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Yes indeed, and of course… I did not see it coming.
On a beautiful fall day – upon getting on my bicycle, I remember clearly having that  “sense of well-being” –  not only did I feel fit on my bike – I had biked and swum earlier – the temperature and sunny afternoon seemed to say “take a bite of life!”
I vaguely remember some speed-bumps that I was going to take in a fun way – without slowing down – after all, I felt good, the terrain was flat and there was no traffic.
ALL ACCIDENTS ARE STUPID – how I would like to rewind and be “more something” (fill in the blank).

Next step is… I am in the ICU at BJC hospital, and I don’t remember anything of the fall, as is well known by all survivors of concussions.

Photo Alma M.

Slowly, it is hard to gather all of these facts, I learn that I have: a broken clavicle, blood in my brain and in my arm, some kind of crack in my skull, and in my jaw, an ear that needs sewing to prevent “cauliflower ear” – and facial, hand and knee bleeding – and…  I hear something very subtle like some faint breathing in my right ear, specially in a quiet environment. And most likely a coccyx that has some damage.

Winner of “Best Experimental Film” 2022 St. Louis Filmmakers Showcase
AND
played
at the 2022 St. Louis International Film Festival
&
the 2023 Defy Film Festival in Nashville, TN


too many words for such a short piece, but then it is (about) nothing
14 years of gestation & very close to failure (as it should be)

Reality is a cliché… — Wallace Stevens


While we try to stand on “icebergs of knowledge” (with a very large mass of unknown), any film either stands by itself or does not…
As we have been told before:“All the rest is commentary.”


My teacher Charlotte Joko Beck used to say that one spends the first part of life accumulating, and that the second part is spent getting rid of things.

In 2008 after being unable to move and to communicate while in an ICU for three weeks… when I finally was home – after having scared myself in the mirror by looking like a camp survivor, jawbone and knees protruding & stomach skin hanging – as in some kind of slow motion, all normal activity seemed like actual choices & getting that essential mechanism going again looked like getting hooked into automated addictions (eating, drinking, watching my surroundings…).
Nothing was evident anymore, not even regular speech and words.
I was an outsider to any kind of normalcy. A world of conventions had been revealed as in the Emperor With No Clothes story…
That’s the short of it.

Addressing this film piece more directly: except possibly for Brakhage’s “The Act of Seeing with One’s Own Eyes,” Debord’s “Society of the Spectacle” or Peter Kubelka’s “Arnulf Rainer,” our addiction to images and sounds remains beyond the scope of most films.

This short piece attempts to take off… while trying to remain as grounded as possible.
Tabula rasa.
The movies of the future will take place in between two eyeballs… but this is meant to be a very cold shower.

Consciousness is motionless… If time passes, it is necessary that there should be something which remains static. And it is consciousness of self which is static. — Leo Tolstoy, January 15, 1910 (at age 85 – ten months before his death).


About the filmmaker:

  • In the tradition of Abraham, the iconoclast… Pier Marton is an original, an artist for our age“. — Dr. Sander Gilman, leading American cultural and literary historian, psychoanalyst and the author and editor of over eighty books
  • He is ahead of us all and behind everything that is.— Tamiko Thiel, Artist (“The Female Supercomputer Designer Who Inspired Steve Jobs”)
  • Pier Marton rakes the virtual screens and the tablets of our hypocrisies with the sharp claws of the avenging angel, piercing the complacent facade of the status quo to reveal the underlying agonies of our conflicting moralities. — Aribert Munzner, artist, professor emeritus/former dean, The Minneapolis College of Art and Design
  • … a reflective, thoughtful presence in the field… balancing intellectual rigor with unbridled creativity and curiosity… an integrity and authenticity characterized by an inner strength, giving his work a unique sensibility… rare in our field of media art. — Bill Viola, Leading and Pioneer Video Artist
  • I am moved by what you are doing, I hope your video will reach many viewers. I hope it will bring them closer to a world they could never enter. — Elie Wiesel, Nobel Peace Prize recipient (in a private letter)

An earlier “graphic expression” of one of the lures.

Currently the Unlearning Specialist at the School of No Media and its collection of “imploding words.”
Video works collected in Beaubourg Museum, Paris – Museum of Modern Art, NY – National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario – Carnegie Museum, Pittsburgh.



