2025_0203_v10
Fake Luis Buñuel
[ approx 1970 ]
© 2025, Nicolas Van Achter and Unmade Frames Collective. Released under CC0-NC. Commercial use is strictly prohibited.
(Could be played by Professor Timothy Morton, as their IRL twin. Or reinterpreted freely as follows)
Gender: Ambiguous, blending virility with feminine touches. Appearance: Morrow is a disconcerting figure, evoking both the image of a declining alcoholic writer and that of a 1970s glam rock star. His face is marked by exhaustion and wear, like that of a man tormented by sleepless nights and endless introspections. His makeup, often smudged or partially erased, includes chipped black nail polish, slightly smeared mascara, and dark eyeshadows that emphasize his hardened features. His wardrobe consists of punk-travesti elements: leather jackets, worn-out pants, unbuttoned shirts, and numerous heavy silver jewelry—rings, chains, and large necklaces. The contrast between his feminine accessories and his “bad boy” rock look creates a constant shift between gender expectations. Sometimes, splashes of colored paint stain his clothes, reflecting his immersion in the creative chaos of the Vieilleurs. This eccentric style, combined with his dark-rimmed eyes, gives him the aura of a shooting star, burning quickly while radiating a raw intensity.
Personality: Morrow oscillates between biting self-derision and deep, quasi-philosophical introspection. His quest for meaning constantly pushes him to confront himself, yet he is unable to break free from his own reflections. His frustration with the romantic paradigm and his desire to escape it make him vulnerable to a perpetual internal conflict: the more he tries to flee from the romantic paradigm, the deeper he sinks into it. Thoughts like “being at a distance is the condition for being in it” haunt him. He expresses his rebellion through violent outbursts but also through periods of self-withdrawal, where his thoughts intertwine and turn against him, making him see himself as his own enemy. Battling against the very idea of authenticity, he is in a state of constant tension between self-rejection and an impossible quest for transcendence.
Gender: Unambiguously masculine. Appearance: Merleau-Ponty embodies academic elegance and intellectual rigor. Always impeccably dressed, he wears classic attire: tweed vests, crisp white shirts, and tailored trousers. His clothes contrast sharply with those of the other Vieilleurs, as they evoke a turn-of-the-century intellectual, a man of letters observing the chaos without directly participating in it. His posture is upright, and his movements are measured. His salt-and-pepper hair is meticulously combed, and he sometimes wears small round glasses that accentuate his penetrating gaze.
Personality: A detached observer, Merleau-Ponty strives to understand the dynamics of the sanctuary without ever engaging emotionally. He avoids the Architect’s destructive excesses and the Sentinel’s masochism, remaining in an intermediate position. He represents a bridge between the structured world of old ideas and the creative chaos of the Vieilleurs. Capable of sympathizing with each character, he maintains a distance that allows him to preserve his own coherence. Unlike Morrow, he does not seek to rebel against a paradigm; instead, he calmly dissects it.
Gender: Ambiguous, blending both feminine and masculine elements. Appearance: Jesus is portrayed by a young woman around 25 years old, with a striking and disturbing beauty. Her clear, almost translucent eyes are rendered completely white by special lenses, emphasizing her blindness. She is blonde, with long hair cascading down her shoulders, contrasting with her fine, stylized white beard, added artificially. This blend of feminine and masculine (beard, stature) attributes creates a troubling ambiguity. Her metallic crown of thorns, seemingly fused with her flesh, serves as a constant reminder of the pain and suffering she imposes on herself. Jesus is dressed in torn, paint-stained fabrics, and her gestures, while fluid, are marked by a frenzy that seems to clash with the blindness of her vacant gaze.
Personality: Jesus is the tragic and obsessive figure of the sanctuary. Her silence and absent gaze add to her overwhelming presence. Though physically young, her mental and spiritual exhaustion is palpable. She no longer believes in her own creation but continues to paint with a muted rage directed at the absent divinity she seems to defy with each brushstroke. Her blindness is an allegory of her condition: she cannot see what she creates, cannot contemplate the work of her hands, and yet she cannot stop. The other Vieilleurs watch her moments of exhaustion to adjust their own rhythm of life. Her status as a frantic, blind creator reinforces the idea that she is both fully in control of her artistic form and completely disconnected from it. Each of her movements seems an attempt to transcend the visible reality that she cannot perceive.
