Pictures (A Sketch)

WHAT I REALLY WANT TO SAY HERE IS THAT THERE ARE NO PICTURES, AND THAT THIS IS FAMILYKER TRAP, BUT READ ON PLEASE.

1. No picture, whether moving or still, whether private or shown, is of any person, place or
thing. Every picture is (not is of) combined persons, places, and things, or a combined
person, place and thing.
2. Every picture, whether moving or still, is waiting to do be made, often waiting forever.
There are no depictions, only pictures.
3. Some might say a picture contains secrets, but the secret is a misleading and confusing
concept; one we would probably better do better without it. There are no clearly definable
things called secrets that are not also places and persons, and few or none that cannot better
be called pictures. Therefore, there are no things alone called secrets, only persons, places
and things combined called pictures.
4. Some pictures lead to the kind of transition that has been referred to as human sacrifice.
Not only are there no pictures of human sacrifice, there are no pictures of humans, or
sacrifice. Take any picture of Jesus on the cross. It is not a picture of a human sacrifice. It is
Jesus and it is sacrifice. There is no real getting around this.
5. If a picture “is me,” (as we say) then what of “my body?” Clearly, my body (as we say) “is
me” in the same sense that a picture is me. As a person, place and thing (for my body can be
nothing else) my body (including clothing, accessories and cosmetics) changes constantly,
and cannot truly be fixed. There are no pictures of my body, no or me. There are only
pictures that are me.
6. Note here too that “my fingerprints” and “my DNA” are “my body.” They are not of my
body (a least not in the sense this “of” is used today).
7. Note also that the disassociation between myself and my body in states like delirium,
intoxication or withdrawal are not exceptions but rather glimpses of a rule that should not be
acknowledged. This kind of disassociation leads to the kind of transition called human
sacrifice. One seems to have a kind of picture of one’s body, but this is not the case. There are
no pictures of bodies, rather just bodies that are the combined person-place-things we call
pictures.
8. Do I change or is it the picture that changes? Who can truly say?
9. Nearly all pictures by Gabriel Embeha have an assigned number. In each of these
numbered works the level of specificity is dependent on understanding. This understood level
of specificity is a level for sufficient play, allowing humans to get on, get along, help, love,
hurt, threaten, or otherwise put themselves and others in play.
10. For example, consider the moving picture made of footage from the first minutes of
Embeha’s Masks in the Sun. This moving picture can be called “g1.3g1.17g1.5g2.15g1.32” or
“Pinka Jean “John” Birken Jean Birken’s House.” Two more persons, places, things are
involved g1.3g1.1g2.15g1.32.
11. The numbers have to do with Embeha. Each of these persons, places, and
things are about Embeha. They have to do with his artistic work and thinking that is a part of
the artwork or writing he does. Each is an abbreviation, as many persons, places and things
are not yet numbered. The numbering is most likely limitless. Storytelling and art are in
certain senses autobiographical, and art history is often simultaneously a kind of biographical
research and writing, as well as (oddly enough) a critique of autobiographies. Being so makes
art history a kind of anthropology and socio-psycho-analysis that has the state and humanity
as its main subject of inquiry.
12. Embeha’s work is not in conversation with scholars, but with the state, with humanity.
One hope within in it all is to make his work a sacrifice to storytelling, to give it up to others.
These stories can become the stories of persons, places, and things other than Gabriel
Embeha. True stories belong to the person telling or retelling them, and all the rest is money-
making and brand protection.
13. Masks in the Sun is quite unusual for a two-and-a-half-hour film, in that it was
conceptualized, written, cast, directed, sound engineered, light engineered, photographed
and edited by one person.)
14. What, whom, or where is a moving picture, such as Masks in the Sun “a picture of?”
15. There are no true pictures of anything, anyone, anywhere. A picture is (not is of) a
person, place, or thing (all combined). Pictures are one before the state (courts, police, or what
have you). A picture is not simply a thing, alone, nor is it “of” this or that person, place, or
thing alone.
16. One of the greatest depicting behaviors we each engage in (dreaming) demonstrates this
to be true. In dreaming persons, places and things do not have the fixity (via telling or
otherwise depicting) we are compelled to give them in waking life (and we forget dream
persons, places, and things too).
17. Dream and dreamlike persons, places and things are the rule and not the exception. One
of the biggest questions about humanity yet to be answered is not why we dream, but why we
sleep and dream so relatively little.
18. A picture does not truly fix the combined person, place and thing “in it,” yet there are
elements in play (called familykers) that a fixing. While we say a picture is “of” a person,
place, and thing, a picture is always of all three at once, and therefore of nothing.
19. In fact, depictions are never of a person, place, or thing as they always were and will be
either. One can picture persons one may not have seen for decades, although they may now
be dead, or look very different, hard for one to recognize face-to-face.
20. If the person is dead, is his or her picture “a picture of” a dead person? No.
21. Even if a camera were placed in a buried casket, the picture of the person, place and thing
in it would not “be a picture of” “the dead person.” Even the grave does not really fix us.
22. One can draw, paint, imagine, impersonate, dream, or otherwise depict what would be
called non-existent, imaginary or fictional persons, places, or things. But, as in dreams (or
dementia), is it correct to say these persons, places and things do not exist, and so on? Are
they not composites or modifications, juxtapositions of pictures, associated with “real
persons, places, and things?”
