(! (\) 'G)\ b e s s A\ F) \, S 'S' E S FS -S-\ *s r.l\i) .S\ \) \, (\) G SSs s -N.sN * l-.N e ;-) \n \ \ u-& S G \' ^. \r \) e\r ss A U s \ ?\ FF; h. GiJ) \, Gr : SS *s A\ \,'- \ oc)\) CL sscJ \, \) +\)S/ NIS \) *s \ \ra e \) fi .r S \) I\) %r c\ A\ \) Ngr \) A. i) % \, s-ES \J Fl-\. --.- eafrE I\Lv->\ f\) \) --- \ :!s' e ^\ - E L- VRA Fr \) \rv! A % .s= \--l s \) I I\) I]\r \ PHri F) Gi) I€F', - P a ri \ I\) \rc!A v \J \ t-i vJ aA.. A\ \------l \) J \) ss$ \, \,- S=L -'\ c\) N ^: \) \,A.\J \ \, o :F?F \ .t- \ I\) \) Gr) f\) \) I,idC $\) -NA | - o v'\v \) \) c\) !coi -l A \) G *.SR \I !\ ET S S-J t\l *q *q a) .- b-vvxF S S :n*Q Rs s :!:($ A e E \U \ s \, .k*S F - AJ s.F if \J n Y v \ sca \ quoted 1. JacquesLacan in Knowledge of El Greco's astigmatism,which is qpically acquiredwell Jean-LouisBaudry, "The after an apprcciationfor the vertigi- Apparatus:Metapsychological nous compositions of his canvases,presents the viewer with an insoluble puzzle that becomes permanently Approachesto the lmpression entwined with the viewer's perception and judgment of the work. We are told that El Greco never over- of Realityin Cinema,"Narra- came the defect his tive, Apparatus,ldeology, of vision, and this certainly must be true, astigmatism being a permanent spherical dis- ed. PhilipRosen (New York: tortion of the cornea or lens that develops as the eyeballs grow. Instead, we are told, El Greco took over his ColumbiaUniversity Press, astigmatism and used it, saw with it rather than in spite of it, and somehow this has implications for the pe- 1986), p. 317. "vision." culiar signatureof his If this indeedwas the case,we must regard his vision separatelyfrom the generalized vision of mannerism. His astigmatic eyes ar€ not iust a metonym for stylistic affect, or a symbol of personalaffliction, like August Strindberg'sbleeding hands; they are a specializedmachine. The factu- ality of El Greco's astigmatism and its (supposed)affirmation in the ocular distortions of his paintings, re- "sees" "projects" defineshis affliction as a literal apparatus,one that both and from the place ofthe view- ing subject. By virtue of its deformity, the apparatusceases to be a neutral term in the genesis of the image and cannot be taken for granted. For all its factuality, however, we cannot actually find this apparatus,much less see with it and describe its function, and a materialist course of reduction will not lead us to it as it would to the paint and support of the canvas. Nor can we infer it formally; we can only imagine it through what we fudge to be its affects, a iudgment which is likely to be presumptuousif not utterly groundless:i.e., the sphericaldistortion of the painted image follows from the spherical distortion of the eye. Thus the factuality of the apparatusyields no material evidence or certainty of its function. And interpretation fares little better. Do we dare assume that the ectoplasmic clouds and garments depicted in TheAgony in the Gard,enappear qualitatively similar be- cause that is how El Greco literally perceived them, or that his bad eyesight forced him to substitute his un- derstanding of fabrics for direct experience of distant and unfocusable atmospherics?We expect th e appa,- ratus to be evident in some form, but everyhing it might constitute as visual meaning is cast into doubt. Everything,that is, exceptthat a distinctlyother viewing subiect- perhapsreligiously ecstatic and visually - impaired has been proposedin place ofour own accustomedpoint ofview. We can, however, stand in front of the painting and look at it for awhile. In so doing we may occupy tne position - of the distortional apparatus albeit, with our own correctional one. The usual condition of trans- parency' "know": the assumption of the other's eyesby our eyes, is interrupted by what we that the painting is, in a sense,not for our eyes.We are presented with a kind ofontological doubling: one point ofview occu- pied by two constituting subjects. Because we cannot see through this interruption, we move around it and enter a circuit ofpursuit and reflection vis-i-vis the grounds ofthe subject - our own vertiginous swirl - which often seemslike a processof splitting.Pursuing the astigmaticapparatus, we addresswhat the imagc shows us and realize we cannot iudge it formally, as that presumes we know what the apparatus does and can distinguish what it does from the formal traits of mannerism in general, which, it is safe to say,were not produced by an epidemic of defective eyeballs.When we eliminate this presumption and treat what rhe image shows us as phenomena, we realize we will eventually only affirm our own correctional apparatus and discover nothing new. The circuit becomes a knot of analysisand perception. Whenever we try to tether it to a securestarting point, which can be neither material nor phenomenal,we keep returning to the droning restatement of a historical fact: El Crecohad an astigmatism.. . . The fact insists upon the actuality of the apparatus and the materiality of its effects - which seemsquite reasonable - but it appearswe can neither locate them nor trace a causal link between them without first translating the whole analysisinto a kind ofnarrative.