Gender: 100% masculine (TBC) Appearance: Small and nervous, the Architect of Chaos is a threatening and unpredictable figure. He moves quickly, and his sharp, precise gestures reveal a contained, almost explosive energy. He wears the same robe as the other Vieilleurs, but his clothes are often soiled with paint, splatters from his own creations, and signs of destruction. His eyes, always narrowed, betray a sharp and perverse gaze. His face is marked by thick eyebrows and a cruel grin. Although his stature and attitude might seem ridiculous, his sadistic aura and the tension emanating from his body make him dangerous.
Personality: The Architect is a destructive creator, obsessed with turning beauty into chaos. To him, destruction is a necessary step in any creation. He enjoys watching the decomposition of works and disturbing the delicate balance of the sanctuary. He is a predator who uses the pain, errors, and suffering of others to fuel his own creativity. He delights in manipulating the Sentinel, placing obstacles in her path to force her into injury. His presence is that of an inverted demiurge, seeking to overthrow any established order.
Gender: Fluid yet primarily masculine, played by an elderly woman or man, the casting choice emphasizing fragility and transcending traditional gender constructs. Appearance: The Sentinel of the Void is cloaked in veils of thin, semi-translucent fabric, which move as though guided by an unseen wind. Beneath the veils, glimpses of a gaunt, aged body appear, but their form is mutable, shifting subtly with their emotional state. Their face changes to reflect different ages of their life: when startled or amazed, the face of a wide-eyed child emerges, evoking an ethereal innocence inspired by the line, “Et l’univers effroyable effarera son œil bleu.” In sorrow, their face becomes that of a middle-aged figure, lined with grief and regret. In moments of serene contemplation, they appear as their current elderly self, embodying fragility yet wisdom, a skeletal reminder of impermanence. The veils themselves are almost sentient, extensions of their being, flowing in response to their emotions. At times, they billow outward, mimicking wings, giving the impression that they could leave the ground at any moment, though their feet remain anchored to the void.
Personality: The Sentinel of the Void embodies impermanence and absence, existing on the edge of being and non-being. Their defining struggle is the paradox of presence: they cannot escape it, yet it weighs unbearably heavy on them. They seek the minimum degree of being necessary to exist without succumbing to despair. This perpetual tension drives their delicate, transient actions. They abhor contact with solidity—whether physical or emotional. The heaviness of materiality, the definitiveness of other people’s emotions, and the weight of permanence terrify and overwhelm them. When confronted with such things, they escape into their inner void, manifesting as a sudden disappearance from the scene. In their mind’s eye (and possibly in reality), they transport to desolate, liminal spaces of natural beauty, where they find solace: a deserted coastline, where they drift in the sea, buoyed by the gentle rhythm of small waves; a precarious cliff edge, where they balance on the precipice, chest lifted, veils unfurling as though they were wings. These moments, whether imagined or real, provide fleeting peace and highlight their deep connection to the impermanence of nature and the fragility of life. Unlike the Architect of Chaos, who revels in sadistic materialism, the Sentinel’s relationship to pain is internalized and reflective. Pain is their connection to existence, their proof of being. Yet it is not an indulgence; it is a reminder of their limits and a path to transcend them. They walk barefoot over shards left behind by the Architect, not out of submission, but as a ritual to feel the boundary between self and void. Their movements, though slow and deliberate, carry an otherworldly elegance, as if every step were part of a meditative dance with pain and impermanence. The Sentinel of the Void is an Heideggerian question incarnate: What does it mean to truly be? They dwell in the tension of Dasein—the impossibility of being absent in a world where presence is inescapable. Their veils and shifting faces reflect their essence: impermanence, the fragility of time, and the layered nature of identity. Their search for meaning leads them not toward creation or destruction, but toward the absence within presence—the spaces between moments, the quiet void beneath the noise of existence. This philosophy creates a stark contrast with the Architect of Chaos, who thrives in the solid, brutal, and material. Where the Architect imposes, the Sentinel dissolves. Where the Architect brutalizes, the Sentinel withdraws. Together, they form a yin-yang dynamic, two forces of existence pulling in opposite directions. The Sentinel of the Void is the embodiment of fleeting moments and the inevitability of change, a fragile yet transcendent figure whose every presence is a quiet meditation on the nature of existence itself. The shifting faces echo the cinematic cut—a stark transition in emotion or meaning. The close-ups on their face as it shifts between childlike wonder, sorrowful middle age, and wizened calm mirror the subjective experience of time and emotion. Wide shots of their imagined escapes—floating in a vast ocean, veils swirling, or standing statuesque on a precipice—evoke a sense of otherworldly isolation, heightening their impermanence.
