Yesterday, I experienced the new pictorial poem by Godfrey Reggio and Philip Glass titled “Visitors” (2013). To call it “viewing a movie” would be a vast understatement. As was the case with Koyaanisqatsi (1982) it left me more or less stunned and at some moments moved me to tears. Afterwards Glass and Reggio were present in a very sober setting to answer questions from the public. Of course there were some questions about the intention of “Visitors”. The answer was a bit too postmodern: there were no intentions, every observer could make up his own mind… I would be surprised if interpretations do not point in one direction: the loosening or relativization of the “self”. Though not a word is spoken, “Visitors” shows the machinery at work producing the self, the personality accurately. It does so by contrasting changes in human facial and bodily expression with that of an animal (I won’t spoil which), the emotional content of decaying human artifacts (building, attraction park, rubbish) and the flow of nature, dead and alive, triggering all kinds of “meaning” and so effectively setting the spectators meaning-producing machinery at work while at the same time unsettling it. This deconstruction -to use a postmodern term- of the soul, leaving it speechless, cannot be praised enough these days, where all egos are pumped up to the max. Maybe it wasn’t the intention of the makers. It certainly was the result. Reggio answered on a question about what words or phrases had inspired him when making “Visitors” that he had the intention to name the work “The holy see”. He refrained from it fearing it would produce too much misunderstanding. Well, not for me. “Visitors”, although expressing fleetingness, does not directly reference personality or the soul. Lees verder →