The topic of my report is rather rigid. In order to keep it clean, I will read it; I apologize for that in advance. Afterwards I will allow myself to make some comments on the text I read. The only thing I should say right away is that we are talking about a theory of video cinema, which Yevgeny Chorba and I are developing in tandem.

 

Introduction to a theory of fatal montage, or Hans Christian Batu Khan

By the syndrome of Batu Khan, we mean the syndrome of seizure and tribute. The artistic space seizes control of a dilogue, forcing it to strive for gain. The author-camera pays tribute to the artistic space by focusing on an object and elevating it to the status of a mega-object. By dilogue we mean the relationship between figures or characters that are animated by inspiration. This is not yet a dialogue, nor is it two monologues.

A dilogue is possible only between mega-figures. It is a mutant dilogue born of the copulation of two monologues, launched into the video space and possessing a clearly expressed heuristic nature, wherein both monologues generate a story. The narrative itself reaches the level of dilogue when the mega-figures sketch it out before a camera. The two mega-figures speak of different things, but in the same space, giving rise to a third space that lies ahead for both of them. This is not polyphony; for in polyphony the themes are intertwined without generating new meanings, and there is no parallel montage.

The close-up object stands in conflict with what is in the background (a horizontal dilogue). The background comes to the fore from within the swollen conflict between the dilogue and space, while the mega-figure in the foreground – a jester – is a trans-agent of the topic on the periphery. The enticement of the background to the fore is the technology of building a horizontal dilogue. The horizontal dilogue enters the foreground and, revealing the tension of the conflict between the interior and the dilogue, the video narrative has no choice but to seek out a physical object, raising it to the status of meta-meaning. The subject becomes a mega-character, containing the next episode, i.e. the next interior, the next dilogue and the next conflict between them. The story continues and, introducing the concept of exterior-interior (an exterior within an interior, see "The Cat and the Mouse"), we now acquire a physical object (mega-object) as a result of the copulation between exterior and interior, and this triad manifests a magical fatal space around itself, accumulates video energy, becomes the core of the narrative and, according to the rules of meta-grammar, this zone admits no overlaps and resists fatal, or final, editing. The prophetic effect is achieved when the overlay (insert) is made tangent to this zone and is metonymic if it goes before, and inverse if it comes later. The insert is the primary means of fatal montage, with the narrative itself being created as a painting, while inserts have the quality of later brushstrokes. Unlike the artist who assumes a new hue with each new stroke, the video artist's every stroke shows life as an audiovisual unity. Just as one must choose the correct distance in space in order to perceive a painting, for a video narrative created by means of the fatal editing technology, one must choose the correct duration of viewing, when the novelistic field of the video story begins to be perceived. An insert is a montage of the entire audiovisual space including the consideration of previous layers on a new insert, and the consideration of inserts on any layers that have been lost. This is a fatal moment of cognition and recognition of the secret of the chronotope. [...] The presence of tense, energetic zones that do not allow overlays proves that slow video is included in fatal montage, or, more properly, fatal montage adds slow video without disturbing the organic matter of the natural fabric, giving rise to a canon, which we propose calling Hans Christian Batu Khan.

Fatal montage is a new linguistic tool capable of penetrating the depths of the Mysterious Realms of Being, which are directly related to fate, increasing in the creative process the source of authentic magic, which the artist is bound to employ. A work's mega-topic created in the canon of fatal montage primarily becomes a statement about fate – that magical background which interferes with life, and defines it [...]. In terms of the heightened sense of the material's linear gradation, work in the canon of fatal montage resembles a violin etude. The biblical infant is confronted by an ungraded space, and his relationship with it is one of fatal montage. He begins to speak in a new language, which is of extraordinary interest to the master, for language generates new grammatical structures.

Fatal montage does not abrogate a continuous line of filming, but attains to the power of a dotted line; fate accumulates in the spaces between the dots. The line remains continuous, but now is the sum of the dots, each of which develops into its own story, which is associated with the introduction of real time and remote editing in a sense close to Artavazd Peleshyan, all of which combine episodes separated by overlays. The principle of these overlays is a powerful method for accumulating the video's energy.

