Judith Cahen
ADN, Talmudic and Burlesque
by Mathieu Lindon
Anne Buridan is the character Judith Cahen embodies in her own films, an obvious reference to the animal supposedly invented by one of William of Ockham’s French disciples. In the fourth century, Jean Buridan is said to have taught the story of a terribly hungry and thirsty donkey who, set at the same distance from a pail of water and a bale of hay, does not know which to have first and hesitates so long that he eventually dies. One easily understands what appealed to Judith Cahen in this story: the distance issue (after all, isn’t she always questioning herself in relation to her “real” life and art life?), the correlated issue of free will and the idea of a donkey philosophizing in spite of itself, philosophy usually being considered a domain for the clever rather than the stupid. Judith Cahen’s films can all be understood as a satire of intelligence (as opposed to ingenuity). Indeed, they all deal with how hard it proves to make profit of it in one’s own life. In her works, intelligence always seems to drag stupidity behind it and fiction appears as the only means to further one’s knowledge of both simultaneously. Judith Cahen chose the absurdity of the Buridan donkey’s position as a starting point for her inquiry, which aims not at erasing but rather at expounding upon this senselessness. One can see her films as fictitious investigations revolving around this central question, the answer to which would have allowed us to help the donkey: did this animal who failed to choose between hay and water die of hunger or thirst?
ADN is as burlesque as la Croisade d’Anne Buridan (Anne Buridan’s Crusade) and La révolution sexuelle n’a pas eu lieu (The Sexual Revolution Did Not Take Place), but in a different way. One cannot interpret the “character” of David Nebreda as being of a kind with a Harold Lloyd or Buster Keaton creation, like Anne Buridan wishes. But the photographer is not the hero of the movie; as always, Anne Buridan is. The Spanish artist published a collection of self-portraits showing his body devastated, mutilated and self-ravaged by behaviors and utensils far sharper than his camera lens. Judith Cahen shows this book to several persons while she films them and asks them questions in order to see how they respond. The whole process is extremely serious and the topic does not necessarily make one feel like bursting into laughter. Yet it is precisely where the humoristic dimension - the burlesque - lies. The filmmaker is not committing herself to a documentary about David Nebreda’s work but to a fiction film starring her wavering heroine, Anne Buridan. One can spot a burlesque touch in the obvious inadequacy between the gentle and singing tone of Judith Cahen’s protagonist and the clearly darker aspect of the Spanish photographer. One would then be mistaken. More burlesque even than inadequacy is adequacy. The filmmaker deeply recognized herself if not in the pictures, at least in the work of David Nebreda. Finding oneself in and identifying with other people’s self-portraits always verges on the absurd, all the more so when this other person has transformed his body to such extremes (a deprecation with which Judith Cahen has not complied in the least, as is awkwardly shown by a few nude images inserted into the film). When offering his body to his viewers, the photographer always runs the risk of having it grasped. And so it has been. The filmmaker appropriates David Nebreda’s body the way he, himself, has presented it. Complaining about it would be improper since the photographer generously decided to make not his life, but his body (and his soul) into art.
