Manifold | Ruken Doğu Erdede

The Image of the World Heating up

Supported by the SAHA Sustainability Fund, Manifold plans to publish a series of articles focusing on the relationship between art and ecology/climate, edited and led by Hasan Cem Çal and Furkan Keçeli, for the SAHA Art Writing within the framework of SAHA's collaboration with the World Weather Network. The series of texts, in which different arts and art-making practices from photography to cinema, digital art to performance art, music to contemporary art will be associated with the six elements of weather (temperature, precipitation, humidity, wind, cloud cover, atmospheric pressure), will be accompanied by two workshops and a collective video production.

The Six Elements Air is Made of: Heat
The Image of the World Heating up

Heat is always in motion. It both radiates from and permeates matter. Under the effect of such motion, we are being spoilt, altered, transformed and restructured. Heat, which, together with the other elements air is made of, forms the body of the world, confronts us more directly than any other with the vulnerability of the atmosphere we are currently sinking in. The weather is now much hotter than it was in the past, and the world and all bodies are spoiling, altering and transforming faster than ever before. That being so, what effect does the increasingly warmer world have on the image ecology of films? A glance at The Collector [La Collectionneuse] (Éric Rohmer, 1967) and Afire [Roter Himmel] (Christian Petzold, 2023), both of which the summer season, intimately cognate with heat, constitutes the temporal and atmospheric framework of, and whose plots are strikingly similar, should prove beneficial in order for us to grasp the nature of that effect.

The Collector begins as Adrien, together with his artist friend Daniel, plans to spend a summer holiday secluded away and entirely dedicated to idleness. Yet upon arriving at the summer estate on the French Riviera where he intends to spend the next few weeks, he is startled to come face-to-face with a female guest (Haydée). This comes as a serious hindrance to his dream of a true holiday, doing nothing but swim, sleep and avoid all forms of thinking. Indeed, Haydée’s incessant nights out and the boyfriends she brings home soon start to make Adrien and Daniel restless. There is in fact no practical reason for them to feel that way: the villa is large enough that they are unlikely to meet unless they wanted to. However, curiosity and desire have sprung into motion once and for all, and thinking naught is even more impractical than inaction. Both male friends’ initially timid curiosity as to Haydée’s summer adventure, and sneering and rude disapproving comments, gradually give way to the concern about being with her or not, and to insidious power struggle between both young men.

“Power struggle” might actually be too strong an expression to describe the situation at hand because, after all, the timeframe during which desires flare up and collide in this film is a relatively fresh, pleasant summer. The villa’s commodious spaces, where interiors communicate with wide terraces, provide a picture-perfect example of the spatial harmony of brightness and shadow which summer may bring about: just the right amount of light, and just enough shade as well. We can almost feel the texture of the materials that appear in the film through its images: the touch of pebbles underneath bare feet, that of terrycloth dresses and the warmth of the sunrays against the skin. When we close our eyes, the film’s soundtrack steps in, emphasising the purity of the air by the pounding of the waves breaking on the shore and the chirping of birds. Within such an atmosphere, everything occurs at a moderate pace; actions are slow and conversations long-running and unresolved. The characters seem to possess all the time in the world. With its thick and drowsy consistency, the summer air that pervades the settings, the conflicts and the conversations between the characters almost abolishes time, as an afternoon nap would.

Such a summer picture could easily spark a sense of nostalgia in us. Recently, rather than evoking a cool, pleasant evening, our summers have become a lot more prone to inspiring a feeling best phrased as “I can’t help but melt!”*. The image ecology of recent summers consists of images of burning forests/houses and helpless people, spilling out of our screens. The last glances on their hearths, cast by people evacuated from places engulfed by the flames, the haunting screeches of birds whose nests are ablaze, the last glimmers of hope of those who desperately try and extinguish the fire with the soil they dig with their bare hands, or the silhouette of an old woman, her hands clasped on her bosom as she watches her house burn, could easily find their way in a corner of either Sandro Botticelli’s or Hieronymus Bosch’s depictions of hell.

In this respect, the summer at hand in Petzold’s Afire feels a lot more familiar. From the very onset, it bespeaks the uncanny: the red screen dissolving over the trees in the opening sequence portends what kind of a summer we are in for. Léon and Félix are planning a holiday/work session away from everyone at Félix’s family’s summer cottage, on the shore of the Baltic Sea. However, their car breaks down on the way there, compelling them to walk down a shortcut through the forest. Upon making it home exhausted, both are met by an unannounced female guest (Nadja). Léon’s plan to go on a retreat in order to finish his second novel has been hampered from the start. While this puts Léon severely on the rack, Félix, well-disposed towards the summer and the sea, remains unmitigatedly cheerful, despite both men having to share the same room.

