the significance of vision and the sublime

when reading singer's article on werner herzog it was difficult to follow and too complex to understand. i certainly understand some of his points and key words, but in the dark as to how it all came together. i'm not sure i am much clearer on his thesis, but after looking at some of herzog's movie trailers and interviews containing movie clips, i began to understand the impetus behind corrigan's writing. herzog's work seems very complex and grandiose in many ways, it only follows that singer would pack as much semiotic theory in his review of herzog's work; it is of course, the language of film making and criticism. this is one of many reasons that i feel inadequate reporting on such writing, but from what little i've seen of herzog's films reminds me of landscape paintings with the sublime as their subject matter. his landscapes are absolutely stunning, overpowering, and strangely mystic; on a human level, on a godly level, and everything in between. i can't tell you whether it is a herzog is coming from a kantian or a burkian point of view in this regard, but he certainly envisions the most dramatic and disparate sense of human conditions as they relate to human psychosis, or just psyche; nature; and the wild, or other, ie. indigenous cultures.

listening to herzog speak, you get a sense that he is both tranquil and hostile.. his tranquility is subduing his hostility to a point of invisibility. he is said to be german but he corrects this suggestion in uneasy defense. germany seems to have produce complex artists after world war ii that carry the baggage of the war in their attempt to bring themselves and society at large to terms with the absolute horrific acts committed by the nazis. joseph beuys and ansalm keefer are such examples that utilize historical, mythological and literary themes to animate the war, deal with post-war German culture, and the taboo of expressing sentiments over the war.









even though singer pegs herzog as a german realist, or at least working in the vain of german realism, i think there is a direct link between the german realists and the german neo-expressionists. both are dealing with myth and human hierarchal descent from mystical or spiritual order (be it christian or otherwise... humanitarian if nothing else). all of europe was confronted with these issues after bearing witness to unfathomable human nature occurring everywhere, on every level, within this particular war. hostility became the language of much european art, but the term is quite tame considering its source. the human psyche was much more aware of its own abyss following this war, that artists to this day, herzog included, explore the transformative nature of the human dimensions, in singer's words, of their lived reality... "an image of their own mortal needs" and the artifice of reality "remains an unpologetic formal element."




view herzog's trailer for "encounters at the end of the world."





william fox's article made me realized, or remember is a more accurate term, that once you get past a visceral response to a place, be it to beautiful or foul in nature, there is a lot to discover. i am thinking how mediated imagery limits this exploration and that there is no substitute for experience. i think it is interesting that governments send artists to the antarctic to document and re-present it; but can hardly fathom it would prove valuable for these governments in relation to expansion and habitation??? can we transform this terrain into territory and what do artists have to do with this? i guess banarjee might prove otherwise, but it seems we are far off from inhabiting antarctica. i know global warming is taking its toll.. but this is not a hopeful scenario and to presume we can inhabit this climate at any stage of global change is premature on every level; we may not be able to inhabit this planet at all if the antarctic was actually inhabitable for humans on any realistic level.



according to the national geographic website, for antarctica "the question still remains as to whether the changes we're observing are permanent or are a more regular purging of the system. In the case of Greenland the amount of ice that the glaciers has lost is very small relative to the size of the ice sheet so the ice sheet could restabilize and even grow again with a small amount of cooling or increased precipitation. However the glaciers in Alaska or the Antarctic Peninsula aren't supplied by a vast ice sheet, so for them to regrow or even stabilize for the long term would take a much more drastic reversal in current climate trends." equally and according to the bbc, these "immense ice sheet has a big effect on the Earth's weather, reflecting great amounts of heat from the sun back into the atmosphere, tying up large amounts of Earth's freshwater, and acting as a freezer at the end of the Earth." balance is key to keeping our entire planet habitable... forget antarctica. we need to study it to death to help reduce further global climate change.



A panoramic view just as you get off the plane. Photo: CARA/Greg Griffin