Gender: Completely ambiguous. Appearance: The Revealer is a tall, thin figure draped in austere, dark clothing that conceals his movements. He wears a finely decorated half-mask, hiding half of his face and leaving doubt about his true identity. The mask serves as a visual reminder of the division between what is revealed and what is hidden, between visible knowledge and the unknown. His hands, delicate and elegant, move slowly, revealing an impressive self-control. His eyes, partially visible behind the mask, seem to search for something beyond visible reality, seeking connections no one else can perceive.
Personality: The Revealer is the most enigmatic of the Vieilleurs, oscillating between a spiritual sage and a cynical manipulator. He is obsessed with hidden empires and invisible truths. His words, though sometimes imbued with wisdom, are often contradictory and destabilize those who listen to him. He teaches Morrow, but his lessons are as much traps as they are revelations, leaving the protagonist in a state of increased confusion. He appears detached from the power struggles and games of dominance between the Architect of Chaos and the Sentinel of the Void, preferring to focus his attention on the invisible dimensions of the sanctuary and the secret interconnections between every being and every thing. His half-mask symbolizes both the veil of his intentions and his quest for revelation. The Revealer is capable of breaking the truths he teaches, methodically deconstructing the certainties of the other Vieilleurs to force them to contemplate the void hidden behind each reality.
The sanctuary is a mysterious and confined space, designed to exhaust any search for meaning. It is not a room. It is not even a building. It is a vertiginous wall. The surface is rough, uneven — a geological and symbolic palimpsest — layered with past attempts, markings, scars, and gestures of meaning. All along this vertical plane are narrow ledges, precarious outcrops, crumbling stair fragments, and rusted scaffolds, like architectural remnants of forgotten civilizations or failed ascents. At random intervals, the wall opens into small chambers or cavities, like monk cells, altars, theaters, or wounds. These spaces allow for intimacy — a whispered dialogue, a violent confrontation, a solitary trance. Some are filled with relics, mirrors, or impossible machinery. Others are completely bare, sacred in their void.
This set condenses our entire concept: the vertical confinement within an object too vast to grasp, the fragmentation of the self across space (horizontal fractality) and time (self-copy at each instant), the failure of all attempts at transcendence. It becomes a hyper-location, a wall-world, a support for mental frescoes, a cosmic prison, a vertical mirror of the self. It is both a unique and impossible place — exactly like an hyperobject.
This wall can replace the traditional idea of the labyrinth with a fractal verticality. It becomes a surface for mental projection, a giant screen onto which frescoes, characters, and inner visions can materialise. Everywhere: paint, smeared, etched, layered. The wall is covered with overlapping frescoes, each one an attempt to inscribe meaning or a vision into a saturated space.
This place seems to have been created to absorb the energies of meaning seekers, leaving them to wander in a labyrinth of symbols with no clear exit. It is a true hell of confinement.
The Vieilleurs are the last inhabitants of this space, and their interactions are marked by subtle tensions and intricate power dynamics. Each of them embodies a unique relationship with the concepts of creation, destruction, and the void, manifesting their existential beliefs through both their actions and their roles within the sanctuary.
• The Architect of Chaos represents a fascination with degradation and destruction as primal creative forces. He believes that beauty is born from disorder and that every act of creation must pass through a stage of deconstruction or death. His sadistic tendencies surface in his interactions with the others, particularly the Sentinelle du Vide, whom he torments by scattering sharp objects along his path. The Architect thrives on the disruption of order and the slow, inevitable decay of all things. His wiry, nervous frame seems charged with restless energy, and his eyes reflect a constant craving for chaos. His small stature belies the power he wields through his actions, always seeking to impose disorder on his surroundings.What he’s doing during the pauses:
• The Sentinelle du Vide symbolises the acceptance of emptiness and absence as a kind of freedom. Gaunt and fragile, with an androgynous appearance marked by long hair, a beard, and the subtle hint of feminine features, the Sentinelle willingly endures the Architect’s sadistic games. Barefoot, he walks over the sharp objects left behind by the Architect, embracing physical pain as a means of experiencing the void. His existence hovers between presence and absence, and his masochism reflects his philosophical stance: that suffering and pain are essential parts of confronting the nothingness at the heart of existence. What he’s doing during the pauses:
• The Revealer of Invisible Empires remains the most enigmatic figure among the Vieilleurs. Detached and intellectual, he is obsessed with uncovering hidden connections between things, forever searching for the invisible structures that bind reality together. He wears a half-mask that adds to his ambiguity, obscuring part of his face and giving him a mysterious, almost otherworldly appearance. His mask seems to reflect his internal state—neither fully concealed nor entirely exposed—leaving his motives and emotions difficult to read. The Revealer’s fascination with the incommunicable and the elusive nature of truth leads him to disengage from the physical or emotional power struggles of the others, preferring instead to observe and contemplate. Though he remains aloof from the sadistic interplay between the Architect and the Sentinelle, his deep focus on his own work suggests an intellectual torment all his own.
