Uncertain Meanings:
Voice-Off, Subtitles and Postmodern Allegories in my Recent Works

By
Paolo Pennuti
Graduate degree in Visual Arts Production, University of Architecture in Venice, 2006

A THESIS ESSAY SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE
REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF
MASTERS OF APPLIED ARTS
in
Media Arts

Emily Carr University of Art + Design
2013

© Paolo Pennuti, 2013

Abstract

This thesis is about my recent works and some questions intimately related to them, with
particular attention to my thesis project; the single channel video, I usually live abroad.
This work plays with voice-over in order to discuss its traditional authoritative and
absolute meaning. Further, the work reveals the impossibility of establishing an organic
unity of meaning, proliferating the possible interpretation of the fragments that constitute
the work. I will use the concept of “postmodern allegory” as defined by Jeremy Tambling
to interpret my recent works that refer to the historic breakdown of ideologies whose
fixed values and meanings seem incapable of interpreting contemporary reality.

How can voice-over be used beyond the realms of authority and objectivity that are
usually associated with this component of cinematic language? Instead of considering
voice-over as belonging to a separate space from that of the images, I propose that it
creates an interstitial space for a negotiation between the spoken text and the images.
What is at stake for me is not the authority of the voice-over but its possibility to question
objectivity through a subjective point of view able to provoke individual reactions among
viewers.

A second concern is what the potentialities are of the relationship between images and
subtitles? The dominant use of subtitles is translation. I propose that there are other
more creative uses of texts juxtaposed with images. Subtitles are for example a way to
express unspoken thoughts or a possibility to subvert the centrality of the image in
movies and videos, they can also create a dialogue instead of a translation in their
relationship with the voice.

This thesis also refers to a conception of allegory, developed by Walter Benjamin and
Paul de Man, that is essential in exploring the deceptive nature of the language I use and
the meanings I can communicate with it. I am specifically considering postmodern
allegories as something distant from traditional allegories. Allegory is a device to express,
through the use of fragments, a world in which it is impossible to establish any definitive
	
  

ii

meaning. Differently than a metaphor, an allegory doesn’t state that A=B and it doesn’t
establish a consecutive pattern in which we associate something specific with one other
specific thing, but often it creates a successive pattern open to several interpretations
that fracture instead of unifying any further meaning. My recent works aim to feed this
pattern.

	
  

iii

Table of Contents
Abstract………………………………………………………………………………………...ii
Table of Contents……………………………………………………………………………..iv
List of Figures………………………………………………………………………………….v
Introduction……………………………………………………………………………………1
Chapter 1: The Foreignness of Meaning: I Usually Live Abroad…………………………..7
1.1 Beyond Appropriation: Postproduction and Profanation
of Cultural Forms……………………………………………………………17
1.2 Structural Devices and Cinematic Tropes…….…………………………….22
Chapter 2: Voice-Off – Beyond Authority and Objectivity:
Paolino, and I Usually Live Abroad…………………………………………...26
2.1 Beyond the Definition of Voice-Over as the Voice of Authority
and Objectivity………………………………………………………………..28
2.2 Acousmatic Voices…………………………………………………………....30
2.3 Voice-Off as a Way to Express Subjective Views………………………….32
2.4 “Che Bella Voce!”: the Voice as an Aesthetic Object……………………...34
Chapter 3: Subtitles – The Task of the Translator: I Usually Live Abroad
and 7 Billion…………………………………………………………………….36
3.1 Subtitles as Aesthetic Objects that Can Subvert Their Traditional
Role as a Form of Translation……………………………………………….37
3.2 Running Subtitles as an Aesthetic Device and as a Symptom of
our Current Way of Transmitting Meaning…………………………………43
3.3 Beyond a Faithful Translation………………………………………………..47
Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………………...53
Works Cited…………………………………………………………………………………58
Works Consulted……………………………………………………………………………59
	
  

iv

List of Figures

Fig. 1 Pennuti, Paolo. I usually live abroad. 2013. Video still…………………………….13
Fig. 2 Rose, Peter. Secondary Currents. 1982. Video still……………………………….38
Fig. 3 Pennuti, Paolo. I usually live abroad. 2013. Video still…………………………….40
Fig. 4 Knox, Liz and Paolo Pennuti. 7 Billion. 2013. Nine video stills…………………….44
Fig. 5 Gatelli, Catia and Paolo Pennuti. Script from I usually live abroad, 2013………...49

	
  

v

Introduction
“Phenomena within postmodern reality cannot be interpreted statically; they
require a thinking which is relational, and which rereads one text, or one feature of a
text, in the light of another, shifting the interpretive value to be given to each part
accordingly” (Tambling136).
My practice is focused mainly on videography and non-linear narrative structures
and I combine visual, sound and text elements in order to construct new environments
that disrupt their narrative origins and this creates space for an encounter between the
viewer and a personal, sometimes surreal, association of fragments from everyday life. An
interpretive approach that doesn’t establish a stable and absolute meaning but explores
a complex and uncertain reality is present throughout my recent works. Like sewing
together snippets of various fabrics, recombining fragments can yield a totally new final
product. For me, this represents a way to re-elaborate personal and collective
experiences, redefining their values.
My working method is informed by experimental documentary and cinema and my
videos follow along the trajectory of essay-movies, structuralist cinema and experimental
filmmaking. Authors such as Chris Marker, Peter Rose, Peter Liechti, and James Benning
are significant references for my recent works, specifically in terms of the experimental
use of long sequence shots, voice-off1,and subtitles. I will discuss specific works and
their relationship to my practice throughout this thesis.
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
1

I will consider the term voice-off instead of voice-over in order to evoke a more subjective use of voices
that don’t belong to what is visible within the frame, beyond the omniscience and objectivity traditionally
associated with voice-over. Beginning in 1982, Michel Chion established a theory of voice-over as the
voice of authority and power, this defined the traditional use of voice-over in movies and documentaries.
Among the authors who, in the last 30 years, have discussed Chion’s position, I will consider Laura
Rascaroli’s critique of traditional voice-over which is connected to an intimate and subjective use of voices

	
  

1

I employ these cinematic techniques (voice-over, subtitles, long sequence shots)
in my recent works to challenge the concept of authenticity that is associated with most
broadcast documentary and movies. Voice-over is traditionally associated with an
omniscient narrator who, from outside of the frame, delivers readymade truth that the
viewer has to use to interpret the images. Subtitles are conventionally presented as a
reliable translation of what is said by the voice of an actor or voice-off. Long sequence
shots are conventionally associated with the representation of a continuous reality. In my
works, voice-off, subtitles, and long sequence shots are used to question the possibility
of an omniscient narrator through the use of multiple voices; the reliability of translation
through the use of an ironic juxtaposition between voice and subtitles that goes beyond
translation. My intention is to express a fragmented reality based on disruption instead of
an organic and continuous reality. Within the scope of this practice I address political
and philosophical questions as they pertain to both individual and collective issues:2
each of my works explore interstitial spaces where apparently nothing is happening but
where residues of experiences are deposited. In these liminal spaces memories are reedited and re-signified without following any original order or meaning.
By focusing on cinematic devices such as voice-off and subtitles, I will analyze
some structural components that are recurrent in my works and the reasons that bring
me to explore these cinematic tropes. In my practice, what is at stake is not a
documentation of real facts or a linear narration that communicates through a cohesive
chain of events. It doesn’t matter if it involves “reality” or fiction; I am more interested in
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
that, instead of defining a univocal meaning, they express the uncertainty and complexity of the individual in
contemporary society.
2
The influences of education, the excess of information, and the European economic crisis are some of the
topics that concern my most recent works.

	
  

2

considering how different languages, and specific communicative devices, try to
represent something that seems impossible for any language: a clear and stable
meaning3. My works also refer to the deceptive nature of languages themselves, which in
their manifest incapability to signify things once-and-for-all, contain devices that can be
used to recreate deceptive and forceful ideological “Truth”. Translation is a good
example of an interpretive mode that displays how each historical language reveals the
impossibility to define a meaning once-and-for-all, instead of a never-ending shifting of it.
Each new translation represents the failure of a language to define stable connections
within its tropes and, at the same time, the possibility of any language to create new
uncertain associations of meanings and values. Following this perspective, translation
and traveling share a common ground: the ability to shift meanings that seem solidified.
Until I was 30 years old, I didn’t travel at all since I didn’t feel a real urgency to discuss
my system of values and routines. Learning how to live with a chronic disease pushed me
to step outside of my former lifestyle, and since then I have been almost exclusively
traveling in order to challenge my capability to adapt and to learn new strategies for
surviving. Though it was extremely repressive to accept that I couldn’t keep old habits, it
has been revitalizing to transform them during different journeys and experiences. From
this perspective, my works express a metaphysical failure (the absence of a reliable
system of values that can be ideologically founded as “Truth”) and concretely discover
how language can be used to change meanings and values, instead of defining
certainties or rules.
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
3

These considerations are grounded by Walter Benjamin and Paul de Man’s writings on languages,
allegory and translation. Specifically, Banjamin’s “The Task of the Translator” and The Origin of the Greek
Tragic Drama, and Paul de Man’s 'Conclusions': Walter Benjamin's 'The Task of the Translator.

	
  

3

For example, one characterizing structural element that I often use in my videos is
the long sequence shot. Since the beginning of the history of moving images, long
sequence shots by the Lumiere brothers and Thomas Edison formulate a baseline for the
representation of the “real”. The first short movies by the Lumiere brothers were simply
long sequence shots that were meant to communicate the illusion of reality to the viewer.
In long sequence shots an absence of editing cuts simulates the temporal continuum
that is commonly experienced as reality4. It is a cinematic device that traditionally extends
the illusion of a never-ending present and a stable, subjective presence. In many of my
works, the fragments from different time periods and sources complicate the
conventional meaning of the long sequence shot, transforming it into an allegorical
device that is related to an idea of history that is not based on progression and
coherence. What is at stake for me in this is a possibility to evoke, through a device
apparently based on continuity and linearity, fragmentation and contradictions.
Often I work collaboratively to realize my works. Working collaboratively is a
further way to play with the multiplication of viewpoints of any given image, idea, or
sound. In this way, the final work is the result of several negotiations and discussions
regarding the different individualities at work. As the works usually have a very subjective
approach, working in collaboration is a way to violate, starting from the very conception
of a work, the idea of a fixed monolithic identity. Each collaboration happens organically
and is based on its own logic, suited to the project. In some cases we each specialize
(on shooting the images or creating the audio for example) and in other cases the entire
effort is created together. Regardless, the conception of the work itself is the result of
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
4

For further reading on the long sequence shot and its capacity to represent an illusionary never-ending
present, see MacDonald, “Putting all your Eggs”, 240-254; and Pasolini 3-6.

