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Voyage through the
Large Glass
With
the Very First Computer Animation of the Large Glass
by Jean Suquet
Translated by Sarah Skinner Kilborne with Julia Koteliansky
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to enlarge
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Brochure
for Jean Suquet,
Voyage through the Large Glass, Centre Georges Pompidou, 24 October, 1995-12 February, 1996 |
A note on the translation: Some French words from the original have been included in this translation to show the wordplay that takes place in Jean Suquet's text which cannot be translated exactly into English. Also, in the original, several words were italicized for emphasis. Those words have been underlined in the translation since the added French has been set off in italics, as is customary. These minor adjustments have been made in order for the reader to appreciate as much of the intentioned subtlety as possible.
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images for Jean Suquet's animation of the Large Glass
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slide of the Large Glass is projected onto the white wall of
a room in a garret. On the right, a door, it's obvious. Closed. The narrator enters into the projection cone and, having become prey to the cast shadows, he transfuses his breath into them. Duchamp left three-fourths of the Large Glass transparent so that in the filigree of the extravagant machinery parading in the foreground we could read a poem. Without words [mots], with no motor [moteur]. The initial lighting crackles with the title: The Bride stripped bare by her bachelors, even. In the sky, the Bride. On the ground, the bachelors. Between them, the horizon line. This line, Duchamp says, is the Bride's clothing. Poor bachelors dreaming of stripping her bare! They carry before them in their own gaze the veil they can't wait to unfasten. The horizon line is an imaginary boundary that recedes as one moves towards it. An inevitable escape from which the bachelors will have to disenchant themselves. Let's join the nine red fellows who look like our brothers. Dressed in tight uniforms, nailed to the ground by their lead soles, they're nevertheless in a flutter by a leak of illuminating gas, which in 1912 was the blood of the city lights. This spirit rushes into a journey through which must pass all states of matter. Solidified and liquefied into a puddle, it wanders around until some weight, falling down from who knows where, makes it splash out. It explodes. It declares its flame. It is dazzled by its own light that is projected into the sky by a playful configuration of mirrors. In the sky, the Bride is nude in every sense of the word. She unfastens her clothing, which falls to her feet and covers the world around. She escapes all outline, denies all representation. On the Large Glass we can only make |
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out
a hieroglyph too difficult to decode until we recognize,
within it, the jagged chrysalis of a queen bee that the nuptial
flight has dissolved into the clouds. |
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