolen med lynlåsen.

Jeg kan huske de ord og de billeder, der voksede i min mave, da jeg kom hjem og lå i min egen seng den morgen, og at jeg manglede søvn, men at jeg ikke kunne finde ro.

Jeg kan huske, at jeg overvejede, om du ville have mig til at være en anden.

Jeg kan huske, at jeg tit har tænkt, at det er svært med den her slags situationer, og at jeg ikke ved, hvordan man bør forholde sig til dem.

Jeg kan huske, at du ikke ville kysse mig.

Hjemme hos mig er vinduerne åbne, og på bordet venter en gulerodskage med flormelis, drysset let henover den lune og fugtige overflade. Jeg har bagt den i tilfælde af, du nu skulle komme forbi.

Hvis mine øjne var en altan hvorfra du kunne stå og se ud på verden, ville du så være i stand til at se det samme, som jeg kan se?