PATRICK JOLLEY – The Door Ajar

essay by Nico de Oliveira and Nicola Oxley

ISBN 978 0948037 979     48 pages (paperback)     17x11cm     42 illus

Patrick Jolley's work spans photography, video installation and cinema. His films use low-tech special effects to articulate those aspects of a place or situation that are present but not visible. The results are depictions of harsh and disassociated worlds, dark and redolent with melancholia, and interwoven with strands of slapstick and absurd humour.

The Door Ajar (2011), a feature-length documentary film, considers the work and life of the influential French poet and theatre director Antonin Artaud (1896-1948) through a journey to Ireland Artaud undertook in the summer of 1937. He had set out on a quest in which he proposed to examine ancient Gaelic traditions, and aimed to return the supposed staff of Saint Patrick to its rightful owners. His expedition resulted in his arrest, repatriation and internment in a number of mental institutions on his return to France. Little is known of what took place during those few short weeks in Artaud’s life, of his wanderings and of his state of mind. The film does not attempt to fill in the missing facts; rather, it builds upon the biographical evidence by developing a partial and broken narrative around Artaud’s presence.

The accompanying text is the result of an extended collaborative process between Jolley and the authors, and seeks further to augment the territory inhabited by both Artaud and Jolley’s film.

EXTRACT

"He shades his eyes with his hand, squinting at the gently undulating surface that extends before him. The sea seems wider because it is viewed from the promontory of the ship’s deck, not from eye-level. The line of the horizon, unbroken only a moment before, forms into the shape of an emerging coastline as the distant headland hoves into view. He sees arrival and departure, the beginning and the end, the things that give a boundary to all journeys, to all aimless wanderings. He senses fate taking shape, but the story, the dark gap of duration in-between remains indistinct. This middle will unravel gradually, not as a premonition, but as a lived experience. He does not tamper with it, he lets it have its way. He had drifted away from her, following a short, intense and unrequited courtship. It was several years ago that he had kneeled before her, wooing her as his lover and kindred spirit, his plumed serpent, who glided over the earth, her plume stirring the air and the mind. She had been wary of his madness, although she loved him for it, and terrified of his abyssal nature. To her, he remains a drugged, contracted being who walks alone, wanting only to arouse the fervour again, ignite the faith. The deep-set eyes of a mystic, a visionary, do not seem to see living things and are trained on some open road where no-one can follow. His long dark hair frames a lean face, as if ravaged by fevers. His hands are long, long-fingered. He has an actor’s nimbleness and quickness of gesture. His lean ghostly figure haunts the shadows, a dumbed-down nobody, locked in his emaciated body, intent only on his quest."

— from the essay by Nico de Oliveira and Nicola Oxley