21/11/24 - 18/01/25
David Lamelas
Interview with Marguerite Duras (1970)

David Lamelas’ Interview with Marguerite Duras constitutes a pivotal moment in the intersection of conceptual art, film, and intellectual thought, encapsulating the intricate relationship between narrative form and the medium through which it is conveyed. The 1970 work employs film, photography, and text to engage critically with the structures of communication, media, and representation. At the centre of this interrogation lies Marguerite Duras, one of the most emblematic figures of French intellectual life in the twentieth century, whose work in literature and film perpetually oscillated between the boundaries of fiction, memory, and identity.

Lamelas’s engagement with Duras is not incidental but rather emerges from a deep fascination with her role in French cultural and intellectual life during a time of significant political and social upheaval. In the aftermath of the events of May 1968, France experienced an intense period of reflection on the intersections between politics, culture, and individual agency. Lamelas initially conceptualised a tripartite series of interviews, aimed at encapsulating the intellectual, political, and cultural pillars of Paris. His choice to focus solely on Duras signals not only his respect for her intellectual stature but also his recognition of the nuanced interplay between her literary work and the sociopolitical conditions of her time. Duras’s contributions to the nouveau roman and her radical approach to cinematic narrative, epitomised in works such as Hiroshima mon amour (1959) and Détruire, dit-elle (Destroy, She Said) (1969), positioned her at the forefront of avant-garde explorations of memory, trauma, and the limits of narrative. Lamelas’s decision to foreground her as the subject of this work thus situates Interview with Marguerite Duras within a broader interrogation of intellectual production and the mechanisms through which cultural figures are mediated. 

The work’s five-minute black-and-white film, presented in an ostensibly conventional documentary style, belies its deeper conceptual aspirations. Shot in the intimate setting of Duras’s country home, the interview features Argentine writer Raúl Escari as the off-screen interlocutor, whose probing questions guide Duras through a meditation on her creative process, particularly in relation to her 1969 novel and film Détruire, dit-elle (Destroy, She Said). The conversation traverses the nebulous space between fiction and reality, with Duras reflecting on the emergence of Stein, a character in Destroy, She Said, whose genesis stemmed from an evocative scream. Her assertion that Stein “was the emptiness” signals her broader engagement with the idea of absence as a productive force in narrative construction. Lamelas’s framing of the interview prompts the viewer to question the veracity of what is being presented. Although the film adopts the visual and auditory markers of a traditional documentary interview, its true aim is to deconstruct the authority typically associated with such formats. Duras’s reflections on her writing process—specifically her assertion that Destroy, She Said is “a love story, but something else”—gesture towards the incommensurability of categorising narrative in fixed terms. By positioning Duras as both a subject and a participant in this deconstruction, Lamelas underscores the inherent instability of interviews, narratives, and, by extension, the intellectual figures they purport to represent.

One of the most compelling aspects of Interview with Marguerite Duras is its integration of photography and text, thereby destabilising the temporal continuity typically associated with film. Lamelas augmented the film with ten photographs, each accompanied by a panel of text extracted from the interview. These photographs, taken at regular intervals during the filming, operate as visual punctuations that interrupt the flow of the conversation, transforming the interview from a linear dialogue into a fragmented discourse on the nature of representation itself. The decision to isolate specific sentences and present them alongside still images further complicates the relationship between image and meaning. The viewer, confronted with the juxtaposition of moving images, static photographs, and disembodied text, is forced to engage in a multilayered reading of the work, wherein the coherence of narrative is called into question. Lamelas himself notes that this technique of capturing images during the conversation was intended to reflect the dissonance between what is said and what is seen, a theme central to both his and Duras’s intellectual concerns.

By employing this method, Lamelas draws attention to the artifice inherent in any act of representation. The still images, accompanied by out-of-context fragments of dialogue, create a disjuncture that mirrors the broader philosophical concerns of nouveau roman writers such as Duras, who sought to unravel the conventions of linear narrative in favour of a more fragmented, polyphonic form of storytelling. The use of multiple media to interrogate the singular authority of the spoken word offers a prescient critique of the ways in which media shape and distort intellectual discourse.

Duras’s reflections on her own work, particularly her discussion of the political resonance of the phrase “We are all German Jews” from Destroy, She Said, situate the film within a broader meditation on identity, alienation, and the role of the intellectual in contemporary society. While the slogan emerges from the revolutionary fervour of May 1968, Duras’s interpretation of it extends beyond the immediate political context, touching on existential themes of marginality and the ethics of representation. Lamelas’s decision to highlight this aspect of Duras’s thought underscores his interest in the intersection of personal and political identity, particularly in relation to figures whose work operates at the confluence of public and private life.

This political dimension of Interview with Marguerite Duras not only reflects the intellectual climate of post-1968 France but also speaks to contemporary concerns about the role of media in shaping public perception. By deconstructing the interview format and fragmenting the narrative through the use of photography and text, Lamelas critiques the mechanisms through which cultural figures are constructed, both by themselves and by the media that represents them. In doing so, he raises important questions about the ethics of representation and the responsibilities of both artists and intellectuals in an increasingly mediated world. In its refusal to adhere to the conventions of documentary filmmaking, Interview with Marguerite Duras exemplifies Lamelas’s commitment to exploring the complexities of narrative, identity, and representation. The integration of film, photography, and text invites a multifaceted engagement with the work, wherein the viewer is encouraged to reflect on the constructed nature of intellectual discourse and the ways in which media mediate our understanding of cultural figures such as Duras. (Steven Cairns)