The Form of Technique, by Cicero Silva

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The form of technique

by Cícero Silva*Before the talking movies, silent films are the materialstarting point. The actor said: "I am being filmed. Thus I think... atleast, I think of the fact that I am being filmed. It isbecause I exist that I think." After the talking movies,there was a New Deal among the filmed subject, theactor and the thought. The actor began saying: "I think Iam an actor. That is why I am being filmed. It isbecause I think that I exist. I think, therefore I am."(Dialogue of Jean-Luc Godard and Jean-Pierre Gorin in"Letter to Jane" movie)

Specters of form

One of the beautiful short-stories by Machado de Assisnarrates the tale of a man who would like to berecognized as a fine musician, but by force of circumstances and in spite of all his efforts didn't get toproduce something identical to the forms then acceptedas "high music," such as Bach and Beethoven, and who,after all, produced things to assure his living, withoutany dignity. The forms of things, seen by the gaze we havedeveloped along time, took much of our time to be

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constituted and established in relation to the nownormalized patterns of

expressions,

both visual assonorous, being in a certain way treated as somethingthat has a function in itself, but that might have hadanother, if the course of our History (with a capital H)had not been so harsh. Also along time, those sameforms that were constituted began to be questioned fortheir own consistence and problems, which led to adialogue almost as extensive as the one faced byphilosophy among the problems of truth and sophistry.Considering that many of the forms we have today wereguided by criteria, and here it doesn't matter if aesthetic or not, which still try to account for what Kantwill make to exist as the "category of beauty," whatremains in a certain way is the insistence on a variationbetween what would fit in that Kantian class, and whatwould stay at large, making all that was left out to beexcluded from representation, or, if not completelyexcluded, at least thrown aside in the history of formsrepresentation.It happens that the attempts of making the form of thebeautiful to be present as a category of analysis werenot so simple. Although the simplest common sensesays that what we define as beautiful comes from aprevious representation to its own representation, I'drather not to proceed with this one. I think it would belike trying to create a form of the form, a conception

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that would relate to disconnected claims on taste,rejection, inclusion, gaze, nature, among others, whichwould make us deviate through many paths.What was formally thought on the very problem of forms has been essentially discussed on a political plan. That doesn't make it less interesting, on the contrary, itmakes that categorization to enter in line with theanalysis of implications that I try to bring about, writingthis text. Summing up: the form, the beautiful, therepresentation and the sublime were condemned forserving to a categorization of themselves, to abrutalization of their definitions. Which would be thesame as saying that, for political reasons, it wasforbidden to think about what would be a form andwhat it would represent, having in mind that if someonebehaved like that he/she would be placing him/herself in an authoritarian, autochthonous and, we might say,rigid position in relation to the most varied expressionsof anything.Obviously desiring to flee from that place that hasannoyed so many people, we have been conducted, uptoday, to a wider detachment of the gaze on things inthemselves. If we think that there is a "in itself" of thatthing, of course. To verify that, it is enough to observehow the references of forms' materiality incontemporary art, music and philosophy were graduallydisplaced, for example.