Archeology of the image-network. Dialogic subjectivity in Chris Marker’s Level Five

Abstract

This article analyzes the presence of a dialogic principle in the way subjectivities are constructed within Chris Marker’s Level Five, with a view to critically counteract the notion of Marker’s films as forms of the self-portrait. Through the Bakhtinian concept of “ideological becoming”, special attention is paid to the role played by new technologies of information and communication in the processes of re- accentuation which determine how subjectivities evolve in the context of the film. The concept of an “image-network” attempts to highlight the development of a new passage of the image towards a mode of representation dominated by a principle of exchange, whose importance is echoed in the film through the analysis of issues ranging from the dichotomy between memory and history to the relevance of documentary image for reality construction.