Catalog

As you may have already seen, or surmised, there's no particular plot in this film, no particular rules that must be followed, and no particular end. That doesn't mean necessarily absence of a kind of order, a certain unfolding, structure, rhythm. But the idea of catalog, unlike say something with a story line or an instructional arrow, seems to be that there's not much lost if you just happen to open it sort of midway through: you may go back or forth from there, like a catalog from a painting exhibition, you see a picture pictured, then there's another one, and maybe you go to the beginning and see that this guy was actually born in... Or something like that, some picture with a movement that may take you in a certain direction, some movements that you're not supposed to copy, some movements that move you, move you to see something that you maybe hadn't noticed, in your situation, your own set of movements.

In other words, facing a catalog of your own movements, no end.

Inspired by the Way of the Ball here means a couple of different things. First it addresses an absence of sorts: the ball itself not being that present, that visible. You go to the wall, you're before the wall, before some wall, facing some situation that is at the same time that very situation and a prelude to another situation, linked to it. Here we're saying that we know we'll get to the ball, but before that we'll take a good look at the situation without the ball, but in the sense that it's not missing.

Secondly, this being inspired by the Way of the Ball means specifically the way of the Ball, rather than some other way or ways, the Way of Tao, the ways of winning, the ways of Tai Chi, of the Martial Arts, of pentathlon, decathlon and so on. Of course we're not trying to say there's anything wrong with these, we're just trying to, if we can, stay with that inspiration, of the ball. To see if staying there would show up in any particular way.

For instance, while we were making the film, and doing some of the stick stuff, it would happen that people would come up and take a look, and they would nicely articulate their interest and share with us how they were also doing this kind of thing. And they would show us what they were doing, borrow the stick and show us. And they would point the stick at some imagined figure in front of them, it seemed, something or someone facing them, and they would relate their stickwork to that absence facing them.

And it was easily seen that they were seldom, if ever, leaving their torsos unprotected, as it were. Whether they looked like taking stabs at someone in front of them or retreating into some seemingly more defensive posture: the torso remained fairly guarded, unexposed.

As it probably should be. But here, in what we were trying to do, stay with the ways of the ball, we didn't need that kind of protection. We weren't facing that kind of attack, we weren't defending our torsos. We were trying to see what a catalog of movements would look like that opened up to the ball, a both more general and specific set of movements and rotations that took its challenges from that specific ground. Noticing the differences, not negating other grounds.

(Obviously, there's no denying that these approaches are easily stacked one upon the other, artially martially arranged in a second: take a ball, add an enemy or two, pull out your killer instincts, serve 'em up, it's another glorious war).

Dedicated to Gil de Kermadec refers to Gil de Kermadec of Paris, France, precious old friend (we met in the late 1940s, at Stade Roland Garros, where the French Championships take place), who at Roland Garros directed a long list of technical films-cum-portraits (of players like Borg, Evert, Connors, Navratilova, McEnroe): a constant inspiration; who over many years wrote a technical column in the monthly journal Tennis de France, using his own footage and photography, a constant source of study; who made a book of photography on the (Spanish) corrida, giving early instruction; who wrote a play for the theater at our house in Copenhagen; who was a doubles partner at Wimbledon and other places; who was in charge of the 1988 film La Balle Au Mur, mentioned above as The Ball And The Wall, its English version; whose wife Francoise visited Seattle with him during the shooting of the present film, but unexpectedly and sadly did not live much longer.

The Tradition of Eadweard Muybridge also leads us towards France and Paris, at least in one way of speaking. Here's how Muybridge, born Edward James Muggeridge 1830 in Kingston upon Thames (and sailing twenty-one years later to America: to 'make a name for himself'), or to be precise, here's how his work is seen many years later, for instance by the French scientist Etienne-Jules Marey, writing to the Editor of La Nature in December of 1878 (quoted by Muybridge curator Paul Hill in his book Eadweard Muybridge, published by Phaidon Press, London-New York 2001, p. 3): "The magic of Muybridge's work has never faded. There is a sense of the pioneer spirit about it, a voyage of discovery that awakens something in all of us. When we look at a Muybridge motion photograph for the first time, we can be forgiven for thinking that we have seen it somewhere before. Muybridge's photographs are so imbedded in our minds that they have become symbolic of Western culture."

Then we might move into the following century, still following Western culture, the tradition, its lineages, coming to Duchamp. There's a book called Dialogues With Marcel Duchamp (New York 1987: Da Capo Press), where Pierre Cabanne ask Duchamp: "Didn't films influence 'Nude Descending a Staircase'?" And Duchamp answers: "Yes, of course. That thing of Marey..." And Cabanne says: "Chronophotography." And Duchamp says: "Yes. In one of Marey's books, I saw an illustration of how he indicates people who fence, or horses galloping, with a system of dots delineating the different movements. That's how he explained the idea of elementary parallelism. As a formula it seems very pretentious but it's amusing." And Duchamp continues: "That's what gave me the idea for the execution of the 'Nude Descending a Staircase'. I used this method a little in the sketch, but especially in the final form of the picture. That must have happened between December and January 1912."

And again, in a book by Juan Antonio Ramirez on Duchamp, with the nice subtitle love and death, even (Reaktion Books, London 1998), Ramirez writes on p. 257: "A row broke out, however, when he presented the second version of Nude Descending a Staircase (completed between December 1911 and January 1912) to the Salon des Independents in February 1912. ... Gleizes and the other orthodox Cubists, using his older brothers as emissaries, let Marcel know of their displeasure at his painting, so he withdrew it from the exhibition. It was a fruitful disappointment, as Duchamp decided from that point on not to have anything to do with groups or schools of artists, but to follow a solitary, personal road. There is more than ample evidence that the Nude was inspired by Marey's chronophotography and the deconstruction of movement achieved by Eadweard Muybridge."