DOI 10.60531/INSIGHTOUT.2024.2.13| CORODAN: THE SELF SLIDES OVER THE SELF WITH FRICTION_ INSIGHTOUT 2(2024) 91This re-codificationdid not aim for theconstruction of newmasculine values orplead for a feministbreakthrough, butrather was concernedwith a very peculiardeconstructive anddestabilising hybridisation betweenthe two canonicallyrecognised genders.tus, you have an almost feminine sensibility:hysterical, sick and feverish. True turbulencesof language.”2Occupying the frame for nearly three minutes,this passage provides more than an openingto Ion Grigorescu’s experimental filmMasculin-Feminin(1976). Composed of letters thatdiffer in form – similar to a ransom note – thetext is initially and only briefly introduced as astand-alone paragraph, denying the viewers acomprehensive reading unless actively intervening in the playback of the film. After thisfleeting encounter, the camera starts performing a radiography of the fragmenting sentences, visually quoting a reading-like motion.Phrases become incomplete as they slip away;letters and syntax interfere, escape, dissolve,not even words are recognisable any more.Deprived of its original logic, this textuallydominated image is characterised by breaksin coherence and an arrhythmic, at times shaky movement of the camera recording it(orrather failing to do so). A subtle reference tothe nature of film emerges. Turbulences of language become an imperative. Not only because it is poetically declared, but because it defines Ion Grigorescu’s aesthetic methodology,this language comes as no surprise. Markedby fragmentation, narrative incoherence andfrenetic camera choreography, a peculiar al“The penis as a brush and the masculine as a mask. phabet(de)coding reality along its artefacts unfurlsOn the one hand, it occupies too much of my person. itself to the viewer.It is my masculine interlocutor, even though it dreamsof a feminine name(penis). It gives me a conception In Romania’s national communist regime of theof myself and of my status in the world. It corrects my 1970s, describing yourself as a realist artist, as Ionbehaviour inclining towards the feminine. Our dialo- Grigorescu often and emphatically did, not onlygue is not reduced to the organic(things we almost came across as anachronistic, but almost as reacneglect); I must recognise its intelligence, its capacity tionary. In a historical context where Realism connoto create, compose and imagine. Regarding the sta- ted traces of the Socialist Realist genre that domi2Text translated by the author; original Romanian version shown in the opening sequence ofMasculin-Feminin(1976).
