I Am Going...

Surveillance of Everyday Functioning. The automatic nature of life deprives us of worthwhile reflections. Looking, walking, and many other actions take place outside the mental field of interest. Artists sometimes venture into these regions and find symbolic points of reference there. Józef Robakowski climbs a triangulation tower with a camera attached to his body, counting his steps loud. The higher he goes, the more his voice sounds out of breath. His fatigue seems to absorb more and more of his attention, until in the end we have the impression that he is concentrating on himself to the exclusion of everything else. Attaining the top of the tower means above all respite from further effort, rather than the achievement of a goal. This observation may be taken as a symbolic summing up of life.

In 'I Am Going...', an attempt at an iconoclastic presentation of the body, Robakowski sets up a situation in which the materiality of the film triggers a dialogue with the materiality of the human body. In this manner, the artist initiates a dialogue between those two physical realities. Additionally, the increasing tiredness of the body carrying the camera is reflected in the progressively more and more tired voice of the climbing artist. This produces a specific effect of ‘materialisation’ of the point of expression as well as the immersion of the artist in his own materiality. The subject becomes no more than yet another thing among other things; or, rather, a fragment of live, incredibly vital, matter. Because of this attempt to dislocate the cinematic point of view, transferring it to a machine (as a location for the perception of the world distinct from the anthrophocentric), Robakowski’s recordings are one of the most complete examples of the anti-voyeuristic tendencies of the structural cinema, which aims to destroy the traditional cinematographic model, based on peeping.

It is essential to point out that I Am Walking is shot in a single long take – a structure characteristic for Robakowski, in which the length of the recording equals the length of the viewing (or projection). Such a device was intended to be a revolutionary means of rebellion against the traditional illusory editing codes, adopted in the Łódź Film School. My Film (1974), identically based on a single long take, is an ironic attempt to relate to the tradititional methods of creating a film narration, derived from literature.

Łukasz Ronduda (an extract from the article The Workshop of Cinematic Form. Film productions from 1970–1977, ‘Art Papier’)