film 35 mm, 4'
1973
A film/performance, I’m Going . . . was the first in a series of ‘biological-mechanical recordings’, the concept of which (the body’s symbiosis with the mechanics of the medium) Robakowski had formulated earlier that year. The film records its creator’s climb to the top of a parachute tower while counting the steps from 1 to 200. Mounted on his chest, the camera frames the stairs, the tower’s constructional elements, and an ever-widening winter landscape. Swinging with the rhythm of his movements, it captures footage beyond the control of the eye or of vision. This, in conjunction with an evocative soundtrack recording Robakowski’s increasingly tired voice and panting breath, combines the mechanical medium of the camera with the biological medium of the body. In this single-take film, where recording time is identical to screening time, the camera becomes an extension of the creator’s body, mediating his psychophysical state. Years later, Robakowski wrote about the unpredictability of mechanical-biological recordings thus: ‘Starting a film, I never knew how it would end . . . Everything was decided beyond me, but always in my biological presence. In I’m Going… I needed to climb the tower to release the energy . . . I didn’t put that on paper; no script could have illustrated the experience.’*
* Józef Robakowski, ‘Videoconversation1989–2005: Always Looking for the World of the Future’, in Józef Robakowski, Energetic Images. Bio-mechanical Recordings 1970–2005, ed. Piotr Krajewski and Violetta Kutlubasis-Krajewska, Wrocław: WRO Art Center, Polish Audiovisual Publishers, 2007, pp. 143–144.