Of course' some of tlese problems and confusions result from applying the terms of the cinematographic apparatus to a somewhat inhospitable example, and allowing those terms to exercise their reductive ten- dencies. But, to the extentthat the choiceof the exampleand the terms is problematic,it is alsodeliberate. The confusions that arise from the overemphasison the apparatus are by no means exclusive to this exam- ple. They part are ofa generalconfusion found in the opticalmodel ofthe subiect,which has for at leasta half-millenium derived its senseby transposing material for subjective terms, the eye for the self, and of which the cinematographicapparatus is but one recent technicalelaboration. WhenJacques Lacan writes, "the - subiectis an apparatus" a statementseized upon by film theoristJean-LouisBaudry - it is implicit that the apparatusin question is fundamentally optical in character and that the subject is on some level re- ducible to it.' However, the confusionthat ariseswhen a reduction to the material apparatusand a reduc- "apparatus" tion to the ofperception are intermingledhas specialrelevance to the subiectofthis text (the

123 What Cyansaid to Magentaabout yellow 2. The term "structuralfilm" is video-projection work of Diana Thater) becauseit recalls the segment of experimental film history, known usuallyattributed to P. Adams "structural generally in America as fiIm," which is to a significant degree reappraisedin Thater's work.' Sitney, whose book Visionary "defective" Film (OxfordUniversity Press, Considering Thater's employment of a kind of optical apparatusand distorted image, the leap to 1974) includesa chapteron El Greco's astigmatismis not all that great - although it requires rigid distinctions between artistic media to the films of lvlichaelSnow, finds a di- GeorgeLandow, Hollis be loosened or put aside, as will many of the points made in this text. In Thater's work one often Frampton,Paul Sharits, Tony viding or multiplying of the place of the subject, keyed in part on the distortion of recognizable images. One Conrad,Ernie Gehr, Joyce "reductions" materialist and phenomenological of the medium - virtually en- Weiland,and others.The also encounters a collision of "structural" - generalterm also capsulatingtwo dominant and interwoven threads of structural film and video although this collision ulti- appliesto numerousvideo mately leads to collapse.The terms of both analytics (image-as-material and image-as-perception) arc callcd works of the first generation includingthose of Peter into question and held accountableto a broader, more heterogeneousdefinition ofthe site of spectatorship. Campusand DanGraham. In r99r, while taking part in an artist-in-residenceprogram sponsoredby the Claude Monet Founda- Whileit mayimply minimalist, garden at Giverny. These camerastudies, cover- deconstructive,and pheno- tion, Thater videotapeda seriesof solowalks through the menologicalmethods and ing three consecutive seasonsofthe garden, were edited into a feature-length videotape for the two-part it is not intendedto concerns, projection installation, Oo Fifi.: Fioe Dajts in ClauileMonet's Garden (1992). A number of Thater's recurrent connotea direct philosophical "struc- affiliationwith French strategies and themes are succinctly demonstrated in this work and warrant some description. In Part turalism" per se, althougha One,r fl1. video projector is placed diagonally on the floor of the gallery with the image frame covering the numberoF the artistswere panes conversantwith that oppositewall, corner, and adjacentwall, aswell as two exteriorwindows. The window are covered movement. respectively with semi-opaque and fully transparent grey theatrical gels, allowing the room to be partially 3. Oo Fifi Part 7 was installed light and offering, in one window, a clear view of the vegetation outside: a window on at 1301 (gallery)in Santa illuminated by natural N4onica,California as part of the world sharply contrasting that of the projected image. As is often the case, Thater alters the proiected group the video exhibitionlnto image not with an electronic video processor - the weapon of choice for much technophilic video art - but the Lapse, L992. with a screwdriverand someelbow grease.The red, green,and blue projector lensesare taken out ofnor- mal calibration, separating - or multiplying - the image into three otherwise identical monochromes. While thcy illuminatc thc surface of the wall, drawing attention to its physical detail and materiality, the three proximate moving images are themselvestoo far out of registration for the most part to be resolved as "screen," "intentional objects" or scenesby the viewer, and remain derealized.Thus a rift between tlte the thing-in-the-image, and the technical apparatusthat would constitute it is forcibly maintained, shifting the gage of thingness in the work away from the image, back to the site and to the video apparatus itself.

