my eye tells your eye: eye, i see you. you reply: i see too.
stefan pavlovic
2019
This is from me to you, from here, for all the way over there, and in-between.
Conditions / Directions
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Introductions 5-7 Beginnings 11-14 The ssttttuutter 15-20 Endings 21-28 Middles 29-36 Zdravko 37-56
Conditions / Directions This is a work-in-progress, because it is a working process; it is on-going and I can never decide or fully know what it is doing. This book is a floating body, a moving collection, a jar of moments, of scraps; this body that wanders, wonders, that scouts, and skirts. In the jar there are currents; think of this book as a delta, water coming together with other water, scraps like choppy waves, conjoining, because water is water. In the walls of this book, on the surfaces, I hope the echo’s of the sounds meet your ear.
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Introductions Waiting for a response from a friend is hard, but waiting for you can be magnificent too. It’s hard to speak about friendship with a friend, but being a friend to a friend, can be magnificent.
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Introductions
what if we just had one eye? it surely is good to have two eyes. one eye says to the other: eye, i see too. two eyes can be friends. they can talk but they can’t see. see each other i mean. if we only had one eye, he would have to look out. he would have to look for himself, not in his twin, for he would have no twin he would have to look for himself in you. if i had one eye, i would have to look for myself in you. i would have to. but as i have two i can hear us too. you also have two. i see them too. with my eyes. it’s surely good to have two eyes, for i see with them, and there i see you. you see too. with your two eyes. and i see that you see. i see too.
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Introductions
i like that we share a wall. the walls can tell us or show us around; remember us, remember for us, because of us, despite us; they see, they have seen. on what side do they remember, on my side, or your side? i like that we share a wall, in this building.
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Beginnings He says he can recall his first memory. He says he thinks he can. He was about to turn four years old when they lived in MontrÊal. They: the mother, the father, the sister and him. He is me. He is being bathed by his mother in a metal bucket, shower curtains closed, the whole world only right here, steaming. Tufts of dark brown hair appear from under the shower curtain,floating towards the drain. His mother opens the curtain to the image of a wet floor, covered with more hair, and his sister holding scissors. Her face covered with hair. She says her hair was covering her eyes and ears, she couldn’t see or hear anything anymore.
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Beginnings
The next thing he remembers is being alone in the bucket. Somehow the water feels sticky now, or maybe the feeling of alone is what’s sticky. He gets out of the lukewarm water and looks for his sister. Nude and still wet he passes his parents’ conversation. They ignore him. There are not many places for his sister to be. He finds her at the dinner table with a plate in front of her. (who put her there?) She doesn’t see him. He looks at her eating. She takes a tomato from her plate and gets up. She walks over to the wall and sticks her tomato behind the only painting in the house. It smears. She walks back to the table. He feels like he has just witnessed something he shouldn’t have.
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Beginnings
With a pacifier in his mouth, (where did this come from?) he walks over to the balcony. Still naked, he throws the pacifier over the railing: it hits a motorcycle parked down below. Four is a good age to do this. Almost four. (why did no one witness any of this?) In MontrĂŠal spoke he four languages the Yugoslav language - [his mother tongue], Dutch - [they would return next year, and English and French at day care. When the pacifier flew down the balcony, hitting the motorcycle, all four of these languages went with it. A stutter made him lose his mother tongue and shaped the way he could and would communicate. Words they had practiced together, all of sudden came out cut up, bundled together, un-finished, polyphonic, stuck somewhere.
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The ssttttuutter he wakes up. he decides to let her sleep. she hates waking up like that, him gone. in this moment he doesn’t care - he does it anyway. he looks at her and whispers her name, clearly not to her, not to wake her up but to himself. her name turns into a prolonged first letter. stretched. he puts on his clothes. he tries to remember her name before she became who she is, to him; without all the context, their context. he whispers again, again he struggles. he leaves. he walks outside. what is it with names that make it hard for him to pronounce them? is it random, or does it happen with specific ones? he maneuvers around them, descriptively. he tries to makes someone else pronounce the name for him. when they do, he will say, oh yeah! and then he can pronounce it himself, almost like he needs to first hear it, before he can say it.
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The ssttttuutter
he rarely calls her by her real name anyway in fact, he avoids the names of most his partners, he somehow doesn’t like their names anymore after becoming close to them, the sound and feeling of their name changes. the names never live up to what he feels for them, eventually they don’t quite fits anymore, their names don’t apply anymore; so he comes up with a different name. it also gives him a strange feeling pronouncing his own name let alone the change of sound inside his name when switching languages.
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The ssttttuutter
does the sound of your voice also exist inside? do your organs hear, do they hear you speak? the voice is something that sees both sides, right? inside and outside. i speak: i know the voice expresses what lives inside, to the outside. but does it sound inside as well? does our body hear?
i like your voice. i like it when i make you giggle. giggle, like the kidney and the liver bobbing against each other, a bit.
i need to talk to you. can we talk? what are you saying? i can’t talk right now. why are you not responding? i would love to speak to you, i would love to hear your voice. i don’t want to speak to you right now.
