The Complex Illusion
The Complex Illusion
From here biding my Time in Waiting, the Temenos of the Twenty-First Century is being borne aloft, first in the imagination of Decision, and then by Force towards its vital Realization, built stone by stone, girder by girder, stitch by stitch, in the Peloponnesus where ancient Arcadia Acknowledges the distant sea. Two spaces, individual in Determination between a precinct sacred to the haunt of doves. Inexplicably through Belief it will rise to safeguard its precious catalogue of films: the supreme work of Beavers and Markopoulos.
Day by day I have often risen in the morning to the tinkling bells of the two herds of cows that partake of their drinking in the square below. Slowly they approach, wait, sometimes askance, and then dip their mouths into the cool waters, once at dawn, and once at dusk; and ever the waters of the fountain run strong, even through the Night.
From village to village, I have walked with some incalculable Hope that the Temenos site might be here in the Graubünden, but though the mountains speak in their marvellous summaries to the Alps, nowhere do I find the spirit that is Greece. Missing are the vibrant, uncanny, showered aeons that are Greece; that is the Eros in Time; and the triumphant face of the peasant of the Peloponnesus. Where indeed do you come from?
Speak, Soul, that is the haunt of doves! The names of the proposed sites are Rayi Spartias and Founta: where one Summer’s afternoon I wandered not knowing their names, and beheld a navy blue expanse in the distance, and dust, and more Dust! A lone Greek peasant sat at one crook in the road and waved to me asking whose son I was – then replied for all his years, “The son of Marko!”
Perhaps, I should have proceeded beyond the central point which many months later I was told was called Founta, but I stopped fearing my uncle would be upset at my disappearance.
Writing this, this glorious afternoon, without a penny to my name, I know that the depth of the Markopoulos space will harbour a screen enveloping the film spectator of the future. Once, I believe it was in 1958, Iconsidered the projected area of film might be peered down into, rather than stared at; this was while at the theatre in Delphi. The question is how to subscribe to the sound; it must perforce emerge from some subterranean element; and the audience must experience a visual incubation such as in the ancient temenoi where the patient was visited by the illusions of his malady.
In the Temenos the visual incubation shall be the metaphysical journey, therefore, Destiny of the film spectator of the future. The film spectator of the future who will benefit from the physical and historical lapse of time which will then be the presentation of film as film shall necessarily Experience the content of the various works from the integral catalogue of films. He will experience the Content because Time itself will have vanquished the entertainment film as such; what of the entertainment film will have survived? The content that critics in their deliberate and faithless sleep during this crucial moment in the rise of film ignore or forbear to recognize will in the Temenos culminate as Speech: the Speech of Images. Time itself with the aid of projection in orchestration will issue a wondrous Content almost mythical and musical, and above all, Elevating for the film spectator of the future.
If at this precise second Beavers is editing his martyrdom footage (based on the St. Hippolytus altar piece in Boston, Massachusetts), section after section, foot after foot, panel after panel, and developing it with the merging of cracked glass, the Bern square, and the dust imagery, what indeed will it become at the Temenos presentations of the Beavers reflecting space? The film spectator of the future in the Beavers reflecting space will not only meet the long lost shadow, but he will welcome as if in an Assumption, his, the film spectator’s loss of faith; a loss of faith due to boredom, freedom, and sensuality. The regained recognition of the film as film, and more particularly, the Temenos Catalogue of Films of Beavers and Markopoulos, become immortal through the sacrifice of these filmmakers and the film spectators of the future will inevitably summarize what will become the very epic scheme, the future scheme of film as film; that is Itself! Today’s history of film is but a constant confusion of purposeless information.
It is, thus, for Skill that I Call! but above all for Courage; not only for myself, but for all those others who in Mighty Hand will help me build the Temenos. May it be as I saw the mountains with Beavers some days ago from Ftan in the sacred Peloponnesus; the Temenos present and not present in its appearance; the presentations purposeful for the future. Mountains close to the surface of Alps: God Plan. Architect and Mighty Hand Waken!!!
16th of May, 1972
Bad Scuol