Gorchakov’s Wish at Image Conference in San Sebastian
2011
‘The image makes palpable a unity in which manifold different elements are contiguous and reach over into each other.’
– Andrei Tarkovsky
At a conference ‘On the Image’ held in San Sebastian in August we screened Gorchakov’s Wish, our video piece culminating our project of the same title. We also presented a paper entitled ‘Reflections on a Future Nostalgia: Exploring Andrei Tarkovsky’s Film Image and its Expansion through Contemporary Art.
The video Gorchakov’s Wish is a split-screen video piece comprised of three parts, with each section reflecting our engagement with the final three scenes of Tarkovsky’s Nostalghia, respectively. The first part, Parhessia, contains one piece of footage shot on-location in Rome at Campidoglio on Capitoline Hill where we carry a sign translating one line of text from Domenico’s speech in both English and Italian (see ‘Parhessia’). This is coupled with footage shot in-studio at the Centre for Creative Collaboration where we perform Domenico’s speech, translated into Irish, in front of an image of the Bank of England (see ‘Immolation Triptych – video’). The second part, entitled Allegory, similarly contains footage shot on-location at the original site of Tarkovsky’s film: in this case, Bagno Vignoni; and the footage is taken from ‘Alba Lunedì’. This footage is paired with our re-construction of the scene in-studio using a long take and tracking shot. Beneath the coupling of these two moving images we have also included clips taken from our multiple site visits to Bagno Vignoni as a kind of visual footnote to the actions being performed scattered along the bottom of the screen space. Finally, Elegy contains footage shot on-location at San Galgano, the ruined church that appears at the end of Nostalghia. This is paired, once again, with our filmic re-construction of this scene in-studio. And although we didn’t present this at the conference, each part of the video has an equivalent piece of writing.
The paper we presented explores Andrei Tarkovsky’s theory and practice of the film image, ultimately suggesting its expansion through contemporary art practice. The paper addresses the following questions: How does Tarkovsky’s film image generate a complexity of meaning through its relation to the artistic symbol, the poetic image, time, place and the viewer? In doing so, how does it evidence a nostalgic impulse? How can one identify the critical and creative potential of this nostalgic impulse? Finally, how do certain contemporary art practices, expanding the complexity of meaning in Tarkovsky’s film image in order to exploit this critical and creative potential, indicate the futurity inherent in Tarkovsky’s ‘nostalgic’ film image?
