Fernand DelignyCamérer. A propos d'images

“The word “camérer” appeared in 1977 as an alternative to “filmer”. In its infinitive form, it privileges the primacy of the process over the aim of the film-object. It refers to a practice: films are shot on the network (Ce gamin, là, Projet N, À propos d’un film à faire), shots are taken in super 8, then in video; there are many projects, notably with the INA. But “camérer” is also a concept, a destabilising tool, a box of questions without answers. At the same time Deligny coined “mécréer”: not believing, disappointing, not filming… In this he is the contemporary of Marguerite Duras, Jean-Luc Godard, or Chantal Akerman.

The second part of the book leads Deligny towards the image, which he plays against language and symbolic domestication, then in symbiosis with it. He is the “writer” who addresses the “cameraman”, Renaud Victor. He takes on the role of the canvas maker, he looks for alternatives to the scenario. Since images cannot be taken, he says, they are “wild”: here lies his critique of Western humanism and his play with ethology: it could be that the image is from the animal kingdom, and that it lodges in the “memory of the species”…

The third part, “IMAGES”, opens Pandora’s box. Looking for the image, he finds a myriad of them, “everything is an image”. As cinema moves away, Deligny returns to the impossible symbiosis between image and predatory language. In other words, the images are hidden, they are held in the mirror’s blind spot. He resorts to Wittgenstein: “I take the word image and I throw it beyond the limits of language. In some masterful notes from the end of his life, he brings up images, some of which, lodged in the swamps of his memory, “kill and devour each other”.

The iconography of the book makes all forms of images coexist: no cinema without maps, no maps without tracings or manuscripts; a link, thought out but not secret, makes them circulate and coincide. In all, over 300 images…”