Diana Thatel Oo Fifi Part 7 installationview at 1301, Santa Monica,September 7992

124 TIMOTHYi,4ARTIN 4. The two parts of 0o Fifi were Oo Fifi Part z, installedseparately from Part C)nc,was a originallyintended to be shown technicalinvcrsion of it, although a similar set of terms waspresent.4 An array as a singlework, but had to be of three separateproiectors running from the sametape source,each with one separateddue to spatiat limita- lens turned on (one red' one green,one blue), project a compositeimage on an adjacentpair tions.Part 2 was installedat ofinterior walls' The three monochromes ShoshanaWayne Gallery in are alignedat the center and within a small area of exactpixel convergence SantaMonica, California, as produce a black-and-white image.But, becausethey are projectedfrom different angles,the imagespro- partof the groupexhibition gressivelydrift out ofregistration as one moves Very, Very, Very, ]^992. from the center to the edge,creating a vortex ofimage and color coherence. picture - 5. Accordingto BertramLewin, The imagineimpressionism suddenly drugged with futurism's love of speed- the dreamscreen is the surface doesn'tend with its distortions,however. Besides the blur and irresolution on whicha dreamappears to be on the side of the image,the dis- tortions produce projected. Lewin further hy- a distinct senseofllux and ulteriority on the part ofthe viewing subiect,keyed on the pothesizes,after Freud,that three separate horizons created by the proiector array. This is at first a haunting effect not readily the dreamscreen ls the traceable to the condition of the image itself. The dream'shal lucinatory repre- vortex gives the impression of spatial depth that pulls the viewer sentationof the mother's into the image, particularly when the camera is panning or moving through the garden. Combined with the breaston whichthe child used bucolic allure of the scenery, which is more resolvable to fall asleepafter nursing. here than in Part One, it offers a familiar invitation to cinematicTaissance "archaic Baudrymakes the connection or, as Baudry has calledit, satisfaction:"the pleasureofa secretgarden. betweenLewin's dream screen The conditionsfor cinematicviewership and fantasyhave often been characterized andthe cinematographicappa- in thesegeneral (in- fantile)terms: a state ratus.See Baudry,op. cit., of bodily immobility (immaturity,undifferentiation) combined with an ,".rt" ubro.p- note 1, pp. 310-311. tion with the visual (fixation upon the breast or dreamscreen).s Under these conditions, the cinematic hal_ 6. PeterWollen, Readin*s and lucination may attain the statusof the more-than-real, Wti ti ngs: Sem ioti c Coun te r- the real of the dream image,or of a fully empowered Stfategies (London secondconsciousness. This, I Verso of course,is resistedin Thater's installationswith what one might view from a Editions,1982), p. 197. cinematicperspective as degreesof unpleasure,that is, distractionfrom the dream. What Thater's work gives with one hand, it soon takes away with the other. As in Oo Fifi Part t, the image does not deliver the flower, but a heady phantasm encoded with the conditions ofits receivership and production. The work may in a sensebe absorbedwith - the visual no soundtrack, no conventional narrative - but it is never lixated solelyupon the screenor confincd to a darkcncdchambcr - no womb-with-a-view - therebyimmobilizing the viewer. Freedom of visual egressand bodily mobility are fundamental determinants of Thater,s work. ln Oo Fifi Part z, for example, as the three diverging horizons register their inclination toward as many ulterior subiects,the viewer may mentallyfollow their lead and indulge a senseof being multiple or divided, or of being permeated by the image's multiplicity. Physical mobility contribures to this, although quite dif- ferendy than the effect of the image horizons. Walking midway between the projectors and the wall the viewer'sbody casts shadowsthat never quite block the projectedimage, because there is alwaysa projector or combinationof proiectors that remain unobstructed.The shadows,diverging in three directions,appear only as shilts of color in the image, equivocating more than attesting to the solidity of the viewer's body. While the body, triplicated, is permeated by the image or subsumed in it, the image itself is relatively im- mune to bodily intervention. It snatchesthe shadow for itself, depriving the body of a clear optical affirma- tion. Thus a dual phantasm of bodily desolidification and ulteriority unite in confounding the place of the subiectand, by the samemeans, substantiatethe autonomyof the image as a technological(unnatural) en- - tity an effect which occursin most of Thater's projectionworks. It is impossible