Open Peer Review Vol.21 N.1

RAWR: kitchen, rage, Judith and I

Maud Ceuterick

Section: Videoessay

Reviewer A:

Please, comment on the most relevant aspects (positive points and areas to improve) of the reviewed videoessay.

This is a video essay recognisably in the tradition of videographic criticism. It uses the remix, juxtaposition and superimposition of several films, which are persuasively related by the analysis to make a version of the ‘epigraphic videoessay’ developed by influential makers like Catherine Grant, and of the ‘accented videoessay’ theorized by Barbara Zecchi. But the video presses invigoratingly at the borders of both forms and refuses any conventional claims to academic authority in its ferocious vocal rendition of the words of Judith Butler. This is a performative piece, not least in the presence of the maker’s body and voice on the visual and the soundtracks, of course, but also in the enactment of the rage that is its theme. The increasingly emphatic repetition of the familiar but ‘convoluted’ quotation from Butler has the effect not of making the quote clearer or its meaning more accessible, but of making it equivalent to the manic singing and amplified domestic sounds that the videos draw from its films. The recitation of the quote becomes a form of protest, a mantra deployed against the phenomenon it diagnoses. Borrowing a phrase from Asbjørn Grønstad, the maker writes in her creator statement that the video’s refusal of clarification may be the “engendering [of] a form of conceptual thought” by other, extreme, means. This is correct I think: the mode of this video essay is one in which the viewer must develop, if hardly ‘complete’, the twinned gestures of rage and analysis that it stages. The work of analysis here is not that of critical distance, but of grotesque intimacy: an act of provocation rather than contemplation, and a kind of ironic and brutal realization of Susan Sontag’s call for an erotics in place of a hermeneutics of art.

Would you suggest any changes or make any recommendations to improve the quality of the videoessay?

I believe that the statement and video could be published as they are, but would ask the author and editors to consider the following modifications: STATEMENT: English should be checked for typos, eg “a rage that inhabit[s]”, “a[n] audiovisual technique” The point beginning “In Saute ma ville (1968), Chantal Akerman is the only woman with short hair…” should be clarified: author should state this is shown in the videoessay (and perhaps give time indicators). Perhaps also suggest that Akerman’s hair is ‘relatively’ shorter… The allusion to Asbjørn Grønstad’s theorisation of unwatchable cinema should be expanded a little: briefly say are, for Grønstad, the characteristics of such cinema so that we can clarify how the video differs from them? I think the final remark also drawing on Grønstad could also be expanded/glossed because it is very suggestive and may offer a kind of rationale for work like this: what exactly is meant by “autopoetical … engendering a form of conceptual thought”? VIDEO: I wondered if the images of the baby around 3:50 distract from the effect of the rest. I don’t know the film being drawn upon, but I take it we should read this baby as a surreally infantilized version of the man’s corpse (?). This cryptic presence had two effects for me: it took my attention away from the character of the rage in the video as I tried to decipher the man/baby transformation, and it seemed to draw in an aspect of motherhood/reproduction that maybe seemed too explicit (the umbilical cord and bulging pipe without the baby might be stronger in my opinion). So, my suggestion would be to omit specifically the images of the bloodied baby (though the author may disagree). I felt that we didn’t have quite enough of the images of the maker herself onscreen and a few seconds more would make stronger her angry identification with/refusal of the gender trouble portrayed. Note that at 5:00, the official title of the Middlebury workshop is “Scholarship in Sound and Image’, I think, and if I’m right, the credit should be corrected.

 

Reviewer B:

Please, comment on the most relevant aspects (positive points and areas to improve) of the reviewed videoessay.

No open comments

Would you suggest any changes or make any recommendations to improve the quality of the videoessay?

The montage is visually strong. Arresting, visceral images, effective overlaps and juxtapositions, and a mesmerising slow editing rhythm. Optionally: it would, however, help if the film clips were HD; high-quality images really help make video essays more watchable. Also, the clips that the author has made monochrome (I think the clips from Raw) are a bit murky and mid-tone; they could increase their contrast so they fit better with the clips from the other films, which look like they were shot on b/w reversal. - The sound mix is similarly strong – thick, unnerving, almost Lynchian – it evokes experimental film and creates a strongly immersive effect. It intensifies to discomfort of watching the images. Optional: the author could boost the bass a bit further. - The concept behind the repeated delivery of the lines is conceptually strong and fits the images. However, there are some issues: - The voice-over begins sharp, clear, and academic. There’s a complete stylistic disconnect with the sound mix, and it jars. I guess it’s meant to evoke a ‘traditional’ expository video essay, a stable baseline that becomes destabilised, but it doesn’t work: it feels like the voice-over is being imposed on the images rather than organically engaging in dialogue with them. Requested: the author could experiment more with how first to deliver the lines: they can stay academic, but maybe deliver them a bit softer, more internal. Time them somehow to fit the rhythm of the images. And especially, I’d slow down – especially the first time, pace it so the viewer can at least have a chance of understanding what it means. - The tone/style of the second delivery is too close to the first. Then the change to the third delivery is drastic. Requested: for the second delivery, find a mid-point between first and third delivery. - Finally, to be completely honest, even after the repetitions, I just didn’t understand the voice-over at all. It felt jargonistic, alienating, baffling, aimed not at me. Learning later that it was Judith Butler somehow didn’t help me make sense of it. Ultimately, the words themselves left me nonplussed, and feeling like I couldn’t (but should) understand how the progressively more extreme tone of the voice-over related to their meaning. Optional: I wonder if there could be another Butler line that would work better – or perhaps instead the author could write their own lines, which would allow them to tailor them more closely to the images.

 

The videoessay included some modifications before publication