For the happy man! - Collected writings DEPRESSION: Ed Atkins

epulsing our clinched beings for its own conceit. Tides, night,
light, some forms of beauty – lunacy, even – especially – derived
from our distant apprehension: while up here at the source, in
the silence, we are, I think, essentially bloodless, and essentially
motionless, transfixed.
The only movement you and I experience being the direct
result of a larger object’s whims.
This kind of deferential behaviour fools no-one.
The entire cast of a Bresson film. Inscrutable but simultaneously,
miraculously, utterly clear, opened – gaped, like the
eyes of a dumb owl – interpolated by us: the holes in search of
boundaries.
You and I understand them: their frigid faces.
You propose a film in which ‘models’ from Bresson’s
company perform as the 66 natural satellites of Jupiter. Jupiter
being something like a central bank, or a river, or a castle, or
a prison, or a farmhouse. The satellites wander – impassivivity
veiling desperation – around Jupiter, coming into contact – just
– with one another.
The lightest kiss;
The slightest graze of a hand on a forearm;
The warm – or cold – depression made by a gaze.
Though it would be more accurate to call such a gaze a reflection.
Nothing behind – as in, no source to outward movement.
At least, nothing we could describe as being for or at YOU.
Each model’s stark face turned toward us. For our inspection,
though it’s hard to look for long at or into the gathered