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The following
is from 312 No. 14, Aug. 1 - Oct. 31, 2006 [Download
Publication in .PDF format]:
SILENCE
PART TWO
(A SURFACE EXCAVATION)
This is
the second half of an essay accompanying 312’s two-part
series on silence. Please refer to the previous
312 Pub for more information on the videos by Carola Cintrón-Moscoso
and Alejandro Quinteros.
Alla Girik
and Oksana Shatalova’s Memory is Immobility draws
parallels between stillness and silence by using VHS footage of
Shatalova’s elderly relatives on a trip to Estonia. Cropped
like an old photograph, the video shows the couple posing perfectly
still next to a series of public monuments, waiting for a photograph
to be taken. The couple’s stillness mimics the monument’s—each
sculpture remains silent, indecipherable without the memorial
plaque to give its context, its reason. An image of the moment
out of context is all that can be managed under these circumstances.
Mobility only occurs in-between as the couple moves to the next
monument. Everything I see—from the hazy texture of VHS
tape to the video’s slow motion treatment—suggests
stillness as a method to ensure clarity against the odds. Memory,
it suggests, is like a camera with an open shutter: sudden movement
might obscure the image. Kinetic silence is a decision to stop
and remain in place, to withhold motion.
In this video,
as in the ones by Cintrón-Moscoso and Quinteros discussed
in Silence Part One,
silence is presented as a decision. Often, I find myself walking
into silence, whether at a library or a funeral home. Do I maintain
the hush—as in a minute of silence—or do I break it,
as Quinteros implores the affluent to do? My decision is reflected
not only by whether I speak or by the volume of my voice, but
also by the way I choose to move within the silence. As shown
by Girik & Shatalova, stillness is kinetic silence, a decision
to restrict physical motion. When considering silence, my entire
body is affected, internally and externally.
As an observer,
it can be difficult to interpret silence—especially cross-culturally—but
silence most definitely is a meaningful act of communication,
if not one of articulation. As Cage pointed out, silence is not
the absolute absence of sound. Instead, silence is Kwiatkowska’s
‘ground,’ a situation reflecting a decision to limit
self-created noise (from speech to politics to physical movement).
The three videos in this series are by no means an exhaustive
exploration of silence—both the right to silence and the
imposition of censorship are left undiscussed. Nonetheless, these
videos by Cintrón-Moscoso, Quinteros, and Girik & Shatalova
form the beginnings of a surface excavation.
Mark
Prier.
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