Starting points or how would it be to film the world-life as Clarice Lispector writes? 

In this post I am going to gather a few ideas on my artistic research.

This artistic research project, performed through filming and visual research practices, aims to develop an understanding of the affective potential of immersive multichannel moving-image installations based on moving images generated through ‘filming with the body’. This research stems from attempting to translate the unclassifiable narratives of Clarice Lispector into art installations; Hèléne Cixous has described Lispector’s work as ‘writing with the body’ which allows a “be(com)ing human”. 

Through a multidisciplinary approach, and drawing on affect theory, feminist thinking and artistic research, this project will explore how ‘the touching image’ –connected to the notion of ‘haptic visuality’ developed by film feminist theorist Laura Marks- displayed in immersive moving-image installations touch spectators, in other words, how images that touch might be able to touch. 

This research stems from encountering the attractive, unclassifiable and challenging narratives of the Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector (1920- 1977). Her work insists on the extraordinary within the everyday and challenges binary categories: self-other, language- silence, human-animal…

Clarice Lispector, Selected Chronicles, (translation 1991)

Feminist thinker Hélène Cixous has defined the writing method of Lispector as “writing with the body”, which operates beyond rationality, which allows to explore the unknown and enables the readers to become human. Also, importantly, for Cixous the work Lispector supposes an affirmation of life.

If “readers can find themselves in the reading of Clarice Lispector’s narratives” (Cixous, 1990), how could my works do the same?

Helene Cixous, Reading with Clarice Lispector, Univ of Minnesota Press, 1990.

Additional material: this is the only video interview of hers.