Unlike the spacious villa that serves as The Collector’s setting, this house is rather cramped. Within such a narrow space, the pressure that accumulates as a result of the interaction and tension building up between the bodies will inevitably be higher. Or, if we choose to account for this phenomenon in terms of the second law of thermodynamics: the total entropy (an appraisal of disorder or randomness) of a closed system tends to increase over time. And when the stress Léon is put under for striving to write piles up on top of the ineluctability of contacts and conflicts within the constricted confines of this house (or closed system), disorder rapidly builds up indeed. As though reflecting this situation, the entropy of the atmospheric system has increased outside as well; nothing like the summers of the French Riviera in 1967. The atmosphere is now arid, and a wildfire is raging in the forests to the west. The siren of a fire engine blares across the bustling square of the summer resort, which provides the setting for the film’s most vibrant scene. As the fire keeps expanding, roads are closed to circulation. The screams of helicopter engines occasionally pierce through the film’s soundtrack. Such is the summer in Afire: blazing.

The wildfire might still be too far to actually threaten the house the characters are in, but the effects of the increasing heat become evident as mould starts to spread across the wall: the roofing material has melted under the heat. “This could mean disaster,” says Félix. Léon, on the other hand, is heedless of such earthly concerns; his main preoccupation is to finish his novel. And when Félix reminds him that repairing the roof, cooking or washing the dishes are no lesser tasks than writing is, he shrugs these remarks off. However, if the conditions are not ripe for resting, they are inappropriate for production as well. Léon cannot concentrate, let alone sleep at night, and finds himself drowsing off during the day. Even the joyful moments when Félix, Nadja and his friend Devid manage to enjoy their holiday as much as presently possible are not enough to alleviate such agitation and angst. Léon’s work distress epitomises the growingly hotter, and increasingly stifling atmosphere of our new summers: the times demand too much action; there remains none for reflection, idleness, falling in love or boredom. What is being produced under such pressure is inescapably mediocre, as is Léon’s draft of his new novel.

Thus, the film progresses towards the tragedy of the great wildfire, whose omen was implied in the opening sequence. During Léon’s editor’s brief visit to the house, the dinner they all have together is interrupted by ashes falling down from the sky, and the rumble of helicopters. One could rightfully speak of a sublime image when commenting on the slowed-down shots of white ash particles falling over the green forest. (Or else, will we all look magnificent as we melt down?) That beautiful moment is interrupted by Félix’ rushed exclamation: “Ashes!” Félix and Devid then rush off to tow their car, which they left stranded in the middle of the forest in the beginning of the film. In the meantime, Léon’s editor falls sick and Nadja has to take him to the hospital. Léon attempts to reach them through a shortcut across the forest. As it gets dark, the sound of sirens blaring and helicopters circling overhead becomes deafening, and animals up in flames run away screaming. Léon contemplates a squirrel, lying down on the ground, burnt to death, before the camera captures the last thing the wretched animal saw. We look at it one last time; the image of burnt trees reflected in its pupils… When the night ends and they finally make it home, Léon and Nadja learn that both Félix and Devid burned to death in the fire. From that moment on, Léon’s novel, relating the events that occurred on that day, the fire and the death of his friend, is called into play as an off screen, read by its editor. Over a shot of burnt corpses holding hands, we hear the fragment where Léon draws a comparison between this scene and that of the lovers who died holding hands in Pompeii.

Such is how our new summers have become: scorching, even blazing. Within the realm of films, pictures of clear sounds resonating amid mild warmth have given way to those of burning forests, sweltering heat, and minds harassed by the pressure to produce. In The Collector, summer exists almost imperceptibly, in all its ethereality, constituting the environment that embraces the film’s picture. Both the past and the future stand at an equal distance to the present moment; the latter is truly being lived. That is the reason why, as the title of the film suggests, minimal actions and desires step to the fore: both the time and dispositions are propitious for either art, feelings or lovers collection. By contrast, hot summers now occupy the top rung of the image ecology; high up in the sky, it has become the name of by far the most dominating macro effect: the red sky sits firmly and everywhere above us. It has become at best difficult, if not impossible, to enjoy life serenely. Moreover, the time shift that occurs towards the end of the film through the superposition of the novel, read from the future into the past, also suggests the emergence of a new time-action axis. It now proves arduous to remain within actual time. The sped-up future contaminates, while tomorrow’s lament reverberates inside the present. In such conditions, the only art that may be made is the art of catastrophe.

Just as it has everything else, heat has altered and will continue to alter the image ecology. As long as the flames kindled by capitalism keep scorching the body of the world, it appears as though the last glance of the dead squirrel, fixedly staring at burning forests, along with similar images, will continue to haunt us from the screens that surround us. Then again, if such an order happens to measure up to an inferno painter, I would be grateful if the most optimistic among us could determine which level of hell we are on, so we may keep our hope of cooling the blazing images down as intact as possible.

*: In reference to the lyrics of a song from the album Moot! by the band Moin.