A preserved image might depict waves and preserve them the way they were while being filmed, giving their recurring breaking on the cliffs a semblance of immortality. But just as, at some point, the depicted waves will stop breaking due to the decay of filmic material, so will the ‘real’ ones disappear one day, even though we can barely imagine such a point in time. If meaning results from de-temporalization, then it fades and fails in the very moment when time finally catches up. In such a case, the material (morphe) is experienced as a purely destructive force, even more so in its indifference towards the living.

Within the allegorical ‘mindset’, then, only the figure elicits meaning, and it only elicits meaning, as long as it is, while the material acts as a negating and perpetually undoing force. But it is not the depiction of waves that makes Decasia’s images meaningful, and strictly speaking not even the depiction the fading images of waves. Neither the figures (i.e. the depicted waves) nor the material (i.e. the filmic material) emanate meaning, but the incommensurable interplay of both. It is the experience of an irreducible ambivalence that becomes meaningful, out of which a new understanding of the material (morphe) can arise, namely of a sympathetic materiality.

The dualistic differentiation between body and soul, between thing and meaning (problem of universals), the ancient suspicion against everything carnal and material leads to a discordant conception between the two spheres. It results in a concession to subjugate the body, to control the empirical world and to transcend the worldly realm. But just as necessarily does it lead to the skewed experience of vanity sketched up above: All attempts to subdue the material, to fix certain meanings to certain concepts will fail, because materiality will always win, because in a world of change there is no space for unchanging concepts or an unchanging soul.

Images

Normally, films are presented as ‘timeless’ images, images in perfect condition that aspire to remain unchanged once and for all. After all, Psycho, looks as good as it did more than 50 years ago; neither (the depicted) Janet Leigh has aged, nor the (filmic) depiction of her. Time comes into play as film forms linear series, following the ‘classical’ arrow of time. One might say that it follows the husserlian conception of retention and protention, meaning that the image receives its meaning from its position within the series. Instead of each image autarkically containing all its meaning within itself, it pre-frames the (potential) meaning of the next one and feeds on the information that was fed to it by the previous images. In film studies, this is known as the Kuleshov effect and lead to the insight that in film, montage is the leading force behind the construction of meaning.

The Kuleshov Effect — The left image would be combined with the right (image source)

Soviet director Lev Kuleshov combined an actor’s image (on the left) with a certain contextualising image (on the right; food, a coffin, a woman), and each time the audience interpreted the actor’s expression differently, depending on the image that followed it. Hence, his expression gained meaning through the other image(s). This can result in a structuralist conception of meaning, in which each instance gains meaning negatively from its paradigmatic and syntagmatic position. During film projection, then, each image continues the narration and hence builds upon what came before it and frames our future expectation; the shock of Psycho’s famous shower scene is precisely because of our expectation of Janet Leigh being the protagonist (and hence surviving till the end) that now needs to be readjusted, while, on the other hand, a murder scene in itself perfectly follows the genre convention of the thriller.

In short, series are formed by atemporal, positioned points of reference that are set within a certain structure and receive meaning through it. But because Decasia is not made of such fixed ‘Lego bricks’, and rather of elements that are themselves fluid, it needs to be understood within another dynamics of inter-pictoral meaning generation.