	
  

4

constant discussion and consideration of the work as it progresses from idea to finished
product.
Joining collaborative projects is a way to alter my personal subjectivity, through a
process of negotiation with my different collaborators, that doesn‘t discuss further the
concept of authorship, but aims to feed a process that combines different fragments
from different sources. Charles Green, an art critic and historian, suggests “artistic
collaboration is a special and obvious case of the manipulation of the figure of the artist,
for at the very least collaboration involves a deliberately chosen alteration of artistic
identity from individual to composite subjectivity” (Green IX). My way of collaborating
doesn’t regard the idea of working in a collective or a group of artists, and I usually
change my collaborators through time. Long term and constant collaborations derive an
artistic identity that is too fixed for my way of working. In the same way, the identity of a
group, instead of those of the individuals constituting that group, would recreate that
kind of “strong” and univocal perspective that I try to escape when I join collaborative
projects.
An example of the way I try to collaborate with other artists and technicians can
be found in Philippe Parreno. Since the 1990s he has been collaborating with many
artists (Douglas Gordon, Maurizio Cattelan, Liam Gillin, Carsten Holler, Pierre Huyghe,
etc.), some of whom don’t usually collaborate. Parreno works collaboratively and
individually and, especially considering the very variable nature of his collaborators, it’s
interesting to notice common aspects and ideas on both sides of these artists
production. In his text Postproduction, theorist Nicholas Bourriaud states that Parreno’s
way of collaborating is usually expressed by the formula “Parreno & [collaborator]” (74).

	
  

5

This doesn’t translate on the web, where you will (of course) see the artists listed in
either order, sometimes with Parreno’s name listed first, sometimes last. In my
collaborative efforts, the artists involved are listed alphabetically, which is a small detail
that expresses the significance of equality. There is no hierarchy in the final work, we are
each given equal weight – not only in these fine details, but in the process of creation as
well. Within a collaborative attempt, if only one person’s individuality is being expressed,
the project fails, which is why there can be a lot of false starts in the process along the
way to developing new ideas with new people.
Collaboration, appropriation (using different fragments belonging to different
sources and time spaces), and translation (mainly through subtitles) are devices that are
recurrent throughout my recent works. I use them to subjectively explore a reality that
can’t be defined once-and-for-all. My works are neither for nor against meaning, rather
they mean to provide a way to frame experiences in a more subjective and interrogative
way.
These concerns, and the ways I address them in my works, are mirrored in the
writing of this thesis. Each chapter addresses and explores movies, documentaries,
experimental videos, contemporary art works, books, articles, and sound pieces that have
influenced specific aspects of my research and recent works, as well as the way in which
my work relates back to them. Ideas are developed through the combination of these
fragments and elements that change their original meaning, becoming part of a further
process of signification. Focusing on cinematic devices like voice-off, subtitles, and
translation, I also express my current interest in languages that is very related to my
condition as an immigrant in Canada.

	
  

6

1.

The Foreignness of Meaning: I Usually Live Abroad
Perhaps the most prominent and unifying aspect of my methodology can be

understood in relation to the concept of allegory as expressed by Walter Benjamin. My
works contain an allegorical instance that is essential in exploring the deceptive nature of
the language I use and the meaning I can communicate with it. When I discuss my work
in terms of allegories, I am specifically considering postmodern allegories5 as something
distant from traditional allegories. My video I usually live abroad is different than a
traditional allegory in that it doesn’t state a definite meaning that replaces the original
meaning of the fragments I use, but it combines allegorically its elements in order to
proliferate possible interpretations regarding them. Differently than in a traditional
allegory, my work isn’t a systematic interpretation of the crisis in Europe6, but a way to
connect the present situation with the past and to raise questions about it. The traditional
political fragmentation among European countries is projecting its conflicts into the
ongoing economic crisis. The absence of an effective and sharable political identity
dramatically shows the contradiction of a community of countries based on economic
interests: the euro appears to be the symptom of an ongoing disease originated by the
fact that instead of supporting each other in facing the crisis, each European country
seems to be focused exclusively on its own interests. In The Origin of the German Tragic
Drama (1928) Benjamin states that allegory is a device to express, through the use of
the fragment, a world in which it is impossible to establish any definitive meaning.
Differently than a metaphor, an allegory doesn’t state that A=B and it doesn’t establish a
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
5

As defined by Jeremy Tambling in Allegory (The New Critical Idiom) (2004).
Among other things, this determined my decision to come to Canada. In general, last year Italy produced
the second most emigrants in the European Community. The crisis in Europe is a common ground that
joins together personal, and collective contradictions regarding my country of origin.
6

	
  

7

consecutive pattern in which we associate something specific with one other specific
thing, but often it creates a successive pattern open to several interpretations that
fracture instead of unifying any further meaning7. As Benjamin states, “[in allegories] one
and the same object can just as easily signify a virtue as a vice, and therefore more or
less anything” (Benjamin, “Tragic Drama” 174). My works function in a similar manner to
Benjamin’s conception of allegories: they can continuously shift the meaning of the
original fragments through a process of combination that reveals the essential instability
of what we can signify through languages, and the failure for any language to reach an
organic unity.
Differently than a symbol that establishes an idealized vision of nature perfectly
joining different elements together, for Benjamin, allegory plays with changing identities
and values. Its essential medium is melancholy, a contemplative state in which we
consider the world, and ourselves, connected with the fatal contradiction represented by
death and the instability of time. Allegories reveal ‘‘uncertain truths’’ that deal with the
absence of an absolute “Truth”. In this way, Benjamin reveals the inconsistency not only
of language and metaphysics founded on illusionary “Truth”, but even that of any political
system that is ideologically founded. My formative years were in a time space in which
political ideologies were still influential; at the same time it was clear that these
ideologies were going to collapse and be incapable of contending with postmodern
reality. The breakdown of the Berlin Wall in 1989 has been, for my generation, the
seminal passage of change from the world of the previous generation (dominated by the
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
7

The classical approach to allegory defined by Christian writers like Saint Paul limited the potential
propagation of meaning connected to allegory to a defined interpretation of the Old Testament whose
literal meaning had to be interpreted as a figure of the New Testament. In Benjamin’s approach allegory is
not contained by any ideology and it doesn’t establish any stable meaning.

	
  

8

conflict between communism and capitalism) to the contemporary world. I remember the
enthusiastic reaction of my grandfather (who was a fascist during the Second World
War) since with the breakdown of the Berlin Wall a new world dominated by only one
ideology (capitalism) seemed to begin. For him, it was clear that finally there was only a
winner and, differently than in the situation that produced the Cold War, a system of
values with a global reach was beginning without the need for further wars. His
optimistic, post-fascist perspective was clearly not effective in representing all the
contradictions to come. Benjamin’s perspective is a way for me to explore a postmodern
reality in which never-the-less ideologies are still present, but seem totally incapable of
explaining our fragmented reality. Languages, like historical events, face this
metaphysical void and produce fragments that can’t be unified but only reused and
reinterpreted. Any stable meaning is just an illusion that exists in order to be interpreted
and changed. For Benjamin, allegory can be evoked by a constellation of stars through
which sailors interpret its unstable unity and changeable truth-values (Benjamin, Tragic
Drama 34-6). My intention is to combine fragments belonging to different contexts in
order to use them to create a new constellation that requalifies their original meanings.
Like constellations and allegories, my works ask for active engagement from the viewer;
they are not random cut-ups and are not finished without further layers of interpretation.
Their literal meaning can be considered like a surface that hides further layers
underneath.
In terms of its literal approach, I usually live abroad is a short, single channel
video, whose imagery is a long sequence shot of fireworks exploding throughout the
streets of a city. The point of view is from a high place, looking over the city, through

	
  

9

some tree branches that are occasionally made visible by the light of the fireworks.
Identifying text appears in the screen indicating: Naples, Italy. New Years Eve, 2012.
This text disappears and two further lines of text appear: Not everything goes as you
wish / to me it is worth it. Shortly after, a voice-off8 is heard with apparently
corresponding subtitles. The subtitles tell a story9 of Italian soldiers in the trenches during
World War II being given orders by a German commander. Rather than doing as they are
told (“Soldiers, attack!”), they interpret the voice in an aesthetic manner, one of them
eventually responding to the commander: “What a beautiful voice”. The German voiceoff is provided by an Italian immigrant, and what she says is apparently nonsense:
fragmented speech, rather than a dialogue, that eventually becomes singing. The words
she says evoke the state of the current economy or are slang derogatory terms for
Italians. At first, it is plausible that the subtitles are a direct translation of the voice-off, but
as the story unfolds, the voice-off becomes more obviously separate from the subtitles,
culminating in the voice singing a song (also from World War II) and laughing out of sync
with the text.
Toward the end of the video, the refrain of an instrumental version of a famous
pop song, Madonna’s “Borderline” (1984), begins to play. As the music plays, karaoke
style subtitles appear in the frame, with a pink highlight leading the viewer through the
lyrics along with the music. The screen goes black and a low frequency hum (that was
playing intermittently throughout the entire video, below the sounds of exploding
fireworks, the German voice-off, and the pop song) is the final sound that ends the video.
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
8

Off camera or off-stage commentary that is similar to a voice-over (I will explain the nuances between the
two further in Chapter 2).
9
Originally written by Mladen Dolar.

	
  

10

I usually live abroad is like an enigmatic combination of fragments, belonging to
different time periods that react with the long sequence shot of the fireworks in Naples10.
A first step towards thinking of the allegorical content of the video is by considering the
imagery of the video. Initially, the viewer sees the city and the fireworks – a time of
celebration – but the point of view is situated far from the action. This distance invites the
viewer to reconsider the fireworks as an image of happiness at the same time as it
evokes the kind of melancholic drive that Benjamin connects with allegory.
This concept is also crucial to the work: melancholy is a state of inaction and
alienation in which the subject contemplates the transient and contradictory nature of our
experiences and the possibility of their disappearance. Under the influence of
melancholy, objects can shift their conventional meaning and become allegories for the
subject and they can reveal the void that threatens any presence in time. The indication
that these fireworks are for New Years’ heightens the sense of time passage and
impermanence, and the impossibility to define a resolute meaning. Fireworks themselves
can be allegorically thought of as a kind of melancholic device. They are subject to (very
literal) fragmentation; they are blinking hypnotic lights that recall the impermanence of
any presence. The light is there for only a moment and as it is fading, there are still other
lights, from other fireworks, in a different moment in the process of fading.
Differently than a symbol, fireworks in I usually live abroad don’t define a specific
meaning regarding the context I explore in the video. Like allegories in the realm of
thoughts, or ruins (following Benjamin’s interpretation) in the realm of things, they doubt
the possibility of thinking about historical events as something whose meaning can’t be
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
10

The current situation represented by the images of the fireworks from last New Years Eve, World War II
evoked by a song and a story from the war, and a pop song from the 1980s.

	
  

11

considered as stable and absolute but only partial and always ready to become
something else.
Last year in Naples, the citizens spent 40 million euros on fireworks for about a
one-hour New Years’ fireworks display. It’s a spontaneous and popular tradition, and
when they are exploding, it seems as though the fireworks could last forever. Obviously,
this is just a melancholic illusion. The following week, the city busses stopped running
(as the city ran out of money to pay for the gas). The long sequence shot of 2012 New
Years’ fireworks in Naples evokes an image of happiness and celebration that relates to
one the biggest crises (both economical and political) of Italy’s (relatively short) history
(founded in 1861) and the distance from the action is a symptom of the desire to
interpret what is going on instead of joining it. After the Romans, the country has always
been culturally fragmented. One way to consider this is thinking about the number of
dialects (in some cases completely different languages) still in use throughout Italy.
In this way, the sound of the fireworks and the peculiar perspective in the video
(looking through the branches) are a starting point to shift the original celebratory
meaning of the images into something that prefigures and contains fragments of war and
alienation. As the subtitles begin to tell the story of the soldiers in World War II, the
images read as both the celebratory gesture they were initially presented as, but also
begin to feel like a war zone, further expressed by the sound of the fireworks, the
constant explosions11, near and far. Representing something like a war through images of

	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
11

	
  

The fireworks audio was accentuated in the editing process.

