Spark II
/4
- Spark II
- Iskra II
- 1990
- video, color, sound
- 1min, 53sec
“Spark II” from 1990 is a later film from the “cemetery series” and is characteristic of Libera’s interest in existential distinction, gnosis and eschatological investigations during the 1980s. It is a different variant of the first “Spark” [“Spinther”, “Iskra”] from 1984, which consisted of anonymous beginnings of the gravestones’ inscriptions filmed at the cemetery in Pabianice. The film begins with the star, symbol of birth, and ends with the cross, symbol of death; instead of full names and dates of life, Libera filmed only fragments that mark the “frame” of life and death, never describing complete remnants (the gravestones’ dates) of the former identities of the reified individuals.
In “Spark II”, Libera proposes a radical reduction, again filming “by hand,” but showing nothing more than two trembling shapes: the star and the cross. Shaking faster and faster, they almost come to form one symbol, or give the impression of a fight between the two symbols in a radical manner known from the structural films of the 70s. Here, the star (life) battles with the cross (death). Human beings’ lives and deaths thereby become one, reduced to a star-cross symbol. For most of the film, life and death are equals. But in the end, of course, the cross triumphs over the star. According to Libera, “Spark II” refers to the formal experiments of the Workshop of the Film Form “as being opaque for quite different content.” Here, it is the formal reference to the pioneers of video art in Poland, rather than the analysis of the medium as such or of the phenomenology of the human body’s shaking of the camera (characteristic of Robakowski or Kwiek), that involves eschatological-gnostic content. At that time, according to Jerzy Truszkowski (in “Allez Liberales,” Magazyn Sztuki, no 1, 1993) and Yan Tomaszewski (“La guerilla identitaire. Zbigniew Libera, 1980–1990 – une interpretation”, Paris 2009, unpublished), Libera had become familiar with a 1988 issue of the literary journal “Literatura na swiecie” that was dedicated exclusively to gnosis. It is possible that the title’s “Iskra” (sparkle) was taken directly from gnostic vocabulary and meant to suggest a Manichean-gnostic reading—the struggle between the two opposite symbols, or its radical reduction. B.P.
In “Spark II”, Libera proposes a radical reduction, again filming “by hand,” but showing nothing more than two trembling shapes: the star and the cross. Shaking faster and faster, they almost come to form one symbol, or give the impression of a fight between the two symbols in a radical manner known from the structural films of the 70s. Here, the star (life) battles with the cross (death). Human beings’ lives and deaths thereby become one, reduced to a star-cross symbol. For most of the film, life and death are equals. But in the end, of course, the cross triumphs over the star. According to Libera, “Spark II” refers to the formal experiments of the Workshop of the Film Form “as being opaque for quite different content.” Here, it is the formal reference to the pioneers of video art in Poland, rather than the analysis of the medium as such or of the phenomenology of the human body’s shaking of the camera (characteristic of Robakowski or Kwiek), that involves eschatological-gnostic content. At that time, according to Jerzy Truszkowski (in “Allez Liberales,” Magazyn Sztuki, no 1, 1993) and Yan Tomaszewski (“La guerilla identitaire. Zbigniew Libera, 1980–1990 – une interpretation”, Paris 2009, unpublished), Libera had become familiar with a 1988 issue of the literary journal “Literatura na swiecie” that was dedicated exclusively to gnosis. It is possible that the title’s “Iskra” (sparkle) was taken directly from gnostic vocabulary and meant to suggest a Manichean-gnostic reading—the struggle between the two opposite symbols, or its radical reduction. B.P.