In the heliotropical noughttime following a fade of transformed Tuff and, pending its viseversion, a metenergic reglow of beaming Batt, the bairdboard bombardment screen, if tastefully taut guranium satin, tends to teleframe and step up to the charge of a light barricade. Down the photoslope in syncopanc pulses, with the bitts bugtwug their teffs, the missledhropes, glitteraglatteraglutt, borne by their carnier walve.
(from: Finnegans Wake)
In his book 'Memory Trade', Darren Tofts makes an attempt to describe the human condition of an era in which we have completely internalized the logic of electronic media. As a literary critic of the cyber culture, Tofts provides a fascinating take on Joyce's 'Finnegans Wake'. He describes the book as a 'hypermnesiac machine', a dream machine running out of control in which information from various cultures, philosophies and mythologies are linked with one another. A dream of human history as a collective unconsciousness combining every language and identity. Following Marshall McLuhan, he describes Joyce as a sort of visionary who anticipated the development of hypertext and hypermedia in 'Finnegans Wake'. The 'stream of consciousness' of 'Finnegans Wake' opens up, as it were, a view on a world in which we have embraced the logic of electronic media. A world in which we make fluid connections between language, text, image and sound. This stream of language, that transcends all boundaries of language and medium, is the starting point for the project 'The Wake – History is a Nightmare from which I am trying to wake up'. This is not an attempt to film 'Finnegans Wake', but an effort to create an analogy of this language landscape with a similar complexity and many-layeredness.
What then agentlike brought about that tragoady thundersday this municipal sin business? Our cubehouse still rocks as earwitness to the thunder of his arafatas but we hear also through successive ages that shebby choruysh of unkalified muzzlenimiissilehims that 16 would blackguardise the whitestone ever hurtleturtled out of heaven. Stay us wherefore in our search for tighteousness, O Sustainer, what time we rise and when we take up to toothmick and before we lump down upown our leatherbed and in the night and at the fading of the stars ! For a nod to the nabir is better than wink to the wabsanti.
(from: Finnegans Wake)
Lemmerz and Kvium describe 'Finnegans Wake' as a dream book, history book and necrology in one. The book creates its own linguistic universe in which the history of the world is retold using a kind of dream dialect. In 'The Wake…' they aim to make a 'film' that produces its own images. A tapestry of images constructing its own grammar as a feverish dream. 'The Wake…' tries to reverse Freud's interpretation of dreams, the translation of dreams, and to turn Joyce's dream language into images. These images form a new dream that in turn produces its own images and constructions. Although 'The Wake..' is a multimedia project with various manifestations, its heart is an eight-hour film. This enormous film does not follow any clear linear plot, but consists of continually mutating scenes. Images permeate one another, combine and transform, pulling the viewer seamlessly from one layer to another. Historic images disintegrate and change into surreal dream scenes in an almost organic fashion. Through the recurring transformed images, the cyclic character of the image flow is elevated beyond the linearity of film. A visual psychotropic journey through a collective human history is the result.
Yet may we not see still the brontoichthyan form outlined a- slumbered, even in our own nighttime by the sedge of the troutling stream that Bronto loved and Brunto has a lean on. Hic cubat edilis. Apud libertinam parvulam. Whatif she be in flags or flitters, reekierags or sundyechosies, with a mint of mines or beggar a pinnyweight. Arrah, sure, we all love little Anny Ruiny, or, we mean to say, lovelittle Anna Rayiny, when unda her brella, mid piddle med puddle, she ninnygoes nannygoes nancing by. Yoh!
(from: Finnegans Wake)
Already in the production stage of the film, an accumulation of creative impulses and intentions takes places, layer upon layer upon layer. Actors, performers, camera people, editors and image wizards work as if in a surrealistic cadavre exquis on a work that eludes their individual expression. An important part of 'The Wake…' rests on Kvium's performances. Scenes from these are expressed through the camera, but the images are in turn processed and connected to other image layers. As a result, each form of intentionality and direct significance is restructured and diverted beforehand and transformed in the maelstrom of the dream. To completely release the fluidity of the images and their associative mutations, the film does not have a fixed soundtrack. It is free of the descriptive, and therefore restrictive properties of language, and thus gains in terms of universal power. As a project, 'The Wake…' has a number of manifestations, and appears in various forms at the World Wide Video Festival. At several locations, the film can be seen on monitors as a temporary window to a seething brain. The Dreamer is still dreaming! 'The Wake…' is also being presented as a video installation where the emphasis lies on immersion. Alternating scenes from the film are projected onto four large screens via DVD. Viewers find themselves in the middle, embraced by and submerged in an endless dream. What the effect of this immersion is is difficult to say. At an eight-hour-long film, an unavoidable loss of memory occurs over the course of time. What have you seen? Have you seen it already? Was it the same or is it an associative link? Just like in a dream, a sort of 'looped consciousness' can arise in which you keep experiencing the same scenes without being aware of it; or a permanent state of déjà-vu can occur, in which you think you recognize each new image. In any case, it will be difficult to maintain a distance and prevent the images from taking hold. On entering the space, you are already a part of the dream. Before you know it, you're dreaming along with it, you link your own internal images with the surrounding hallucination.
