In “Each Die I Dawn”, Noah Angell clips together scenes of the moment in which image fades to black in the films of Japanese director Kenji Mizoguchi. The fade out often occurs when the subject faces a trauma that they cannot bare, the fade out acts here as the precipitation of nightfall upon a day which has threatened psychic unity, a merciful enshrouding of forgetfulness. The fade out not only correlates with those defensive mechanisms that shield the self from disturbance, the fade out also operates as a form of censorship proper. If we are watching a film made in the early 1950s and in it a woman is raped we are very likely to see a fade out as the attack begins. Socially we are in a space where it is acceptable to nod in the direction of rape but not to represent it in its unbearable duration, not as something that 'is happening', but as something that 'was happening’, ‘was about to happen', or (in the case of the fade-in) has 'already happened'. Blackness stands in for the unspeakable, that which both is and can't be. This temporal slip saves us- the viewers- from participation in an act of degradation, and also provides cover to the subject, protecting her from our gaze and intensifying her suffering through plunging her into an extrasolar isolation.

Just as the daily ritual of sleep is a sort of rehearsal for death, the fade out between scenes is also a foreshadowing of, and preparation for 'the end', an alarm bell sounding the tone of finality which dissipates once the camera's shutter opens and light again exposes film. This cessation of consciousness- this blackness- allows us an intermission, a time to reacquaint ourselves briefly with ourselves. Therefore the fade out also gives way to a suspension of belief, a moment free from the injurious sense impressions and attendant ideological clouding which are the meat of an afternoon at the cinema. The fade out is an opportunity to disengage.

Noah Angell is a filmmaker, writer, and lecturer who currently lives and works in London. Recent exhibitions include A Tergo, Limoncello, London; About Now, Message Salon, Zurich; Noah Angell Rana Hassanieh, Treignac Project, France; Dramaturgy of the Subject, Open Space, Vienna.