What are friends for if not to offer one the chance to be open or ridiculous without judgment? Nietzsche claims that defenders of truth are not most scarce when truth is dangerous, but when it is boring. Maybe truth also lacks support when it takes on a playful, burlesque, dizzy dimension. The viewer doesn’t make distinctions between actors in Judith Cahen’s movies working with a custom-made text written just for them (like in Anne Buridan’s Crusade and The Sexual Revolution Did Not Take Place) or a complete improvisation over which they have control (like in ADN). This does not really matter to the viewer because these movies intend simply to present the language; the arguments and feelings expressed here get swallowed up by fiction anyway because their aim is to tell the truth, an aim put in perspective by the saying of Jacques Lacan quoted at the beginning of ADN : “I always speak the truth. Not the whole truth, because there’s no way to say it all. Saying the whole truth is materially impossible: words fail. Yet it’s through this very impossibility that the truth touches the real.” Judith Cahen has no desire to tell the truth, but to show it, with hopes that this way it will take on a concrete appearance that she will then be in a position to grasp. Words are but actors. It’s always the same old story with the truth: it fumbles everywhere with its greasy fingers and ends up contaminating reality itself. When the outrageousness comes from a friend’s mouth it is spared critical judgment. One cannot get mad at friends when they reveal a burlesque part of themselves, since we chose them for that very reason, and friends cannot get mad at us either since this absurdity is not the filmmaker’s purpose but rather a stage to go through with maximum neutrality. Paradoxically enough, affection can be useful at this point (one can predict what will happen when an artist seeks to illustrate designated opponents as objects of ridicule; as far as satire is concerned, such a behavior is pointless). Judith Cahen’s films seem to be mere sketches led in a new direction by each new character, like a handiwork set a hundred times on the loom. The filmmaker ceaselessly endeavors to grasp a fragmentary, intermediary truth, some part of the truth, while her imagination shows it to her as a whole and absolute notion. She is aware that her quest has a burlesque dimension and this very burlesque gives meaning and truthfulness to it. She quotes Lacan’s words with hopes to refute them, just as when in love, no matter how hard someone might try to explain to her that a fusional relationship is a myth and that there are always two persons involved in a love relationship, she would still be convinced that there cannot be love outside the frame of this totally consumed fusion. Her idealistic beliefs inspire Judith Cahen to make burlesque movies. Ridiculousness is not lethal. In fact, it is what breathes life into things and fuels the artist.
Burlesque cinema is a metaphysical variety, just like the Theater of the Absurd was. David Nebreda does not appear in ADN, only his work does. His talent does not lie in his growing thinner and torturing himself beyond reason but in his photographing self-portraits, which is totally independent. Granted, he does not produce Raw Art but he confronts his images’ viewers with a very raw type of truth, thus making them into some kind of raw viewers. Facing Judith Cahen’s camera, they wonder: is this art or symptom? Is it an imposture or a masterpiece? Is it all of these? The filmmaker must recognize herself in the destabilization of the artistic field she identifies with this inconsistency, this ungraspable. Judith Cahen makes intellectual adventure movies, and she perceived in David Nebreda’s work a similar irony - that there is no need to self-mutilate in a visible way to look like the Spanish photographer. David Nebreda’s talent does not lie in his withstanding physical pain, but in his ability to push his mental pain to the extreme. He does not appear in ADN, and yet, through his pictures he does appear in the purest way. It would be pointless to see him moving or to hear him talking when the physical and mental world of his work fills up the screen. He is the only character. The others – except for Anne Buridan – are but exegetes. He is shot in a Christ-like posture: one follows his teachings without being able to see or touch him. Is this – what he shows – his blood, his body, his soul? Can Judith Cahen claim to be his blood sister by displaying her immaculate body next to David Nebreda’s? ADN is a Talmudic work (though Talmudists are not fond of the Christ), a peculiar mystical text resembling a Gospel written exclusively for the Jews. Metaphysics becomes comical.
Will Anne Buridan, one day, die of hunger or thirst? The animal invented by the medieval philosopher is – according to French writer Jean-Yves Jouannais then echoed by Spanish writer Enrique Vila-Matas – an “artist without an oeuvre”. How can we choose between oeuvre and life? Which touchstones should we rely on? Which of the two is the deadliest? Must Judith Cahen get closer to or further from David Nebreda? Must she identify with him to become him, or to get rid of him? How can we choose between two necessities? Which one should we postpone, thus challenging its necessity? The ass of Buridan does not die out of indecision but because he is impartial, because he is righteous. But righteousness does not belong to this world, where it is only seen as burlesque. Will Anne Buridan, one day, die in her body or her soul, in words or in images? Judith Cahen strives to wear out her character, to exorcise her using exhaustion. But Anne Buridan untiringly resists. She eats and drinks. She spends freely. In The Sexual Revolution Did Not Take Place, she tries, out of lack of money, to strike a deal with her psychoanalyst: she wants to trade appointments for profit-sharing in the outcome of Anne’s “machine.” The analyst refuses, stating that psychoanalysis and the “machine” have no connection whatsoever (whereas money can become anything - a universal chameleon). They have as little in common as Judith Cahen and David Nebreda’s pictures, so little, and yet so much at the same time.
