Forensics of Imagination
Artistic research project (2018-)
Print publication (2019)
Multi media installation (2019)
Audiovisual abstract (2019)
Forensics of Imagination is an explorative practice, a research method for the understanding and interpretation of phenomena, encounters and objects—as well as their probable and potential connections. It seeks to subvert dominant narratives by considering any trace a meaningful evidence of something yet unknown. Forensics of Imagination aims to interrogate the production of representations of truth.
Parts of Forensics of Imagination can be found here. It encompasses its audiovisual abstract (below), “Notes from the Unreal” and “Exhibits of Ephemeral Evidence” print publications, parafictional existential detective bureau Inverted Eye Co. (new window) as well as the installation work Ephemeral Evidence (next page).
Forensics of Imagination is an artistic research project developed in the context of the Master of Film MA in artistic research in and through cinema at Netherlands Film Academy 2017-19.
Warning: Graphic images around 1:55
Excerpt from ‘Notes from the Unreal’ (2019)
It’s Easter Saturday, blue skies, the sun is high and warm. I’m on a quiet corner perfectly shaded by the fledgling leaves of a tall beech tree with Wolfgang at my feet, waiting for my pizza. Difficult to remain pessimistic in these conditions.
I arrived here from the laundry service to which I had pushed my bike carrying loads of clothes. It’s exam time, I’m at my last pair of underwear and these guys, like me, aren’t that concerned with the resurrection of Christ. With a lighter stride and Wolfgang free to sniff around we crossed one of the little straats of Oud-Zuid. I noticed a mailman in the characteristic orange Post NL uniform. Usually these guys are always on the move with their mail carriers but this one was standing still six feet away—except for his shoulders and head which were shaking and jolting as if their owner in ecstasy, overwhelmed by the music presumably in his ear pods. Tripping. For a second I worried that Wolfgang, the timid creature, would be spooked by the unusual behaviour and jump out into the street so at first I didn’t notice the mailman speaking to me as I approached him. “Meneer,” he said and looked at me through his purple-tinted sunglasses. He was younger than me, blond, unshaved, somehow entirely out of place. “Meneer,” he repeated and made a motion, ever so slowly, towards his Post NL fanny pack. In what felt like a hundred frames per second he unzipped the compartment with his left hand and let the thumb and index finger of his right hand search for something on the bottom. “Does he think I live here?”
I thought to myself, “What sort of mail item would even fit in there?” With a sacral gesture he held out something in shiny red tinfoil: he was offering me a tiny chocolate egg. “No thanks,” I smiled. He made another attempt: “Paashaas?” My Dutch is not that great but in Danish påske means Easter and haas I know because I’ve been searching for a taxidermied hare on Maarktplaats.nl. Easter Bunny. I grinned. “No, but thanks,” I repeated pushing my bike past him. He shrugged and carefully placed the chocolate egg back in its marsupial nest. Wolfgang didn’t seem to take notice.
As I’m sitting down at the foot of the beech I realise the significance of what just happened. I curse my lack of spontaneity: Easter Bunny, Rabbit Magazine wanting to make my acquaintance on Instagram, Scenario Magazine’s men-holding-rabbits issue, the fateful bunny on the tracks at Hengelo Railway Station. I should have followed this one down the hole.
I’m trying to train my situational awareness. This task has been on my mind for a while but it’s easy to get out of practice; exam preparations at my desk isn’t exactly an ideal workout. There are no simulators available like the ones air traffic control officers use, no Tinder to this desire. There’s only the mercilessly mundane that must be conquered by conditioning for the unexpected—or succumbed to.
Traveling soothes. Editing proves it. Going through my film footage I re-encounter beautiful unexpectedness. Some of it I was aware of in the moment, some of it only appears to me as I identify connections in review, some of it is missed opportunities. I remember cursing myself for not moving in with the camera, for my consideration or shyness, and curse myself again. I also recall exciting unexpectedness occurring outside of shooting. In fact, most of my encounters have happened without a camera.
This becomes part of a problem of existential magnitude: how to grasp a moment? How to become aware of its significance before the passing of time and the hovering of the next one renders it insignificant?
Danish experimental film grand old man Jørgen Leth ad- dresses this problem in his writings. He explains positioning him- self to be able to receive what he calls ‘the gifts of coincidence’ by simply setting up the camera—and waiting. For me to see its success relies (in part) on making the frame small enough and the moment long enough not to miss it: Andy Warhol eating a burger, the perfect human shaving, Torben Ulrich playing with a tennis ball. Leth makes it significant simply by his gaze—and by inviting us to see. But if the frame is unlimited and the moment is a lifetime, how then to capture anything of significance? My camera broke down just as the rabbit of Hengelo invited me to High Tea. There’s always an appropriate explanation for a specific failure. But would the footage of the rabbit eventually have been significant—or was it precisely the confluence of the rabbit, the out-of-service train and the breakdown of my instrument that made it so? And if so, how to make that material?
