Diploteratology or Bardo Follies

A paraphrasing of certain sections of the Bardo Thodal (Tibetan Book of the Dead) in motion picture terms. Not to be confused with other films which have done the same thing in dramatic or literary terms via motion pictures.
This is an analogical film, and in order to understand it one must be acquainted with the process by which it was made. An image was selected, in this case the image of a woman hired to be part of the display at an amusement park waving to a passing boat filled with tourists. One of the tourists is filming her with a ‘home movie’ camera. Frames from this image were then heated in a specially modified projector, projected and refilmed. The melting of the film engenders all of the subsequent ‘images’. The analogy is between this process and basic operating procedures of the system of which we are all a part, sometimes called ‘creation’; the suggestion is that death (the destruction of the initial image) is not an end but merely the next stage. perhaps the amusement park scene is only a preparation for its transformation into the ‘diploteratological’ (a word meaning a monster with two heads or other bodily parts which it would normally only have one of) images. There are three main types of ‘abstract’ images: macrocosmic, suggesting planets; visionary, suggesting mythical battle scenes; and microcosmic, suggesting cellular structures. – G.L.