12

fireworks is a way to impart a sense of irony which Paul de Man12 considers another
essential state that, like melancholy, relates to allegory.

.

n

Fig. 1 Pennuti, Paolo. I usually live abroad. 2013. Video still.
Irony for de Man creates an interruption in the regular flow of the tropes that
constitute the language. The illusionary well-connected chain of tropes within a linear
narration is discussed by irony, which reveals the contradictions and disruptions among
the fragments that constitute it. Irony, similar to allegory, is a way to say something in
order to mean something else, creating a contradiction, an interruption in the wellconnected chain of statements of an apparently persuasive discourse.
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
12

A deconstuctionist literary critic and theorist, in the 1960s, de Man was one of the first literary theorists
in the AngloAmerican world to reflect on Benjamin’s theories with a special interest in the concepts of
allegory and translation (Tambling 111).

	
  

13

In the case of irony, the meanings, other than the initial literal one, often contain
meanings that are opposite from the “original” intention, and this creates a comical effect
based on the association of contradictory meanings. Following this perspective, the
images of the fireworks transmit an initial sense of happiness, supported by the subtitles
that evoke a day of celebration. But then, the story of war, the voice-off, and the sounds
of the explosions shift the tonal atmosphere of the video. Once the refrain of the pop
song begins, the apparent meaning of the images shifts again. As the music plays and
the karaoke subtitles enter the screen, the fireworks become a kind of pop backdrop.
Like an image from a post card or advertisement, the work is no longer only about war or
celebration, but also about excess and globalization.
The tonal atmosphere of I usually live abroad changes three times, producing
variable interpretations of the same footage used. The possible meanings of the fireworks
footage create an alternative kind of Kuleshov effect, an experiment, developed by a
Russian filmmaker (Lev Kuleshov) in the 1920s. Kuleshov shows how the same close-up
of an actor can produce a very different association from the viewer, depending on what
it is edited next to in a sequence. I am interested in this experiment because it plays with
the deceptive possibilities of editing or simply with the possibility to create very different
meanings using a different approach to editing. The way I consider this effect in relation
to my work involves, not only the editing of the images, but also the relationship between
subtitles, voice-off, and images. The long sequence shot of the fireworks replaces the
close up of the Russian actor, Ivan Mosjoukine, in the famous Kuleshov experiment from
the '20s. The long sequence shot remains constant, differently than the text and audio,
which present three very different ways of using subtitles. Like the close-up of the

	
  

14

Russian actor, the long sequence shot shifts its possible meanings in relationship with
the different texts and audio that are edited with it.
The first part of the video uses subtitles to convey a personal thought, like a note
in a diary or a post in a blog. The second, a joke about Italian soldiers, plays alongside a
voice-off with a completely different meaning that reacts with it. Lastly, there are the
karaoke subtitles of a popular 1980s American pop song. Each time, the images of the
fireworks have a different potential meaning and can express specific emotions in the
relationship with the different texts-voices. Initially they frame an apparently personal and
intimate moment introduced by the subtitles. When the voice-off begins, the images
evoke World War II in an ironic way through the interplay between the voice-off and the
subtitles. In the last part of the video, the images become like a melancholic popbackdrop, and they celebrate a period, the 1980s, in which the American dream was the
main ideology and Italians couldn’t imagine the current economic and political situation
that has now come.
In I usually live abroad, these three parts are connected together and they
address something about Italy and the crisis in Europe at the moment, as the structural
and aesthetical components of the video create an atmosphere of uncertainty and
foreign references so as to express the point of view of an immigrant. The subtitles that
are present in the three parts of the video are a device that in itself refers to the
foreignness that I try to represent in the video, in that “Subtitles are the marks of
difference, the written words that visibly render the voice of another language and in
such a way as to render the original foreign from the very start” (Balfour 532). A foreign
atmosphere is the main link between the three parts of I usually live abroad, and I

	
  

15

deliberately decided not to use Italian - in a work that is focused on Italy - in order to
evoke the identity crises of this originally fragmented country during this time of
globalization. Italy’s political credibility and economic independence is weak and
increasingly influenced by the European Union, especially Germany. The piece also
considers how Europe, even more than Italy, is historically characterized by an essential
fragmentation and disparity that contradicts what the European community should
represent as a whole. More than a defined identity regarding very different countries, the
European Community seems to me an allegorical concept that expresses the lack of an
organic unity. The ironic contradictions of the current economic crisis shows how fragile
and weak the political union among the European countries is. In discussing an
allegorical interpretation of I usually live abroad (that followed the production of the work
itself) it is important to state that it is not the only one possible, and my works are
deliberately open to misinterpretation since they don’t state a definite meaning but rather
evoke the absence of a univocal one.
The structure of I usually live abroad reflects this lack of organic unity of the
political context I am representing. Instead of consistency, the images, the voice-off, and
the texts introduce displaced fragments belonging to different time periods in which the
country faces deep identity crises: World War II and Italian immigration after it, the
colonization by American culture from the 1980s, and the present (2013)13. This idea of
history behind I usually live abroad also relates to Benjamin’s allegory. Literary theorist

	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
13

World War II is addressed by the story of the soldiers, immigration after the war is present in the voiceoff and the slang it uses, the proliferation of American culture, globally, is present in the karaoke subtitles
and pop music, and the current moment is present in the images and text in the beginning of the video.

	
  

16

Jeremy Tambling, who writes extensively on Benjamin’s conception of allegory, suggests
the following regarding allegory as it relates to history:
Piles of wreckage, or debris, recall the fragments and ruins that comprise baroque
allegory. Perceiving history as a ‘chain of events’ unifies them and threatens to
produce an ideal narrative; it resembles the thinking which produces the symbol,
seeing history as telling a narratable story. History as a ‘single catastrophe’
repeated again and again refuses the idea of progress, and leaves nothing but
fragments. (Tambling 103)
Interpreting Benjamin’s idea of allegory, Tambling evokes his concept of history that
excludes any progress and consequentiality while including contradiction and ruins. The
structure of I usually live abroad reflects Benjamin’s concept of history considered as
something that continuously transforms the original meanings of the historical events
without a clear goal to accomplish. The way I recombine historical sources in my videos
is generally also connected to Benjamin’s concept of history, that is, as a non-linear
stratification of fragments. Some fragments are lost in the process while others are
reused, and shifted into new contexts.

1.1

Beyond Appropriation: Postproduction and Profanation of Cultural Forms
In I usually live abroad different kind of fragments from different sources, like an

old Italian joke from World War II, Madonna’s 1980’s power-pop ballad “Borderline” or
the 2012 new years eve fireworks in Naples, are appropriated and recombined to
express something about the ongoing economic and political crisis in Italy. Changing the
original background of the fragments that I use, reframing their values and potential

	
  

17

meanings, is a recursive aspect of my practice that relates to my generational
background characterized by DJ (and remix) culture.
Contemporary theorist and curator Nicholas Bourriaud’s essay Postproduction
considers the way artists today (starting massively from the 1990s) recombine
preexisting elements of culture – everything from any kind of images, artworks, or books
to social forms (i.e., working on Sunday, playing a game, etc.). “The museum like the city
itself constitutes a catalogue of forms, postures, and images for artists - collective
equipment that everyone is in a position to use, not in order to be subjected to their
authority, but as tools to probe the contemporary world” (9).
Considering my practice, which is mainly based on an experimental approach to
documentary and cinema, my ‘appropriation’ begins with the footage I shoot – nothing is
staged, rather I capture what is happening around me without an intent of documenting
reality but generating new connections among its fragments. In this thesis, I consider
how cinematic tropes like voice-off, subtitles, and long sequence shots can be used in a
way to undermine their traditional values in mainstream cinema and television. Similar to
postproduction artists, my use of cultural forms doesn’t refer only to the reinterpretation
of previous works or places, but they explore alternative uses of the cinematic tropes I
employ. In I usually live abroad, I used subtitles beyond their traditional role of a reliable
translation, voice-off beyond its authoritative and clarifying role, and the format of the
Kuleshov effect to interrupt the sense of continuity that is traditionally associated with the
long sequence shot. In this way, I appropriate the form of voice-off and subtitles just as
much as I am appropriating the joke and pop song - combining all of these elements
through editing. Bourriaud suggests:

	
  

18

What we usually call reality is a montage. But is the one we live in the only
possible one? From the same material (the everyday), we can produce different
versions of reality. Contemporary art thus presents itself as an alternative editing
table that shakes up social forms, reorganizes them, and inserts them into original
scenarios. The artist deprograms in order to reprogram suggesting that there are
other possible uses for the techniques and tools at our disposal. (Bourriaud 72)
Bourriaud distinguishes the difference between appropriation and postproduction
in terms of the inference of authorship – appropriation implies a clear view of the sources
origin, while postproduction moves “toward a culture of the use of forms, a culture of
constant activity of signs based on a collective idea: sharing” (9). Following this
perspective, I think that my use of appropriation corresponds more to how Bourriaud
defines the use of cultural forms present in postproduction practices than from a concept
of authorship. I am interested in the use value of fragments, how they can be adjusted
and transformed, far more than being faithful to their original meanings or ownership. For
Bourriaud contemporary art can have an essential value:
Art puts us in the presence of counter images, forms that question social forms. In
the face of the economic abstraction that makes daily life unreal or an absolute
weapon of techno-market power, artists reactivate forms by inhabiting them,
pirating private property and copyrights, brands and products, museum-bound
forms and signatures. If the downloading of forms (these samplings and remakes)
represents important concerns today, it is because these forms urge us to
consider global culture as a toolbox, an open narrative space rather than a

	
  

19

univocal narrative and a product line. Instead of prostrating ourselves before
works of the past, we can use them. (Bourriaud 93-94)
There is some resonance between these ideas related to the role of postproduction
artists in our society and those of the philosopher Giorgio Agamben in his text
Profanations (2005). In this essay, Agamben explores the concept of profanation which
is the removal of something from a separate (sacred) space in which its use is
inaccessible and returning it to a space of free use (73) not through neglect, but rather
through a new activity that transforms its value (76).
He gives the example of a cat playing with a ball of yarn as though it were a
mouse – the action recreates the predatory activity but does this as a game that shifts its
original purpose. The predatory act is opened up to new possible uses by its very
deactivation. “The game with the yarn liberates the mouse from being prey and the
predatory activity from being necessarily directed toward the capture and death of a
mouse. And yet, this play stages the very same behaviors that define hunting” (Agamben
86). The behavior of hunting is freed from its original purpose, even though the actions
themselves are identical whether in the original (hunting) or its emancipated form (playing
with yarn for example). This dismissal of the obligatory relationship of the means to an
end is what creates further potential from the action – opening it up to new uses
(Agamben 86). Agamben suggests:
“The activity that results from this thus becomes a pure means, that is, a praxis
that, while firmly maintaining its nature as a means, is emancipated from its
relationship to an end; it has joyously forgotten its goal and can now show itself