to internalize or mystifu these subject-effects for very long - to be multiple, divided, permeated'etc. - becauseevery mark ofdifference that triggersthem alsosignifies, diagrams, and ratio- nalizestheir genesis. As with film historian P. Adams Sitney'sclassic definition of the structural film, Thater's work always"insists upon its shape,"and keepsinsisting upon it. If one interrogateswith but the tiniest effort the subiect-effects of the diverginghorizons and image-permeatedshadows of OoFifi part z, the apparatus- the three-headed - witnesson the floor confessesimmediately and with almostdiscon- certing sincerity. The three divisionsofthe subiectcorrespond tautologically to the array ofthree .eyes," cones of light, and vanishing points of the equipment on the floor. In an instant the sense "apparatus" of the term switchesfrom Lacan and Baudry to the Sony Corporation,and the phenomenalartwork yields to thc material one. With the structure of the work so completelydisclosed and the link betweenthe sub- ject-effect and the mechanical apparatusso matter-of-fact, the apparentreduction of'the former to the latter appearsat first quite analltical and convincing,ifnot conclusive- which it never could be and, as we shall see'it never pretends to be. Convincing,that is, in its evocationof a prior discourse.In terms of the video apparatus, it echoessuccinctly the materialiststrain of filmic modernism,which peter Wollen "the characterizedas: reduction of [cinematiccodes] to their material - optical,photo-chemical - substrate ('material support') to the exclusion of any semantic dimension other than reference back to the material of the signifier itself."6

125 What Cyan said to tvlagentaabout yeilow order of the image to be viewed on 7. See DavidJames, A,legories As therc is no optical substratcto the vidco image,nothing on the of Cinema(Princeton: Prince- image and the three the magnetic tape itself, Thater's attention to the three color components of the video Press,1989), ton university material ofthe signifier: red, green,and pp.27a-279. lensesofthe proiector would seemto adequatelyreference ttre ultra-reductionist filmmak- blue light. yet, this is not an ideological reduction in Thater's work as it was for "structural,/materialist" essentialismas a ers like peter Gidal, whose project resurrectedmedium-specific its reductions'An political (Marxist) aswell as logicalimperative.z Thater's proiect is never reducibleto implications for the place i-age is always attached to the carrier of the apparatus and, by virtue of its direct completelycontrary to the courseof materialistreduction. There is no sig- of the subject,has destinations "to in the artist'swords, nificanceto why the imagesare separated into red, green,and blue other than this: mandatesis made seethe way proiectorssee." In this simple statementThater's indifferenceto dialectical "sight" subiect.(Granted, plain by virtue of a willful confusion:it conflatesthe proiector's with the seeing best a kind of reversible this would be a familiar paradoxwere the apparatusa camera.)Presupposing at Thater's reduction-to-appa- circuit of heterogeneousterms, and most certainly nota d'ialecticalreduction' El Greco seesor taking over ratus analyticdeliberately leads us to impossibilitiesnot unlike seeingthe way an astigmatism with normal vision. r, but ex- The reversiblecircuit is not completewithin the schemaof the video proiectionitself' howeve "reductionisr" - in Oo FiJi Part z, tends outsideit. Thater subiectsher terms to a kind of public hanging spacewith translucent Abyx of Light (1993),and other works - by coveringthe windows of the exhibition yellow' lnOo Fifi Part z,the gelsoithe"essential" video colors or their compliments:cyan, magenta, and overextensionof the appara- *indo* gelstake the configurationof a color bar test pattern.The result is an proiector which one may both tus theme to the point of absurdity:the evocationof a building-sizedvideo the view one has of the view as a model and occupyas a subjectmerely by taking a stroll. From the interior, "image." in turn ceasesto be an es- outsideworld is coloredby the window lens and becomesan The color the window becomesa senceandbecomes a quality of imagc,iust as the colorcd light spilling in through the circuit re- quality ofthe interior - the shift from essenceto quality being one generalclue to where aesthetic,worthy of verses.At this stage,the apparatustheme is reconfiguredas a somewhatmagical connotationgiven ,,Californialight and space"artists such asJames Turrell, that is, with a strictly sensory gelshave a tendencyto the notion of structuralopenness. But, like Daniel Buren's stripes,Thater's window

* Diana Thatel i'p'. Up to the Linte/, 8,iss * installationat Bliss House, Pasadena,August 1992