ARTISTS REACTIONS

Phenomenal, so deep, so simple…
The closest thing to facing the mystery of the Easter Island’s faces in a most present manner.

Aribert Munznerhttps://www.aribertmunzner.com/


I have watched it many times yesterday and again just now.
Every second of the film, so much to capture: your voice and your eyes change as you balance both realities – yes you can speak from or close to what you call the silence.
But that can’t really last for the nature of those moments of knowing makes it so that, by the very stating that you know, you are expelled from holding onto any kind of trophy.
Yet, honest and reflecting that liminal threshold of access to that ‘silence’… with the words you are allowed to speak in that, and from that moment, that place.
There’s that most human moment when you call it something else, it’s almost done then… the last vestige of it.
And then it changes to ‘addiction,’ a kind of pronouncement, which engages the mind, as in asking who is ‘you’? Is it us, or is it your voice as it leaves that space, speaking to the self that is addicted to images and thoughts? And all of us who are addicted to these….  the energy shifts.
I know that instant of knowing… trying to stay in that moment and keep that consciousness but the words diminish the actuality of that type of being and knowing … it can’t really be held.
But you did it: the entire process is there to witness as it happens…  And then you stop,  judge yourself, and how it seemed like a good idea…. but in fact you have succeeded, because you are exactly what you name your film, (a human) being.
To me, moment to moment, no editing, a piece so brave… raw, humble, true.

Rose-Lynn Fisher – https://www.rose-lynnfisher.com/


The nuances of a master at his craft – very subtle and very intimate.

William Morrishttps://vimeo.com/williammorris



PRODUCTION STILLS


NO!
— the shout that started the process of “recovery,” my “reincarnation” (coming back into my body/life) —
After weeks in an intensive care unit, I finally came back to life when, from the deepest place in my body, I found myself shouting “No!”


We are born…
And our brain is shapeless. Words and concepts have not yet colonized it.

There is a “self” (should we even use that word?) that exists that is pure perception.
In that state, nothing is stored for recycling.
You live…
It is neither “life,” nor “art,” nor “experience.”
You live.

Then come those who say: “tell us all about it! Make sense, let us know, make us understand!

However hard this hospitalization is/was, it is a trip… an initiation into something that cannot be communicated.
Just like anything worthwhile.
Just like becoming a shaman.
OR
You can view this as a Torah(Teaching) Scroll where you will spend the rest of your life
trying to interpret it – my advice, as Susan Sontag says, don’t.
It is what it is.

ALONE.
AND UNIQUE.


In the extremely long road of recovery – one does not recover – everything appears as what it is: a series of addictions.

from the School of No Media site

In parallel to the Chinese Yin and Yang principles, our digital reality is composed binary digits – the bits – composed of ones and zeros, yet our culture seems to emphasize only the ones, only the fullness
at the expense of our emptiness


As per the hourglass visualization, the clarifying process of decantation takes time, yet dramatic events like death or disease can speed up the unlearning phase.
Regardless of our books, our words and our philosophies, death – the so-called “great equalizer” – will create an outstanding silence.
What traces will be treasured by the next generation?

An Unlearning MapThe essence of normalcy is the refusal of reality. Ernst Becker

Words, these words too, hide so much more than they reveal.

In an effort to unmask this, I did this long interview for a Bolivian paper: The Void and its Pressure.

Just a few excerpts from the beginning:

  • At their core, words are frozen experience and as such monuments, they function as mere reference points. No matter what others may say, we remain bound by our life’s path.
  • The topic at hand is oblivion
  • I should mention that I belong to Abraham’s ancient iconoclastic tradition and that this is only one way to react to our boundless arrogance.
  • Civilization as a whole produces a deafening disturbance we remain unconscious of until the end of our lives.
  • During encounters with death or, in less tragic ways, when we feel dwarfed by our surroundings, radical changes can take place…

More importantly, the School of No Media (I am its Unlearning Specialist), is my direct response to the arbitrary concepts/words we surround ourselves with – something I would not have been privy to, had I not been without words in I.C.U. for those “hellish” three weeks.

Yes, beyond stuff, culture & media, words & concepts…
Can we get there? Very easy: the next car accident will get you there fast.
Or, you may simply sense a regular form of vertigo as you ponder the implications behind what the Laniakea or the Eukaryota imply for us. More information on the School of No Media site.

