D-normal/V-essay 平地數碼

VIDEO ZINE #3
錄像雜誌第三期

Presencing … Becoming
就在此瞬間

2021.06.30

“Presencing” is to make oneself present in one’s concern to the world, according to Heidegger. Presencing constitutes (1) “being” in time, (2) within the world, and (3) in action; and this denotes how Heidegger’s early emphasis of being and time developed into being in the process of becoming. Thus, being is not of a singular ground. The process of becoming embodies the trajectory of hereness to thereness, and presence towards moving beyond presence. An extension from this is that space could only be understood as narrated space, and who we are could only be presented and unfolded as narrative selves.

In many of the video essays submitted to issue #3, I experience the tenacity of asserting one’s presence which highlights the momentary, the liminal, and what is about to come (or may not come). Presencing must be understood, then, as distance, as spatiality. “Becoming” involves turning to the future; videographic acts of becoming materialize in space, and time as space.

“Presencing” is no philosophical bluffing here. The highlighted distance of becoming through presencing is laden with existential crises. Is it the same event if the voice that speaks is a different one? Why wouldn’t passion and sensations be less real because it is in a virtual, fictional/game environment? Am I conducting everyday activity or am I dwelling in an artistic moment, and where is the boundary? Is it possible to grow a story into a projectile by telling it many more times ….? In what ways do maps and image tokens enact our presence in a place? If I do not start here, will I ever be there? What kind of distance or becoming is marked by miniaturization and virtualization?

There are several pieces on dance and yet they are no ordinary dance videos. These works all highlight the choreographic moment, and the formation of a dance. 4000 Blows reminds me of Yvonne Rainer’s Trio A -- lifting the strict boundary between the professionally trained dancer and the everyday person. Using everyday activities and gestures as the raw material of dance by minimum transformation is Rainer’s anti-elitist, methodical liberation of dance from classical conventions. And how does it differ from Merce Cunningham’s attempt for a new form of abstract dance via “chance dance”? The video essays we have collected here all manifest sharp spatial awareness -- any point in space could set off the dancer’s movement; a phrase has multiple generative possibilities, or a deliberate deferral of a humanistic story.

No surprise and no coincidence, a handful of works describe, point and allude to the Covid-19 global experience. Loneliness and isolation acquire new languages. The body wakes up to new challenges. Expected or not, this issue “archives” these epoch-marking experiences.

第三期收集的作品，驅使我們再一次用空間的度向去理解時間和我們存在的狀態。這令我想到晚期海德格的「盤踞此刻這裡」(presencing) ，是他的哲理思辯的啟悟，同時帶著的更挨近生存事實的迫切。作為「存在」的實質，「這裡」(here) 是時間上的現在進行式，空間上是在世界的其中，也在當下的活動裡。「這裡」凸顯了朝向在形成中的未來。錄像文章恰巧就是填滿此刻當下趨向未來搖晃著的空間和變動中的時間。看著這些錄像文章，我呼吸著存在的焦慮和危機感。

請帶著各種疑問、好奇，參看二十多個錄像文章如何把「盤踞此刻這裡」所引發的空間時間行動的「距離」化成為「跨越」的實質體驗的呈現。徵集了好些因全球疫情而起的記述，沒有半點驚訝，只平實的收錄，為這個瞬間的地球留些紀錄。沒有預期卻驚喜的是不少的舞蹈錄像，或純粹紀錄一段行動的聲影文章；看來，我們經驗的是奮起的實作而不是低沉的就範，就連日常生活所經驗的「權」、「控」，也可重新理解，也可以翻開再翻開。