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The ssttttuutter
I know I will stutter before I do, there are certain letters I avoid; they oppose being placed next to other letters, they clash, causing a rupture; an unavoidable force of polyphony; my articulation gets highjacked, but not necessary to be taken somewhere else; a movement and a pause at the same time, it doesn’t advance, it doesn’t go anywhere, it disperses, it sips through, it leaks. when I read: i hear the words i read, i’m hearing the text. when I write:
i hear the words i write, i hear my hands speak.
when I speak:
i hear the words i think that i say, simultaneously hearing a withdrawal to a level of non-speaking.
I hear myself before I speak, with my body first, then I hear myself with my ears, while I speak, while I look at you; I hear my thoughts afterwards, reflecting on what I said, as I look at myself in you. I read somewhere that the stutter is caused by a glitch between these two types of self-hearing. 18
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Endings
Los Angeles (2009-2015) (The USA is where I think he started filming) (Most of it came from a desire to belong, I think) (Attempts to understand his surroundings through the camera) Everything revolved around her. She was everything, for that period of time. He filmed her for two years. He asked her and five of her friends, also his friends, to re-enact her birthday, which had happened a week prior. She would be the center of attention, like always, and the re-enactment would bring a sense of fiction, a heightened reality is what he called it. (No one questioned what he meant by that, so neither did he) He was interested in the way they spoke, the way they dressed, and their fearlessness. He wanted to understand them, feel close to them, belong to them. 21
Endings
He wanted to understand the time they lived in, the space they occupied. He wondered why they never seemed to eat, sleep or work [for money]. He daydreamed who their parents were. The camera allowed him to look and gave him hope they would look back. He believed that merely his gaze, the camera, would tell the story of their time, of these people, and most importantly, how he felt about them. The camera would show everything and because of this, his role remained passive. (He had made the mistake to not think what his gaze was, from what position was he looking, who was he? He had not question his own aesthetic. Maybe this lack of gaze was related to the absence of language he experienced as a child?)
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Endings
The film disappointed him. The material did not. Something was missing. (But I don’t think he knew what that was at that moment.) They broke up. He turned silent. He left Los Angeles and moved on, and away.
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Middles From Filming Intimacy to Filming Intimately. Ten years he stayed in America. From age eighteen ’til twenty-eight. In the meantime he had started to dream in English. He returned to Amsterdam, to research something artistically. What ever thatmeans. Asking questions consciously for the first time, looking back for the first time. Back home, but not really home, for the first time in a long time. He entered the program with questions of belonging and participation. Can one belong to - and film at the same time? Can one simultaneously look at and be part of? Can one understand a group by observing its individuals? Will dissecting lead to understanding? (Let me now add: How intimate can you get with someone you film?) (Do you need this intimacy in order to film?)
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Middles
He stirred away from these questions pretty soon. He had no group, to look at. He turned to his archive of past material, he turned to lost times. He started to question his fascination. (I think this started as a reminiscent gesture, but quickly became a reflective act) He wondered about the disappointment he experienced towards the Los Angeles film. He slowly realized what was missing his voice. His part was missing. Who was looking, and from what position? His subjectivity was missing, a conceptual frame was missing. (Like I mentioned above: his gaze had not been understood by himself yet.) His passive, silent position as an outsider-observer was creating merely a gaze of fascination, nothing else. (He realizes this now)
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Middles
He started to ‘look’ for his voice. His cinematic voice, his language. He started looking for intimacies, but from a distance, always that distance. (What does he mean by intimacies anyway, isn’t it something different for everyone?) He started writing. Using him, her, I, we and them. Language, again, came to the foreground, as he looked for ways to speak, to write, to express, to be, to see - to film. The feeling of not having a language, again. (Let’s take a step back) - What is important: All his work had been about connection, relations, relating to one another, spending time, sharing space. And trying to understand those connections, those relations by looking at them, listening to them. Language being the vital part of any relation [he thought]. Spoken language, silent language.
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Middles
He was working on a methodology, he wondered what the role of a camera can be inside a pre-existing relationship. What the act of filming can mean for intimacy that exists outside of the camera. He has been filming intimate moments, that would exist regardless of the camera, in the hope to understand them. Is intimacy the time shared with a person he is close with? (Let me try to understand: the relation exists, the intimacy exists, and then he brings a camera. Now his role shifts, now he is the man behind the camera. He is not anymore the second player within the relationship. {Is this true though is his silence the fault of the camera not necessarily I would think.}) In a way what he desires is to reveal himself as a vital part of the relationship, but he kept disappearing inside the camera.
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Middles
He needs ways to make the off-screen [himself] felt on-screen. (He realizes this now) He comes up with something and calls it From Filming Intimacy to Filming Intimately. He doesn’t want to merely capture / document intimacy, togetherness he wants to see what kind of intimacy the camera itself can create between people - between himself and the other. He films with his family and checks what the presence of the camera does. He checks if the relationships can change and allow a new playing ground. These moments result in awkwardly private moments, private in the way meaningless to anyone else. He needs deviation, a fiction maybe, a stranger maybe?