Anne Buridan is the character Judith Cahen embodies in her own films, an obvious reference to the animal supposedly invented by one of William of Ockham’s French disciples. In the fourth century, Jean Buridan is said to have taught the story of a terribly hungry and thirsty donkey who, set at the same distance from a pail of water and a bale of hay, does not know which to have first and hesitates so long that he eventually dies. One easily understands what appealed to Judith Cahen in this story: the distance issue (after all, isn’t she always questioning herself in relation to her “real” life and art life?), the correlated issue of free will and the idea of a donkey philosophizing in spite of itself, philosophy usually being considered a domain for the clever rather than the stupid. Judith Cahen’s films can all be understood as a satire of intelligence (as opposed to ingenuity). Indeed, they all deal with how hard it proves to make profit of it in one’s own life. In her works, intelligence always seems to drag stupidity behind it and fiction appears as the only means to further one’s knowledge of both simultaneously. Judith Cahen chose the absurdity of the Buridan donkey’s position as a starting point for her inquiry, which aims not at erasing but rather at expounding upon this senselessness. One can see her films as fictitious investigations revolving around this central question, the answer to which would have allowed us to help the donkey: did this animal who failed to choose between hay and water die of hunger or thirst?
ADN is as burlesque as la Croisade d’Anne Buridan (Anne Buridan’s Crusade) and La révolution sexuelle n’a pas eu lieu (The Sexual Revolution Did Not Take Place), but in a different way. One cannot interpret the “character” of David Nebreda as being of a kind with a Harold Lloyd or Buster Keaton creation, like Anne Buridan wishes. But the photographer is not the hero of the movie; as always, Anne Buridan is. The Spanish artist published a collection of self-portraits showing his body devastated, mutilated and self-ravaged by behaviors and utensils far sharper than his camera lens. Judith Cahen shows this book to several persons while she films them and asks them questions in order to see how they respond. The whole process is extremely serious and the topic does not necessarily make one feel like bursting into laughter. Yet it is precisely where the humoristic dimension - the burlesque - lies. The filmmaker is not committing herself to a documentary about David Nebreda’s work but to a fiction film starring her wavering heroine, Anne Buridan. One can spot a burlesque touch in the obvious inadequacy between the gentle and singing tone of Judith Cahen’s protagonist and the clearly darker aspect of the Spanish photographer. One would then be mistaken. More burlesque even than inadequacy is adequacy. The filmmaker deeply recognized herself if not in the pictures, at least in the work of David Nebreda. Finding oneself in and identifying with other people’s self-portraits always verges on the absurd, all the more so when this other person has transformed his body to such extremes (a deprecation with which Judith Cahen has not complied in the least, as is awkwardly shown by a few nude images inserted into the film). When offering his body to his viewers, the photographer always runs the risk of having it grasped. And so it has been. The filmmaker appropriates David Nebreda’s body the way he, himself, has presented it. Complaining about it would be improper since the photographer generously decided to make not his life, but his body (and his soul) into art.