In the sense of results, fatal montage may seem to run parallel, but, being conditional, it does not, for it is based on the rejection of context. Re-reading in the era of post-structuralism is the best way to gain inspiration, and, at the same time, it is a technological technique that includes new territories in repetition, so, as such, this article is structured on the distinct feeling of circling around several main ideas, which first give rise as scraps of theses, then are gradually filled with corresponding meaning. Result and process merge, providing the basic principle of matrix construction. Therefore, when we introduce the concept of a mega-matrix – a novelistic tale, which, in our understanding corresponds to what we call The Mad Prince, a Video Novel in 1,000 Cassettes – we simultaneously access a huge narrative space that is formed as a result of the complex mutual "work-relationship" of two artistic principles – slow video,[1] and fatal editing.[2] Actually, in the light of everything that has been said to this point, this very "work-relationship" must be understood as a dilogue.

I'll allow myself to say a few more words. What I just read is a text based on several stages of elaboration of points related to our, so to speak, theoretical existence in video cinema. It draws on several concepts. Natural video (or slow video) employs a single, usually primitive, camera, VHS or Video-8. In no way are computers or any more sophisticated technological methods employed. We try to work with this rather primitive technique, taking into account its limitations, and understanding it in order to grasp the capabilities of so-called natural video, not rushing to generate more complex fields that are always associated with a computer which is virtually beyond the control of rigorous analysis.

A second point has to do with a fact that it is probably worth explaining. What is fatal montage? It's very easy to do. Almost any camera... (here it is crucial to specify what kind of camera we are talking about: Video-8) allows the videographer to shoot material first, then make cuts or inserts in this material, i.e. to aim the camera at another object at some other time. Employing, however, the same filmstrip that was already used. At this moment, an insert seems to replace its previous self. And it replaces itself fatally, that is, forever. In essence, it erases the previous frame, taking its place. In a certain sense... I even became rather alarmed astrally after Olya Khrustalyova and Andrei Levkin began talking about deleting; for, in a sense, this precise moment of deletion means replacing the next insert with the previous one. This is a point of no return. It is worth recalling the Japanese and their method of painting, wherein it was common for the artist to destroy layer by layer of the created work. They did this relying solely on the existence of this specific work within themselves, but not expressed in the material. In a sense, video is the first attempt to exceed the mere existence of a single, continuous line (this is the main point that distinguishes video as a separate and new art form, say, from cinema, which is discrete in nature). So this insert, it would seem, brings a discrete moment to this continuous line, although, in fact, this dotted line [...] only overcomes continuity within itself. [...]  Already possessing continuity in order to rise to a certain height of discrete thinking, video was bound to posit itself as a non-discrete art form. This is the first thing I speak of in terms of an insert or fatal montage. The second, respectively, is due to the fact that these inserts may be done indefinitely. I can see the space with a camera, then destroy what I have seen with a subsequent insert; then, using this next insert, which destroyed what I previously saw, I can again destroy the next insert after it, and so on almost indefinitely – but only if you do not introduce the concept of quality, or some other criteria that go beyond reason and are related to perception or commerce. So this process itself allows you to edit a film without removing the cassette from the camera, and without using any other tools, but for the camera itself. For the camera makes it possible to peruse viewed material through the window of the viewfinder and accordingly apply this accumulated knowledge. As such, the very process of filming is transformed into the process of montage, or editing.

If we consider the insert not just a technical way of materializing oneself inside the material, but rather acknowledge here a fairly fundamentally new point that I have tried to formulate, then we will see that video contains some entirely incredible and new possibilities that clearly allow us to say we are dealing with an art form organized according to the laws of the third millennium.

Thank you for your attention.

 

Boris Ostanin: “You mentioned Japan in connection with video. I once was reading Suzuki, and, indeed, he compared oil painting – which allows you to create a huge number of copies – with Japanese calligraphy.”

Boris Yukhananov: “Yes! That's amazing.”

Boris Ostanin: “So can this series be extended with video?”

Boris Yukhananov: “Yes… I see where you're leading… of course! The paradox is that we have made no such attempts. And we have no such attempts in life either! The fact is that video is very close to the life we live. It's like a diary or a telephone. It is [...] amazingly familiar to us even when we apply it to some other manner of life or the life of others. This familiarity to us is due to the fact that the subjective factor is highly sensitive in video art. Let's say it's in much greater demand. What most often remains in the camera is not a real or objectively given world, but rather a perceiver of this world. That is, the so-called subjective camera, which semiotics already discussed in the 1960s, is utterly incomparable with the enormous, almost all-encompassing aspect of subjectivity that video possesses. And in this synod, not a single gesture of the video artist can be repeated, replaced, or improved. And, of course, it is comparable – I would even say, related – to the watercolors you talk about.”