126 TIMOTHYMARTIN 8. Up to the Lintel was installed becomean institution-levelcode as well, a codc in which the rcductive at 8liss, an artist-run (and analyticssignificd by the colors are framed - occupied)exhibition space in as a past and faded romance yellow, the faundiced hue, being particularlywell-suited to this ef- Pasadena,California, 1992. fect. Even ifthe gelsare read as declarations,as public bannersflying the colors ofThater's work, or as a Ihe installationtook over virtu- color code advertising allytheentire house and free-accessto a usuallycloistered tlpe ofart (bannerscelebrating vid eo glasnost), groundsduring its open hours they ultimatelycease to signif' anythingfoundational at all and becomea kind ofvisual speechact: a term from6 p.m.to midnight. with no fixed meaning, only the meaning given to it by its performance and context. This servesto open the structure ofthe work even further and bring yet anotherdimension ofcontingency and extensityto bear upon the apparatus theme. In Up to theLintel Qggz), for example,the color code is againseparated from its material origin in the video apparatusand takesthe form of an ersatzcolor bar test pattern projectedonto the windows of a sub- urban housein Pasadena,California.8 In this guise - with a good measureof irony - it performs as a signi- fier of the phantasm. Using five proiectors placed on the floors of the front room and attic, illuminating their exteriorwindows and a portion of the walls around them, Thater projectedfive separatetapes back onto the samelocations in the housewhere they had originallybeen recorded (attic tape proiectedonto the attic wall, etc.).The projections,running unedited in real time, correspondto what a passerbyon the street would seethrough the windows of the houseif the interior were illuminated,except the interior view (in the proiectedimage) is obstructedby largevertical color bars and can be seenonly through the gapsbetwe€n them. The color bars are not electronicallysuperimposed on the interior scene,however; they are literally part of it, and composedof materialcomparable to it: standard-sizedconstruction lumber and paint. Thater simply set four-inch squaresections of paintedlumber in front of the lens,turned the camera on, andaoili,: color bars, foreground;house interior, background.The trick readily disclosesitself. Despite being some- what blurred, the color bars are noticeablydimensional, tangible, even perspectival. We may at first be temptedby the frontality of the color bars to regard the backgroundscene (of domesticre alism, including the comingsand goingsofthc occupant)as cxistingin a stateofmecliation by the apparatus-code,and therefore to regard the reality of the apparatusas prior to that of the scene,but ultimately the reverseseems more to the point. The ersatzcolor bars haveby inferencederealized the apparatus;they havebeen turned into a model or (in narrative terms) a character portralng the apparatus.And in this performance it is the only characterwearing a costume. An insistentlyarchitectural work, Lintelhas a way of collapsingthe bulk of its referentialityback upon the site itself. Indeed, the whole schemehas an architect'stemporal senseto it. Walking up from street, through the room full of whirring projectors and,actiztitl,and down the darkened hall into the rear room where an illuminated model ol'the housesits on the floor, one gets a senseof moving backwardsin time, "before/during/after" through the stagesof architecturalgenesis. In the world of the architect,the ,,dur- ing" - stageis one ofcontingency and unpleasure terror would better describeit - and such is the case with Lintel. The foundation of the work, the confluence of the site and the projected images, is always shifting in the proiection rooms. One gathersthat a questionof structure is at hand, but which structure? Although the scenebeing projectedleads directly to the placein which it is situated,and the image has a real referent to which it may secureitself, both occur simultaneouslyand obscurethe distinction.To bas- tardize the philosopherHenri Bergsonand Gertrude Stein in a singleplatitude: In the ,,during,,room, there is no therethere. That is, everything in the proiection rooms is caught up in movement and time, both cinematic "there" and diurnal. The color bar, for example,is unquestionably in the cinematicsense. Unlike the flower "intentional in Oo Fifi, it hasbeen deliveredas an object." But, to the extent that it is passingfor somethingelse, something not made of wood and paint, it is the most phantasmalthing in the house. "consciousness Gaston Bachelardsaid, is housed,"and a good deal of experimentalfilm and video, in- cluding that of the structuralcamp, has