	
  

20

as such, as a means without an end. The creation of a new use is possible only by
deactivating an old use, rendering it inoperative.” (86)
This is the space where Agamben’s profanation and Bourriaud’s postproduction meet –
in the recognition that there is mass potential in the emancipation of forms, objects, and
ideas in combating the limiting constraints of the power structures inherent in daily life,
using cultural products as tools to reinvent new uses of them. Both theories rely on the
power of reconfiguring what already is, opening up new possible uses and realities; a
clear reference, especially for Bourriaud, is Duchamp’s readymade.
Differently than for Agamben, Bouirraud’s brand of reuse carries with it the
implication of intention or goal – the emancipation of forms through art comes with a goal
or intention attached, even if the goal is simply that of sharing art and new possibilities of
editing different fragments from realities. Profanation offers the opposite, inhabiting a
form without a goal is a way to emancipate that form. Play is a significant tool in
profaning an object, in play there is no clear goal or task at hand: “children, who play with
whatever old thing falls into their hands, make toys out of things that also belong to the
spheres of economics, war, law, and other activities that we are used to thinking of as
serious. All of a sudden, a car, a firearm, or a legal contract becomes a toy” (76). Even if
there are potential differences between Agamben’s pure means and Bourriaud’s
postproduction artists’ counter images that question social forms, both the child (or the
cat) in Agamben, and the artist (for Bourriaud) seem able to reactivate a positive
approach to a reality whose forms can be reinvented through a playful approach.
I usually live abroad plays with Madonna’s pop song in form and context. I use
the song, relying on its cultural baggage, to infuse in my video considerations about the

	
  

21

promise of the American dream from the 1980s and its relationship to the current
economic and political crisis in Europe. At the same time, the title and the lyrics of the
song can be ironically associated with the condition of thousands of Italians who are
working or looking for jobs abroad.14 The original context of the song is intentionally
shifted into a different system of references that feed new possible meanings through the
editing of different fragments with the background of the fireworks.

1.2

Structural Devices and Cinematic Tropes
Among the artists that Bourriaud discusses in Postproduction, I was especially

interested in Philippe Parreno whose work starts from considering reality as structured
like a language, or a movie set that can be explored differently than mainstream television
and cinema. For “Parreno, the artwork represents the site of a negotiation between reality
and fiction, narrative and commentary” (Bourriaud 47). Bourriaud suggests that, in
Parreno’s practice “it is often the commentary that produces forms rather than the
reverse: a scenario is dismantled so that a new one can be constructed” (74-75). In his
work in collaboration with Douglas Gordon, Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait (2006), the
scenario that is being dismantled is that of a soccer game star, and most of all, the
traditional representation in real time of an important soccer match15.

	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
14

In Europe, Italy has the second highest rate of emmigrants from 2012. In the past three years, more than
one million jobs for workers under 35 years old have been lost. Italy has the worst unemployment rate in
the European community after only Greece.
15
The artists followed the legendary soccer player Zinédine Zidane through the duration of a soccer match.
Seventeen cameras were situated around the stadium, following the players every move, from close up
detail shots to long shots. The point of view shifts quickly and drastically, zooming from way up in the
stands to inches from Zidane’s face or shoe, and so on. What each shot has in common is that Zidane is
at its centre, regardless of where the ball, or action of the game, is.

	
  

22

In the act of filming a sports match in a way that ignores the purpose of the match
itself and rather focuses on not only one player, but the biggest celebrity player, Parreno
and Gordon offer the viewer a way to think about the structure of a sports match in terms
of its spectacular nature as well as its fetish and market functions. The sustained and
intense focus on Zidane parallels the athlete’s own intense focus on the soccer ball, and
creates a portrait of the player that is unlike conventional portraits: there are no talking
heads, no structured interviews or introductory pieces of information. The field of Parreno
and Gordon’s Zidane, like the fireworks in I usually live abroad, evokes a different way to
think about the space of play. The structure of my video, characterized by the use of the
long sequence shot, consists in three different parts that contrast with the idea of
continuity usually associated with the long sequence shot. At the same time, the images
of the fireworks shot from a panoramic point of view don’t recall joy or celebration, but
contain fragments evoking a condition of crisis that is like suspended in a dreamlike
state. Watching Zidane is a different experience than viewing other televised or recorded
soccer matches. Likewise, the fireworks in my video offer a singular experience of a
public firework presentation. Where Gordon and Parreno focus so closely as to fragment
the centre, I start with fragments at the core of the work, and develop them in such a way
as to proliferate possible meanings and interpretations producing a non-linear
combination of them.
In Zidane, almost all of the fragments that constitute the final editing follow the
chronological development of the soccer match, but the way they are shot and edited,
the peculiar use of subtitles in the first-person, the way sounds are selected and
amplified in order to evoke a subjective perception of the event, alter the way we

	
  

23

perceive the development of the match that becomes the subjective, fragmented,
absorption of the main character, similar to a dreamlike condition in which it is not
possible to establish a linear order and in which a sense of totality fragments into pieces.
Consider these quotes by Zidane that are shown as subtitles in the film: “You don’t
necessarily remember a match as an experience in ‘real time”. “My memories of matches
are fragmented”.
For me, one of the most interesting aspects of this work is the representation of a
soccer match, with all of its strict rules, constraints, and conventions, in a completely
subjective manner. Their particular use of subtitles and audio goes beyond expressing a
straightforward meaning. They employ the structural devices in such a way as to put a
tension on the regular use of audio and subtitles, using them to evoke a very subjective
point of view – the opposite of documenting a fact in real time. The thoughts that appear
in the subtitles aren’t strictly related to what is happening during the game, just as the
audio is fragmented evoking a suspended and dreamlike condition – neither the linear
sound of the commentator of a soccer match or a progression of thoughts that leads to a
clear point. The images that reveal the soccer match also constrict the viewer from
seeing most of the plays in the game. The match and the protagonist are fractured
together through the structural elements and the ways they are used.
For similar reasons I am interested in the work of Stan Douglas, especially his film
installation Klatsassin (2006), and the connections I see between it and my work.
Douglas commonly takes fragments and cinematic tropes as his starting point and,
through medium, structure, and installation, expresses a non-linear approach to narration.
In Klatsassin, he presents numerous versions of a single event to at once fracture and tell

	
  

24

the story of the incidents that started the Chilcotin War. It is the structure of the final
work that sets it apart. His film is made up of scenes that loop in random combinations;
each scene contains a character giving the viewer his version of the story. These are
combined ultimately showing the viewpoint of every character in every possible
combination with each other. In making Klatsassin, Douglas appropriates not only the
story of Klatsassin16 but also the multi-perspective narrative structure of the film
Rashomon (1950), which he pushes to the furthest degree possible.
Rather than following a linear approach, Klatsassin’s story is told through the
looping combinations of each characters recollections and perspectives. Like I usually
live abroad, the events are presented in a way that accentuates subjective viewpoints
stimulating different interpretations. In my video this is done through the tension placed
on translation, through the subtitles and audio becoming more obviously separate from
each other as the video progresses and the images of the fireworks which shift in tone
and association throughout the work. This lack of cohesion invites the viewer to fill, with
his or her own interpretation, the disruption that the narration of the video contains.
Douglas doesn’t offer any final resolution or clear idea of what really happened,
the range of perspectives, contrasting with each other in content and form, create the
impossibility of a clear story and instead leave the viewer with an unstable idea of what
might have happened. The work remains about a historic story, using the structure of a
cult movie, but also, through the way he emphasizes structure, becomes about the flaws
inherent in time and memory, and the confines of traditional narrative film. Likewise, I
usually live abroad uses cinematic tropes which normally convey truth and objectivity in
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
16

	
  

Klatsassin was a Tsilhqot'in chief, the war was between his tribe and settlers.

25

such a subjective way as to convey both the limits in the way these tropes, specifically
subtitles and voice-off, are traditionally used, and also offers an alternate way to evoke a
historical and political context.

2.

Voice-Off – Beyond Authority and Objectivity: Paolino, and I Usually
Live Abroad
“Voice-over” or “voice-off17” (off-camera or off-stage commentary) is the use of a

voice whose source is not visible within the frame. These two expressions are often used
interchangeably; however, I define a subtle difference between them in order to discuss
the traditional use of this cinematic device. Voice-over can be associated with what is
traditionally considered the voice of truth or authority whose source is in a transcendent
space outside the frame. Alternatively, I would like to consider the voice-off as something
not necessarily linked with any authoritative power but simply coming from outside the
frame, and without a predefined position. How can the relationship between voice-off
and images be addressed with regard to the realms of authority and objectivity? How
can voice-off be used in order to express fragmented identities?
I will consider my recent works Paolino18 and I usually live abroad, in terms of
their subjective use of voice-off, in order to explore ideas of objectivity and authority and
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
17

This is not to be confused with off screen voice, which is a voice that, even if it doesn’t belong to an
element visible within the frame, it still belongs to the same space evoked by the elements within the frame.
Differently, voice-off is a voice that comes from a space that is qualitatively different from the one evoked
by the frame.
18
Paolino exists in two versions as a sound piece: an English version with two English pupils who each
read the fable in English (as a performance in a gallery space) and an Italian audio version in which each of
the students belonging to a grade 6 class read a fragment of the fable. Paolino also exists as an artist book
(8-12 year old Italian students transcribed manually an English translation of the fable). I decided to create
multiple versions and fragment the possible meanings of the work to express an idea of subjectivity that,
instead of representing a defined “whole,” produce a proliferation of identities. Paolino is not only the

	
  

26

to fragment the concept of a monolithic, singular identity. Voice-off evokes what is hidden
and not immediately present in the images without trying to describe or reveal it (as
compared to the voice-over). It opens up a dynamic dialogue among the inner
components of the image (sound and vision) that can produce unexpected and ironic
meanings instead of defining a singular one.
My recent works Paolino and I usually live abroad use voices in order to play a
game with the viewer based on uncertainty and interpretation, in which off-frame voices
evoke not the omniscient “voice of God” but the intimate and immanent conditions of
subjects within the works who are experiencing transformations that effect their
provisional identities. The voice-off in I usually live abroad refers to the condition of an
Italian immigrant; Paolino, the child in Carlo Michelstaedter’s fable, is rejecting adulthood
and the educational process. Both works focus on identities that, for different reasons,
are under a process of transformation.
Voice-over is conventionally associated with an invisible character or narrator who
is separated from what is going on in the images and who has a dominant and objective
point of view on what is truth and correct in the narration (i.e., the voice of God or the
voice of the omniscient narrator). By contrast, voice-off can be fragmented in multiple
voices and characters and it doesn’t necessarily belong to a transcendent space. Instead
of a single transcendent voice coming from an ideal space, I am interested in immanent
multiple voices that evoke, from outside of the frame, fragmented identities rather than
objective narrators. When discussing my recent works, I prefer to use the term voice-off
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
individual character of the Michelstaedter fable, but becomes a collective character that refers to a certain
way of experiencing the educational process.

	
  

27

in order to clarify this more subjective perspective that is splintered and unstable, a term
that will be further defined in the next section of this chapter.