What I represent. © Marton 2015

To Dr. Michael Chicoine – May He Keep Saving Many More Lives!

From the New York Times

For The First Time, Treatment Helps Patients With Worst Kind of Stroke, Study Says

After three decades of failure, researchers have found a treatment that greatly improves the prognosis for people having the most severe and disabling strokes. By directly removing large blood clots blocking blood vessels in the brain, they can save brain tissue that would have otherwise died, enabling many to return to an independent life.

The study, published online Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine and conducted by researchers in the Netherlands, is being met with an outpouring of excitement. One reason the treatment worked, researchers suspect, is that doctors used a new type of snare to grab the clots. It is a stent, basically a small wire cage, on the end of a catheter that is inserted in the groin and threaded through an artery to the brain. When the tip of the catheter reaches the clot, the stent is opened and pushed into the clot. It snags the clot, allowing the doctor to withdraw the catheter and pull out the stent with the clot attached.

“This is a game changer,” said Dr. Ralph L. Sacco, chairman of neurology at the University of Miami’s Miller School of Medicine.

A stent, basically a small wire cage, on the end of a catheter is inserted in the groin and threaded through an artery to the brain. Credit Covidien

A stent, basically a small wire cage, on the end of a catheter is inserted in the groin and threaded through an artery to the brain. Credit Covidien

“A sea change,” said Dr. Joseph Broderick, director of the neuroscience institute at the University of Cincinnati.

About 630,000 Americans each year have strokes caused by clots blocking blood vessels in the brain. In about a third to half, the clot is in a large vessel, which has potentially devastating consequences. People with smaller clots are helped by the lifesaving drug tPA, which dissolves them. But for those with big clots, tPA often does not help. Until now, no other treatments had been shown to work.

The new study involved 500 stroke patients. Ninety percent got tPA. Half were randomly assigned to get a second treatment as well. A doctor would try to directly remove the clot from the patient’s brain. The study did not specify how the removal would happen. There are several methods, but the vast majority were treated with the new stent.

One in five patients who had tPA alone recovered enough to return to living independently. But one in three who also had their clot removed directly were able to take care of themselves after their stroke. And that, said Dr. Larry B. Goldstein, director of the Duke Stroke Center, is “a significant and meaningful improvement in what people are able to do.”

It has been a long road to this success, explained Dr. Walter J. Koroshetz, acting director of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. It began in the 1980s when researchers began testing intravenous tPA. In 1995, when the first large study was published demonstrating tPA’s effectiveness, stroke experts were jubilant. They were left, though, with the problem of helping people with large clots.

Companies began marketing various clot-snaring devices, but there were no studies showing they helped. Using them could be risky — some involved pushing wires through twisting blood vessels that often were damaged already from atherosclerosis, Dr. Koroshetz explained. “You could puncture an artery and if you do and get bleeding in the brain, you have a problem,” he said. Another problem was that sometimes fragments of a clot could break off and be swept deeper into the brain, causing new strokes.

The systems were also expensive. Giving a patient tPA cost about $11,100. Using one of the new devices could cost $23,000, Dr. Koroshetz said.

But some neurologists were enthusiastic. The Food and Drug Administration cleared the first device for clot removal in 2004, allowing it to be marketed. The clearance was granted because the agency considered the device to be equivalent to something already in use — devices used to snare pieces of wires or catheters that might break off in a blood vessel during a medical procedure.

That, other neurologists said, was not at all the same as going into the brain to grab a clot. “There was a lot of controversy,” Dr. Koroshetz said. But the devices quickly came into widespread use. It took time and experience for doctors to learn to use the devices, and not everyone had the necessary expertise.

Even so, said Dr. Diederik Dippel, professor of neurology at Erasmus University Medical Center and principal investigator for the new study, when his study was about to begin, people questioned why it was even needed. “People said why bother with a clinical trial. Just do it,” Dr. Dippel said.

The Dutch study began in 2010. In the meantime, several other large clinical trials testing clot removal were well underway, including one sponsored by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke and headed by Dr. Broderick. By 2012, with 650 out of the planned 1,000 patients enrolled, the American study was ended. “Because of futility,” Dr. Koroshetz said. It had become clear that, if anything, those randomized to have their clots directly removed were doing no better.

