Le rayon vert—the inexperienced ray—is a mysterious flash that seems at sundown and divulges one’s ideas and the ideas of others. In Eric Rohmer’s movie of the identical title, Delphine is alone. Craving connection however unable to bear the gap that precede closeness, she drifts by way of pictures that emphasize a way of isolation most palpable in a crowd. Listless journey. Yasujirō Ozu’s Tokyo Story, too, is formed by stressed motion, a to-ing and fro-ing. Characters depart and return, in search of a geographic treatment that by no means works. In these movies, the empty nonsense of life types a form of poem.

It’s summer season in Paris. Parisians flee to the coast and shopkeepers board up home windows with heavy picket shutters whereas droves of vacationers roam town, photographing pastries. Then seasons change. August turns into a reminiscence the moment September hits. That well-known autumnal melancholy, an untranslatable saudade or toska—one thing resembling and but surprisingly distinct from unhappiness. Maybe it’s the scent of approaching decay, the final gasp and rustle of leaves having fun with the cooling solar earlier than they fall.

And but every thing occurs in September: style week, artwork exhibits, books launch, shutters open. In The September Problem, RJ Cutler chronicles the making of Vogue’s notorious tome that for many years has advised readers what they are going to need to eat, purchase, and put on within the coming 12 months, indexing tendencies each noticed and constructed. It revisits these declarations with every coming season, ensuring consumptive need is stoked anew. The phrase journal, with its miltary roots, refers back to the chamber the place gun cartridges are saved. {A magazine} goals with precision; it shops info supposed to enter the reader.

Jiajia Zhang’s “September Points” steals strains from The Inexperienced Ray, Tokyo Story and The September Problem, collaging them right into a melancholic and disembodied narration that captions fragments of web footage. Leaves fall. Phrases drift. Fashions fall out and in of style.

You would possibly know the movies of Ozu and Rohmer by way of the proliferation of stills and memes that flow into on-line. A wistful gaze in technicolor, or a black-and-white stare, is paired with poignant subtitles that encapsulate the pervasive loneliness and vacancy of recent life. A way of resignation in the direction of the impossibility of which means. In these movies, famously, nothing actually occurs.

“September Points” collates web clips and commercial bits into one longer movie—subtitled with a dialog between scripts recognized for his or her gradual durationality. This mashup of distinct timelines and use of reverse compositional approaches makes palpable the methods during which up to date consumption of video is essentially in bite-sized chunks that in some way take up all our time. Our information is mined by synthetic intelligence and refashioned to distract us from ageing, loneliness, and tedium.

Maybe we can not bear the sentiments that come up in empty moments of slowness and relaxation. As an alternative, a continuing motion—from clip to clip or metropolis to metropolis—devours our consideration and helps us keep away from the gnawing nothing. Winter is approaching. However on the web, the temperature is at all times the identical.

—Shanzhai Lyric, September 2023

at All Stars, Lausanne
till October 29, 2023