concurred and added this somewhatagoraphobic amendment: "... in a darkenedchamber." (Thus upholding,under t}repretense of uncommon insight, no lessthan a half- millcnium of common senseinstead.) Thater's Up to theLintel, like Dan Graham'sAlterationoJ'a Suburbun House Qg78)before it, may go alongwith Bachelard,but addsa quite different amendmenr.It suggeststhat Consciousness would benefit by getting out of the houseevery once in awhile.As the proiection rooms are the only occupiableplaces in and around the housethat are illuminatetl- given the installationwas open - only during the evening the darkenedchamber would no more be the immanent domain of consciousncss "outside than the street,the front.lawn,or the porch. One stands the house" evenin the room containing the illuminated model-The implication appearsto be that an ethosof movement,of passingthrough,is of valuehere, and by repeatedlypassing through one acquiresa right ofpassage:through areasin which

127 What Cyansaid to Magentaabout yeilow "ldeological L See Baudry, othershave become mired by ownership- such as the cranialboudoirs so d,erigueurin art that setsout to Effectsof the BasicCinemato - - graphicApparatus," op. cit., deal with consciousness.The advantage,ofcourse when passingthrough is notTzsrpassing through is note1, p.295. how closeyou can get to your enemies. Although the end is perhaps the appropriate place to deal with supplements, a worthy supplement is sometimesan enlighteningplace to begin. There are numeroussupplemental ele ments in Thater's prac- tice, such as the architecturalmodels and window gelswhich, aswe haveseen, often act as primary mark- ers as well. The shifting role of the color code from fundament to supplement and back initiates the critical movementof the reduction-to-apparatustheme from an analyticto a kind of narrative.A similar movement occursvis-i-vis narrativeproper in the supplemcntalindexes Thatcr compilesupon complction of cach work. In the form of a standardbook index - singleword entriesand short phrasesset in alphabeticalorder - they collect a seriesofrelated and unrelated,leftover, and stream-of-consciousnessideas pertaining to "false the work. By Thater's description,the indexesalso construct narratives"for the videotapes,which are otherwise devoid of conventional narrative lines. These narratives are usually quite cryptic in their in- dex form, but occasionallyemerge full-blown around certain key words and recognizableproper names. The most basicform of the narrativeis not so much a plot line or story as it is a nascentsubiect: a character with a name and both a figurative and literal point of view - given the assumption of a camera/projector apparatus.Thus the supplemental index brings a fundamental narrative apparatus for the constitution of subject(the character)to bear on a demonsffablynon-narrative apparatus in which subiectis constituted (and deconstituted)strictly by opticaland mechanicalmeans. On the one hand, this would appearto defeat the purposeofseparating the two apparatusin the first place;on the other, it reversesthe reduction ana- lytic and askswhat kind ofmeaning can be reconstructedout ofthe diverging - and alreadyreduced - mechanismsofsubiect constitution.Ifthe index and the projection are given equal consideration- as op- posed to reading one through the other - it seemsthat the two apparatus must inevitably conflate on the screen,as the terms ofthe cinematographicapparatus set down by Baudry and others - that the "reality" "self" mimed by cinemais first of all that of a - directly correspondto the first-personand third-person omniscient narratives (if one characterizes them optically). In both casesone identifies less with what is "spectacle" "see" represented,the itself, than with what stagesit, what obligesone to what it sees.sThe history of structuralfilm and video suggeststhis is no lessthe casewhen narrativeand cinema are reduced

Diana Thater The Bad lnfinite detai I from video tapes projectedin the installation

128 TIMOTHYMARTIN A considerationof the gen- - to skeletalconfigurations as they arc in the indcx and thc proicction - than it is in (what Alain Robbe- perspectiveis warranted "nineteenth-century . What Shelley has to say Grillet sarcasticallytermed) cinema" and its literary counterparts. male-dominated roman The conflating of the two apparatuscreates a monstrosity in TheBad Infinite The proiection and Thater has to say $gg3). scheme is quite like male-dominatedstruc- Oo Fifi Part 2, exceptthe three projectors are stacked atop one another (running one film andvideo may be lens each)and the sourcematerial is edited from a walk through snow-boundSequoia National Forest. as anotherallegory of The cameratechnique, however, is radically