Extract from Les mains négatives, a film by Marguerite Duras from 1978

The man alone in the cave looked into the noise, into the noise of the sea, the immensity of things.

And he screamed.

You who are named, who are gifted with identity, I love you.

Les mains négatives is a short film. The entire piece can be seen here.

Extract from Aurelia Steiner (Melbourne), a film by Marguerite Duras from 1979

It is three o’clock in the afternoon. Behind the trees, there is sun. It is cool.

I am in this big room where I stay in summer, facing the garden. On the other side of the window there is this forest of roses and, since three days, there is this cat, skinny, white, who comes to look at me through the window, his eyes in my eyes.

He frightens me. He cries. He is lost. He wants to belong. And I, I don’t want to any more.

Many of Duras’ later films are made in this way. Voices reading over images that show no direct connection with the text. Images of landscapes, of empty places. Stills or slow panning shots. But while a link in terms of content seems to be missing, there is a strong correlation in rhythm that happens almost unnoticed at first -while we are recovering from the alienation caused by not being able to make sense of the images in connection with the text. There’s a rhythm, the juxtaposition of images and text form a sort of choreography. The images lead your mind in the understanding and appreciation of the text. And the objects in the images become props that stand for objects in the text, and your mind plays with them that way.

This is a very tricky conceit. Many contemporary artists use a similar language and fail to connect with the viewer. I imagine for many Duras fails as well. I remember seeing a film of hers for the first time in a gallery and being somewhat disgusted with what seemed to me as modernist pedantry, being weird for the sake of being weird. But a gallery is a bad place for appreciating this work —the internet is much better.

When I concentrate on the text —not just the words and their meaning but also the flow of the reading, the rhythm of speaking and silence— I feel the film lifting me up and carrying me. There is something immensely soothing about this work, despite of the sometimes painful subject matter. And by the end, I feel like a child being read a bed time story by mother Duras, ignoring the blood on my knee caused by falling off my bike.

To some extent, this soothing quality that I deeply enjoy, reduces my capacity to understand what the writer is talking about. I am lulled into an aesthetic bliss where I don’t care about meaning. It may take me several viewings to realize what the story is about.

Extract from Césarée, a film by Marguerite Duras from 1978

In the heavens, suddenly an outburst of ashes. On cities named Pompeii, Herculaneum. Dead. Destroys everything. Dies of it. The place is named Césarée, Cesarea. There’s nothing to see any more but everything.

It’s a bad summer in Paris. Cold. Foggy.

Césarée is a short film. The entire piece can be seen here.

Extract from Le navire Night, a film by Marguerite Duras from 1979.

— She says they will never meet. That they will never see each other.
— She says she loves him like mad. That she is mad with love for him. That she is ready to leave everything. For him.
— Out of love for you, I would leave my family, this house in Neuilly, tout. Yet it is not necessary. That we see each other. I could leave everything for you. Yet without joining you. Leave because of you. For you. And precisely not join anything. Invent this loyalty to our love.

Again with the voice of the author.

Extract from Agatha et les lectures illimitées, a film by Marguerite Duras from 1981

— I believed to know everything, everything.
— Yes.
— To have foreseen everything. Everything. Everything that could happen between you and me.
— Yes.
— I believed to have considered everything, everything.
— Pain? No. That is never possible.
— Right. Never. We think we know it, like ourselves. And then, no. Each time it returns. Each time, miraculous.
— Each time we don’t know anything any more. Each time.

This film was recorded in Trouville-sur-Mer, in the lobby of the building where Duras lived. She reads the female part of the text and her much younger lover, Yann Andréa, reads the male part.

The dry way of saying the words that express such passionate feelings has inspired much of the tone of Bientôt l’été. Not to mention the views of the sea, and the atmosphere of an abandoned resort town.

I want to show you some films made by Marguerite Duras, the author who inspired Bientôt l’été. Next to many novels and plays, she also wrote, directed and even performed in several films.

A few films were made based on her writing by other directors. These tend to be more famous than her own (Hiroshima Mon Amour, Moderato Cantabile, The Lover, The Sea Wall). But I want to focus on the films she directed herself.

Duras’ films have inspired and influenced the design of Bientôt l’été to some extent. But more importantly, seeing a short extract from some of her films will quickly introduce you to the atmosphere, style and themes of her work. Hopefully this will help you to appreciate ours, and explore hers further.

We will start with some of Duras’ last films, because they are the purest and the simplest, and the most influential on Bientôt l’été. And we will work our way back in time, and see her films become more conventional but no less mysterious and fascinating, as they explore the main themes and characters of her literary work.

I am very concerned with the experience that players of Bientôt l’été will have. How the game makes them feel. What it makes them think. It’s delightful to hear that it inspires them. That they find meaning and value in the piece.