Matter is a moment in time that reproduces itself in the same way the moment after. As solid as it seems, the table I’m working at is in fact a cloud of typical café-table shape consisting of free-floating atoms that just happen to stay in place (it could use a wedge under the leg to keep it from wobbling, though). Same with recorded footage. Time captured in time. So, record everything like Spanish visual artist Maria Molina did for her ‘One Year Life Strata’? Then there’s no moment of significance. Make the frame small enough like Jørgen Leth? That would be a life in waiting. The world is in constant creation of the now and I’m in a constant process of montage of what came right before. How to catch up with the present?
Imagination. Imagination is an act of emancipation from that condition. A claim to freedom, a form of protest, of asserting my own subversive creation of the now.
***
The waiter doesn’t seem aware of the situation that my pizza hasn’t yet arrived. I’m staring at the chalk letters of a blackboard on the wall: “Alle wedstrijden Ajax & Oranje live”. I take it that this place screens all soccer matches in which Ajax and Oranje play. I don’t know those teams. I don’t like soccer. Will I like this place? The wobbling of my table is of a nature that didn’t just begin today or last week—but the superiority of their stone oven could outweigh this minor annoyance. Let me rephrase: I thoroughly dislike soccer. The pizza probably won’t be great but I’m making an effort to not only see what I expect to see: in life, in my practice, and now in pizza. In any case perhaps the disappointment will allow me to disregard the weather and touch base with my negativity. In fact I loathe soccer and I avoid it at all cost. Or, wait—criticality doesn’t equate with negativity, giving critique isn’t by default passing judgment.
This will definitely be important.
***
A few days ago I met with my friend Alexander, a Danish filmmaker who’s moving to Amsterdam because his partner has a new job here. I told him about my research. Since before my move to Amsterdam I have been researching a true crime story rooted in the killing of Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme in 1986. It has taken me on journeys to Scandinavia and North Carolina and has led me to encounters far beyond the story itself: Santa Cruz in the police investigation, Santa Cruz in Oslo Airport; a lost notebook found with Magic cards and a bleak letter; Don Giovanni killing Il Commendatore at the movies, our main character known for being a Don Giovanni possibly assassinating the Prime Minister in the street outside; the bunny at Hengelo Station and my broken camera. There are many others. Somehow these encounters have become the main concern of my artistic research. “It all sounds extremely cinematic,” Alexander said. I agreed; “trouble is, it’s not footage. How to treat it as material?” This has been my struggle for almost a year.
Alexander was off to visit his partner’s new office. It wasn’t to be missed, he’d had to dress up. I was off to find a present for my girlfriend: a book on Norse Mythology, my ancestors’ deriving of meaning from the World. She calls me a nerd. Wolfgang had never been to the American Book Center but somehow knew where we were headed, insisting on leading the way. On the second floor we turned from the stairs, the first book facing me was Haruki Murakami’s latest. Wolfgang was off browsing the cooking section. I’ve never read anything by Murakami but this one caught my attention. Or rather, its title did: Killing Commendatore. Praise Odin! I sent a picture to Alexander. “Signs everywhere?” he responded. Indeed. They haven’t dried out; they’re still available to me, even with laundry and pizza on my mind.
***
I realise it’s been more than an hour, still no show. These soccer suckers. Killing Commendatore, the Easter Bunny, an absent goat cheese pizza. What’s the significance? The angle of the sun has shifted; the right side of my body is exposed, making my left side feel chilly. I’m hungry. Less attractive conditions than initially. What does it mean for my ability to form connections, identify coincidences, receive messages from The Unreal—let alone account for all of this in writing?
In ‘The Order of Things’ Michel Foucault writes that when one articulates his thoughts they exist because the words become sounds that exist outside of one’s self. What is not explicated does not exist outside of the one who thinks it. Image-making and montage are interventions into the world. I’m a machine of creating reality, and so are you. I believe my encounters with The Unreal are key to the sort of expansion of reality I’m after. That’s why I need material. That’s why I’m training my situational awareness. I’ve come up with a better notion: Imaginative Vigilance. It’s about how to prepare for the unexpected, to be able to receive the gifts of coincidence on- or off camera, to be able to montage with the now, making experience and text synonymous.
Wishful thinking…?
***
My laptop has 36% battery remaining. I’ve emptied two ginger beers. I ask the waiter if he forgot about my pizza. “Did you order one?” he responds. I would have thought that was implied. “Which one?” he asks and runs off to pop it in the oven. “Ten minutes.” He apologises.
I talk to my friend Anders. He’s a poet. He doesn’t see my problem, “I just write.” He’s right, of course; poetry must be one of the most immediate ways of montaging with the now. “My pen broke down at Hengelo Station” doesn’t sound like a plausible fiasco scenario. In certain ways I envy him. How do I make my camera into a pen?
Ten minutes later the waiter is back. “I’m really trying to move it along, you’ll have it as fast as possible.” Another ten minutes. Wait, here he comes! In his rush he drops the knife on the pavement, one of those pizza slicer wheels that became a household must-have in the 80s. Oh dear. The pizza has baby corn on it. Why!? He brings a new slicer. I don’t know any goat that would voluntarily take credit for this cheese. The whole thing tastes like something out of a nigh shop freezer.
In my book this place is now a crime scene. They murdered that pizza.
