Obstructing the View: An Argument for the Use of Obstructions in Art Education Pedagogy
2010; Volume: 30; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
1057-0292
Autores Tópico(s)Neuroscience, Education and Cognitive Function
ResumoIn the film The Five Obstructions (2004), Lars Von Trier challenges his mentor Jorgen Leth to remake his 1967 film, The Perfect Human, five times, removing Leth's filmmaking comforts and conventions as part of the agreement. The Five Obstructions is a documentary of the barriers that Von Trier implements and the films that resulted. This paper will look at The Five Obstructions and the implications of creating obstructions as both a pedagogical approach to art education, and a foundational approach for a game-based pedagogy.In the first obstruction, Von Trier (2004) challenges Leth to remake his 1967 film The Perfect Human in Cuba, without camera shots longer than 12 frames (approximately .5 seconds), answering questions Leth posed in his original film. The difficulty of this obstruction was a technical problem for Leth, forcing him to use to a very fast-paced and unusual filmmaking style. Leth answered by repeating and reversing film segments to create his narrative.For the second obstruction, Leth was told to film a dinner scene from The Perfect Human in a miserable but show it (Von Trier, 2004). His new scene takes him to the brothel district of Bombay (now called Mumbai). Von Trier requires Leth to film himself eating a meal in the open air of the brothel district, yet hiding its existence. Leth anxiously begins filming, unafraid of the blighted area itself, but of his appearance as a white western man imposing himself in this place of need. Seeing Von Trier's obstructions as a psychological game, Leth musters up the ability to distance himself from his feelings of sympathy towards those in the brothel district, circumventing Von Trier's austere calculation by filming the scene with a translucent screen between Leth and those living in Mumbai, providing a frame of reference to his original film's message of the and the human, partitioning himself as inhabiting a separate space, a space, yet challenges the viewer to recognize the real world conditions of Mumbai's brothel district through the partition.Von Trier, unpleased with Leth's framing technique, poses two options for his third obstruction: a reshoot of The Perfect Human in Mumbai as Von Trier described, or film The Perfect Human with complete freedom. Complete freedom poses as challenging an option for Leth as a total reshoot. Rather than return to Mumbai, Leth chooses to remake the film in Belgium, filming in a noir style. Von Trier wanted Leth to be a tortoise on his back struggling with the process, but finds his mentor unmarked by the exercise (Von Trier, 2004). In The Five Obstructions DVD commentary Leth describes taking a defensive position to Von Trier's obstructions. For Leth, exposing his methods and approach to each obstruction, he is defying Von Trier's bait to be labeled as a cool and unfeeling, or a perfect human. Von Trier has also created obstructions for Leth that he himself cannot perform. Because of personal phobias like his fear of flying, Von Trier is incapable of traveling. Cuba or India are places Von Trier would never be able to visit and is incapable of personally experiencing, obstructions to which he could not complete for his own challenge.While Leth is strategic in his approaches to directing, restrictions open up the possibilities for chance and change. Von Trier admits that whatever he says to Leth as part of their process of critique, inspires Leth to continue on. Yet Von Trier has made discipline and rules as a focus of his life and work (Macnab, 2006). Von Trier known to be strict and rigid in his methods as a director as a way to expose a rawness to his films (BBC News, 2005). Further evidence of his support for rigid filmmaking can be seen in his involvement with the Dogma 95, an avant-garde film movement developed as a response to the major film studio production model (Dogma 95, 2008). Leth sees Von Trier using rigid rules and obstructions as a romantic device for creating raw emotion, where Leth finds those obstacles as a way to free up his creative process (Kaufman, 2004). …
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