For my thesis project I created a digital short animation, based on the poem Eleven Poems taken from the Archangelical by George Bataille:

“My madness and my fear 
have wide dead eyes
and the steady gaze of fever
what looks in these eyes 
is the nothingness of the universe
my eyes are blind skies
in my impenetrable night
the impossible cries out
everything crumbles…”[i]

 

The piece progresses through stages mirroring the storyline of the poem, and utilizes visual elements corresponding to symbols and representations which engage Julia Kristeva’s theory of abjection, such as the male gaze, evil eye, mirror stage, talking cure and Solar Anus.

The body parts that replace the eyes displays a relationship between the key concepts discussed above, such as fetishization of female body and the fear that is caused by replacing the celebrated or fetishized object into something supposedly improper like the anus. Inspired by Bataille’s Solar Anus, I set out to explore the idea of interchangeability of meaning. By following Bataille and Kristeva and challenging established forms of language and representation and celebrating the Other, the supposedly impure, one can challenge any order whether it is an intra-personal individual order or a social order.

 

[i]  Bataille, Georges, and Mark Spitzer. 1998. The collected poems of Georges Bataille. Chester Springs, PA: Dufour Editions.