Abstract Space

Two of Sarah’s films that were screened at the last class made me reflect upon the power of the black color in particular. In this regard, Wassily Kandinsky in his book Concerning the Spiritual in Art underlines that “Black is something burnt out, like the ashes of a funeral pyre, something motionless like a corpse. The silence of black is the silence of death. Outwardly black is the colour with least harmony of all, a kind of neutral background against which the minutest shades of other colors stand clearly forward” (39). The viewer’s sense of space is significantly distorted because a black background erases the feeling of depth. Since Sarah mentioned that those films were related to the death of her close friend, the interplay between the figure of the white dancer and the black mise-en-scène accompanied by strong rhythmic sound brought me somehow closer to experiencing the unknown feeling of space. I think that Sarah brilliantly articulated in these films the space the viewer cannot inhabit – he or she can only slide on the black surface alongside the dancer’s figure without going inside.