2.1

Beyond the Definition of Voice-Over as the Voice of Authority and Objectivity
In a famous scene from the film The Great Dictator (1940), Adenoid Hynkel

(Charlie Chaplin) gives a speech in a style that clearly evokes Hitler and Nazism, but his
language is a nonexistent language that only sounds like German. We can’t understand
what he is saying even though his aggressive voice and his body language are clear
clues as to his violent political message. But the traditional voice-over of an English
translator apparently provides the senseless voice of the dictator with a meaning in a
kind of simultaneous translation. After a while, the viewer can’t avoid considering that the
translation is not only wrong, but definitely in contrast with the self-explanatory meaning
of the dictator’s performance. The translation of the speech should be considered
reliable following a classic cinematic approach, but Chaplin uses this device in a
completely different way. In A Voice and Nothing More, philosopher Mladen Dolar writes:
The paradox of the scene is that we have two versions, the dictator’s speech and
its translation, but we don’t understand the one, yet nevertheless know that the
other is false. Still we know perfectly well what is going on: the very discrepancy
between the two versions provides the exact clue: it is in the mirroring of the two
versions that the object dictator appears. (115)
Chaplin creates a short-circuit, a faulty connection between the speech of the dictator
and the voice-over of the translator in order that the viewer is stimulated by evidence to
consider the voice-over of the translator - which is usually true and reliable in a movie - as

	
  

28

something surprisingly false. The viewer is invited to become active: one has to refuse
the authority and objectivity usually associated with voice-over. The viewer is asked to
doubt what he or she is listening to in order to create alternative connections between
the voice-off of the translator and Chaplin’s voice. The disruption between them
generates new meanings with the active collaboration of the viewer. The traditional voiceover becomes an absurd voice-off which evokes, for an active viewer, a different meaning
than the one expressed by the translating voice.
Similarly, in the work I usually live abroad, the German voice-off, whose meaning
is incongruent with the English subtitles, plays an ironic game with them. For example,
while the subtitles are telling a story of soldiers in the trenches during the Second World
War, they say “Soldiers, attack!”. The voice-off sings some lines from a famous song (by
Marlene Dietrich) belonging to the same time period “Europa…Europa…lalalala”. In other
moments of the video, the German voice-off (which belongs to an Italian immigrant) uses
German slang denigrating Italian immigrants. In contrast, the English subtitles narrate a
story of some Italian soldiers who disobeyed a German commander during the Second
World War. The combination between voice-off and subtitles produces an ironic effect
regarding the different ways of “being Italian”.
Using an ironic relationship between the voice-off and the subtitles, I usually live
abroad recalls The Great Dictator’s speech and its use of mis-translation. My video
invites the viewer to consider something like a fracture or a conflict expressed through
the use of cinematic tropes that instead of a faithful translation evokes the actual
European situation in which Germany is pressuring Italy about its financial issues. The
misconnection between voice-off and subtitles is a way to consider conflicts within the

	
  

29

European Community whose identity is experiencing a deep crisis. At the same time, the
relationship between what is said by the voice-off and what is written in the subtitles
transforms the meanings of the original sources and is integral to the allegorical intent of
the video. For a viewer who doesn’t speak German, what remains clear is a disruption
between the voice-off and the subtitles. He or she can also understand that the topic is
about Europe since the voice-off repeats “Europa” a number of times.

2.2

Acousmatic Voices
In The Testament of Doctor Mabuse (1933), Fritz Lang challenged, in a different

way, a similar prejudice related to voice-over as the voice of authority and power. In
Lang’s movie, the evil master, Mabuse, is a terrifying voice hidden behind a screen.
Towards the end of the movie it is revealed that this powerful voice is generated by a
mere gramophone hidden behind a door. Lang inverted the concept of voice-over as a
voice of power, authority, and objectivity to turn it into something completely different,
simply a gimmick. The voice of power finally shows itself and its artificial nature: it is just
a mechanical voice.
Mabuse’s voice in the movie can be considered as an example of acousmatic
sound. Sound theorist Michel Chion’s analysis of voice-over is based on the term
“acousmatic,” which he revived from composer and writer Pierre Schaeffer’s writing
Traitè des Objects Musicaux (1966). The etymology of the word ‘‘acousmatic’’ dates
back to ancient Greek times when uninitiated disciples of Pythagoras were forced to
spend five years in silence listening to their Master speaking behind a curtain “so that the
sight of the speaker wouldn’t distract [the students] from the message. This interdiction

	
  

30

against looking, which transforms the Master, God or Spirit into an acousmatic voice
permeates a great number of religious traditions” (Chion 19). Acousmatic sounds today
are the basis of our mode of listening through things like phones, computers, and radio.
Beginning in 1982, Chion established a theory of voice-over as the voice of
authority and power; his theory, based on the concept of acousmatic sound, can be
considered the traditional conceptualization of voice-over in cinema language. I challenge
this approach to voice-over in Paolino which contains acousmatic voices who read a
fable about rejecting authority or power, instead of perpetrating them. The hidden voices
of the children, instead of revealing truths, remind the viewer of similar educational
experiences. In the fable Paolino, written in 1906 by the Italian philosopher Carlo
Michelstaedter, the main character is a child whom we witness growing up. The adults
are teaching Paolino how to behave like a man but he begins to question their system of
rules and their contradictions. The performative version of the work (conceived in
collaboration with Elisa Ferrari), involved the presence of two children (ages 10 and 14)
reading a fable in the Concourse Gallery at Emily Carr University of Art + Design. The
children were physically outside of the gallery in the boardroom located above the
entrance of the exhibition space. Through the window, they were only partially visible to
the viewers but their faces remained hidden while their voices were amplified and audible
inside the gallery.
Paolino reinterprets the habit of the Pythagorean sect, who used to hide the
Master behind a curtain; moreover it plays with the authoritative value that is traditionally
associated with acousmatic sounds and voice-over. In our work, there is no hidden
Master whose acousmatic voice can reveal truths but instead we ask the viewer to listen

	
  

31

to the fragility of the voice-off of the children as a way to cast doubts on institutional
truths. Paolino reminds the viewers of that special moment in childhood when we deeply
understand that what we are learning contains contradictions, and that the education we
are receiving can lead us far from our intimate desires. The children reading the fable are
hidden but the viewers are aware of their presence because of the sound of their voices
in the exhibition space. The sound moves from the outside of the exhibition space, to the
inside, evoking a kind of negative space – outside the frame of the exhibition. Similar to
The Testament of Dr. Mabuse, the spectator becomes conscious that the acousmatic
voice being listened to doesn’t belong to any transcendent and omniscient entity.
Differently than in Lang’s movie the acousmatic trick is not related only to a mechanical
device, but to an educational process based not on criticality, but on a system of stable
and fixed inviolable rules.
We are interested in the inner contradiction that constitutes this work: on one
hand it is the attempt to perform a fable critical of education, on the other hand, it enacts
an educational process (the children were trained to perform the fable and the exhibition
space belongs to an art school). The performance invites the audience to reflect upon
contradictions of the education process and its effects on those who are subjected to it.

2.3

Voice-off as a Way to Express Subjective Views
Cinema theorist Laura Rascaroli’s maintains that the voice-off19 can reflect a

personal, individual, point of view in non-fictional movies and film essays. Instead of
considering the extra-diegetic voice as belonging to a separate space from the images,
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
19

Rascaroli uses the term voice-over without differentiating it from voice-off; I will use voice-off and voiceover following the differentiation that I offered at the beginning of this paper.

	
  

32

Rascaroli proposes that the voice-off creates an interstitial space for a negotiation
between the spoken text and the viewers (Personal Camera 49). Instead of a separation
between the viewer and the voice-over that is supposed to reveal “the truth” to the
viewer (like the voice of a master to a disciple) voice-off introduces a dynamic
relationship between the unstable meaning of the spoken subject and the possible
interpretations of the viewers. Rascaroli invites the audience to reflect on subjective
values – “dramatic norms of performance, technical norms of recording and grain of the
voice” (Rascaroli, Personal Camera 49) – rather than on the cognitive possibilities,
which had been at the center of cinematic debate in the 1970s and 1980s. Through the
use of multiple voices in Paolino, the subjective qualities of the voice-off are multiplied20
as the viewer deals with the identity of a singular character who speaks through different
voices. Especially in the audio (Italian) version of Paolino the voice-off uses 27 student
voices that read Michelstaedter’s fable and each of the students read a fragment of the
fable. The voices were then edited together to tell the full story. The identity of the
protagonist is fragmented like the snippets of the fable. Each of the students is a
possible Paolino and the fable becomes a collective, sonic portrait of the class. The use
of multiple voices alludes to a collective character that expresses the experience of being
under an educational process. The aesthetic singularity of each voice multiplies the
possible perspectives on the ways in which we undergo education.
One of my intentions in this work is to question the monolithic and objective use
of voice-over, both in fictional and non-fictional movies, by using 27 voices with different
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
20

Different qualities such as the grain of a voice, intonation, and pronunciation evoke different emotional
tones which interweave together and are evoked by each voice (ie. frightened or detached, energetic or
bored, calm or panicked).

	
  

33

aesthetic qualities (grain, tone etc.). I was interested in the sonic nuances of the voices
of the students as a symptom of their subjective approaches to the same experience.
Rascaroli suggests the voice-off here can be used to convey a subjective identity,
complicated by the aesthetic differences of each voice. Using multiple voice offs I tried to
feed a possible association between the viewer’s educational experiences and the one in
the fable. Michelstaedter’s narration is fragmented by multiple voices, transforming
Paolino into a collective experience played by the students. Being under an educational
process can’t be interpreted and defined once-and-for-all as it is connected to very
subjective factors. Paolino is extreme in his rejection of the educational process and for
me it was interesting, through the reading of the students, to evoke the different
viewpoints of those who accept this process.

2.4

“Che Bella Voce!”: the Voice as an Aesthetic Object
In his essay A Voice and Nothing More (2006), Mladen Dolar interprets the

following story to focus attention on a specific potentiality of the voice that is related to
its aesthetic value:
There is a story which goes like this: In the middle of a battle, there is a company
of Italian soldiers in the trenches, and an Italian commander who issues the
command “Soldiers, attack!” But nothing happens, nobody moves. So the
commander gets angry and shouts louder: “Soldiers, attack!” At which point there
is a response, a tiny voice rising from the trenches, saying appreciatively ‘Che
bella voce!’ “What a beautiful voice!”21 (Dolar 3)
In this amusing tale, the aesthetic pleasure represented by the voice of the General
becomes a way for the soldiers to subvert the orders of the General. The answer of the
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
21

This is the same story that appears in the subtitles of I usually live abroad, while the German voice-off is
playing.

