Jiří Černický: ABS Video

ABS video

The films from the series of "ABS Video" video-projections are unedited records of a real space in real time. The time in which the record is made is not important – it may be more or less random. No actors take part in the film, nor is a screenplay demanded. It is therefore possible to speak in this context of a special kind of "time and space ready-made". For the most part, the cameras used to achieve these recordings are ordinary CCTV cameras designed for monitoring public spaces.

Another fundamental characteristic of these films is the inclusion of "mental subtitles". These subtitles do not serve as a translation of a foreign language, but facilitate the perception of a concealed, relative version of reality. I employ the "mental subtitles", as I term them, in order to be able to visualize the conscious and subconscious thoughts of those whose images are captured by the camera. They may, for example, fill the space with invisible, real meanings, which would remain concealed in the case of ordinary observation. The mental subtitles are not located in the bottom field of the picture like ordinary subtitles – they are not, that is, merely an accessory to the picture. On the contrary, they are a dominant, dynamic component of the picture. They are animated in such a way that they are associated directly with a character who is thinking an authentic thought at a given moment. They have the advantage of being able to show at the same time what several people are thinking at a given moment, which is, from my point of view, suggestive. It is possible, that is, to work with the phenomenon of the collective consciousness or subconscious, or the social aspect of reality. It is also possible in effect to create an image of a sort of specific "mental space".

It is also possible to work further with such visualized texts. For example, it is possible with the aid of animation to influence the speed of the thoughts and thus the intensity and dynamics of thinking. Certain thoughts leave us very quickly, others meander and may stray and be caught in space, yet others overlap precipitously and distract etc. This conceptual work forced me to begin thinking, for example, about something that I would call the "physical aspects of thoughts", i.e. about such terms as the weight of a thought, the space of a thought, the length or dimensions of a thought etc.

An important aspect of working with mental subtitles is that it is possible to compose such thus acquired "thought ready-mades" into an experimental literary structure. I sometimes think of the result as a "documentary, kinetic literature" or a "dynamic, specific literature".

It might occur to someone to ask how it is possible to acquire the (sub)conscious thoughts of people and what is more, several people at the same time. It is demanding, but possible. The method is different practically in every film. I would like to speak about the individual films in the chronological sequence in which they were created and to describe some of those methods.

The first and very atypical project for the ABS Video series is the fictional documentary "The Invisible". The film's main character is someone about whom we know nothing, because we do not want to know anything about him, someone who has acquired in the given environment perfect gestures, although we are convinced that he does not belong there at all. That is to say that he blends with the environment even though he is foreign to it. I was interested in what the man on the street thought of such people. I found a suitable person living on the street and asked the people walking past him what they thought of him. Similarly, I asked the homeless man what he thought of the passers-by. I recorded the answers on a Dictaphone. The transcription of the answers provided the subtitles employed for the film The Invisible". In this case the texts were to some extent altered. They had in some details an autobiographic nature and it was also necessary, due to the 3D animation employed, to create a screenplay from them.

The turning point was the film "Railway Station". It has all the typical features that are characteristic of the ABS series. It was inspired by a thought that occurred to me as I was waiting for a train in the Main Railway Station in Prague. I sat on a bench and became aware of the simple fact that the hordes of people around me were really thinking as intensively as I was. At that moment I had a feeling that the spatial density of the thoughts in the railway station had an incredibly "substantial", or more precisely "anti-substantial" nature and that it was even more intensive than the intensity of the visible and audible reality. It was a similar feeling that I wanted to capture in this film. It is an unedited, random recording, in which I first worked with a multi-layered sequence of texts.

For an authentic poly-text of this kind to emerge, I had to acquire several texts at the same time. I therefore needed a team of assistants to approach a large number of people at the same time. I gave a Dictaphone to each of them and asked them to spread out in the monitored space. Their task was then to approach everyone captured by the camera and to put to them the question: "Can you please tell me what you were thinking about as you were passing through this space?" Of the people addressed in this way, 80% really answered immediately, probably because they had never met with such a question. The acquired thought was immediately recorded on the Dictaphone.

