To forget. Of air.

Sexuate Subjects, UCL, London, UK - December 2010 

‘The image makes palpable a unity in which manifold different elements are contiguous and reach over into each other.’
– Andrei Tarkovsky

Comprising film clips shot on location at the Santa Catarina pool in Bagno Vignoni, Italy, ‘To Forget. Of Air.’ documents the atmospheric conditions of this site: the original location for the penultimate scene of Andrei Tarkovsky's film Nostalghia (1983). Through digital video, this piece observes the marking of temporal boundaries as well as the atmospheric conditions of the original location. Drawing attention to the material and symbolic qualities of the film image as it relates to the place ‘behind’ the scene as well as to the place in front of the screen, 'To forget. Of Air.' foregrounds the materiality of mediation itself. The work was screened at the conference 'Sexuate Subjects: Politics, Poetics, Ethics' as a large-scale projection alongside a small-screen clip of the original scene. Footage from ‘To Forget. Of Air.' was used in the final cut of the video work Gorchakov's Wish.

See index below for other works relating to 'To forget. Of air.' including:

• Gorchakov's Wish
• Alba Lunedì’
• Fall (An Allegory)
• Kino Haiku
• Parrhesia
• Immolation Triptych

Please see also our Publications page for information on ‘Time, Place and Empathy: The Poetics and Phenomenology of Andrei Tarkovsky's Film Image’ (Visual Studies, Volume 28:1; p. 1-16). Informed by this constellation of works, this essay draws together our research into Tarkovsky’s theory and practice of the film image.