Transcript
>Session 3, Paulo
>Diagram of Relations "Axolotl","Metamorphosis"
Document
>Relations between an Axolotl and a Cucaracha
Document
>"Axolotl"
Julio Cortazar
in: Julio Cortazar, The End of the Game (1964).
Document
>"The Metamorphosis"
Franz Kafka (1913)
Transcript
>Session 3, Paulo
>Diagram of Relations "Axolotl","Metamorphosis"
Transcript
>Session 1, All members
I was thinking of a space of confrontation. It is what I think, but I didn’t know I articulated this. In truth what I wrote is what I said, but in your interpretation. When you get the message, the way the words are configured bring for me another sense. It isn’t a lie. It is always stronger in writing than in oral.
The increase of the technology brings this new space and new ways and permit either to dominate or liberate. When you have stronger ways of communication, mass media, the governments has more ways to dominate the people. But then, this space has also more ways to get to freedom – internet – but the governments can survey you but there are movements you can see - like the antiwar. Like the virtual manifestation of sending emails to the white house. This is a new space of confrontation.
I chose the two stories because I saw the different ways they went out from the conventions - a man who becomes an insect or a fish. I began with what the two have in common, the transformation. I was interested in the different ways – one is looking for it and developing over time. He likes it or conformed to it. The other is sudden, wakes up and is an insect. He can’t accept, and the family is upset around this situation. Two completely different views around the same phenomena, where one is good and the other is a catastrophe.
The character always goes to the botanical garden, which has a zoo that he always goes to visit. He always looks at the aquarium, but never had been there, and finally, one day he goes. I see the aquarium as the most obscure parts of his mind. He enters, he sees many common things, which don’t interest him. Then he sees something completely different, that never exists – the axolot – something he never perceived, something in his mind, but he never conceived. He began to become obsessed of it. He starts to see how it resembles a man. He goes inside this little thing he found inside his mind, and finally he could not get free. I see it as an offer from the author to do so, but it is a little bit open, you can go inside your mind and lose yourself – or if you go, you can find the truth. The axolot is a strange fish. There is a description in the book, but it is not so important. I saw one documentary and on the author and he showed the axolot. It is something like a lizard and fish. It doesn’t move a lot because there is not a lot of space in the aquarium, so is afraid of moving a lot for hurting himself – like the little thing in your mind can disturb if moved. He wants to look inside his mind, to come up with another world.
The author was revolutionary, also in that he didn’t criticize directly the institutions, he did it through this literature. In 1964 was the brazilian military coup, in argentina was also around this time, perhaps before. Chile came after, in 70s. Then came the persecutions, he had to leave. In 59, the Cuban revolution therefore the increase was on in Latin America, as well as the repression.
In Kafka for me the fatalism is more clear. Everything begins bad and we finish worse. Cortazars character goes to look for something. Kafkas received it without warning. He hopes his condition is just a bad dream. The boss arrives and tells him it is impossible he doesn’t show up. The family sees him no longer useful because he can’t work. He has always this way about repression. Cortazar tells thing going on inside, but not so heavy, even though it could be repression. Kafka is a psychological repression, and he projects everything.
Both want to change something. Kafka’s character was tired, he had to work as a salesman and didn’t like this life, but he could not for different reasons. The other character from Cortazar, we don’t know the name even. It is just a route to a place, and he describes. The character in Axolot, he always went to see the lion, panther and the flowers, and finally one day the lion is sleeping, the panther was not good, he decided to change. One day the exterior world was no longer there, so he tried something else, and he entered into his mind.
In the metamorphisis, after one nite of bad dreams, he wakes up – this was the point of transformation. I just can see both want to change the way of their lives, but one was conscious of this, the other not. One woke up and went to this, the other was sleeping. The desire was the common point, to get away from this way of life, the routine of that life. In Axolot it was more symbolic, the panther, lion, flowers all the exterior of the botanical garden, and then he moves to the interior.
I was studying before CCC communication, then film. The studying of communication and cinema, was technical. Now it changed a bit, but when I studied it was technical, not a lot of reflection. A few of the professors go to work, like going to a bank, so it is more yourself, as a student you are on your own. I went to read, to discover something, other teachers, by myself. I wanted to study more about cinema so I went to Madrid. I wanted to go there to experiment within another culture, another language, in Europe. I wanted to study art, but I had the opportunity to do just what I had. So when I came to Geneva then I had the opportunity to study art..
Abstract: "Axolotl", Julio Cortázar (1963)
A man goes to the aquarium for the first time, and stays, impressed by a kind of fish called Axolotl. Since this day, he visits the Axolotl every day, increasing the frequency each time more until he himself becomes an Axolotl."It was a time where I thought a lot about Axolotls. I went to see them at the Jardin des Plantes aquarium and I spent hours watching them, observing their immobility, their obscrue movements. And now I am an Axolotl." (pg.27)
Abstract: "The Metamorphosis", Franz Kafka (1913)A man woke up in the morning and realizes his body became the body of a vermin, an insect. He was laying down on his back, a hard back, and raising his head a bit, he realizes he had an arched brown abdomen shared by nerves. The cover of just what I had. So when I came to Geneva then I had the opportunity to study art..
"As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. He was lying on his hard, as it were armor-plated, back and when he lifted his head a little he could see his domelike brown belly divided into stiff arched segments on top of which the bed quilt could hardly stay in place and was about to slide off completely. His numerous legs, which were pitifully thin compared to the rest of his bulk, waved helplessly before his eyes.
What has happened to me? he thought." (pg 1)Some Relations
Axolotl Metamorphosis
Gradual transformation
Abrupt transformation
Transformation consented
Transformation without consent
Acceptance of the new body
Refusal of the new body
1st person narrative
3rd person narrative