Thursday the 20th of September | 8pm | Free
Double bill
This World We Must Leave
by Jakob Jakobson & Mikkel Bolt
A Man Asleep
by Georges Perec & Bernard Queysanne
Venue:
88 Fleet Street, St Brides Yard.
Mikkel Bolt and Jakob Jakobson will introduce both films and lead a discussion afterwards.
The title of the film 'This World We Must Leave' is taken
from the French left communist Jacques Camatte, who wrote a text in 1973
entitled “Ce monde qu’il faut quitter”, in which he gives an account of how
capitalism tends to subjugate not only society and the economy, but also
culture, everyday life and the human imagination. Camatte’s critical analysis
of the despotism of capital emphasizes the need for a radical transformation of
mankind with a view to the development of a non-capitalist life. The short film, This World We Must Leave investigates
and represents the desire for another world that is inherent in the rebellious
or revolutionary rupture with the prevailing order: the revolutionary event
which both articulates criticism of the existing order and presents a new
perspective that reflects on how things could be organized in a different way.
The website has more details on the film and exhibition of which it was a part :
http://thisworldwemustleave.dk/eng.html
'Communist
revolution is complete revolution. Biological, sexual, social, economic
revolutions are no more than partial attributes; the predominance of
one is a mutilation of revolution, which can only be by being all.
Communist
revolution can be conceived only if it is grasped through the history
and paleontology of human beings as well as all other living beings. By
grasping this we become aware that, if this revolution has long been
necessary, it can now be realized. Earlier it was possible but not
unavoidable. There were still other "human" paths in that they still
allowed a human development; specifically, they allowed the
externalization of human powers. Now almost everything has been
externalized and plundered by capital, which describes the only path
other than communist revolution: the total negation of human
beings. Therefore we must understand our world; we must understand the
despotism of capital and the movement of rebellion breaking out against
it. This act of understanding which is taking place not only
intellectually but also sensually (the rebellion is to a large
extent bodily rebellion) can only be reached by rejecting the
wandering (of humanity) and repressive consciousness.'
Jacques Camatte,
The Wandering of Humanity, (Invariance Année 6, Série II No. 3, 1973. Published in English by Black & Red (Detroit) in 1975).
See: http://www.marxists.org/archive/camatte/index.htm
A Man Asleep
'You have hardly started living, and yet all is
said, all is done. You are only twenty-five, but your path is already
mapped out for you. The roles are prepared, and the labels: from the
potty of your infancy to the bath-chair of your old age, all the seats
are ready and waiting their turn. Your adventures have been so
thoroughly described that the most violent revolt would not make anyone
turn a hair. Step into the street and knock people’s hat off, smear your
head with filth, go bare-foot, publish manifestos, shoot at some
passing usurper or other, but it won’t make any difference: in the
dormitory of the asylum your bed is already made up, your place is
already laid at the table of the poète maudit; Rimbaud’s drunken boat,
what a paltry wonder: Abyssinia is a fairground attraction, a package
trip. Everything is arranged, everything is prepared in the minutest
detail: the surges of emotion, the frosty irony, the heartbreak, the
fullness, the exoticism, the great adventure, the despair. You won’t
sell your soul to the devil, you won’t go clad in sandals to throw
yourself into the crater of Mount Etna, you won’t destroy the seventh
wonder of the world. Everything is ready for your death: the bullet that
will end your days was cast long ago, the weeping women who will follow
your casket have already been appointed.
Why climb to the peak of the highest hills when you would only have
to come back down again, and, when you are down, how would you avoid
spending the rest of your life telling the story of how you got up
there? Why should you keep up the pretense of living? Why should you
carry on? Don’t you already know everything that will happen to you?
Haven’t you already been all that you were meant to be: the worthy son
of your mother and father, the brave little boy scout, the good pupil
who could have done better, the childhood friend, the distant cousin,
the handsome soldier, the the impoverished young man? Just a little more
effort, not even a little more effort, just a few more years, and you
will be the middle manager, the esteemed colleague. Good husband, good
father, good citizen. War veteran. One by one, you will climb, like a
frog, the rungs on the ladder of success. You’ll be able to choose, from
an extensive and varied range, the personality that best befits your
aspirations, it will be carefully tailored to measure: will you be
decorated? cultured? an epicure? a physician of body and soul? an animal
lover? will you devote your spare time to massacring, on an out-of-tune
piano, innocent sonatas that never did you any harm? Or will you smoke a
pipe in your rocking chair, telling yourself that, all in all, life’s
been good to you?
No. You prefer to be the missing piece of the puzzle. You’re getting
out while the going’s good. You’re not stacking any odds in your favour
or putting any eggs in any baskets. You’re putting the cart before the
horse, you’re throwing the helve after the hatchet, you’re counting your
chickens before they’re hatched and eating the calf in the belly of the
cow, you’re drinking your liquid assets, taking French leave, you are
leaving and you are not looking back.
You won’t listen to any more sound advice. You won’t ask for any
remedies. You will go your own way, you will look to the trees, the
water, the stones, the sky, your face, the clouds, the ceiling, the
void.'
| —
|
Georges Perec, A Man Asleep |
An unusual mix of werewolf movie, police procedural, and serial killer thriller, Wolfen is based on a 1978 novel by Whitley Strieber, and directed by Michael Wadleigh, best known for directing the documentary Woodstock (1969). Entangled in a plot symptomatically torn between political history, capitalist practice and mythologies of the land, Wolfen
is an odd and beguiling narrative about a critical moment in the
collapse of radical politics and the emergence of a feral neoliberalism
against a backdrop of urban dereliction and real estate speculation.
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