ABSTRACT
It is the stare here that works towards countering the identificatory process, by presenting the stare's presence. Self-conscious viewing can be instigated this way, as it similarly can be by the reflexivizing of the constant attempt to arrest an image. Making the mechanism apparent (stare, arrestation attempt, etc.) whilst it is in operation is a constituent part of countering identificatory processes. Posited within such formulations of, for example, the stare in Warhol, is a self situated in its self-alienation. That is the place from which the stare is sited, no humanized self finally left. Viewer becomes (a) viewmg. Without stabile self, totalized identificatory projections and introjections can be barred; a first step. The anti-illusionist project foregrounds mechanisms of cinema in the viewing, denying possibilities of an imaginary oneness of viewer and viewed. Seemingly endless duration produces itself as duration, across the continuum of the stare. For this “continuum” to appear seamless, as conventional narrative films demand, it needs endlessly interrupted duration, edited for the illusion of a continuum. The very opposite of time-as-duration. Yet the processes engaged against identification cannot operate in a vacuum, to somehow “make” a non-illusionist final work; rather, an anti-illusionist project is attempted.