From the audience: “Do you think this is akin to the conditions of a theatrical performance?”

Boris Ostanin: “You have rehearsals there.”

From the audience: “No, I mean the performance itself.”

Boris Yukhananov: “No, the point is that the theatrical performance itself is the crown of the tree trunk, where the trunk is the rehearsal process. A theatrical performance, if you think about the essence of theatre, is a continuous expansion of this very essence, its transformation in the process of rehearsals, the giving of clear musculature to spirit. Next come the mises-en-scene, also born of spirit, the place whence comes the word, which, so to speak, washes over the spectator. There is no leap here. Video immediately takes in a world that it does not cultivate. Unless you deliberately... how do I say this... don't demand such a canon of yourself; rather, see to it that the space that the video creator perceives, is cultivated by the video itself. If you don't worry about this specifically, then the space is a given — it exists organically, entirely unlike in theatre, where, first, it is created, and second, it is a closed system, closed-circuited either in a chronological or in any other sense... Is that clear?”

From the audience: “Yes.”

Boris Yukhananov: “These are very different things. Moreover, we do not present ourselves as actors in our daily lives. [...] In our daily existence, we present ourselves as individuals living a real life. And we carry responsibility for this by our own death and our attitude to death and life. In the theatre, an actor finds himself in a territory that transcends the relationship between death and life. Actors occupy a territory that is fundamentally closed, and only in this territory do they begin, in fact, to enter into a relationship with spirit. That allows them to create and repeat their performance. All this is fundamentally different from video, which works in a completely different way with space and time.”

Boris Ostanin: “What about the correlation to the kino-eye?”

Boris Yukhananov: “No. Dziga Vertov's concept – the kino-eye – represents a camera as an eye. The video-eye is more akin to a centaur, a camera attached to my brain, where my eye remains my own eye, at the same time becoming the camera's eye. This is a fundamental difference. I write about this specifically in an essay that will soon be published in the famed Mitya's Magazine.”

From the audience: “But, tell me, please, don't we cultivate our consciousness as we live?”

Boris Yukhananov: “It is cultivated to the same degree that it is discriminated against. And we do not know what is lost... A filmstrip cannot guess what material it contained until I allow myself (in general, this is a liturgical act) to destroy the previous material and superimpose... that is, insert new material into this filmstrip... By introducing fatal montage, I am transformed... in a sense... The role of the artist as a demiurge is enhanced. And, perhaps, responsibility, along with it.”

From the audience: “Maybe that, then, enhances the role of the executioner?”

Boris Yukhananov: “Well, only if the executioner is a role.” (Laughter, applause.)

 

Supplement to “Fatal Montage”

The notion of a season is the prerogative of an old-fashioned consciousness. The intra-season is the time of waiting for the season. The art of filming an intra-season is the art of treating the intra-season as a season.

A mega-figure is a super character, one who is capable of furthering the development of the plot.

A meta-figure is a super character after its death in the plot.

The Mad Prince. Japanese is built entirely on a play between mega- and meta-figures.

The relationship between mega- and meta-objects should be understood as play and interaction.

Meta-grammar is a grammar that describes the transition from mega- to meta-.

Experiment here is bonded to theory, theory itself is an experiment.

Rehearsing with an actor through distancing. Transfer to a third person or text (object).

A meta-set is a string of dead fragments within a single insert.

The power of the insert is the power of the impact of the insert on plot; the meta-essence is determined by its meta-meaning: the more a powerful volume corresponds to the space of dead fragments, the more apparent the need for an insert that gives the fabric element [...] the chance of being of mega-quality.

My chaos is always order, and their order is terrible chaos (from a monologue of the progenitrix of video).

The Hitchcock principle is composition in exposition.

The Batu Khan principle is when an invading composition destroys plot.

The Heraclitus principle is composition shattered into shards.

Artistically full-fledged fabric in its most powerful, most intimate aggregate receives a piece of fabric as an insert, as it were, "right on the nose," incommensurate by genre, by story, or anything else, as if it has come from another dimension, yet commensurate in allegorical meaning and energy. Example: the answer to Romy Schneider's question “Who are you?” in the scene with the flashlight search in Bertrand Tavernier's La mort en direct is:

“I am” — followed by a close-up: lips... from lips to eyes as a mustache appears with powerful musical chords resounding —“I am Charlie Chaplin.” A hand reaches for a bowler hat. "End of film."