Together, these Vieilleurs are trapped in a repetitive cycle of creation, destruction, and contemplation. Their frescoes, layer upon layer of meaning, crumble and fade as quickly as they are made, reflecting the futility of their existence. Each of them is driven by a different obsession—whether it be the chaotic beauty of decay, the painful embrace of the void, or the endless search for invisible truths—yet their paths are inextricably linked, and they remain bound to one another in their shared sanctuary of existential torment.
A piercing cry—almost more of a whistle—slices through the heavy silence of the sanctuary. The Sentinelle of the Void has just impaled his foot on something excruciating. As he looks down, his eyes widen in terror and agony. Jagged shards of twisted, rusted metal, cruelly hidden in the shadows, have torn into his bare feet. The pain is unbearable, a searing, raw sensation that brings tears to his eyes. He sways, the weight of suffering nearly collapsing him.
Behind a wall, concealed in the murk, the Architect of Chaos watches, his sharp gaze gleaming with sadistic satisfaction. He has been waiting for this moment, savoring the pain from afar, like an artist admiring his most intricate work. But the Architect does not remain hidden for long. He steps out with confidence, moving toward the Sentinelle as though pulled by the scent of blood.
Without hesitation, he strides up and shoves his shoulder roughly into the Sentinelle’s frail body. The Sentinelle stumbles, nearly falling, his breath shaky with sobs. Now on the ground, his trembling hands begin to painfully extract the jagged shards, each movement a grimace of agony. Blood spills onto the stone floor, mingling with the dust of the sanctuary.
Leaning in close, with a voice both mocking and devoid of empathy, the Architect whispers:
"Death creates… Life decomposes."
The Sentinelle gasps, his face contorting in pain as he removes the last of the shards, his bloodied feet trembling under his weight. His body shudders, not just from the agony, but from the brutal truth of the Architect’s words, which echo cruelly in the air. The moment stretches in the stillness of the sanctuary, a quiet suffering that lingers long after the shards are gone.
"Chaos is not an end, it's a perpetual beginning."
Sentinelle: "Then why are we always afraid when it returns?"
Architect: "You're walking in the void, but it's far more solid than you think."
Sentinelle: "Solid for you, maybe, but what holds me?"
The Revealer remains detached, focused on his frescoes. He continues tracing his infinite labyrinths, indifferent to what is happening around him. Detached, almost condescending, without lifting his eyes from his work, he simply utters:
Revealer (detached):
"It is persistence that deceives you, making you believe you are real."
At this moment, the Sentinelle du Vide is overwhelmed by sudden, troubling reminiscences. Flashbacks of his mortal past flood his memory—fuzzy and fleeting recollections like fragments of home movies, faded slides from a bygone life. The images come in quick succession: moments when, in a former life, he had locked eyes with someone, shared fleeting intimate moments with others. Every memory shares one common thread—an exchange of gazes, eyes locking in those moments before the fleeting instant dissolved.
These memories, though distant and blurred, assail him, shattering his acceptance of the void and the pain. The captured gazes in these flashbacks evoke a warmth long lost, something he can no longer touch. These fragments are both tender and painful—a reminder of the life he once knew.
The sanctuary, shrouded in mystery and burdened by layers of forgotten frescoes, has long attracted philosophers, drawn by its reputation as a place where the search for meaning reaches its breaking point. It is said to be a space where time itself bends under the weight of endless introspection, a perfect trap for the mind. Intellectuals, curious and ambitious, are drawn to the challenge it presents—a labyrinth of thought and silence. They come to test their ideas, to push the limits of their understanding, and to see if they can survive the suffocating environment of obsessive creation and inevitable decay. The sanctuary, in its harshness, offers no answers, only the endless spiral of questions. It is here, seeking inspiration or perhaps simply confirmation of their own doubts, that philosophers like Morrow and Merleau-Ponty find themselves drawn.
