Zapping Zone was initially called Logiciel / Catacombes (Software/Catacombs). It involved putting images onto the computer reminiscent of the subterranean tunnels in La Jetée or those in Fellini's Roma, consequently leading back to Sans Soleil (Sunless) and memories of Tarkovsky. The “Zone” in Stalker is an obscure, restricted area at the heart of which lies a building, wherein lies a “room of wishes” where nobody enters: not the Writer, nor the Professor, nor even the Stalker – their guide in the aborted expedition. Only the latter's disabled daughter could possibly gain access through her gift of animating objects by merely looking at them. But the Zone is also a hazardous, complex area in constant flux around that magical, spiritual core preserved to art by the great Russian film-maker […]. The Zone epitomizes obsession; recent obsessions, with the question of technique, from which we would have no resort were it not for our forte at grasping the techniques of production, being one of the ways of resisting ever increasing metamorphoses […]. Zapping Zone is therefore an area that allows one to zap within the zone. Zapping is defined here as circulating within the zones. The work comprises about 20 screens, piled up one on top of the other with a few isolated soundtracks and computers. Together, they form a compact and discreet (in the linguistic sense) ensemble, looking as much like a second-hand goods fair as an ordered layout, the rubbish that results from the dream of a work conceived in the dustbins of history and its utopian ideals. To put it more simply, Zapping Zone is a mini-market, a small John Lewis, cunningly disorganized, in which everyone can find anything and everything, or at least a few of the things they may want. Since he started filming, following the whims of his utterly discreet, varied and interesting life (possibly conditionally so), Marker has freely used and interchanged his supports (photo, cinema, video), methods of filming (direct shots, rostrum camera, various forms of animation) and sources (archival documents and borrowed images from friends the world over). He wanted to emphasize here as much the distinctions between the different stages, as between the mixing (for example, two zones for his photos, one black and white, the other colour; two zones dedicated to his beloved owls, one linking movement and colour, the other fixing on a perpetual, turning movement; one zone for images, or readymades, borrowed from Japanese television; another for showing footage from preceding films, etc.). In this way his zones lend a diversity that offer the strolling visitor, whether attentive or not, as many ways of weaving their way through the different systems and forms of images as between their themes and subjects (such as Japan – inevitably, Berlin – topicality oblige, Tarkovsky and Matta, selected personalities and friends, and also cinema, painting, etc.). Zapping is none other than an extreme form (and in non-existent terms) of getting through. But by applying oneself from Marker to Marker, as if between the different frequencies of a private channel, in the way that the channel itself delves into all the other channels that surround and haunt it, then the path through (the idea as much as the experience of it) ends up by attaining a strange coherence. There is also a secret core to the Zone, that is actually more revealing than any of the others. Marker, the unrepentant traveller, never ceases to film around his room, trying to get into the Zone on at least one side that would help him reach all the others, even as far as Hayao's machine. He imports onto his computer as many images as he wants from the photo-cinema video channel, and works and re-works them, attempting to mix them with other images that he conceives more directly from programmes. The first results of this subjective computing are thus spread over a few zones, and particularly onto computers whereby the viewer is invited to enter into the game: a nevertheless modest invitation, much like the images themselves. But it is this modesty that makes the gesture all the more important, insofar as a private gesture in the domain of research and art may be so. The computer equipment with which Marker works (as with the film cameras he uses, the standards of his televisions, etc.) is both elementary and home-made, ie. modest (always considered too expensive) and relates to the specific needs of one person (who is always in need of more). So much so that Marker finds himself at home today (like Godard, Viola and others, each with their own needs), faced with a sort of writing job of which Zapping Zone gives an inkling, insofar as even implying an aim […]. With someone like Marker, who references directly from literature (and one merely senses him orienting himself with care and patience within his zones), it is interesting to realize to what point the power of technology is susceptible to encouraging this man of images back to what he longs for as a writer, even if he feels compelled to include his images: the conception of his own mythology.

Raymond Bellour
Translated by Diana Tamlyn

Excerpt from the catalogue Passages de l'image, Editions du Centre Pompidou, Paris, 1990.