On Sisyphus Work and Other Visual Essays

“Likewise and during every day of an unillustrious life, time carries us. But a moment always comes when we have to carry it. We live on the future: “tomorrow,” “later on,” “when you have made your way,” “you will understand when you are old enough.” Such irrelevancies are wonderful, for, after all, it’s a matter of dying. Yet a day comes when a man notices or says that he is sixty. Thus he asserts his (pased) youth. But simultaneously he situates himself in relation to time. He takes his place in it. He admits that he stands at a certain point on a curve that he acknowledges having to travel to its end. He belongs to time, and by the horror that seizes him, he recognizes his worst enemy. Tomorrow, he was longing for tomorrow, whereas everything in him ought to reject it….There is no longer a single idea explaining everything, but an infinite number of essences giving a meaning to an infinite number of objects. The world comes to a stop, but also lights up…"

Having again collected fragments of audio-visual moments and assembled them into a chronological vine-compilation, Sam Renseiw, in an existential(ist) Sisyphusian mood, paraphrases Albert Camus for this blogpost entry… continuing the completely futile re-trospective body of work(s) in a world of 1:1 real-image live streamings… Enjoy a moment of digital nostalgia by activating the footage. [Vine compilation # 12, 473MB, 09'44'', Quicktiome/mov > vimeo ]  

On voodling and the beach man's sandy burden

“Hutte, for instance, used to quote the case of a fellow he called "the beach man." This man had spent forty years of his life on beaches or by the sides of swimming pools, chatting pleasantly with summer visitors and rich idlers. He is to be seen, in his bathing costume, in the corners and backgrounds of thousands of holiday snaps, among groups of happy people, but no one knew his name and why he was there. And no one noticed when one day he vanished from the photographs. I did not dare tell Hutte, but I felt that "the beach man" was myself. Though it would not have surprised him if I had confessed it. Hutte was always saying that, in the end, we were all "beach men" and that "the sand" - I am quoting his own words - "keeps the traces of our footsteps only a few moments.”

Further compiling snipnets of quotidian (obsessive-compulsively, but with a certain research attidude ) Sam Renseiw gathers the latests (short-cut)imagery into the long awaited late-summer / fall vine compilation, feeling like an unspecified "beach man", while paraphrasing Patrick Modiano… Enjoy the extended compression by cliking here or on the image above. (Vinecompilation # 7, 19'29'' 482MG, Quicktime/mov)

On Vining Ad Herennium manner

"Now nature herself teaches us what we should do. When we see in every day life things that are petty, ordinary, and banal, we generally fail to remember them, because the mind is not being stirred by anything novel or marvellous. But if we see or hear something exceptionally base, dishonourable, unusual, great, unbelievable, or ridiculous, that we are likely to remember for a long time. Accordingly, things immediate to our eye or ear we commonly forget; incidents of our childhood we often remember best. Nor could this be so for any other reason than that ordinary things easily slip from the memory while the striking and the novel stay longer in the mind. A sunrise, the sun's course, a sunset are marvellous to no one because they occur daily.

We ought, then, to set up Vines of a kind that can adhere longest in memory. And we shall do so i f we establish similitudes as striking as possible; if we set up images that are not many or vague but active (imagines agentes); if we assign to them exceptional beauty or singular ugliness; if we ornament some of them, as with crowns or purple cloaks, so that the similitude may be more distinct to us; or if we somehow disfigure them, as by introducing one stained with blood or soiled with mud or smeared with red paint, so that its form is more striking, or by assigning certain comic effects to our images, for that, too, will ensure our remembering them more readily. The things we easily remember when they are real we likewise remember without difficulty when they are figments. But this will be essential-again and again to run over rapidly in the mind all the original places in order to refresh the images."

Paraphrasing a passage from Ad Herennium, Sam Renseiw compiled an ever growing amount of recent Vines into a nearly half-hour Voodle chronological pêle-mêle of exeptional beauty (also inserted, shorter moments of singular ugliness) for subsequent scrutiny and visual aide-memoire. Enjoy. (Vinecompilation # 6, 24'10'', 601MB, Quicktime/mov, Vimeo)