Bad lnfinite. different. Thater mounted three camerasonto a singlelength of lumber, one several feet behind the other, carrying it horizontally during the walk in such a fashion that the samescene was shot,but from three slightlydifferent points of view. The first cameracaptured the (through scene a staggering,wandering eye);the second,the sceneand the first camera;the third, the sceneand the other two cameras.The tapeswere each assigneda proiector,thus splitting the overallimage into three separateviews, each with its own identiS'ingcolor. As in Oa.Fly',a splitting of the subjectoccurs, only more confoundingly,because it is keyed on a distinctlyfirst-person point of view, the most naturalized and persuasiveof ocular subjectmarkers. And becausethe projectorsare stackedtogether, the configura- tion of the apparatusin the room producesno immediateanalogue of the subject-effect.The viewing sub- ject is lost in a phantasm which neither permits it to integrate its selaes,nor to console them with reason. Scanningthe index {or TheBad Infiniteyields a number of potentialsubiects, the most insistentof "camera; which may be constructedby this seriesof entries: deformity; Mary Shelley;monster ..." The multiphrenic camera-subjectof the projectionis thus permitted to seizeand be seizedby a new identity, "false that of Frankenstein'smonster wandering through a frozenlandscape.The narrative" stabilizesthc subiect-effect through characterization,but in this newly-acquiredstability the subjecttakes a proper name synonymouswith biological monstrosity. Between the index and the projection the viewer is given an inter- estingchoice. One can be divided and in a sensedeconstituted as a whole subiect,or one can be unified (monstrous) - as a subiectof parts and both alternativesare not without their charms.However, if the in- dcx and thc projcction are takcn together,thcre is no real choice to be made - althoughthere is a percep- - tion of one as the two constitutionsof subiectdesire something from eachother and soonbecome insep- arable.In this sense,The Bad Infinile becomesan allegoryof cinematicinvestiture, and raisesa serious question about Thater's work. In reconveningthe optical and narrativeapparatus, whether through overlay or simple iuxtaposition,is Thater simply remaking cinemaby other means,a cinema in which there is "some assemblyrequired" and some questionsasked? The answeris in part yes,but not simply.Viewed as a model of Thater's practice, TheBad Infinite reconstructs- in principle more than in specificform - prior (vs. "cinema" structural semiotic)deconstructions of cinema,that is, it constructsa out of techniquesthat previously "cinema" took it apart.It constructs in a fashionthat doesn't permit the place of the subjectto remain ,,it" ideological, that is, unconsciouslyobedient to a fixed model of relation.And it constructs as a demon and a machine,not an ideal secondconsciousncss. The allegoryburied in TheBad Infinits is not solelyon the side of the subiect,however. If we associatc .nascent Thater's image with the arctic passageof Mary Shelley'sstory, we realizethe monster is not just a subiect;" it is a subiectheaded for oblivion.Although Lord Byron would have denied it, Frankensteinmay be regarded as an allegorical(and prophetic)history of romanticism,which, to make two long storiesshort, "proto-fascism" chartsthe transformationof the innocent into the tyrant, end sketchesthe latcnt in thc model of the Byronic hero.'" In Thater's work, the suspicionof romantic innocencewould appearto sur- face in severalways analogous to Shelley'sallegory. Treatment of the landscapeas a sign of the spiritual, the transcendent, or the ideal is anathemato Thater's practice.The nature-imageis alwaysblatantly me di- ated and destabilized,and it is addressednot as sign,but as movementand duration, as a constantpassing- through of the subiect.It is a stateof confusionthen, like Schiller's sublime,that identifiesthe nature- image. In Thater's mirror, cinemais alternatelyregressive and tyrannical,but so is anti-cinema.The re- ductionist - strain ofstructural film and video in particular,the apparatusanalytic - is recapitulated,but its illusionsof finality are put out to pasture,as it were. As TheBad InJizile shows,neither the monster-image nor the monster-narrativeis reducibleto a common machine,yet both are co-creativeof one nonetheless - one we get uncomfortablyclose to. Lest we eliminatea whole dimensionof possiblemeaning - like that posed - by El Greco's astigmatism iust becausewe are interestedin material questions,we had better get used to thinking about some things inclusively that, for structural, political, or esthetic reasons,we prefer to keep apart.

129 What Cyansaid to Magentaabout yellow