	
  

34

soldier produces a short circuit between the voice of the General and its literal meaning.
The aesthetic value of the voice of the General allows the soldiers to focus on the sound
of the voice and suspend their judgment about the meaning of the order. This example in
which a voice which is supposed to represent authority is of interest as a starting point,
but it is more so where the voice of a general turns into something completely different,
an aesthetic subjective sound, a mere voice. Instead of a coherent and stable meaning, a
voice as a sonic object is something that requires interpretation beyond the apparent
significance of what it is saying. For Paolino, and I usually live abroad I looked for voices
considered first of all as sounds. My intention was to recreate an aesthetic relationship
with the viewers without suggesting a predetermined meaning.
In this way, voice-off offers the viewer further subjective perspectives that are not
necessarily explained by the images or other elements of my videos. It creates a dynamic
dialogue within the components of the video itself without communicating a defined
meaning. In my works, I use voice-off as a way to foster the possible translations of the
work, rather than reinforce the more traditional authoritative use of voice-off. This
traditional conception of voice-off is contradicted through a number methods that ask the
viewer to become actively critical: revealing voice-off that is incongruent with its
translation (as in I usually live abroad); using acousmatic sound to cast doubt on
institutional certainties (as in the performative version of Paolino) and using multiple
voice-offs to express the same experience and in so doing emphasizing the way
aesthetic qualities of a voice (and its treatment) effect the viewer’s reception (as in the
audio version of Paolino). Paolino, and I usually live abroad are an attempt to explore
unstable and uncertain conditions and to open up an interstitial space between the

	
  

35

voice-off and the personal experiences of the viewer. They express fragmented identities
and contradictory points of view using voice-off beyond the boundaries of authority and
truth, in an open dialogue with an active listener.

3.

SUBTITLES – The Task of the Translator: I Usually Live Abroad and
7 Billion
In my work, the question as to how can subtitles be used beyond the realm of a

“faithful” translation is a central one, as they are one of the most promising cinematic
devices with which to explore the fragmentation of meanings, times, and spaces in our
contemporary society in the way we currently share information. Subtitles started with the
introduction of the “talkies” in the early thirties. At that time, subtitles were a phenomenon
that concerned only the movies, but after World War II, they became common on
television programs as well. The first essay about subtitling appeared only in 195722 and
still after forty years, only a small number of papers had been published on the subject
(McMahon 33). In the last fifteen years the situation has changed, but even if “there has
been a boom in academic translation studies programs worldwide” (McMahon 33),
scholars seem still almost exclusively focused on subtitles as a form of translation, and I
haven’t found any clear reference for an alternative approach to subtitling. This
consideration of subtitles as only translation is unable to explain, for example, the use of
subtitles in television and news programs that go beyond the limits of the translation to
add layers of information that are not contained by any other element in the frame.
The traditional role of subtitles as a form of translation expresses a rigid and strict
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
22

	
  

See Simon Lak, Le Sous-titrage de films: Sa technique, son esthétique.

36

connection between the meanings of what is said by the voices and their subsequent
translation. The syncing between the voice-off and the subtitles invites the viewer to
accept the subtitles as a faithful translation, without further questioning their associations
and connections. Some of my recent works such as I usually live abroad and 7 Billion
open up the limits of this relationship using subtitles as not necessarily a translation of
what is said by the voice-off. In this way I use subtitles and voice-off to question the
unreliable idea of a faithful translation and to produce, instead of a translation, multiple
associations that the viewer can recombine in his or her own way. Asking the viewer to
doubt the translation in these experimental works also casts doubt on the more
traditional works using subtitles as a kind of “true” interpretation.

3.1

Subtitles as Aesthetic Objects that Can Subvert their Traditional Role as a
Form of Translation
My interest in subtitles runs concurrently with my interest in voice off. Subtitles,

like voice off, can deal with the negative space of the frame, something that can be
associated and that reacts with the images, but is not contained by them. I would like to
consider, as I did with voice off, subtitles first of all as aesthetic objects; a device that
belongs to the language of video and film images. Instead of the meaning that they can
communicate, in this section I will concentrate on their “physical” presence inside the
frame.
In the final minutes of the experimental video Secondary Currents (1982) by Peter Rose,
there are parts in which the subtitles become more than words, they are no longer
expressing textual meaning, but become simply images constituted by letters that don’t

	
  

37

refer to intelligible words. It is interesting to note that in the last seconds of the frames,
letters disembodied from words flicker by as though they are the end of the film reel; it is
like the final agony of a language that tries to express something without being able to
properly do it.
	
  
	
  
	
  
	
  
	
  
	
  

Image not available due to copyright restrictions
Google: “Peter Rose” “Secondary Currents”

Fig. 2 Rose, Peter. Secondary Currents. 1982. Video still

What is left before the silence are just linguistic signs without a specific meaning.
In this experimental movie, the subtitles also become images, with the exception of the
end in which there are the real letters of the reel. In both cases, the presence of the text
	
  

38

evokes something beyond the literal meaning, something that alludes to the disruption
between the signifier and the signified, so that the viewer has to look at them as
mysterious words that have to be interpreted.
In Secondary Currents, the text becomes an aesthetic object, no longer
representing any defined meaning and I have found Rose’s piece very influential for its
unconventional use of voice off and subtitles as aesthetic objects. Some of my recent
works have built on this kind of approach, but rather than exploring only voice-off and
subtitles as aesthetic objects, they use this to explore a situation (the economic crisis in
Europe) whose meaning can’t be defined once-and-for-all. For instance, the karaoke
subtitles of I usually live abroad also become aesthetic objects within the frame, rather
than simply text transmitting a specific linguistic meaning. The coloured karaoke-style
subtitles, associated with the long sequence shot of the fireworks in Naples, aesthetically
transform the image into a moving postcard. My intention here is to evoke a period, the
1980s (“Borderline” is not by chance a song from the 1980s) in which wealth, unlike
now, seemed like a possibility for many Italian people. The postcard style image is an
ironic way to recall the past in order to express something about the current situation and
the presence of the subtitles is also a way to invite the viewer to interpret it. As colourful,
physical objects the karaoke subtitles alter the geometry, composition, and emotional
tone of the images.
The karaoke-style subtitles not only transform the images of fireworks into a kind
of 1980s pop postcard, but they attempt to stimulate a performing act from the viewer,
as karaoke subtitles usually do. They function similarly to a musical score or, more in

	
  

39

Fig. 3 Pennuti, Paolo. I usually live abroad. 2013. Video still
general, a relational device, which can produce different versions from the same strings
of texts, regardless of the meaning they express. This device is used in the work so that
each viewer can engage in a singular experience with the video and so will have the song
in their mind and sing along in a different way, recalling personal experiences related to
the song. The relationship between the images and the karaoke subtitles is mediated by
the individual reactions of the viewers “performing” the song. These possible versions of
the karaoke “performance” in I usually live abroad, refer to the fragmented identity of the
whole video using some structural components of cinematic language instead of a linear
narration or a description of facts. Nevertheless, my goal is not to involve the viewers in a
relational game; rather, I invite them to generate a critical approach to the regular use of
subtitles in movies and television through the use of subtitles that are only apparently
related to a translation. What is at stake is not a specific meaning to communicate (the
	
  

40

content of the song), but the possibility to use a structural component of the language
(the karaoke subtitles) to question its regular use and the way it produces meaning.
This question of the production of meaning is an important concept to my work as
a whole. In the following passage, Paul de Man analyzes the disruption between what
Benjamin in The Task of the Translator calls “das Gemeinte,” - to mean - and “Art des
Meinens,” - the way to mean - (de Man 40) stating how language influences the meaning
we try to produce through it.
[T]he problem is precisely that, whereas the meaning-function is certainly
intentional, it is not a priori certain at all the mode of meaning, the way in which I
mean, is intentional in any way. The way in which I can try to mean is dependent
upon linguistic properties that are not only [not] made by me, because I depend
on the language as it exists for the devices which I will be using, it is as such not
made by us as historical beings, it is perhaps not even made by humans at all…if
language is not necessarily human–if we obey the law, if we function within
language, and purely in terms of language–there can be no intent; there may be
an intent of meaning, but there is no intent in the purely formal way in which we
will use language independently of the sense or the meaning (de Man 39).
In this passage, de Man considers how our possibility to mean something depends on
languages that have properties and rules that are not created by us, but that deeply
influence what we try to mean. Questioning the structural components of the languages
that I use is a way to re-discuss the rules and the properties of them such that, even if
they are not created by me, I can play beyond the conventional ways of using them. More
than simply philosophical, I would define my approach as poetic, considering poetry as a

	
  

41

way to play with the language following a different perspective that is not first of all
conceptual, but aesthetic. De Man comments on Benjamin’s example related to the fact
that to mean “bread” it is possible to use the German word brot or the French word pain.
In both cases, what we intend to mean is the same, but the way we are meaning using
different languages, can produce a “discrepancy between the intent to name bread and
the word bread itself, in its materiality, as a device of meaning” (de Man 40).
Following this perspective, translating itself reveals the limit of interchangability for
words belonging to different languages, showing the impossibility to fill the disruption
between the signifier and the signified. It seems that a “faithful” translation is possible
only for a completely passive interpreter since for Benjamin, any historic language misses
the possibility to define a stable meaning – a stable relationship between the signifier
and the signified – and the pure language – which would be able to fill the separation
between what we mean and the way in which we mean it – remains a utopia. The
absence of this pure language corresponds to a fragmentation and a proliferation of the
ways we intend meaning. This absence is also a symptom of the impossibility of all
languages to express something certain and objective (Benjamin, The Task 74).
There it is a matter of showing that in cognition there could be no objectivity, not
even a claim to it, if it dealt with images of reality; here it can be demonstrated
that no translation would be possible if in its ultimate essence it strove for likeness
to the original. For in its afterlife – which could not be called that if it were not a
transformation and a renewal of something living – the original undergoes a
change. Even words with fixed meaning can undergo a maturing process
(Benjamin, The Task 73).

	
  

42

What is at stake for me in this passage is the fact that Benjamin bases translation,
instead of on a kind of likeness to the original, on a difference. Translating activates a
process of meaning that can’t be fixed but is under a process of change. In this way,
even words with a “fixed meaning” can be interpreted in a way that transforms the
original significance.
The karaoke subtitles in I usually live abroad are synced with a cover (that is only
an instrumental version) of the original song “Borderline” by Madonna. In this
perspective, the viewers are requested to “perform” something that is already a
translation. The process that I try to activate, quoting Madonna’s song, relates to several
interpretations of the original that reveals slippages in the original meaning of it. In the
karaoke subtitles of I usually live abroad, for me what is relevant is highlighting the use of
a cinematic device to produce a fragmentation of meaning that the regular use of
subtitles in movies and television would fill with an apparently univocal translation.

3.2

Running Subtitles as an Aesthetic Device and as a Symptom of our Current
Way of Transmitting Meaning
In my video 7 Billion (2013) (in collaboration with Liz Knox), a frantic long

sequence shot of a poppy field contains words that appear and disappear in the centre
of the frame, producing the text of the video. The text relates to our limits to retain
information and the current state of the over-abundance of information we are faced with
each day. The text invites the viewer to accept these limits conserving the possibility to
be focused on singular experiences, of fragments and details, accepting the impossibility
to have an exhaustive understanding. The text says in full:

	
  

43

If you calculate how long it would take /To look at the faces of the people on earth
/One by one /Second by second /You would need over 221 years /Too many
faces for a single life /Regardless, who wastes time considering this? / Who
knows how many people you have looked at? /How many seconds have you
spent on this? /Now an ad is playing that asks /Can your dog smile?
Over fast-paced images of poppies in a field, this text also races by, appearing on
the screen word-by-word (an average of 8 frames-per-word). The images look almost as
though they are a stop-motion animation (due to the speed of the camera moving
through the field, and the shutter setting). This aesthetic approach is paralleled by the
content of the text, which suggests the impossibility of controlling the speed and quantity
of information that surrounds us.