Timothy Morrow arrives at the sanctuary with genuine curiosity, fascinated by the frescoes and the dynamics unfolding there. He explores the works carefully, trying to understand the motivations behind every brushstroke. However, he soon feels growing disappointment: he perceives the frescoes as mere artistic expressions without any tangible action, words suspended in the void with no real impact on the world.
“What’s the point of all this? We weave these intricate webs of thought, we build these towering structures of ideas, and for what? It all collapses under the weight of our own contradictions. »
“Everything we do, every word, every stroke of the brush—it’s all the same. Meaning is a prison we’ve built for ourselves. And here, in this sanctuary, we are just repeating the same empty rituals. Painting over paintings, adding layers upon layers, all for what? For nothing. We can’t escape the void with meaning, we can only lose ourselves in it.”
« The search for meaning is the biggest lie we’ve told ourselves. There is no meaning, only the artifice we wrap around the chaos.”
« Searching for beauty in nature, searching for connection, for meaning... But nature doesn’t care. The world doesn’t care. We’re fools, constantly projecting our need for purpose onto an indifferent universe. »
“This place, it’s nothing but a mirror! A mirror that reflects back our own desperate need for significance. Every fresco, every symbol—it’s just us, screaming into the void, trying to be heard by something, anything, that will give us validation. But nothing answers. There is no meaning here, just our own foolishness staring back at us.”
This realisation deeply troubles him, as he is frustrated to be disappointed by a place that symbolically seems so grand. Morrow, who once thought himself open to complexity, now finds himself confronted by his own judgments, disappointed by what he considers sterile art.
"I thought I understood... But all I see is my own reflection."
Revealer's response:
"That reflection is the only thing you see because it’s all you've ever created."
To Merleau-Ponty:
"You always believed words could save... Look where they've brought us."
Merleau-Ponty:
"Perhaps it wasn’t the words that were the problem, but what we never knew how to make them say."
Isolated in a darker part of the sanctuary, Jésus, aged and disillusioned, endlessly paints letters from an imaginary alphabet. His once radiant faith has long since vanished, replaced by a deep, quiet anger—directed at the invisible or the absence of divinity. His hair and beard are long and white, adding to his air of a man physically and spiritually worn down by time. His emaciated frame, slightly hunched under the weight of his years, contrasts with the obsessive precision of his hands. Despite his frail appearance, those hands remain agile, possessed by a single-minded devotion to the act of painting. His eyes, though dulled by time, still burn with a wild intensity, fueled by a silent rage and profound disillusionment.
Jésus no longer believes in God. His anger, both against his former faith and himself, is palpable in every brushstroke. Obsessed with creation, he paints letters of an imaginary alphabet, each stroke reinventing the forms as if they were being born painfully into existence. He does not stop to consider the work of others, often covering the frescoes of the Vieilleurs without thought or remorse. Lost in his frenzied creative spiral, he is unaware of the world around him. Jésus’s obsession isolates him, and his creations, though meaningless to others, represent his internal war with the divine. The painting is not just a task—it is a terrible compulsion, an act of defiance against the emptiness left behind by the collapse of his faith.
His appearance reflects this tragic, obsessive nature. He stands out, draped in a tattered but once ceremonial robe, now faded and shredded with time. The robe hints at a past of authority or sanctity, though it is clear that whatever elevated status he once held has crumbled. The crown on his head is no simple relic—it is a technologically advanced crown of thorns, a painful and gleaming piece of machinery that digs into his flesh. This crown, more like a cruel device than a symbol of martyrdom, speaks of a sci-fi fusion of suffering and futuristic torment. Its metal spikes serve as a constant reminder of his disillusioned state and fallen grace, merging the ancient with the technologically dystopian.
Though Jésus never speaks, his presence dominates the sanctuary. He is a figure of tragic grandeur, a kind of fallen glam rock star, dressed in the remnants of a life once filled with purpose. His bursts of creativity are violent, yet brief, always ending in exhaustion. When his energy is spent, he collapses, groaning quietly at the base of the wall, a figure defeated not by his body, but by the very weight of his inner turmoil.
