finds the double entrentre in things (and likes to sip from a straw)

Author

Julian Dime, Bard College

Date of Submission

Spring 2019

Academic Programs and Concentrations

Film and Electronic Arts

Project Advisor 1

Peggy Ahwesh

Project Advisor 2

Ben Coonley

Abstract/Artist's Statement

This film is, contiguously, an exploration of aspects of my own seeing in light of the failure of specialists to diagnose problems I’ve had with my eyes, which appear alongside an exploration of the window as symbol, especially insofar as the window might serve as a rubric within which to comprehend dialectics implicit in the act of seeing. This film uses anaglyph 3d, aspects of my own experience, and various literatures to problematize these relationships and to draw them into light. The window is, perhaps, the preeminent symbol of a voyeuristic seeing; it stands as the barrier between an interior and exterior space, from which one is afforded the distance necessary to properly see. In effect, everything seen is outside the window, especially if we are to take the saying literally, that eyes are the ‘windows to the soul’—then they are also the windows from which I see outside myself, by which the external becomes internalized. This process of internalizing, which is embedded in the act of seeing itself, is foundational to most creative processes: the world is the fodder, the supply of material, for the camera, which captures it so that it can be reshaped in editing. The process of seeing, even without the emblematic stance of the filmmaker, and even without the camera itself, occupies a similar dialectic—one which occupies spaces of violence and intrusion alongside forces of creation, forces that create the self in relation to the world. The voyeuristic seeing—or the filmic seeing—is in this sense, a normative seeing of the world; I am seeing, foremost, in images, and images necessitate imagination. The image is both creative and aggressive. In seeing at the window, I place myself at a distance from the world, from which I may enact a violence even as I am creating—it is a distant violence needed in order to create, in order to reflect. And though I am wary of the window, this project seeks also to acknowledge that which is made possible only through the window, or at the very least in learning to see through the window: it, too, has its own reflectivity, the possibility that one might acknowledge their own self in the act of seeing. I need the window in order to be able to distinguish between that which is internal and that which is external, between myself and another, between myself and the world at large. In order to engage in the process that is both semi-autobiographical and, in other cases, fictional, I must be able to distinguish myself, to say what is not ‘I’. This film seeks to reframe the use of the window, less as transparent device for seeing at a distance, but rather as a reflective vehicle by which to comprehend our own seeings, from which we might glean certain aspects of ourselves in the world and thereby muddle the dichotomy created by the window (between interior and exterior spaces)—to see ourselves as we are: enmeshed in the images we create—and to draw the eye to the fallibility and problematics of its own seeings.

Open Access Agreement

On-Campus only

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

Recommended Citation

Dime, Julian, "finds the double entrentre in things (and likes to sip from a straw)" (2019). Senior Projects Spring 2019. 284.
https://digitalcommons.bard.edu/senproj_s2019/284