Breaking Through: Untitled #2
(2022)
Over the coming weeks, I will be writing about some films which I enjoyed at the festival Instants Vidéo in October 2023.
The title of Untitled #2, a seven and a half minute video by Rafael, suggests that the artist wants to avoid easy categorization and interpretation of the work. Rafael is an artist who is known for his live “expanded cinema” performances that link images, music and hints of narrative into surprising combinations which are loosely improvised, so it makes sense that this video work has a similar structure and flavor. The film’s sections, introduced in intertitles as “Doors,” “Walls,” “Screen,” and “Windows.” are certainly open to multiple interpretations, yet the implied story of the film’s charismatic protagonist, fashion designer Karl Yoon, hints at a man’s exploration into different sides of himself.
The film starts off satirically, as an “instructional video” teaching us how to open a door, giving directions with a preposterous level of precision. Yoon demonstrates proper door-opening technique while wearing his own avant-garde creations. In one shot he is seen wearing pants while pushing open the door, and in the next shot another Yoon is seen in a dress, trying to hold the door closed from the opposite side, which suggests that what we are watching is a struggle between two sides of the same man.
An intertitle announces that the subject has switched from doors to walls, and we see Yoon in front of a brick wall, masturbating through his pants. A film of a wall being demolished, brick by brick, is projected onto his body, again suggesting a metaphoric dimension to the images. Perhaps this unleashing of sexual energy will demolish the walls that separate him from his dress-wearing self.
An alarm sounds, and a computerized voice reads the “I recorded you” email scam, a common ruse which warns the recipient that someone has gotten control of his computer and made videos of him masturbating, and threatens to send the video to all his contacts if he doesn’t pay the ransom. The walls are definitely back up; he will be punished for trying to break them down. Guilt and shame have arrived, significantly, online. We see blurry screenshots projected onto the walls surrounding him, so he seems to be continually oppressed by the presence of social media, by the weight of the online opinions of the world.
In the enigmatic ending, entitled “Windows,” we witness what may be a magical purging, where the fear that holds him back is regurgitated. A cold wind blows his long hair, as he stares passively through the broken panes of a window, partially transformed, but still imprisoned. He can’t pass through the wall or the door, but he can stare, wistfully, through the broken panes.
Yoon’s silent concentration is magnetic, and he possesses that alchemical star quality that makes an actor’s face riveting on screen, even when he appears to be doing nothing at all. Untitled #2 certainly doesn’t need to be interpreted at all in order to be enjoyed: Yoon’s performance, and Rafael’s expert crafting of images and sounds make each moment compelling on its own terms. But the hinted-at storyline gives everything the extra weight of emotional resonance, and raises the stakes of what is to be discovered here. Yoon doesn’t make any final choice or decision between his pants-wearing self and his dress-wearing self; he becomes something altogether different from either of them. As viewers, we also don’t need to make any definitive choice about the “meaning” of the film; it simply exists as a window into a world of wider possibilities.
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