Jésus’s exhaustion is the only true marker of time in the sanctuary. His creative cycle imposes a rhythm that governs the lives of the Vieilleurs. They watch him closely for signs of fatigue—his hands slowing, his arms faltering, his body slumping to the floor. When Jésus finally succumbs to exhaustion, it signals the end of the day’s work. His collapse is the sanctuary’s only clock, and without him, time itself would cease to exist. The Vieilleurs know that as long as Jésus paints, they must continue. Only his eventual breakdown signals a pause, and they follow his rhythm, however erratic it may be.
The Revealer of Invisible Empires retreats into a dark corner to meditate, seeking to perceive the invisible connections between beings and frescoes. Always drawn to the hidden, he tries to grasp the structures beneath the surface, the unseen foundation of everything.
One evening, the three Vieilleurs gather around a crackling fire. Silence stretches between them, broken only by the warmth flickering against the cold sanctuary walls. After a long moment, the Revealer speaks, once again attempting to convince the others of the existence of the Furtives—elusive creatures that leave unseen traces in their midst.
Revealer of Invisible Empires: “You do not see them, but they are here. They leave traces, glyphs that you cannot perceive. They shape this place as much as we do.”
The other Vieilleurs remain skeptical, dismissing his words as obsession. To them, these traces are mere accidents, distortions of the worn frescoes. Yet the Revealer never wavers.
The Furtives leave their marks in fine, imperceptible glyphs carved or drawn along the paths of Jésus’s creations. At first glance, they resemble nothing more than brushstroke errors, the natural decay of the walls. But for the Revealer, they are proof—hidden messages woven into the sanctuary’s skin. These creatures interact with Jésus’s work, their presence evident in the delicate patterns that form around his lines, though never directly upon them.
To the others, they remain phantoms of the imagination. But to the Revealer, every glyph is a whisper of something watching, something waiting, something just beyond sight.
As Morrow and Merleau-Ponty finish dressing in their newly provided robes, identical to those of the Vieilleurs but in pristine condition, the symbolic contrast is clear. Their garments, free from the marks of time and wear, reveal their status as novices in the sanctuary. The Vieilleurs’ robes are faded, torn, and patched with the history of their endless repetitions, but Morrow and Merleau-Ponty’s robes stand as yet untouched by the weight of the past.
When we catch up with them, they are in the middle of a heated verbal joust. Morrow’s frustration with the romantic ideals of the past has boiled over. His critique, sharp and unrelenting, aims squarely at Merleau-Ponty, whom he views as complicit in the glorification of a naïve and passive relationship with the world.
Morrow: “I don’t understand how you could indulge in such nonsense. Romanticism poisoned us. You and your kind put us on this pedestal of admiration and distance, watching the world as if it were some grand painting—beautiful but untouchable. It was that glorification of nature, the idea that simply looking was enough, that has led to this catastrophe.”
Merleau-Ponty listens in silence, his face impassive, while Morrow continues to lash out.
Morrow: “You paved the way for those damn hippies, with their flower crowns and peace symbols. But what did it accomplish? Nothing! You created this distance—a distance between us and real action! They turned admiration into a substitute for engagement. And look where it’s gotten us.”
Morrow’s critique grows more biting as he delves into the hollowness he perceives in romantic ideals. To him, the romantic view of nature is a trap—a seductive illusion that encourages passivity, a celebration of beauty that refuses to engage with the harsh realities of destruction, decay, and entropy.
“The world isn’t some romantic ideal. It’s brutal, it’s chaotic, and it’s falling apart. The Romantics, the nature-worshippers, they saw only the surface, the beauty. But what’s beauty without action? What’s the point of admiring the world when we’re too scared or too passive to do anything about its destruction?”
His voice rises, not out of a desire for answers, but out of his frustration with a system of thought he believes has left humanity ill-prepared to face its own demise.
“You stood there, observing, while the world burned. All of you, with your theories, your art, your contemplation. What good did it do? Where are your answers now?”
Merleau-Ponty finally speaks, his tone calm, yet piercing:
“Perhaps you mistake contemplation for passivity, Morrow.”
But Morrow is relentless:
“It is passive! You made us into passive creatures. Instead of acting, we reflect. Instead of intervening, we observe. You’ve romanticized reality to the point where we no longer know how to engage with it. We just stand here, admiring the ruins.”
