October 27, 2021

a dynamic square

 



There came a day when I both rose to the highest heights to which a person can hope to ascend and descended to the lowest depths out of which a person emerges. 

On one and the same sunny day in Zurich. 

In the morning I flew with the now deceased Mittelholzer over the snowy whiteness of the Alps. 

In the afternoon we piled in to the no less crystalline whiteness of one of the best women's clinics in Switzerland.

In the morning, we'd been amusing ourselves.

In the afternoon, we 'earned back' that opportunity we had taken to amuse ourselves. 

In the Zurich clinic, we filmed a kaiserschnitt, a caesarean section, for a semi-scientific picture, which was our source of sustenance during the first third of our international journey.

Here, for the first time, I observed as a little living being died in my hands on a napkin over the course of ten minutes or so after its premature appearance in the world. 

This stage of life interested me very much. 

I was very much interested by this opportunity to discern the degree of complexity with which such a small being moves at this phase of development, a being who has not yet come to know the differentiation of movements. 

I needed to see this, in order to clarify the fundamental constant of expressive movement.


Sergei M. Eisenstein

Metod | Methode, vol. 1, 1942-43

trans. Dietmar Hochmuth, Anne Nesbet


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