My job then was to transcribe the testimonies into mental language and to replace them in the form of subtitles in the virtual space and time of the film with the original owners of the thoughts. During the process of animation I worked with the thoughts by stopping each at the left edge of the picture in order to have the option of working with a "random" literary composition.

A project that follows on directly from the "Main Station" documentary is the film "Perón", which contains all the characteristics of the ABS series already mentioned. As in the case of the preceding film, the texts were acquired by means of a poll. The recording was done with the aid of a CCTV camera, which monitors the platform to prevent crossing of the safety line into the track zone. Because the commuters are obliged to wait for the train, there is a unique opportunity to think in peace here. The Perón station thus became an ideal place for acquiring recordings.

The texts were animated similarly as in "Main Station". They stop at the edge of the frame so that they can be composed into the required literary structure. The "mentalizing" of the final image does not occur smoothly, but rather in bursts. The texts are affected at intervals by the strong airflow forced ahead of the train from the darkness of the tunnel. By this means, a dramatic conflict occurs between the mental energy and the physical, the latter of which seems to emerge from some unknown place, from another space, which I find to be loaded and exciting.

The last film so far, and I hope the most pregnant, in which a multi-layered sequence of texts is employed, is the film "Tower Block". It is also a typical ABS video, though it differs from the preceding ones very fundamentally in the method in which the texts were acquired. The recording was conducted, that is, by means of bugging. The reason was an attempt to acquire authentic testimonies unmitigated by reason or speculation. For this purpose I had special bugging devices made, which were composed of a Dictaphone, earphones, acoustic cable, set of directional microphones and funnels. These devices enabled me to record the sound from individual apartments through the entrance doors. Equipped with this equipment, I conducted for one month a risky, adventurous exploration into the selected tower block to acquire the required recordings. The recordings for the most part took the form of dialogues and not the individual testimonies regarding subconscious thoughts as in the case of the preceding recordings. The phonetically transcribed subtitles also contain transcriptions of television and radio programmes, the ticking of clocks, dogs barking etc. During animation I allowed the subtitles to flow freely out of the format, which gives the image a specific dynamic in the form of a sort of rising "mental wind", which thus releases from the anonymous box of the tower block a different, "mental dimension".

Constituting a special category of films, which are an integral part of the "ABS Video" series, are films that follow on directly from the first film, "The Invisible", but move in a different direction thematically. Their central theme is not a large group of people, but individuals.

An example of this type of film is "Loading…". It is self-psychoanalysis, a segment of the mind of the film's author, who sleeps and whose precipitous mind is written (played back) into the resulting picture of the morning. More precisely, a nightmare (in reality a true story), is created from letters that are constituted from the morning light – literally. The visuals of the film are created from two layers. The first layer consists of night and the second, hidden beneath it, of day (morning), while the place is absolutely identical. The letters are formed by gradual revelation of the sub-layer as it glows and illuminates the morning by unveiling it. The result is a sort of strange, trance-like catharsis, which culminates in a dramatic confrontation between the text and the picture. With the culmination of this catharsis, the story itself also ends, describing how the brain of the hero is overwhelmed by chaotic thoughts in a situation which becomes ever more complicated and falls into disarray, where it is not possible to force any conclusion and yet it is necessary to try to emerge from any situation with dignity. This sort of counter-story also falls into the category of "ABS Story".

The subsequent film is "The Flood", which also has autobiographical features. It is characteristic in that it is composed thematically of two parts. In the first, very short part the face of the author of the film is seen in relief for a moment. In the form of mental subtitles he is thinking of a project that he has wanted to do for a long time and has never gotten round to. In the middle of his thoughts, however, his cellphone rings and the author is forced to leave the frame, but the continuity of his thoughts remains on the screen. This second, much longer part is composed of flowing text alone, which realistically describes the subsequent train of thought of the author. The character of this text also has a similar ABS nature to that in the film "Loading…". The theme that is characteristic of it, as well as the majority of the ABS stories, is the role of chance impulses in the continuity and control of our thinking, which is naturally projected into our behaviour and the quality of our life in general.

Jirka Černický