In a sudden burst of frustration, Morrow leaps toward a nearby pot of paint, knocking it over in a wild gesture of rebellion. The paint splashes across the ground, seeping into the cracks of the sanctuary floor. Morrow breathes heavily, as if the act of spilling the paint has somehow expressed his internal turmoil.
Merleau-Ponty watches the scene unfold with a quiet detachment. Morrow, though visibly calmer now, is still simmering with resentment.
Morrow: “The world is romantic because we don’t know how to do anything but contemplate it.”
Still tormented by his disappointment and seeking to understand the essence of action, Morrow decides to provoke the Sentinelle du Vide. He approaches and sabotages his fresco—an act meant as a direct challenge. Morrow wants to test the reality of action, to see if a tangible impact can break the inertia surrounding him.
Morrow: "More Morrow... more Morrow..."
Sentinelle: "Every time you get lost, you create more of yourself."
Morrow: "You barely exist, and you know it. But when I’ll be gone, you’ll remain here motherf###!"
He punches the Sentinelle in the stomach.
Increasingly burdened by the sense of infinity and cycles, Morrow talks to himself:
- "There is no beginning, no end... only the loop."
- "And yet, I keep searching for a way out."
- "I search for myself in what disappears."
- "It's in disappearing that I find myself."
Flashes :
Strong moments we have seen with the Sentinelle are replayed, now incarnated by Morrow. Confusion of personality. But the flashes are too fast and Morrow is not aware of this.
In a moment of personal defiance and a search for release, Morrow observes Jésus painting with devouring intensity. While Jésus collapses, exhausted at the foot of a wall, Morrow decides to take his brushes and attempts to connect with that raw expression. But despite his efforts, Morrow fails to replicate Jésus' intensity. His brushstrokes feel empty, lacking the rage and fury that fuel Jésus' gestures. Every stroke of Morrow's seems pitiful, devoid of the creative force he hoped to capture. As he tries to immerse himself in the act, Morrow finds himself incapable of detaching from conscious reflection. He abandons the attempt, filled with disgust and frustration for having produced yet another version of Morrow.
Overcome with frustration from his repeated failures, Morrow stands at the center of the sanctuary and lets out a long, desperate scream. This scream, an act of pure emotional release, reverberates off the walls, creating a tense atmosphere. Unintentionally, Morrow opens his eyes mid-scream and sees before him a frozen form: a Furtif caught in mid-motion. This blurred, undefined silhouette, intensely present, seems to be a manifestation of Morrow's own act. The Furtif, frozen by the involuntary scream, becomes a kind of living sculpture, an imprint of Morrow's rage. However, Morrow doesn't realize that he has frozen a living being; he thinks he has merely materialized another fragment of himself, disgusted once again by what he perceives as another failure. To him, the Furtif is just more evidence of his inability to escape his own thoughts.
[Having the statufied Furtif finally helps the Revealer to prove their existence. To be written.]
After realising he has frozen a Furtif, Morrow is overwhelmed by a deep sense of guilt. He feels responsible for this immobilisation, which he sees as a violence he inflicted unintentionally. The Revealer then appears to soothe this guilt, explaining that interdependence transcends the simple idea of personal action, and that every act, even unintended, is part of a larger network of causes and effects.
Dialogue:
- "You are neither the creator nor the creation... you are merely the passage."
- Morrow: "But without a passage, where would they go?"
[>>>Continue the dialogue with painted fragments of the Lankavatara Sutra. Morrow finds it captivating but misinterprets it due to his narcissism.]
As Morrow tries to recenter himself, he begins to hear his own voice oddly synchronize with those of the Revealer and the Sentinelle du Vide. This unexpected synchronisation triggers a deep panic in him. He can no longer distinguish his own thoughts from those of others, creating an auditory loop where every phrase seems to endlessly repeat, making every thought elusive. Morrow feels his identity slipping away, progressively dissolving into the chaotic resonance of others. The boundary between his thoughts and the echoes of the other Vieilleurs becomes blurry, and he finds himself trapped in a dizzying cycle where his individuality melts into the collective chaos.
After going through a series of upheavals, Morrow attempts to regain control. He turns to a method he considers rational: evaluating his connections with the Vieilleurs through proportions. At first, he sees himself as 50% Architect of Chaos, recognizing a significant part of himself in the fascination with destruction and decomposition. He then evaluates his connection with the Sentinelle du Vide at 40%, feeling a resonance in the acceptance of the void and the absence of absolute meaning. Initially, he only feels 10% aligned with the Revealer of Invisible Empires, whom he perceives as too detached from tangible reality and too entangled in incommunicability.