But I am also concerned with the creation itself. With Homme and Femme, the characters we created for players to use as avatars. With the buildings, the places, the objects. I care about them. To me, somehow, they exist. Even when nobody is playing the game, they are still there in the data, on the hard drive, in the uninstalled archive, in the source code, in the meshes and the textures.

They were created and now they exist. And I want the players to care about them too. Not just about their own experience. But also about these creatures, these places, these objects. Not just as metaphors or symbols or means to an end, tools for pleasure, beautiful, perhaps. But as things that really exist, that have a presence. Things that deserve our concerned thoughts, our care.

They have become part of the world. And now we have to care about them.

There is something to be said for imperfection. Things that are too well done, too finished, tend to close themselves.

It’s difficult not to sigh and complain about a program’s shortcomings and errors. But working around those allows me as a user to penetrate them, to become part of the process. And then I get a sense of ownership.

In fact, this is how most videogames function -as I observed a long time ago. They are often designed as perfect machines of which a part is then broken. And the player is tasked with performing the role of the missing part, in order to restore the perfection of the machine.

But even things with shortcomings that are not implemented by design, but are simply errors, omissions of their creator, function in this way. More so, probably, because the final state that is achieved through collaboration of user and object, is not perfection. And, as such is often highly unique, as unique as the user.

Imperfection is charming, it provokes empathy. It makes us feel at ease in its company. We, imperfect creatures ourselves. Always looking for someone who can work around our own imperfections.

So next time you see an error in a program, be glad. The error is an invitation. An invitation of the program (not its creator) to complement it, to come closer, to form a bond.

I can feel horrified by commercial media. Not only by the quality of the work and the implicit assumptions in popular entertainment about their audience. But also by the presentation of these media in press and stores.

I cannot picture the display of my work in that context. I find it demeaning to have to present our sincere art in a context where everything is trash on purpose. Throwaway entertainment, ironic fun, self-mocking ugliness, made-for-profit junk.

When I feel this way, I suddenly understand those artists who, despite of working with computers, flee to the safe confines of the museums and the galleries, where their work can be presented with some dignity.

But that is not where the people are. And when one works in a medium that has the potential to reach a wide audience, as an artist, I feel one has the obligation to use it as such. To put one’s work out there, to show it to people, next to doing one’s best to make the work intellectually and emotionally accessible.

So that is why we have to clench our teeth when looking at the context of our work. In our mind, we picture our work next to that of artists we admire, and hope to find a place in their shadows. But in reality it is presented next to popular junk that we have no respect for, that was not made to be respected, that is just consumer products made without emotional sensitivity or intellectual concern.

It’s so tempting to run away from it all! To walk the moral high ground and not participate in the military-industrial-entertainment complex. We don’t have to do this. We don’t need the money. We don’t need the fame. We don’t get any proper critical response anyway. But if we were to retire to the ivory tower/concrete bunker of high art, we would actively take away the choice that people have. And then all is lost.

We need to continuously remind ourselves: It’s not about our comfort. We are doing this for other people. That means that our work should be presented in places where those people can find it. We shouldn’t expect respect from those places, or to feel comfortable in them. That is irrelevant. What matters is that people have at least a chance to find our work. So that they can choose to make their life better. To make life better.

When I talk about art I mean something very specific. I reject the modernist tendency to simply broaden the concept of art to include just about everything. I also reject a lot of modernist art as being just jokes, or the works of charlatans.

I enjoy art, and I find it important that art is made. But I don’t need it to be the only thing in the world. I like to be entertained as well. And I don’t think entertainment needs to be considered art to be respected. It deserves respect in its own way. Art is something else.

When I am making art, I feel like a scientist. I am exploring. Exploring a subject. And the terrain where I do my explorations is my soul. Not because I think my person is important in the art work. But because my body is the thing I have at my disposal to explore the cosmos, being, existence.

My body is not a neutral tool, like a telescope or a microscope. In fact, the way in which my body responds to stimuli is the most important source of data that informs my work. Of course, “the way my body responds to stimuli” is everything. It is the only thing that exists. Or that we know that exists. Things that we do not perceive do not exist.

The exploration that the creation of art is, then, involves minute probing for unusual, or otherwise remarkable perceptions. Asking the question How do I respond to this? And then asking the question again No, how do I really respond to this?. Until a phenomenon is discovered that reveals something. Or that has the potential to reveal something.

Art is a way to deeper understand reality. A way not encumbered by the rules that slow down science. An artist can explore much further and much deeper, much faster, following intuition. And the results of the research don’t need to be finished, or even analyzed, because the viewer always continues the exploration when interacting with the work.

Art is also hard work. And a lot of it is just getting things done, technical things, craft things. Only a part of the work involves the deep exploration described above. It’s an essential part, and one that sets art apart from everything else for me. But it would not be bearable to do this for extended periods of time. Much like the experience of artistic beauty, does it need to happen in small doses. Too much and I faint.