Fig 4 Knox, Liz and Paolo Pennuti. 7 Billion. 2013. Nine video stills.

	
  

44

The predominant role played traditionally by images in the composition of the
frame is violated for several seconds during the video by the centrality and large size of
the letters. Once again, I use the text not only as a device to communicate meaning, but
as a material presence that alters the power relationship between the elements that
constitute the totality of the frame. An aesthetic change in the way something is
communicated is something that doesn’t only concern the style of the communication,
but is also a shifting of the meaning of what is communicated. In 7 Billion, we initially
used traditional subtitles in the bottom of the frame. They were not frantic at all, just
regular subtitles that were like reporting personal notes. Using large letters in the centre
of the frame, frenetically succeeding each other word-by-word, we were not only looking
for an aesthetic change in the framing of the text, but for a general shifting from a more
personal to a more collective atmosphere for the video. Big letters in the centre of the
frame are reminiscent of the aesthetic of political propaganda that is often quoted in
Jean-Luc Godard’s movies23. In his 2004 essay “A New Line in the Geometry”, Eric
Cazdyn invites the reader to consider how the use of the running subtitles for television
news, starting from the Gulf War, has changed the television’s compositional aesthetic.
The pornographic aesthetic is one in which the active content monopolizes the
absolute centrality of the frame to the marginalization of everything else; the body
that exists in the center of the frame – the talking head of the broadcaster, the
implosion of the buildings, the copulating couple, the advertised product –
pushes-out, crowds-out, snuffs-out significant elements of the shot…but the
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
23

Godard’s movie La Chinoise (1967) is a good example. In this movie, texts with a very similar aesthetic
are edited with the images. This was a reference we used in defining the visuals of 7 billion, differently than
Godard, the text is juxtaposed with the images and not separated.

	
  

45

running subtitle challenges the compositional fact of television; it returns the
relation to the equation – the relation between text and image, between the
margin of the frames and the centre, between the different speeds of information
delivery, and between multiple narrative lines. (405-6)
Cazdyn considers the development of subtitles as a “dominant mainstream distraction”
for North American television viewers, and a symptom of the fragmentation and
proliferation of news, in a society in which too much is usually happening at once and in
which the running subtitles24 are an “aesthetic strategy” that provide running multiple
real-time updates that would be simply impossible to perform for a single reporter (4045). Similarly, what could not be grasped by only the meaning of the text in 7 Billion can
be experienced on an aesthetic level because of the style of the subtitles. This is a
recursive strategy in my practice, using structural components in order to evoke
meanings that are not clearly stated or represented by a narration or a documentation of
facts, but by a critical approach to the cinematic devices I employ.
For Cazdyn, the relationship between the slower pace of the news read by the
reporter and the faster speed of the running subtitles represents the current
contradiction in our society between the local and the global, the national and the
transnational, showing the excess of contradictory and fragmented information that we
collectively share (417). The alternative use of text associated with images on television
becomes, independent from the meaning of what the text has to communicate, an
allegorical way to evoke a contradictory and fragmented condition that is expressed

	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
24

Cazdyn uses the term running subtitles with a very general meaning, including what could be better
defined as “the crawl” or “the scroll” as in the case of CNN or news broadcasts.

	
  

46

through the use of subtitles first of all as aesthetic objects that subvert the composition
of the frame.

3.3

Beyond a Faithful Translation
Subtitles in movies, with very few exceptions, are totally devoted to translating the

verbal content of the movie but they are not conceived in order to have a critical
approach to translation, something that reveals the complexities of translating itself.
Especially when subtitles are well done, they are synced in such a way with the voices of
the actors that the viewer can feel, as little as possible, the disruption between the
languages involved and the slippages of meanings. How is it possible to create this
illusion of correspondence between the signifier (the voice in the movie) and the signified
(the subtitles)?
Since the beginning of subtitling in the 1930s (coinciding with the advent of the
“talkies”) the spotter25 is responsible for syncing the subtitles with the images and
dialogue in order to produce a perceptive connection and fill the natural disruption of
meaning among different languages. In I usually live abroad, I simulate translation
through spotting in order to activate questions about how meaning and truth are
conveyed through a traditional use of subtitles and voice-off. Playing with the disruption
between these two cinematic devices, my video refers to the current situation in Europe,
in which, more than an organic unity, there are conflicts and fragmented views. Although
the subtitles are temporarily synchronized with the fragments of the speech, as though
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
25

The spotter watches the film and decides exactly when each line of dialogue begins and ends, following
specific rules, based on the consumability of the movie. Independent of their meaning, subtitles cannot
exceed a certain number of characters and have to simulate a correspondence with the timing of the
dialogue.

	
  

47

they are a smooth spotting, from the beginning, someone who knows German can
understand that the subtitles are not a real translation. For the other viewers, it is only
possible to fully understand this after a while, but without any further doubt as the
subtitles start to be out of sync with the voice and the illusion generated by the spotting
fades.
In I usually live abroad I employ spotting to discuss this cinematic strategy as a
way to produce an unreliable connection between what is said by the actors and what is
written in the subtitles as an Italian immigrant living in Berlin provides the accented
German voice off in this video. She speaks using German words and slang that are
common derogatory terms for Italians. These words have been especially common
starting from the 1970s, when, like now, there was consistent immigration from Italy to
Germany. The words she uses are apparently nonsense; they are like fragments of
speech or sudden thoughts. The voice-off and the subtitles are fragments from the past
that ironically evoke the present situation in Europe and the conflicted relationship
between a larger more powerful country (in this case Germany) and a country with less
economic and political sway (Italy).
The full text (Fig. 6) should illustrate this, showing both the German voice off, its
“correct” English translation, and the English subtitles:

	
  

48

1) Voice Off (German) - Ah mensch! Ah verdammt!
(English translation) Ah, man! Ah damn!
Subtitles - There is a story that goes like this

2) VO - Die katzelmacher! Die ganze Europa! Na ja, die ganze Europa!
26

The Katzelmacher! The whole Europe! Well, the whole Europe
SUB - There is a company of Italian soldiers in the trenches.

3) VO - Die katzelmacher… warscheinlich...
The Katzelmacher… probably
SUB - And there is an Italian commander who issues the command

4) VO - Die weltanschauung… warscheinlich…
27

The weltanschauung … probably ...
SUB - “Soldiers, attack!”

5) VO - Der spaghettifresser, die ganze Europa… mit dire…aufidersen. Kamrad ich
komm so gleich
The spaghetti eater, the whole Europe ... with you ... goodbye. Comrade it's time
to leave.
SUB - But nothing happens, nobody moves.

6) VO - Okonimisch? Okologisch? Warscheinlich…
Economy? Ecology? Probably…
SUB - So the commander gets angry and shouts even louder

7) VO - Europa…Europa…lalalala
SUB - “Soldiers, attack!”

Fig. 5 Gatelli, Catia and Paolo Pennuti. Script from I usually live abroad, 2013
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
26
27

	
  

Katzelmacher: a derogatory term for Italians (“kitten makers”) evokes the growth of Italian immigrants.
Meaning the philosophical vision of the world.

49

In relation to this effect, it is interesting to notice that one of the words in the title
of Benjamin’s essay about translation, “Aufgabe,” is a German word that can express not
only the concept of “task,” but even the (almost opposite) concept of “defeat”. Beginning
with his title, Benjamin plays with the contradictory process of translation, and its
essential failure to be a faithful reproduction of the original. Benjamin’s essay theorizes an
approach to translation that is exactly the opposite of the one perpetrated by subtitling in
movies – in which the aesthetic illusion of spotting anaesthetizes any critical thoughts
about the ongoing process of translation.
A similar experimental use of spotting can be seen in the film Contempt28 (1963),
by Jean-Luc Godard. In the movie, the character of the Italian translator sometimes
translates anticipating the speech of the person she is translating for, or in any case, she
translates in a way that exceeds the meaning of the original violating the basic rules of
spotting and the illusion of a reliable translation. At a certain point, the character playing
an American film producer complains that he was forced to sell his studios and that the
new owner will build a five-and-ten-cent store in its place. The translator translates from
English to French: “C’est la fin du cinéma” it’s the end of cinema. This is an interesting
example in which the translators own subjectivity is embedded in the process of
translating. Differently than a literal translation, a subjective one doesn’t aim to be a
faithful reproduction of the original but rather adds something that transforms it. In my
works, the way I recombine fragments that belong to real experiences is generally based
not on objectivity, but on allegorical instances that shift the original meanings.
In his afterword for the text Subtitles: The Foreignness of Film (2004), Ian Balfour
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
28

Contempt is a movie about the production of a film version of the Odyssey and it is based on a novel by
an Italian writer (Il Disprezzo by Alberto Moravia) that Godard decided to adapt for the screen.

	
  

50

considers Contempt and Godard’s particular way of playing with the foreignness of
translation in the film.	
  

Not a literal translation in any sense, it does nonetheless convey a version of the
original while going well beyond it, to a resonant allegorical pronouncement on
the precarious state of cinema itself. The films internal ‘subtitles’ precede the
actual subtitles to come, raising all the problems of translation in advance of their
inevitable re-staging in the circulation of the film as foreign…subtitles are the
marks of difference, the written words that visibly render the voice of another
language, and in such a way as to render the original foreign from the very start.
The final word of Contempt: SILENZIO. (Balfour 532)

Beyond spotting, what I find important in Contempt, is that the movie, starting with its
experimental use of subtitles, is all about translation and the disruption between the
original and its interpretation. This is something that relates to my work, not only in its
considering the relationship between voice-off and subtitles, but more in general, in the
way I shift the original meanings of the fragments I combine in my work. What I express is
the inevitable failure of establishing a definitive and univocal meaning, and the
importance of joining an unstable relationship among fragments belonging to different
contexts.
Not by chance, Contempt represents different failures29 and it seems to reflect
what Benjamin evokes in The Task of the Translator, with the image of the vessel:

	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
29

Also not by chance, the movie is a love story, about a love that is falling apart through misunderstandings
stemming from the impossibility to really communicate.