Just one moment. A pinch in time of the ideal, musketeers! Alphos, Burkos and Caramis, leave Astrelea for the astrollajerries and for the love of the saunces and the honour of Keavens pike puddywhackback to Pamintul. And roll away the reel world, the reel world, the reel world! And call all your smokeblushes, Snowwhite and Rosered, if you will have the real cream! Now for a strawberry frolic ! Filons, filoosh ! Cherchons la flamme! Famm- famm! Fammfamm!
(from: Finnegans Wake)
The complete version of the 35mm film can be seen over eight hours in a special live event. Projected onto a large screen, 'The Wake…' creates a type of cosmos for one night, from sunset to sunrise the following morning. The film is given a live soundtrack by an ensemble of 10 DJs. Image and sound can be experienced as a kind of DJ symphony. Dror Feiler, DJ Wunderbaum & August Engkilde have composed a basic track, a soundscape forming the backdrop to a marathon concert. The same tension between collectivity and individuality, that also characterizes the film, is expressed here. DJs, hyper-individualists par excellence, have to follow the directions of a conductor. But how do you conduct an orchestra of DJs? The conductor also has to navigate between extremes and enter this field of tension to provide direction to a perhaps uncontrollable flow. Because the film has not been arranged linearly, visitors will be able to walk in and out in order to experience manifestations of the same dream at other locations. As a result, they will have the feeling that they keep entering a new virtual dream. They step in and out of a collective subconsciousness, as it were, a cloud of images and associations in which visitors themselves are the integrating factor. The most recent manifestation of 'The Wake…' is the 'webbed version', an interactive edition that will offer the opportunity to actually dream along with it. In 'The Wake Interactive', scenes from the film have been redesigned in a variety of ways. Short film clips give way to animations or interactive games. The starting point for this virtual dream is determined by a Java-based 'Randomiser' that allows visitors to start at a random point in the network. From there, a number of alternative scenarios appear, that are beyond visitors' direct control however. There is scarcely any navigation either, more like unpredictable choices, the consequences of which cannot be second-guessed. There is no way back. Because visitors are served a random scenario or combination of scenarios from a database, they will not go through the same dream sequence twice, even when they think they've made the same choices. This web version is simply the beginning of a project with global ambitions. The scenes from the film form the starting point and offer an open network of associative relationships, in which media and culture intermingle. By building in a 'Dreamsharer' and a messenger service, the artists provide others with the opportunity to add their own dream scenes and stories. Dreamers can place images and deposit their dreams in text form or as an SMS message. Over time, 'The Wake…' can grow into an endless dream of a global brain, a delirium of worldwide proportions.
Whath? Hear, O hear, living of the land! Hungreb, dead era, hark! He hea, eyes ravenous on her lippling lills. He hear her voi of day gon by. He hears! Zay, zay, zay! But, by the beer of his profit, he cannot answer. Upterputty till rise and shine! Nor needs none shaft ne stele from Phenicia or Little Asia to obelise on the spout, neither pobalclock neither folksstone, nor sunkenness in Tomar's Wood to bewray how erpressgangs score off the rued. The mouth that tells not will ever attract the unthinking tongue and so long as the obseen draws theirs which hear not so long till allearth's dumbnation shall the blind lead the deaf. Tatcho, tawney yeeklings! The column of lumps lends the pattrin of the leaves behind us. If violence to life, limb and chattels, often as not, has been the expression, direct or through an agent male, of womanhid offended, (ah! ah!), has not levy of black mail from the times the fairies were in it, and fain for wilde erthe blothoms followed an impressive private reputation for whispered sins?
(from: Finnegans Wake)
– Geert-Jan Strengholt |
Camera: Lars Beyer, Steen Moller Rasmussen
Editing: Jacob Thuesen, Per K. Kirkegaard, Anja Farsig
Music, director: Dror Feiler
DJ's: Dror Feiler, Anders-Peter Andreasen (DJ Wunderbaum), August Engkilde, Aron, Tanja, Aardvarck, Jansenis, Alec Smart, Mark Poysden
Production: Dino Raymond Hansen, Robert Grant
Christian Lemmerz, 1959, Karlsruhe (Germany)
Michael Kvium, 1955, Horsens (Denmark)
Live and work in Copenhagen (Denmark)
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