What are friends for if not to offer one the chance to be open or ridiculous without judgment? Nietzsche claims that defenders of truth are not most scarce when truth is dangerous, but when it is boring. Maybe truth also lacks support when it takes on a playful, burlesque, dizzy dimension. The viewer doesn’t make distinctions between actors in Judith Cahen’s movies working with a custom-made text written just for them (like in Anne Buridan’s Crusade and The Sexual Revolution Did Not Take Place) or a complete improvisation over which they have control (like in ADN). This does not really matter to the viewer because these movies intend simply to present the language; the arguments and feelings expressed here get swallowed up by fiction anyway because their aim is to tell the truth, an aim put in perspective by the saying of Jacques Lacan quoted at the beginning of ADN : “I always speak the truth. Not the whole truth, because there’s no way to say it all. Saying the whole truth is materially impossible: words fail. Yet it’s through this very impossibility that the truth touches the real.” Judith Cahen has no desire to tell the truth, but to show it, with hopes that this way it will take on a concrete appearance that she will then be in a position to grasp. Words are but actors. It’s always the same old story with the truth: it fumbles everywhere with its greasy fingers and ends up contaminating reality itself. When the outrageousness comes from a friend’s mouth it is spared critical judgment. One cannot get mad at friends when they reveal a burlesque part of themselves, since we chose them for that very reason, and friends cannot get mad at us either since this absurdity is not the filmmaker’s purpose but rather a stage to go through with maximum neutrality. Paradoxically enough, affection can be useful at this point (one can predict what will happen when an artist seeks to illustrate designated opponents as objects of ridicule; as far as satire is concerned, such a behavior is pointless). Judith Cahen’s films seem to be mere sketches led in a new direction by each new character, like a handiwork set a hundred times on the loom. The filmmaker ceaselessly endeavors to grasp a fragmentary, intermediary truth, some part of the truth, while her imagination shows it to her as a whole and absolute notion. She is aware that her quest has a burlesque dimension and this very burlesque gives meaning and truthfulness to it. She quotes Lacan’s words with hopes to refute them, just as when in love, no matter how hard someone might try to explain to her that a fusional relationship is a myth and that there are always two persons involved in a love relationship, she would still be convinced that there cannot be love outside the frame of this totally consumed fusion. Her idealistic beliefs inspire Judith Cahen to make burlesque movies. Ridiculousness is not lethal. In fact, it is what breathes life into things and fuels the artist.
Burlesque cinema is a metaphysical variety, just like the Theater of the Absurd was. David Nebreda does not appear in ADN, only his work does. His talent does not lie in his growing thinner and torturing himself beyond reason but in his photographing self-portraits, which is totally independent. Granted, he does not produce Raw Art but he confronts his images’ viewers with a very raw type of truth, thus making them into some kind of raw viewers. Facing Judith Cahen’s camera, they wonder: is this art or symptom? Is it an imposture or a masterpiece? Is it all of these? The filmmaker must recognize herself in the destabilization of the artistic field she identifies with this inconsistency, this ungraspable. Judith Cahen makes intellectual adventure movies, and she perceived in David Nebreda’s work a similar irony - that there is no need to self-mutilate in a visible way to look like the Spanish photographer. David Nebreda’s talent does not lie in his withstanding physical pain, but in his ability to push his mental pain to the extreme. He does not appear in ADN, and yet, through his pictures he does appear in the purest way. It would be pointless to see him moving or to hear him talking when the physical and mental world of his work fills up the screen. He is the only character. The others – except for Anne Buridan – are but exegetes. He is shot in a Christ-like posture: one follows his teachings without being able to see or touch him. Is this – what he shows – his blood, his body, his soul? Can Judith Cahen claim to be his blood sister by displaying her immaculate body next to David Nebreda’s? ADN is a Talmudic work (though Talmudists are not fond of the Christ), a peculiar mystical text resembling a Gospel written exclusively for the Jews. Metaphysics becomes comical.
Will Anne Buridan, one day, die of hunger or thirst? The animal invented by the medieval philosopher is – according to French writer Jean-Yves Jouannais then echoed by Spanish writer Enrique Vila-Matas – an “artist without an oeuvre”. How can we choose between oeuvre and life? Which touchstones should we rely on? Which of the two is the deadliest? Must Judith Cahen get closer to or further from David Nebreda? Must she identify with him to become him, or to get rid of him? How can we choose between two necessities? Which one should we postpone, thus challenging its necessity? The ass of Buridan does not die out of indecision but because he is impartial, because he is righteous. But righteousness does not belong to this world, where it is only seen as burlesque. Will Anne Buridan, one day, die in her body or her soul, in words or in images? Judith Cahen strives to wear out her character, to exorcise her using exhaustion. But Anne Buridan untiringly resists. She eats and drinks. She spends freely. In The Sexual Revolution Did Not Take Place, she tries, out of lack of money, to strike a deal with her psychoanalyst: she wants to trade appointments for profit-sharing in the outcome of Anne’s “machine.” The analyst refuses, stating that psychoanalysis and the “machine” have no connection whatsoever (whereas money can become anything - a universal chameleon). They have as little in common as Judith Cahen and David Nebreda’s pictures, so little, and yet so much at the same time.
