Loïe Fuller and the Poetics of Light, Colour, and Rhythm: Some Thoughts on the Making of fugitive l(i)ght

Abstract

A companion piece to the author’s short film fugitive l(i)ght (2005) based on found footage of serpentine dancers near the end of the nineteenth century. The chance discovery of Loïe Fuller inspires the making of this film. An analysis of Fuller’s performances draws on texts by Stephané Mallarmé and Julia Kristeva, with a particular focus on the instability of the subject position, what Kristeva later calls le sujet en procès or ‘subject in process/on trial’ and, of course, in the aesthetic process of the author’s film. Particular focus is accorded to the interplay of the visible and the invisible, and the presence and the absence of author/subject, which are explored in connection to the destabilizing aesthetic techniques of Fuller and Mallarmé.