Unstructured Discourse: An Afternoon with Jean-Pierre Gorin

Join us on Saturday, June 6 at 3pm for Unstructured Discourse: An Afternoon withJean-Pierre Gorin, a screening of Poto and Cabengo (1980) by Jean-Pierre Gorin, followed by an in-person talk by the filmmaker and a public discussion moderated by Yuka Murakami and Lukas Brasiskis.

The event begins with a screening of Poto and Cabengo, one of Gorin’s most searching works on language, listening, and the social forces through which speech is interpreted. The film follows Grace and Virginia Kennedy, twin sisters in San Diego whose private speech briefly drew the attention of linguists, therapists, journalists, and television reporters. Gorin described the film as being about “unstructured discourse”: the language of the twins as it is surrounded by the more structured discourses of family, medical institutions, and media. Rather than treating that language as a puzzle to be solved, Poto and Cabengo uses observation, interviews, and essayistic reflection to examine how different forms of authority attempt to translate and contain it. In doing so, the film becomes an inquiry into mechanisms of power of interpretation, and into cinema’s own position within that field: how can film enter a situation without pretending to master it, and remain open to uncertainty and contradiction?

Following the screening, Gorin’s talk and the public discussion with the filmmaker will take the film as a point of departure for a wider conversation on authorship, committed filmmaking, and the role cinema can play in society.

Program

3pm:
Jean-Pierre Gorin, Poto and Cabengo (1980, 73 minutes)
Grace and Virginia are young San Diego twins who speak unlike anyone else. With little exposure to the outside world, the two girls have created a private form of communication that’s an amalgam of the distinctive English dialects they hear at home. Jean-Pierre Gorin’s polyphonic nonfiction investigation of this phenomenon looks at the family from a variety of angles, with the director taking on the role of a sort of sociological detective. It’s a delightful and absorbing study of words and faces, mass media and personal isolation, and America’s odd margins.

4:30–5:30pm:
Talk and discussion
An in-person talk by Jean-Pierre Gorin, followed by a public discussion.
The event is organized in conjunction with L'Alliance New York's "Why? Because...with Jean-Pierre Gorin", programmed by Yuka Murakami and Jake Perlin. Further details can be found here.

For more information, contact [email protected].

Accessibility
– Two flights of stairs lead up to the building’s front entrance at 172 Classon Avenue.
– For elevator access, please RSVP to [email protected]. The building has a freight elevator nearest to 180 Classon Ave, a garage door, leading into the e-flux office space. A ramp is available for steps within the space.
– e-flux has an ADA-compliant bathroom with no steps between the event space and this bathroom.

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