Leopold von Sacher Masoch

During a period working very much working in the mode me, myself, video camera, I
discovered the writings Sacher Masoch. To speak of a discovery is almost an idiotic
misnomer – since the influence of Masoch is so totally penetrating (in language, in the
relation to the image, in everyday actions and expressions), yet to read “Venus In Furs”
was an awakening. The text’s use of repetition and recurring rituals, its use of tableaux
and the author’s fixation with securing certain conditions, in order to create a specific
image / moment, a freezing of time, all had absolute resonance and relevance regarding
my own activity of capturing very particular scenes, in which I was the chief protagonist,
both subject and object within the strictures of time and physical trials.

It was one of those rare moments of synchronicity when the perfect text seems to seek
you out when you are deeply engaged in a realm of activity you do not fully comprehend.
It was at this moment that I first encountered Gilles Deleuze in his beautiful and
masterful analysis of Masoch “ Coldness and Cruelty”. A way of thinking and writing,
which once would have been completely impenetrable, opened out to me because of the
actions and explorations I was engaged in. This is one of the most satisfying encounters
in art making as theory and practice connect with complete flow and each act in time
enhances a greater understanding in the realm of research - the knowing takes place in
the doing. Words on the page become an enrichment of what emerges in practice and
theory and practice yield to one another in a complex reciprocal relation.
Deleuze’s observations and insights on repetition are subtle and mesmerising.

“We remarked earlier that repetition characterized the binding process inasmuch as it is repetition
of the very moment of excitetation, the moment of the emergence of life; repetition is what holds
together the instant; it constitutes simultaneity. But inseparable from this form of the repetition
we must conceive of another, which in its turn repeats what was before the instant – before
excitation disturbed the indifference of the inexcitable and life stirred the inanimate from its
sleep. How indeed could excitation be bound and thereby discharged except by this double action
of repetition, which on the one hand binds the excitation and on the other hand tends to eliminate
it?

Beyond Eros we encountered Thanatos; beyond the ground, the abyss of the groundless; beyond
the repetition that links, the repetition that erases and destroys.”

This encounter became an extremely fertile period for me in which I made several works
in a matter of months, chiefly concerned with the body caught up in repetitious action so
that the scene in some respects could be taken as aspiring to a still, frozen image yet the
repetition involved seemed to act as an stimulus of libido at first energising and then
exhausting.

Rewarding as it was, such activity became very draining and in its narcissistic accent I
finally encountered the real cul-de-sac of self-referentiality; that is to say it ceased to be
an exploration and became almost a symptom. The experience was akin to being caught
in a hall of mirrors – all reflecting the same thing. Such alliances have to be suspended –
sometimes annulled – both for one’s health and to avoid falling into mannerism.
I was to explore the world of Masoch very differently in a time yet to come.