	
  

51

Fragments of a vessel, in order to be articulated together must follow one another
in the smallest detail. So, instead of making itself similar to the meaning, to the
Sinn [Sense] of the original, the translation must rather, lovingly and in detail, in its
own language, form itself according to the manner of meaning (Art des Meinens)
to make both recognizable as the broken parts of the greater language, just as
fragments are the broken parts of the vessel (Benjamin [Jacobs trans.] qtd in de
Man 43).
De Man, analyzing this passage, notes that institutional French and English translations
betray an essential concept that Benjamin is trying to show: the impossibility that is
contained in the original itself and that regards any further translation to reconstruct the
whole vessel (43). Translations for Benjamin are fragments that cannot constitute a
totality, as they cannot express a stable meaning. De Man notes how the concept of
translation in Benjamin can be related to the one of allegory since they both reveal the
impossibility for any historical language to define a stable meaning. Translation (Aufgabe)
brings different kinds of failure in trying to interpret the original, revealing a fatal
contradiction contained within the language: the impossibility to state any presence but
only an essential void. Historical languages evoke something that remains outside of
history and human capabilities: the absence of a pure language that can express the
truth, a stable connection between what we intend to mean and the way we mean,
between the original and its interpretation/translation.
De Man insists that translations for Benjamin are not metaphors that produce “a
unifying pattern in which things become one by resemblance”, rather they open up a
successive pattern in which the relationship between the way in which we mean and

	
  

52

what we mean is necessarily unstable and produces a slippage of meaning each time
something is translated or interpreted (43). In my works such as I usually live abroad, I
use subtitles and voice off to play with a fake translation in order to connect fragments
belonging to different time-space. My intention is not to make these fragments into a
straightforward metaphor of the current crisis in Italy, but to proliferate an open pattern of
possible interpretations of it. For example, the images of the fireworks are not intended to
have a predefined and univocal meaning. They are images of celebration taken from a
detached point of view. They can be interpreted as a way to simply show a folkloric event
or they could be ironically interpreted as something connected with the economic crises.
They should also be seen as images of a city outside of the common parameters of
control. In this thesis, I interpret I usually live abroad through focusing my attention on
the economic crisis, but this is only one of the possible layers that regards those images.
The organic, apparently natural intent that founds mainstream cinema and documentary
uses subtitles and translation to state exactly the opposite – to represent the illusion of
meaning and totality. My works explore an opposite approach, which I have previously
defined as a neo-allegorical one that keeps contradictions, and the fragmentary nature of
meaning, at the forefront as a way to generate a different process of signification,
structurally based on the different cinematic devices I use.

Conclusion
In his historical review of the concept of allegory, Tambling states that “the main
difference between traditional allegory and “postmodern” allegory is that whereas the
first assumes a system of thought which may be extracted from the allegorical level of the

	
  

53

work, the latter does not; there may be scraps of meaning, but no assumption can be
made of an underlying coherent meaning” (142). My works function as postmodern
allegory does, differently than symbols they don’t associate one original meaning with a
new one, but rather reveal the impossibility of establishing an organic unity of meaning,
proliferating the possible interpretation of the fragments I use. Following this perspective,
my works refer to the historic breakdown of ideologies; their fixed values and meanings
seem incapable of interpreting contemporary reality. At the same time, my intent is not to
support relativity. What is at stake for me is not simply that it doesn’t seem so easy
anymore to establish truth, but that looking at the languages we use can be a way to
explore individual possibilities to generate new (uncertain) meanings. Traditional
allegories are ideological in that they use a system of fixed values to interpret one text in
order to substitute its original meaning with a new one. One good example of this is St.
Paul’s using the Old Testament as an allegory of the Truths revealed by the New
Testament. Traditional allegories are ideological since they replace old meaning and truth
with new ones, without discussing the process of interpretation that they open up by
shifting the original meaning of the fragments that they interpret. They betray what is
crucial in the language that regards the impossibility to fix the meaning of a word or a
trope since these are constantly changing through time and space. Further, they hide the
impossibility for the language to communicate any absolute truth. Like symbols or static
metaphors, they define a new meaning that depends on a new system of values that is
still closed and refuses to accept the impossibility to establish any absolute Truth, any
certain meaning, but only to proliferate the interpretation.

	
  

54

The process of producing allegories, like that of translating, potentially never ends.
As Tambling states:
If art is now “anti-aesthetic”, it cannot think symbolically, or say that a concept can
be expressed through a symbolic object. This makes postmodern art allegorical;
the image is no longer thought of as describing, or representing, a pre-existent
world. The fragment stands for anything, nor is there anything but fragments,
whose being declares the absence in them of inherent meaning, since [quoting
Benjamin] “any person, any object, any relationship, can mean absolutely anything
else”. (Tambling 143)
Following this concept, in my works I juxtapose different time-spaces, not to represent or
describe a pre-existing organic world, but to create relationships among different
fragments of it, shifting them into new contexts. The long sequence shot, as the
cinematic device that apparently doesn’t contain interruption and simulates a neverending presence, is used allegorically in my recent works in order to reveal what it tries
to hide: the impossibility for any presence not to fade into an absence; an absence that
relates to our human condition, and to the lack of a stable referent within the language.
Instead of representing an ideal continuous presence, for example, in I usually live
abroad fireworks are in themselves an image of something precarious that will fade
quickly. Following this perspective, the long sequence shot of the fireworks refers to
what is behind a moment of collective celebration in which everything can seem eternal.
In 7 Billion the long sequence shot of the poppy field is so frenetic and, together with the
text, expresses the anxiety of being with limited time in a context full of signs to be
interpreted. I used long sequence shots in my recent works to evoke a different kind of

	
  

55

duration that de Man connects with an allegorical approach where “duration has the
illusion of continuity that it knows to be illusionary” (Tambling 115); duration becomes a
way to evoke its own unreliability. The long sequence shots of I usually live abroad and 7
billion are all presenting something that is going to fade, their temporary presence
evoking the absence of any ideal never-ending presence30.
Even if the media I use (video, photography, sound recording) are usually
considered mimetic – a reproduction of something that already exists – my works are
collections of fragments that don’t document real events, but transform their original
meanings. At the same time, I don’t employ structures that are typical of well-connected
narrations. Instead of representing or describing a chain of events that moves from a
beginning towards an end, my works can reveal that the connections among the
elements that constitute a traditional narration are only apparently strong and firm. In the
process of allegory, shifting the meaning of the fragments that connect through time
undoes not only narration, but also identity and any structure produced within the
language that supports the illusionary idea of a stable totality. In I usually live abroad, my
intent is combining fragments belonging to different time-spaces in order to express the
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
30

An example of the use of long sequence shots that evoke this sort of impermanence is James Benning’s
film Casting a Glance (2007). The work by this experimental filmmaker is usually based on collections of
long sequence shots of different cityscape and landscapes. I find Benning’s work inspiring because his
approach reminds me of a very documentaristic form of cinema that has a completely different intention:
instead of documenting reality, Benning’s work creates allegories of landscapes using images of reality in
order to express political and conceptual interpretations of the American landscapes he explores. For
Casting a Glance he visited Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty (1970) earthwork sixteen times over the course
of two years. Each trip corresponds with a long sequence shot that makes the video. The sixteen shots
show the unpredictable and fluctuating nature of the jetty. In some shots the jetty is covered, in others it is
completely visible, not only the level of the water, but even the tides, weather, and seasons, together with
the occasional visitors of the jetty, constantly modify the identity of the spiral jetty. Benning’s film of
Smithson’s work is reminiscent of Benjamin’s idea that there is not linear progress in history and not fixed
truth. The sixteen moments that Benning shot create an allegory of impermanence and instability that
regards any historical object throughout time. Each moment represents only a possible view of a natural
landscape whose defining characteristics continuously change. The editing of the sixteen moments,
instead of creating an organic and complete view of the jetty, shows the impossibility of representing that.

	
  

56

complexity of the ongoing situation, which is the product of contradictions and conflicts
accumulated through history.
In Benjamin’s allegorical interpretation of the painting Angelus Novus (1920) by
Paul Klee, history isn’t a reminder of the certainty of progress, or of a linear and wellconnected narration of events, but proliferates a process of fragmentation and ruins
whose meaning can’t be fixed within any ideological Truth.
His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees
one single catastrophe that keeps piling ruin upon ruin and hurls it in front of his
feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has
been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his
wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm
irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of
debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress. (Benjamin,
Tragic Drama 259-260)
Considering the future, my intention is to continue working with I usually live abroad,
exploring as an immigrant, from a detached point of view, the development of the
economic and political crisis in my home country: as with Paolino31, there could be
multiple versions of the work. Differently than Paolino, I usually live abroad doesn’t refer
to a specific story but to a specific kind of melancholic and ironic perspective on my
home country that the detached view, through the branches of the long sequence shot of
the fireworks, embodies as a first version of this work.

	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
31

	
  

which exists as two sound pieces and an artist book.

57

Even while I am still working on my skills with the English language, my Italian
friends complain when I speak with them in Italian because I’m getting an accent. This
increasing uncertainty that I am experiencing using, not only English but Italian as well, is
another interesting starting point from which to explore changing identities and unfaithful
translations in my work going forward.
	
  

Works Cited
Agamben, Giorgio. Profanations. 2005. Trans. Jeff Fort. New York: Zone Books,
2007. Print.
Balfour, Ian and Atom Egoyan. Subtitles: On the Foreignness of Film.
Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2004. Print.
Benjamin, Walter. “The Task of the Translator.” 1920. Illuminations. Trans. Harry
Zohn. Ed. Hannah Arendt. New York: Brace and World, 1968. 69-82. Print.
---. The Origin of German Tragic Drama. London: NLB, 1977. Print.
Bourriaud, Nicolas. Postproduction: Culture as Screenplay: How Art Reprograms
the World. Ed. Caroline Schneider. Trans. Jeanine Herman. New York: Lukas &
Sternberg, 2002. Print.
Cazdyn, Eric. “A New Line in the Geometry”. Subtitles: On the Foreignness of Film.
Eds. Ian Balfour and Atom Egoyan. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2004.
403-419. Print.
Chion, Michel, Claudia Gorbman, and Walter Murch. Audio-Vision. New York:
Columbia University Press, 1994. Print.
	
  

58

de Man, Paul. "'Conclusions': Walter Benjamin's 'The Task of the Translator'".
The Resistance to Theory. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986. 2546. Print.
Dolar, Mladen. A Voice and Nothing More. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006. Print.
Green, Charles. The Third Hand: Artist Collaborations from Conceptualism to
Postmodernism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001. Print.
Holte, Michael Ned. “1,000 Words: Stan Douglas.” Artforum. 45.2, 2006. 232-233.
Print.
McMahon, Kevin. “Talking at the Movies.” Cabinet. 46 (2012): 28-35. Print.
Pasolini, Pier Paolo. “Observations on the Long Take”. 1967. October. Trans. Norman
MacAfee and Craig Owens. 13 (1980). 3-6. Print.
Rascaroli, Laura. The Personal Camera: Subjective Cinema and the Essay Film.
London: Wallflower Press, 2009. Print.
--- “Sonic Interstices: Essayistic Voiceover and Spectatorial Space in Robert
Cambrinus's Commentary.” Media Fields Journal. 3 (2011). 1-10. Print.
Tambling, James. Allegory (The New Critical Idiom). London: Routledge, 2009.
E-Book.
Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait. Dir. Gordon, Douglas and Philippe Parreno. United
International Pictures. 2006. Film.

Works Consulted
Bordwell, David and Kristin Thompson. Film History: An Introduction. 1994. 3rd ed. New
York: McGraw-Hill, 2010. Print.
	
  

59

Deleuze, Gilles. Cinema 2: The Time Image. New York: Continuum International
Publishing Group, 2005. Print.
Fried, Michael. “Portraits by Thomas Struth, Rineke Dijkstra, Patrick Faigenbaum,
Luc Delhaye, and Roland Fischer; Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno’s film
Zidane.” Why Photography Matters as Art as Never Before. New Haven: Yale
University, 2008. 190-233. Print.
MacDonald, Scott. “Putting all your Eggs in One Basket.” Adventures of
Perception: Cinema as Exploration: Essays/Interviews. Berkeley: University of
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---. “Interview with James Benning.” Adventures of Perception: Cinema as
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