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Zdravko September 2018 I meet Zdravko at an artificial lake between Bosnia and Montenegro. He fought in the war and lost 90% of his hearing, and one eye. In order to not also lose his sanity he left the city of Trebinje and slept in the basement of a church, on a little island in the middle of the lake, some kilometers from the city. He fishes, and sometimes spends months not speaking with anyone. The lake gets dangerous in the winter because of thunder. [it has killed six people in the last three years]. Zdravko doesn’t hear the sound of the thunder, and will go out on the lake anyway. His friends will call him on the phone [He hears very well when you speak to him on the phone] to tell him to leave.
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Zdravko
The isolating silence he must feel [this is my projection] the vast, sharp, rocky landscape, the blaring sounds of his little boat engine. His screaming voice. These contrasts touched me. I relate to that feeling of isolation, a feeling of not being part of your surrounding. Or not being allowed to be part of it. I loved him instantly. I asked to film him, instantly. The fact that I need to scream [back] at him, in order for him to hear me, in a language that I am not comfortable with, left a big impression on me, besides being funny.
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Zdravko
November 2018 Through filming with Zdravko I am finding my voice: I am learning my mother tongue [again?], and I am finding my cinematic tongue, I am pushing for my presence to be felt, through speaking and by being on-camera. Somehow Zdravko is allowing me to do this, more than my family. (This is the first time I am doing this. For the first time I feel like it might be working what I have been trying to do for many years: finding a cinematic language and method to visualize a relationship I am having with another person, in the context of something larger.) The filming creates a bubble around us, our time, our space, our world, we are getting to know each other through the filming. One of the last days of shooting we are on the lake and Zdravko tells me to steer the boat. In response I ask him to take over the camera.
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Zdravko
One of the last days of shooting we are on the lake and Zdravko tells me to steer the boat. In response I ask him to take over the camera. I feel the power shift immediately. He sits higher than I do. He starts to ask me questions for the first time. Now it is my time to give, his turn to look, with his one eye. It is surprising to me how comfortable and willing I am, as opposed to previous times, [when my ex-partner had wanted to film me]. I think in this moment: I wish I had a second camera to film how Zdravko is looking through the camera for the first time; how he is experiencing the landscape that he calls home for the last twenty years, in a new way. We become closer through filming, together, to each other, we learn, we understand, we share.
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Zdravko
February 2019 Zdravko wants to show me a large dam that keeps the lake separated from the river behind it, about twelve kilometers from us. This will take all day. Within ten minutes half of the boat fills with water; he brings us back to the shore: three knife slashes on three different spots. For the remainder of my time he doesn’t get over the fact that people would do that, to him. He tells me he could’ve been alone, at night, with one eye, he would’ve been at the bottom of the lake. This is a new phase in our friendship, I am seeing him distraught for the first time, effected and at odds by his surroundings. His inner world, out. Not knowing how to properly speak is difficult for me, especially now. I wanted him to know that I was there for him.
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Zdravko
(Later he tells me that he can be with me for thousand years, we will never get angry at each other. In a way he feels that I was there for him; words are not so necessary.) I become insecure about filming [again] in these moments, I don’t want to bother him, or make him feel like I am taking advantage of him. (Why is it so easy to fall back into those thoughts? The camera must really have a authoritarian, totalitarian, advantage-taking feeling to it.) But our filming has the opposite effect, we find comfort in it, this is our way of communicating, of co-sensing, of sharing; it is empowering for both of us, in different ways. He keeps saying how I have to pass my exams and work on my future. [he knows I’m doing this film as part of my studies] He knows he is able to help me, and what is more empowering than helping someone?
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Zdravko
On our second attempt to reach the dam we pause on the lake, half way, and decide to take a fifteen minute nap; the camera is on. He tells me to lie down, I come from behind the camera and do so, the camera catches me. (Looking back at this footage, this moment caught my attention. In a way he invited me in front of the camera, he invited me to expose myself.)
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Zdravko
On the last day of filming [my mother had come to be with us for the last two days] I remember sitting with Zdravko in the bedroom; he is drinks a coffee, smokes a cigarette, and watches two men fish on TV. I am filming this. All of a sudden I start to cry behind the camera, looking at him, sitting, alone. He sees me crying and waves me over to come sit next to him. He consoles me, but then starts crying himself, and tells me about his family and his sadness of not leaving anything behind in this world, no house, no children. A lot of it I don’t understand. I had forgotten about the camera.
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Zdravko
(Again, looking back at this footage something surprising struck me. My mother came in and operated the camera. {and not only that} She focused on me, zoomed in on my face, while I was listened to Zdravko. Furious at first, that we had missed the emotional moment of him crying, it then sunk in as I looked better. {I started liking the close up shot of me just listening.} I recognized that I understood very little of what he is saying, but the intimacy and emotionality was clear. Then there came a moment where you can see that I want to say something, I am thinking but can’t find the right words, I give up. Verbal language completely disappears and we are just there, together, cohabiting a space, bonding. After crying, Zdravko starts to sing.)
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