ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the enfolding and unfolding process of bodies and images in the Malayalam film Artist. The film narrates the story of the protagonist Michel, who loses his eyesight in an accident. After this incident, Michael continues his artistic practice in ways identical to how he created paintings before the accident. Michel’s experiences can be seen as a product of his virtual past and his actual present. The past experiences, gathered when he was ‘able-bodied’, unfold in his perceptions. These perceptions impact his body, and get transferred through the haptic (the hand used to brush) to the canvas with all virtual bodies of the canvas impinging on other bodies in heterogeneous ways. Yet they are intertwined with his virtual past in producing the moment of experience. The chapter also shows how Michel captures the invisible sensational forces onto his canvas and how the absence of seeing is only a co-present event in the process of the becoming of the artist and his painting.
