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In his autobiography, the heroic whistleblower Edward
Snowden warns that “the greatest danger still lies
ahead, with the refinement of artificial intelligence capabilities, such as
facial and pattern recognition”.
Lucrecia Martel mimics a typical automated process of
pattern recognition in her 100-second trailer for the 2019 Viennale – but
renders it strange, surreal and disquieting. It can be viewed here. I suggest taking it in slowly, and
repeatedly.
What central piece of found footage does Martel hurl
against this AI machine? It is the famous “Psychiatric Interview” with an
anonymous “Patient no. 18” filmed at UCLA in 1961, today viewed by 85 million
people on YouTube.
In it, a young man (whose subsequent fate remains a
secret) speaks deliberately and thoughtfully about his desire to “play the
piano for people”; he is duly classified as a case of “negativism in a
catatonic schizophrenic”.
Martel combines the man and his interviewer, loops eye
movement and blurs mouth movement. She introduces flashes of other, associative
images – an individual’s unconscious association, or a machinic algorithmic
association, it is impossible to say any longer.
Inner and outer realms of subjectivity are blurred,
for good and for ill. And all clinical definitions of mental ability and
disability are put into the blender.
Meanwhile, Martel – a master of sound design – underscores
everything with an ever-changing collage of musical selections that sits at the
edge of our aural comprehension.
In short, the will of AI to control, sort and label
everyone in the world is countered by a sublime act of audiovisual subversion
by Martel. The mimicry of a malign system leads to its sly discombobulation. She
manages to do a lot in 100 seconds.
MORE Martel: Zama © Adrian Martin September 2019 |