Two other clinical trials also ended without showing benefit. All too often, attempts to remove clots resulted in uncontrolled bleeding in the brain.

Gloom settled over the field. In the Netherlands, Dr. Dippel said, attitudes about the trial reversed. “Everyone said, ‘Why should we go on?’” Dr. Dippel said.

But the Dutch study happened to start at a time when there were a few key developments that made it possible to hope for success. There was new technology that allowed doctors to quickly assess whether a stroke patient had a large clot and, if so, where it was. In previous studies they tried to guess from a patient’s symptoms. And the stent system for snagging a clot seemed safer and easier to use than previous devices.

The stent system, said Dr. Dippel, “was clearly a better device than we were used to.”

Of course, said Dr. Goldstein, he would like to see the results confirmed with other studies. But, he and others say, that may already have happened. Two other studies like the Dutch one were just ended early because the results were so positive. The data will be presented in February at the International Stroke Conference in Nashville.

Now neurologists are increasingly confident that, at last, they have something in addition to tPA to offer patients.

“I think this is the real thing,” Dr. Koroshetz said.

— As I have written elsewhere and will keep repeating, in spite of all appearances, “you’re on your own.”
The isolation of being in nature, or lost in ICUs can lead to a very similar wisdom —


Another way to be and to think — Une autre manière d’être et de penser

Claudie Hunzinger - Photo Françoise Saur

Claudie Hunzinger – © Françoise Saur

Claudie Hunzinger est écrivain et artiste. Elle vit en Alsace dans les montagnes des Vosges depuis 1964.
Wikipédia (en Français)

ENGLISH TRANSLATION BELOW

Interview sur Hors-Champs (France Culture)

Question (Laure Adler): Une dissolution?
Réponse (Claudie Hunzinger): C’est quelque chose comme ça la solitude. Il y a quelque chose d’infiniment merveilleux qui peut vous attirer très loin, qui est le fait qu’on se quitte soi-même. Quand on est seul, on perd son identité. On se déploie dans tout ce qui vous entoure, on devient ce qui vous entoure.
On peut devenir la maison si on est à l’intérieur, on se dilate et on prend toute la place; c’est un peu une expérience très “Alice,”
Et si on est à l’extérieur, on devient absolument ce qu’on voit. On devient l’air, on devient les forêts, on devient l’herbe, et c’est un sentiment très puissant, très reposant aussi.
L’élément humain… on devient un élément étranger, et quand je quitte la montagne et que je me retrouve à Paris, il me semble que j’entre dans l’élément humain, et que l’élément humain est un élément étranger. Que je suis, que j’appartiens à la montagne, que j’appartiens aux bêtes, que j’appartiens aux plantes, et que je me rétrécie que je rentre en moi-même et que je suis en face de ce micro…


Question
(Laure Adler): Quand vous dites que la montagne vous appartient, elle vous appartient sensoriellement? Elle vous a capturé?
Réponse (Claudie Hunzinger): Sensoriellement. J’en fais partie. C’est quelque chose qu’on sent, c’st quelque chose qu’on remarque. C’est un bien–être.

Le désir doit rester une fenêtre ouverte sur la nuit, sur sa foule d’étoiles.” La Survivance (2102)


Les Promesses Tenues de Claude Hunzinger –  © Françoise Saur

Claudie Hunzinger is a writer/artist who has been living in the mountains of Alsace since 1964.

Question (Laure Adler): A form of dissolving?
Answer (Claudie Hunzinger):  It is something like that, solitude. There is something infinitely marvelous that can draw you forth very far in the sense that one leaves oneself behind. When we are alone, we lose our identity. We spread out into everything that surrounds us, we become what surrounds us.
We can become a house if we are indoors. We blow up and take all of the space; it is a bit like an “Alice experience.”
And if one is outside, one becomes absolutely what one sees. We become the air, we become the forests, one becomes the grass, and it is such a powerful feeling, very relaxing too.
The human element… we become a foreign element, and what I become when I leave the mountain and I find myself in Paris, it seems that I enter the human element, and that the human element is a foreign element. That I am, that I belong to the mountain, that I belong to the animals, that I belong to the animals, and that I shrink and re-enter inside myself when I face this microphone…

Question (Laure Adler): When you say that the mountains belongs to you, do you mean that you do on a sensory level? It has taken over?
Answer (Claudie Hunzinger):  On a sensory level. I belong to it. It is something one feels, something one notices. A well-being.
Desire must remain a window open onto the night, with its multitude of stars” La Survivance (2102)

Brother David Steindl-Rast, A Network of Grateful Living (ANG*L) and his many books!

