ANEMIC CINEMA

The film depicts whirling animated drawings – which Duchamp called Rotoreliefs – alternated with puns in French. The text, which spirals in a counterclockwise motion suggests a set up of erotic scenarios.

Marcel Duchamp’s emblematic Dadaist experiment is a seminal work of early abstract cinema. Filmed with Man Ray, the whirling geometric animated drawings (which Duchamp called rotoreliefs) spin alongside French puns, reconfiguring the language of cinema and offering up pure visual sensation.