Opposing forces in Broodthaers’ Un Voyage en Mer du Nord

Given that I will be presenting Krauss' essay, reinventing the medium today i thought i might comment briefly on the Broodthaers’ film, Un Voyage en Mer du Nord (A Voyage on the North Sea). The piece was originally released as a silent 16 mm color film together with a book bearing the same title. The “book-film,” also shares the ostensible subject matter: 19th and 20th century nautical images. A 20th century photograph, taken of a contemporary sailing boat set against a modern urban backdrop, is juxtaposed with a late 19th century amateur painting of a fleet of archetypal fishing ships.

The obsolete format, 16mm film, used to create the piece and the pedagogical presentation of the piece (the book was placed on a single shelf with a light overhead) suggest that it ought to be interpreted by the viewer as a historical document. The viewer is immediately drawn to inspect and then analyze the piece closely. Whilst I have not seen the book, Broodthaers choose a similar structural composition for both mediums, focusing in on small details of the photograph and the painting. Watching the film, it initially seemed to propose a structural analysis based on formal and historical differences delineating the 19th and 20th century. For example, on the one hand we have cinema and on the other a book, then there is the painting and the photograph and also a sailing boat used for leisure and one used for commerce (although I cannot be sure that the boat in the painting is in fact a fishing vessel).

These opposites are bound together, literally in the case of the book and through the use of intermittent titled pages that punctuate the film. Throughout both images are repeated and little excerpts are cut from the photograph and painting and enlarged. I read a review of the piece that explained Broodthaers’ motivation compose the piece in this manner as follows:

“(the book and film) allow a journey through the manifold layers interacting within the media (52). Fiction narrates the "impossible attempt to transform succession into stasis, or a chain of parts into a whole" (53) as one attempts to reclaim the wholeness of the original source, the outmoded. The moment of obsolescence, of becoming outmoded, thus allows for a recognition of how these older practices interact with the newer practices of which they constitute a layer (53).”

But as the film continued - page 5 was repeated and a cotton weave replaced a shot of the painted canvas - it became clear that the film had greater ambitions; precisely what these are I am not sure and so I will leave the subject up for discussion. Rather interestingly Broodthaers wrote in the preface of the book, “It is up to the attentive reader, to find out what devilish motive inspired this book’s publication.”