Br. Steindl-Rast, against solidification:
The religions start from mysticism. There is no other way to start a religion. But, I compare this to a volcano that gushes forth …and then …the magma flows down the sides of the mountain and cools off. And when it reaches the bottom, it’s just rocks. You’d never guess that there was fire in it. So after a couple of hundred years, or two thousand years or more, what was once alive is dead rock. Doctrine becomes doctrinaire. Morals become moralistic. Ritual becomes ritualistic. What do we do with it? We have to push through this crust and go to the fire that’s within it. — During Link TV’s Lunch With Bokara 2005 episode The Monk and the Rabbi.

Someone who  had also a brain hemorrhage told me that to this day, twenty years later, one thing that remained with her was the exhaustion.
Sometimes it feels as if I want to sleep for weeks at a time, to hibernate…

The famous French/Belgian poet, Henri Michaux speaks here of exhaustion too.
I had always liked this poem but now I understand it more deeply.

Un homme paisible

Étendant les mains hors du lit, Plume fut étonné de ne pas rencontrer le mur. ” Tiens, pensa-t-il, les fourmis l’auront mangé… ” et il se rendormit.
Peu apres, sa femme l’attrapa et le secoua: “Regarde, dit-elle, fainéant! pendant que tu étais occupé à dormir on nous a volé notre maison.” En effet, un ciel intact s’étendait de tous côtés. “Bah, la chose est faite.” pensa-t-il.
Peu après, un bruit se fit entendre. C’était un train qui arrivait sur eux à toute allure. ” De l’air pressé qu’il a, pensa-t-il, il arrivera sûrement avant nous ” et il se rendormit.
Ensuite, le froid le réveilla. Il était tout trempé de sang. Quelques morceaux de sa femme gisaient près de lui. ” Avec le sang, pensa-t-il, surgissent toujours quantité de désagréments; si ce train pouvait n’être pas passé, j’en serais fort heureux. Mais puisqu’il est déjà passé… ” et il se rendormit.
– Voyons, disait le juge, comment expliquez-vous que votre femme se soit blessée au point qu’on l’ait trouvée partagée en huit morceaux, sans que vous, qui étiez à côté, ayez pu faire un geste pour l’en empêcher, sans même vous en être aperçu. Voilà le mystère. Toute l’affaire est là-dedans.
– Sur ce chemin, je ne peux pas l’aider, pensa Plume, et il se rendormit.
– L’exécution aura lieu demain. Accusé, avez-vous quelque chose à ajouter?
– Excusez-moi, dit-il, je n’ai pas suivi l’affaire. Et il se rendormit.

English Translation (by Marton)
A quiet man

Extending his hands out of bed, Plume was surprised not to meet the wall. “Well, he thought, the ants must have eaten it …” and he fell asleep again.
Shortly after, his wife grabbed him and shook him: “Look, she says, lazy you! while you were busy sleeping we were robbed of our house. “Indeed, an immaculate sky stretched on all sides. “Well, the thing is done.” He thought.
Soon after, a noise was heard. It was a train coming at them at full speed. “From its hurried look, he thought, it will surely arrive before we do” and again he fell asleep.
Then, the cold woke him up. He was soaked in blood. A few pieces of his wife were lying next to him. “With blood, he thought, there are always a great many problems; if this train could have not passed, I would be very happy. But since it has already passed … “and he went back to sleep.
– Well, said the judge, how do you explain that your wife injured herself to the point that she was found divided into eight pieces, without you, who were nearby, being able to make a gesture to prevent it, without you even having noticed it. That’s the mystery. Everything lies there.
– On that path, I cannot help him, thought Plume, and he fell back asleep.
– The execution will take place tomorrow. Accused, do you have something to add?
– Excuse me, he said, I have not followed the case. And he went back to sleep.

Référence. Henri Michaux, Un certain Plume, dans Plume précédé de Lointain intérieur, Paris, Gallimard, 1963, pp.139-140.


If you want more from Michaux, here are some of his night reports.