Pad.ma Launch: The Left, the Right and the Rights by Sebastian Lütgert

Duration: 00:42:47; Aspect Ratio: 1.778:1; Hue: 349.983; Saturation: 0.046; Lightness: 0.151; Volume: 0.085; Cuts per Minute: 0.748; Words per Minute: 18.392

Sebastian Lütgert introduces Pad.ma

Introduction by Madhushee Dutta

-> Archive, Access, *Anxiety*
elaborate on the anxiety part

it's a few thoughs about images, but it's titled

THE LEFT, THE RIGHT AND THE RIGHTS

1. THE LEFT AS PERCEPTION

we're all more or less coming from from an era where the left was strong
and that is rare, and may cause misconceptions about what constitutes the left
one would be that you join it by joining it's "opinions"
(that you're against the war, or don't like the president, or whatever)

-> deleuze
the left is not a matter of opinion
the left is a matter of perception
a type of perception that begins at the horizon
likened to a "japanese" mode of perception
where what you see first is the world, the periphery
and you, yourself, is what you see last

whereas the right is exactly that type of perception
that percieves: me, my room, my house, my steet, my neighborhood, my city, my province, my country, the other countries.
(this is pretty universal: the indian right doesn't seem different from the european right, in that regard)

but now if the left is a matter of perception,
perception brings us to the image

2. THE IMAGE IN CINEMA

it is also, generally, rather unclear what is an image.
alone regarding the image in cinema, countless attempts have been made to define it,
and these theories only apply to cinema. photography is different again...

mid 20th century french new wave / cahiers du cinema (godard/daney) idea about the image:

in the cinematic image, there is always something missing,
and there is always a surplus ((-> lacan))

or, in other words: the image is always less than an image,
and at the same time, it is always more than an image

more than an image in the sense that it makes references to a world outside the screen
that it makes use of certain politics, and, maybe most importantly, that it is a part of a history,
not just the history of the world, history-history, but also the history of cinema

but it's also less than an image in the sense that what it deals with is often outside the frame,
or it's not yet there, or it is an image that is still waiting for another image,
that needs a cut, an association, to be made, before something can become visible

Day for night
François Truffaut
Jean-Luc Godard
La nuit Americaine
Mumbai
On what is an image and an anecdote about Francois Truffaut, Jean Luc Godard and Jacqueline Bisset that makes it clear what an image in cinema is, or what makes it an image.
Sebastian refers to the film La nuit Americane. More details at http://0xdb.org/0070460
There are many people I could attribute this thought to – in cinema, an image is when you can see something. I find it intriguing – this simple thought. And these moments are rare. In a film maybe you'll see one or two but thats already too much. A good example is an anecdote that I quite like. Its early 70s, and Francois Truffaut has made his film La nuit Americane (The American Night or Day for Night), and Jean Luc Godard was asked that – Have you seen the film, how did you like the film? And he said that – The film, I don't know. But you know, Truffaut, there's one image missing from your film. One image is missing and what is that image? It is when a few weeks ago I saw you and Jacqueline Bisset who is the main actor in the film walk on the street and enter that café, there. Because I think this image would be beneficial, its missing from your film because it shows why you made the film. You made the film to hang out with Jacqueline Bisset and its quite strange if this is the constitutional moment and if you want the core of your film, why don't you show it? That's what an image is, would be. That's what it means when you see something or something becomes visible. And you see why Truffaut made La nuit Americane and it becomes visible why he made it.
cinema
image
invisible
visible

An effort to help images escape from the realm of ethics and morality, and to make them enter again into the realm of politics.
There are basically - simplification - 2 laws that govern this world of digital data exchange. Moore's law and Murphy's law. Moore's law in its most vulgar form says everything becomes twice as cheap, twice as fast, twice as big - whatever - every 18 months. Murphy's law in its original form says, whatever can theoritically go wrong will eventually go wrong. And in this special case this just means - evey bit of copyrighted material will eventually be copied illegally. These are kind of fundamental laws of the information age. And its historically a relatively very new situation and I think it should not be feared, but rather embraced. But there is a lot of anxiety, it doesn't really depend on where you go, you'll find it in all sorts of different types of contexts. The question of - the issue of anxiety brings us to the question of the rights, and the management which has become so fashionable of rights. The goal of digital rights management - the big term, the umbrella on top of all these attempts to keep numbers secret and make bits behave differenlty - goal of digital rights management is basically to suspend the fundamental laws of information. As such, actually, rights management is just a fancy new name for plain old censorship. In the context of cinema, rights management is an attempt to end its history once and for all. To transform cinema into the art of making sure that nothing can be seen. Making sure that nothing can be copied, that this DVD doesn't work on this computer, this operation is not permitted, that this download will expire in 2 days, that this film won't run on a digital screen, that this archive will be lost, encoded in proprietary unreadable formats - gone forever. This doesn't just affect the archivist or the so called consumer, but also the producer and director. You need to sign contracts before you can make an interview, you can't use certain footage because its unclear who shot it, or you can't film this building because the architecture holds a copyright to its visual features. And it seems as if the world of rights management takes a divorced concept of the spectacle and then even escalates it further - its not just what you see and what exists. And what exists is good, but now it is even what you see if what your rights are, and these rights are good. And I think at this very point, practices of the digital and the practice of cinema have to team up, have to form some sort of coalition, and its also what in the end pad.ma might be about, in a way. It may be part of a larger effort to help images escape from the realm of morality and rights and to make them enter again, the domain of politics. Because in the end all these so-called moral or legal problems of cinema or making video - what am I allowed to film? What am I entitled to screen? - are a matter of politics.

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