ENTHUSIASM
A short-poem-film
Noah HUTTON
& SJ FOWLER
A short film—a transatlantic cinematic collaboration produced as part of The Hub residency at Wellcome Trust—Enthusiasm draws on new techniques in analyzing internal monologues and self-consciousness used by contemporary neuroscientists. Utilising the possibilities of cinema to reveal the conflicts of inner and outer narrative, how our internal and external languages collide, the film features improvised and acted scenes alongside voiceover techniques, to juxtapose that which is said and that which is thought. The text featured below is the latter.
Misophonia, literally “hatred of sound,” is a rarely diagnosed disorder, commonly thought to be of neurological origin, in which negative emotions (anger, flight, hatred, disgust) are triggered by specific sounds. The sounds can be loud or soft. There are ex-votos, or acts of faith, all probably in intentional or symbolic order, with each scene occupying its hierarchical place, and what’s more, each subject, each human figure, rendered in a predetermined size and scale in accordance with some stray, subtle meaning. What is the meaning? That to correct ourselves we must be honest with ourselves. We must admit our desires in order to resist them. This might not seem possible at first. To admit to the harm we might want to do. Because everyone else seems so still. Of course, many are, frozen, fixed—never connected enough to gain motion or momentum. But so often, being too tired, or not methodological enough, we visitors hurry on, distracted, through the zoo. A touch of fingertips on an exposed forearm, a hand resting flat upon a back. Eyes, widely staring, invitational, being taken seriously. The underlying attraction to individuals who are brighter than us, more intelligent, but who are at the same time at a genetic disadvantage—utterly malleable through the lottery of genes. Once you’ve got them to touch you, your arm, your neck, your hair, then it tends to be chance has had its moment, and the endless search for control has found its mark. Can this kind of mechanism be as satisfying if it isn’t built on an assumption that everything is founded upon chance operation? Visions of perfect relations, spaces beyond words. A couple, you and the famous actress, neuroscientist, friend, lithograph, hologram. The last minute is her smiling, correcting the vocal fry register, and the whole abstinence movement of America. You can see, if you watch closely, the dying possibility of a deeper link.
Noah Hutton has presented work at the Venice Biennale, Society for Neuroscience, Wellcome Collection, Rubin Museum of Art, and elsewhere. In 2015 he was named a Salzburg Global Fellow in Neuroscience & Art, and created Brain City, a multi-platform installation in Times Square commissioned by the Times Square Arts Alliance. He is in the final year of work on a ten-year documentary begun in 2009 and currently supported by a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation about the quest to simulate the human brain on supercomputers, focusing on the Blue Brain Project based in Geneva, Switzerland. Previously he directed the documentary films Crude Independence (SXSW 2009) and Deep Time (SXSW 2015). Noah studied art history and neuroscience at Wesleyan University. See here.
SJ Fowler is a writer and artist who works in poetry, fiction, theatre, film, photography, visual art, sound art and performance. He has been commissioned by Tate Modern, BBC Radio 3, Whitechapel Gallery, Tate Britain, the London Sinfonietta, Wellcome Collection and Liverpool Biennial. He is the director of Writers' Centre Kingston and European Poetry Festival. See here.
Texts and stills from Enthusiasm feature in Nemeses (Haverthorn Press, 2019)—Fowler’s Selected Collaborations, 2014-2019.
SJ Fowler is a writer and artist who works in poetry, fiction, theatre, film, photography, visual art, sound art and performance. He has been commissioned by Tate Modern, BBC Radio 3, Whitechapel Gallery, Tate Britain, the London Sinfonietta, Wellcome Collection and Liverpool Biennial. He is the director of Writers' Centre Kingston and European Poetry Festival. See here.
Texts and stills from Enthusiasm feature in Nemeses (Haverthorn Press, 2019)—Fowler’s Selected Collaborations, 2014-2019.