Claire Fontaine
La fine del mondo
05.30.2020 – 06.24.2020
Claire Fontaine
La fine del mondo
05.30.2020 – 06.24.2020
Claire Fontaine
La fine del mondo
video, 5’26”, 2020
Claire Fontaine has produced for studioconcreto a short video that shows a walk through Palermo during the quarantine. In the video the images were modified by simple optical effect. The doubled views remind of a moving Rorschach test, they absorb passers-by and things, open up an escape where there used to be an obstacle, offer a lisergic impression of reality, and make even the sea disappear, giving us only the fragile certainty of the ground under our feet, which is swinging as we step on it. The streets are oddly deserted, passers-by are rare, one has the tangible impression that the world is about to collapse and that something horrible is about to devastate humankind. All of this is made more striking by the words read by the authors, an excerpt from Ernesto De Martino’s unfinished book La fine del mondo. Contributo all’analisi delle apocalissi culturali [The End of the World. Contribution to the analysis of cultural apocalypses]. The first edition of this work appeared posthumously in 1977, it consists of fragments, quotes, and notes, and it reminds in structure and ambition Walter Benjamin’s Passages. It is an exploration of the mysteries of human soul and an attempt to dispel its ancestral fears. The eclectic and passionate research by the anthropologist brings us to look for a possibility to create the world, to build all together universes of meaning which can give emotional and cultural stability to our lives. Permeated by the awareness that western civilisation is in crisis, with every passing year this fragmentary essay becomes more prophetic and the need to rediscover it becomes ever more pressing.
p.38 “In the confusional, epileptic, and crepuscular states we hear the patients say: “The walls are crooked, the roof is collapsing, the sick person has the sensation of being lifted in the air, the ground is shaken, everything is falling apart, the ground is torn apart and opens onto the abyss, everything is frantically moving, humans animals devils spirits objects loom over the sick ones, all things crush upon them, the world is tumbling down…” In the crepuscular epileptic states, the cosmic experiences and the rapturous ecstasies present the same anomalies of the senses: the stars start twinkling and swinging, the planets fall on the ground, heaps of clouds raise, the celestial sphere is ripped apart, it is slashed in two. The element of motion is in the very foreground: the alteration of movement, the loss of balance, the shattering of the tangible world’s certainty and tranquillity, all bring to one conclusion: the world is collapsing, sinking.”
p.40 “Insanity was for me like a domain opposite to reality, dominated by a merciless light that wouldn’t leave any space to shadows and that made me blind. It was an immense space without borders nor limits, flat, flat, a mineral domain, moon-like, cold… In that expanse everything was unchanging, motionless, stiff, crystallised. The objects looked like scenery drawings, placed haphazardly like cubes that had lost any meaning. People were moving strangely. They were making gestures and movements that made no sense. They were ghosts wandering in this endless flatland, crushed by the merciless electric lights. And I was lost there, isolated, cold, naked under that light, aimless. A wall made of brass kept me apart from everything and everyone… No help did I get from anyone… Insanity, that is to say all of this, was the revelation, the perception of unreality… In that limitless silence and in that tense immobility I had the impression that something scary was about to happen, something that would have broken that silence, something brutal and destructive was looming. I kept waiting and holding my breath, suffocated by anguish, but nothing seemed to happen. Motionlessness was becoming ever more motionless, silence ever more silent, things and people with their gestures and their noises would become ever more artificial, detached from each other, lifeless, unreal. And my fear grew until it became unheard, unspeakable, atrocious.”