Seite 110 [110]
Bopy, THE GAZE, AND ABSTRACTION: FROM SAMUEL BECKETT TO BRUCE NAUMAN
An in-between space is created — echoing Beckett’s “key word"? perhaps —
where the spectator oscillates from a purely formal toa figurative conception of
space, for want of reference to stable, “norma!” reality. Secondly, the spectator
is limited to a partial view, which excludes the overall layout. As he cannot
detach himself from the strict image that is offered, he is not free to reduce
the performance to a conceptual dimension, or to endow it with “meaning.”
Indeed, if Nauman himself seemed to be imprisoned within the geometrical
space of his studio, it is now the spectator who is reduced to passivity: he is
immobilized by the single fixed take, whereas cuts and changes of perspective
would have circumscribed his place in the intervals.
The strictly limited visual field produces the effect of an anamorphosis:
deformations produced bya change in the point of view, rendering the original
image unrecognizable.** For example, in architecture, a fresco in a cupola will
be distorted to recover a recognizable shape when seen from below. However,
constructed forms can easily be deconstructed, once an unorthodox point of
view is imposed on the spectator. For Lacan, the anamorphosis reveals the
way a coherent image can collapse when seen from the point of view that
remains unimaginable for the subject, revealing the point from which the
latter is seen, as an object of his Other’s unknowable desire.
In Nauman’s video, the effect of the anamorphosis is present in the
changing shape of the performer which, flattened out on the screen, fails to
coagulate into a coherent three-dimensional being. His stylized body appears
to border on the formless, folding and unfolding. His body thus appears as a
fascinating blot, creating a breach in the surrounding space.
Moreover, the geometrical diagrams created by Nauman to organize his
movements show two forms that, so to speak, reflect each other.™ It is as
if the angles served as pivot-points, so that their sides open up like doors
in an architectural plan. These very orderly and abstract forms appear to
correspond to the geometrical movements of Watt, being patterned on the
signifiers ordained by the Other. However, this dimension disappears in the
video, as a result of the camera angle, since the spectator is obliged to observe
from a point of view closer to the ground. One sees the geometrical movements
of Nauman’s body, but not the specific form that these movements describe.
The invisible pattern can be likened to the equally invisible form in the center
Beckett cited in Tom Driver, Beckett by the Madeleine, in Columbia University Forum IV
(Summer 1961), 23.
Jacques Lacan: Le Séminaire, Livre VII, L’Ethique de la psychanalyse, Paris, Seuil, Champ
freudien, 1986, 161. Lacan comes back to this structure later: Le Séminaire, Livre XI, Les
Quatre concepts fondamentaux de la psychanalyse, Paris, Seuil, Le Champ freudien, 1973,
80-83.
54 Beckett Walk Diagram II, 1968-1969, reproduced: Gijs van Tuyl: Condition humaine/corps
humain: Bruce Nauman et Samuel Beckett, in Christine Van Assche: Nauman Bruce: image/
texte, 1966-1996, Paris, Centre Georges-Pompidou, 1997, 60.
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