Spilled milk

One could easily recon that this whole enterprise of keeping a blog about my endeavors, is merely the proof of my inability to make serious art. With a frown and thin lips one could demand that my machines and videos should be self evident, so why all this? The simple strategy to fend off such criticism is the cool observation of the fact that there is absolutely nothing to demand and furthermore that I am not obliged to produce anything that fits a certain category for a specific public, neither imaginable nor real. In that sense I am completely free. In a less aggressive manner I could take such critique as starting point for a brief exploration of my inner motives. Two things in particular then arise, I do like the fact that this blog acts as a personal archive, it's good to dive back in time, finding moods and links and certain ways in which I crafted solutions. Another aspect is the benefit of formulating thoughts about my proceedings, as if I look at my work freshly from a different angle. A third thing tries to put a foot between all these noble motives, vanity, I have to admit that the thought that other people can read all these musings pleases me, even if only one person find inspiration or even pleasure in this all. Enough said, let me tell you a few things about the Russian cinematographer Tarkovsky and milk...

The film Mirror (1975) draws heavily on Tarkovsky's own childhood, Filipp Yankovskyas took the role of child "Alexei" and in one of the key scenes we see the child drinking from a large jug of milk. Mirror is preceded by three major productions, positioned halfway Tarkovsky's oeuvre. The symbolic force of the life bringing milk in a huge glass jug is all concentrated in this image.

A filled milk bowl reappears in Offret (1986), his seventh and last film. This time the context and tone is completely different. By than Tarkovsky was already suffering from the cancer that ended his life. In the film a squadron of low flying jet fighters rip up the delicate silence of the remote wooden house and casts this huge milk bowl out of the cupboard, violently crashing on the floor in a spectacular fall. This marks a dramatic turning point in the narrative, the broken glass and the spilled milk can never be undone and nothing will be ever the same afterwards.

Now let's leave the realm of world cinema and take a look at my Paradise Machine in the making. It's clear how I came up with the idea of ​​the spilled milk, lets call it a humble tribute to the late Andrei Arsenjevich Tarkovsky. My Paradise Machine marks this current moment in history. It was quite easy to chase these lazy tourists away, as if they deep down understood that their way of living was somehow abusive and a little decadent. How smoothly flipped the world in lock down and how profoundly is our life altered by the fear of this so called killer virus. I do not think lightly about the consequences and the dangers of authoritarian ruling and corporate power that we see rapidly unfolding. But what can I do other than making my machines? So I am finishing up the theatrical vitrine and think of the way I will film the scene for my May video.