Author’s Preface

Summary

This book emerged from a practice of intellectual restlessness; of always, as I phrase it, ‘looking around the corner’. The title of this book series, ‘Refractions’, is, therefore, very apt for my temperament as well as my writing style. With persistent curiosity and a reluctance to obey boundaries, my work is interdisciplinary. For the past twenty years, it has also been intermedial. Making video art is not changing fields. I will explain what it is instead: a practice I have termed image-thinking. True: something changed when I was compelled – for personal/social reasons – to buy a camera and start making videos. But that change was not an abandonment of my previous interests. On the contrary; these became enriched and deepened by the addition of – refractions through – audiovisual sources for my thinking to the printed materials in libraries; the indispensable collaboration with others; the liveness and contemporaneity of what I studied. The fact that I never stopped writing, lecturing and publishing proves my case. The present book is motivated by the aspiration to put my experience of the process of making and thinking as inextricably intertwined at the disposal of others. Not for imitation, but for inspiration.

Many people have had a great impact on this book, and I cannot possibly mention them all. Rather than risking forgetting some of them, I refrain from writing the traditional list, which would bore my readers anyway. Moreover, it is simply impossible, for I would have to include my students, of all academic levels, who have always inspired, challenged and triggered my thinking; all the artists whose work has been an ongoing stimulation and motivation; and the colleagues whose kind support and invitations all over the world have kept me going – including literally. As I have frequently argued, writing, only seemingly an isolated activity, is as social as thinking is. And so is artmaking, hence, the making about which this book reflects. Just think of the many participants, mostly volunteers, in all the projects discussed. And the few professional actors and cinematographers who were so crucial for the fiction films deserve huge gratitude not only for their terrific, brilliant work but also for their unpretentious, collaborative attitudes that helped the volunteering participants to learn and surpass themselves. Without the innumerable people who have been there for me when I needed them, this book would not exist.