23. These persons, places and things are actually persons, places and things as the rule, rather
than as the exception.
24. When a person with dementia looks at you in the odd, composite, indeterminate, unfixed
and so-deemed incorrect way they do, are they dealing with you? Yes.
25. When a stranger looks at you as someone oddly familiar, are they dealing with you? Yes.
26. When someone looks at you in a so-deemed enthralled, lustful, pitying, amused, racist,
sexist, ageist, or envious way are they dealing with you? Yes.
27. When someone dreams of me, or is “thinking about” me, are they dealing with me? How
can I honestly say they are not?
28. So, there are no true, fixed persons, places, or things (or pictures) to be “pictures of.”
Each would-be true person, place, or thing is but a still or moving picture (or sound pattern),
and this still or moving picture, or sound pattern, is itself a person, place and thing.
29. We do not love, avoid, bid, get on with, or fight with true others. Without the familykers
compelling us to admit to and be treated as true persons (i.e., identified, located, fixed,
picture-persons), and without most of our collectively willing consent to be so, and without
being such persons, we need to be to avoid the violence of the state (its algorithmic logistics,
mathematics, etc.), we are the hugging, playing, sleeping, dreaming, fighting, getting along,
apes we have always been.
30. Returning to Masks in the Sun, we can ask again “What, whom, or where is a moving
picture, such as this, “a picture of?””
31. One could answer this in terms of the story of the film, a version of Charles Dickens’ A
Christmas Carol, yet, this is also a part of the story, screenplay, film Masks in the Sun in
which an old man with dementia named Gene Carter is being financially exploited. Yet
again, it is of a private investigator and actor Jean Birken who in this short film is seen acting
along with a woman named Pam Welles, who is also likely to be known elsewhere in
Embeha’s work as someone else. Beyond this, it is also a series of persons, places and things
written, being directed, and edited by a man named Doug Walters. Finally, but not in
conclusion, are pictures of Berlin’s Landwehrkanal related a figure who was killed and
dumped into it many years ago.
32. It is important here to realize that while persons Embeha is calling Jean, Pam and other
names are acting, Jean, Pam and the others are not the characters they are playing. There is a
list of these actors, all local actors and not celebrities, whose names scroll at the end of the
film Masks in the Sun.
33. In Masks in the Sun we are witnessing play, and nothing more.
34. In Masks in the Sun the characters being played by Pam, Jean and others (like those
named Mike Brannigan, Lisa Brannigan, Gene Carter, Nick Carter, Allison Carter, Tammy
Carter, and Brian Weller) are nothing—they are nowhere, nobody, basically meaningless;
they cannot be kissed, or killed, or lied to, or flattered, or any such thing. The only story is
that of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol mixed with the screenplay and its filming, and
not any stories of “the actors themselves.” This story is Embeha’s own, of the film as a
written, cast, directed, photographed, and edited work of art, anthropological thinking, and
socio-psycho-analysis. This is one way to explain what makes it unnerving for some. Some
want the story to be (almost legally, ethically, and even patriotically) real, to be involving
local Americans, and they become lost and anxious in not being able to say who, what, where
and why people are who, what, where and why they are. Within the dark theater they begin to
become figuratively demented and want to flee back into the real America, the real human
world.
35. One could say “This is a fun, artistic way of looking at pictures, but it is different in
reality, or everyday life.” But this would be wrong. Present, living stories somehow relying
on pictures, whether visible by others or only by ourselves, whether told or left untold, are all
we (as humans, and state actors) actually possess. In fact, our very defense of our own dignity
may consist of little more.
36. Embeha used to reject mental images as pictures. His idea was that they were only
pictures metaphorically. Now he is willing to turn it around and say mental images are not
simply metaphorical but images period, pictures period. There should be no difference
between the two.
37. Are there “real people” in Masks in the Sun? One could say there are unknown actors, and
that these are the real people but, to a certain extent, the persons acting in Masks in the Sun
are characters, in that their personal lives are unknown. They are not celebrated persons and
thus, do not continually call for a suspension of disbelief when we see them on screen acting
as if they are fathers, mothers, sons, lovers, postal clerks and so on.
38. In the end, the “reality” of the persons we see in Masks in the Sun has, once again, more
to do with Embeha’s artistic work and thinking. These persons, as far as viewers of the film
are concerned, are autobiographical. The history of the film is art history, a kind of
biographical research and writing, as well as a critique of autobiographies. To discuss or
critique the film is a kind of anthropology and socio-psycho-analysis (whose true focus is on
the state).
39. Is biography actually avoidable in art history? History and anthropology have shown to fit
well together. My anthropology and take on pictures you are reading is art-driven. It does not
stem from historical, social or cultural critique and their appropriation of philosophy and
literary theory.
40. To be clear, Embeha does not pretend to know any truths about any of the actors in his
film. The numbers assigned to their characters are numbers assigned to his own artistic work
and his own thinking, to a combined who, what and where “he was” as he was writing,
casting, directing, photographing, and editing the film. He is trying to relate as much as he
knows about this via the anthropology, socio-psycho-analysis and philosophical rumination
employed in knowing why he himself did or do this or that. You have the right to your own
take, your own numbers, on this as well.