DECENTRUM IN TRACTUM – My way towards Decentrism
Warszawa, July the 2nd, 2008
“…The Decentrism postulates that the center of a represented object – being situated somewhere outside the frames of a painting – dominates its visible surroundings… By creating such a compositional rule, a tension between the hidden object and a noticeable background enhances either the meaning of the object or its surroundings, depending on the role ascribed to them”
It is only a seemingly simple definition.
Why? Let me, please, justify.
The world has opened to me; the way that I could follow without denying my previous considerations carried out within the realm of art.
All my research in the art world have been supplemented and gained the sense of existence.
At first I become aware of an interior of a sphere, a defined sphere of imagination (and not in its negative meaning) resulted from the analysis of “Uniformed Theory of Space-Time Continuum” by Adam Snerg Wiśniewski and all night’s discussion on decentrism in art with Mark Ruff.
Then, my first revelation transferred me to the dream zone, which not necessarily was a dreamdreaming, but also showed fears and fright. I used archetypal symbols reenacting its meaning in various cultures. Each of them activated imagination. It was enough to move the symbol to the edge of the composition to authenticate and emphasize its meaning.
I came to the conclusion that it is too superficial and not what I was thinking about.
I used logic and that was the second step.
I created CIRCULUS SUBSENSORIUM.
I assumed that to designate the decentrum, first I have to point out the center. And so it happened.
It is the viewer in the very middle of an event that creates the center and the whole reality circulates around him in a perpetual movement. With no beginning and no end.
This phenomenon led me to the association with a cinematographe. A moving image.
Suddenly I discovered that moving image are natural film language, without which the film would never exist.
I have realized that just when so called high art… have been exposed to experiments (Dadaism and other “-isms” that led to postmodernism; easy, nice, fast, destructive heading towards self-destruction) the film are kept developing.
*Allow me, please, for a small critically comparative inclusion – joke with a moral, summing up the passing by epoch of postmodernism.
Once upon a time Lenin said that everybody can be in power – even a cook and we had to wait over half of the century to find out that she can, but… in the kitchen.
It is high time we cut all the consideration proving that everyone can be an artist: the one who can, and the one who can not, the gifted one and ungifted one, the one for whom art is the sense of life and the one for whom art is just a fake. In the contrary to the rulling new-academism it is not enough to shock or show any superficial deduction, or skill in applying any abstract theories, installations, video art or others, catching the viewer in the pliers of negative emotions, suffering and recording of pain.
It is just postmodernism that pushed the art aside onto the second if not the third location in the development of civilization. I has made the artist to comment or – which is even worse – to lament instead of marking new trends in art.
If a film director (poor) wish to achieve an easy effect of emotional storm , he “kills a child on the screen” and everybody is crying. But it will not be a good movie: it will shake the viewer instantly and instantly will be forgotten.
When I have analyzed certain movies starting with the very first by the Lumiere brothers (entrance of the train), it turned out that a moving image can not come into being without decentric composition (formally) for otherwise it would no have been a movement initiating image.
I have created a cycle of paintings entitled: DECENTRUM IN TRACTUM that had been inspired by iconic films (Birds by A, Hitchcock, Eight and a half by F. Fellini, Man and Woman by C.Lelouch). I have noticed that decentric shots are used in films in the moments important for the development of the plot or even underline the meaning if the scene just by understatement, mystery that intensifies the viewer’s impressions or set going his or her imagination. Decentric shots, images start and close takes or even pass one into the other giving the impression of movement.
To stress the meaning of takes I applied phosphor technique. When the light faded away the primary meaning of the scenes has revealed. I have created a symbol cumulating the content of a given film by adding decentric composition.
These are obvious shots for movie language and I recall the well known scene from F. Zinnemann’s High Noon. What can we see in the duel scene? – the quintessence of the film. Looking from the perspective of the hero’s hip we know that in a moment the the gun will fire. This ideally decentric shot puts in motion the viewers imagination and additional designation is needed. Everything is obvious.