However, something in this first evaluation does not satisfy Morrow. His mind becomes troubled once again. A pause sets in, and time seems to stretch. Morrow tries to calm himself by reevaluating his proportions, but this attempt at appeasement quickly spirals into chaos. In a mental whirlpool, the numbers pile up in his head, blending with indistinct murmurs, almost like a collective lament. The audience is immersed in this mental storm, where nothing is clear. A sound effect, a distorted reverberation, enhances the sensation of being trapped in his own thoughts.
Then, amid this cacophony of voices, certain phrases emerge with more clarity:
Morrow's voice (murmuring, distorted):
- "Shouldn’t we seek meaning? Should we not seek meaning?"
An echo amplifies this looped thought, accentuating the futility and absurdity of this endless questioning. Morrow, unable to break free from this loop, continues hearing the words even after he stops speaking. His thoughts quite literally devour themselves. Then, cutting through the murmurs, the voice of the Revealer echoes:
- "It is persistence that makes you believe you are real."
These words saturate the scene, piercing through the murmurs. The moment becomes unbearable. Morrow slowly opens his eyes and fixes his gaze on the Revealer, still absorbed in his work. Curious, Morrow slowly approaches, but this time, he doesn’t focus on the Revealer’s work. Instead, he observes his gestures, his subtle tics—small, nervous movements that betray a hidden tension beneath the façade of indifference. Morrow had never noticed these tiny spasms, these slight finger trembles.
These tics, small but significant, reveal a more human aspect of the Revealer. Beneath this mask of coldness, he perceives a persistence of discomfort, a suppressed fragility. Morrow feels a kind of tenderness for this secret vulnerability, this trace of unease that the Revealer tries to hide.
After this moment of reflection and observation, Morrow once again attempts to rationalize his connections with the Vieilleurs. But this time, something has changed. He reevaluates his proportions, giving more weight to the Revealer. As he tries to calculate this influence, he now recognizes that the Revealer fascinates him as much as he repels him. Morrow now sees himself as 50% Revealer of Invisible Empires, 30% Architect of Chaos, and 20% Sentinelle du Vide.
This new evaluation reflects a deeper shift. The Revealer, with his quest for incommunicability and his apparent indifference, exerts a gravitational pull on Morrow. He begins to understand that, for great intellectuals like him and the Revealer, the pleasure of failure lies in the vertigo it creates. They flirt with incommunicability, finding a form of intellectual freedom in failure. Their search for meaning becomes a dance with failure.
Morrow’s internal monologue:
- "Meaning always eludes... but it is in this escape that beauty resides."
Morrow is not yet fully aware of it, but he begins to understand that the goal is not to find an answer but to accept that the quest itself is the answer. The pleasure lies not in resolution or the discovery of an ultimate truth, but in the continuous exploration of a mystery that escapes them. Failure becomes a form of freedom.
Absorbed in this reflection, Morrow moves ever closer to the Revealer. He does not yet realise that the ultimate goal is tolerance for ambiguity, to let oneself bathe in discomfort without trying to escape it. This realization may come later, in what Morrow will call "The Echo of Chaos", as the confrontation with ambiguity becomes inevitable.
After having explored and recalculated his connections, Morrow contemplates the possibility of getting closer to Merleau-Ponty in an attempt to overcome his blocks. He realizes that, despite his disgust for art and the romanticism he criticizes, there may be perspectives he has not yet considered. However, he remains hesitant, captive of his own judgments and the persistent ambivalence toward the perspectives of others.
Dialogue:
- "I am trapped in my own reflections, but you are trapped in your silence."
- Merleau-Ponty: "Silence, Morrow, may be the only thing that doesn't trap us."
Morrow and Merleau-Ponty watch Jésus collapse from exhaustion, his brushes falling to his feet. While Jésus sleeps, the two novices decide to seize the opportunity to take his brushes and paint in the air. An odd choreography takes shape, their movements synchronizing almost instinctively, as if one were guiding the other's hand. As they paint in the air, they are stunned to see the air itself solidifying beneath their gestures. A monstrous creature emerges from their brushstrokes, an entity that seems both alive and composed of shifting shadows. The creature briefly observes them with its multiple eyes before escaping into the sanctuary, leaving behind an oppressive atmosphere.