Following this path I’ undertaken the next… Shot and Counter shot – a procedure natural for film language and essential for film editing. Then I discovered that language of the film naturally uses decentric compositions, in terms of a painting composition, to stress the meaning of the scenes.
I have come back to film icons creating a cycle of paintings entitled: DECENTRUM IN TRACTUM 2. This time I have analyzed Casablanca by M. Curtiz, The Graduate by M. Nicholas and Matrix by A. Wachowski and L. Wachowski.
Decentric shots:
1. Casablanca – meeting of the main characters Rick Blane (Humphrey Bogart) and Lisa Lund (Ingrid Bergman); the turning point of the film, a quintessence of unfulfilled love by inevitability of events resulting from war realities.
Lisa is entering, Rick is looping at Her – two different shots in which the characters look into the same direction. Although their look agree in film language in moving images they stay in opposition to a traditional composition on a painting’s surface. Their look do not meet. To underline this phenonenon in the day light we see overlapping shots, Lisa’s entering and Ricks’s sitting and in the dark only the hero- culminating shot. Shot by shot. Shot = Counter shot.
2. The Graduate – the turning point of the film, the scene when the main character of the film Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman), ask an uncomfortable question by which he dynamizes his conscious process development and he gets the answer Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft), who confirms himself in the process of adolescence.
In the first shot Benjamin is the dominating shadow – He asks question (daylight), in the second shot Mrs. Robinson answers to that question – we can see a sensual movement of putting on a stocking (dark). We can see shots penetrating through each other. By introducing decentric composition in the daylight and in the darkness the meaning of the scene has cummulated. Shot by shot. Shot = Counter shot
3. Matrix – they try to arrest Trinity (Trinity (Carrie Anne Moss), the first scene which introduce the viewer into the reality of existence of two parallel worlds.
Policeman’s shadow is dominating in the film frame shiluette with Trinity’s figure with her hands behid her head in the background (daylight). Next frame – dominated by Trinity’s concentrated face; in the background the policeman approaching (dark). Shot by shot. Shot = Counter shot
Conclusion:
A decentric painting is a natural way of perceiving by contemporary human being who has been accustomed to that phenomenon by moving images.
Paradoxically, on the one hand it can not use means that would be unreadable for the viewer. On the other hand – had it been composed traditionally we weren’t be able to watch such a film.
Until now I’have concentrated on proving the importance of decentrism. Formulated in seemingly simple sentences of a manifesto launched by Adam Snerg Wisniewski and created on the basis of cumulation of philosophical thought of his and Mark Ruff’s. Brother’s and friends, who 20 years ago went through a brainstorming. And so it happened!
A long awaited time has come when with full understanding I can enter the world of my creativity, which can not exist without notions of decentrism any longer and I hope I managed to explain why it is obvious to me.
I’ve started my “film”. In my latest realization I took on recording senses as a way of describing pure emotions, which open the gates of imagination. To look in a non verbal time-space.
In the cycle of six paintings I designed representation of basic human senses.
Sight, hearing, taste, smell, the sense of touch, the sixth sense (the last one in the traditional and not medical sense) on which I bestowed great importance by the scenes included.
Each sense can by seen by the daylight. The disposition of particular senses within the composition follows the construction oh human brain. If one imagines the location of brain in a head bowed with humility that’s how senses’ receptors will be disposed.
In the darkness the world of subconscious revives, as if recorded by a camera inside it. Composition of the vision suggests its inner movement. After a couple of minutes the light fades away and we stay all alone with imagination,
And a question arises: why senses? Is it because we live fully thanks to them? No, not only…
Quite a postmodernistic proceeding.
This is the last refugee of humanity which is taken away from us by so called – techno – logization that leads towards illusionary effortless of life in which senses will be useless. It’s just a step from becoming a mass button operating individual.
Let’s hope that the next generations – as a rule – remonstrates the previous ones.
Dorota Łacek Gorczyca
Translate: Robert Kardzis