After passing his baccalauréat, Thierry Kuntzel obtained a masters in the teaching of philosophy (Paris, Sorbonne). At the same time, he studied linguistics and semiology at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, where he attended the seminars by Christian Metz and Roland Barthes. Under the direction of Barthes, he began a thesis - never finished - entitled "Travail du film et travail du rêve" [Film work and dream work]. In 1972, he became a researcher in the Research Department of the ORTF and then at the INA, where he remained until 1989, specializing in the problem of the relationship between the arts and television. During this period, he also taught the semiology of cinema at the University of Paris I, the IDHEC and the Centre dÕEtudes Américain du Cinéma in Paris. He later did the same in two American universities (University of New York in Buffalo, Center for Twentieth Century Studies in Milwaukee, Wisconsin). He published cinematic analyses until 1976. In a 1972 publication entitled Le Travail du film [Film Work], he replayed the work of the dream as defined by Freud. Thierry Kuntzel illustrated the work of condensation that takes place in the first moments of the film. The images "all tend towards the scene, the shot, the photogram ideally halted as if by a vibration of memory" [1]. In 1974, he studied a film by Chris Marker (La Jetée [The Jetty], 1963) and analyzed it during a residence of a few months in Milwaukee in the United States where he had video equipment at his disposal enabling him to re-edit certain elements of the film. This became work in its own right in the form of a video tape entitled La Rejetée [The Rejected / The Re-jetty - there is a pun in the French] (1974). Thierry Kuntzel has kept this tape, now said to be "lost", at the top of the list of his video productions. He subsequently declared: "In my work as a theorist, I quickly felt that I was moving away from writing and discourse to focus on my fundamental preoccupation: being with or in the image. The work "on" the image had been a relay, a way of understanding or imagining how the viewer functioned in psychological terms. [2] In 1974, he made Le Tombeau de Saussure (Double Entrave) [The Tomb of Saussure (Double Hindrance)], which would be presented nineteen years later at the Galerie National du Jeu de Paume in Paris (1993). In 1976 and 1977, Thierry Kuntzel exhibited in Paris at the Théâtre Campagne-Première (with Tania Mouraud), and then at the Galerie Ghislain Mollet-Viéville (with Jon Gibson and Tania Mouraud). These two shows were accompanied by a manifesto entitled Trans. In the one dated November 16th 1976, he said: "TRANS refers the subject to nothing except to itself, the action in progress, the psychological system." Anne-Marie Duguet notes the planned intervention by Thierry Kuntzel in the context of the manifesto Trans 3, in which he would have displayed the words Vous, Ici, Maintenant, [You, Here, Now] mixed with the words Ni Ni [Neither Nor] by Tania Mouraud on 57 advertising hoardings in the eastern Parisian region [3]. From 1979 to 1981, he made several videos: Nostos I, Still, Echolalia, La Desserte blanche [The White Sideboard], Time Smoking a Picture, Buena Vista, and La Peinture cubiste [The Cubist Painter], as well as La Desserte noire, bleue, rouge [The Black, Blue, Red Sideboard] and La Desserte multiple [The Multiple Sideboard], both unfinished. These tapes were the metaphorical stage for an exploration of the psychological system, memory and temporality through systematic use of the characteristics of the medium. Rather than being closely related to video art, the works of Thierry Kuntzel are strongly influenced by his knowledge of cinema (both classic and experimental), literature (the Nouveau Roman, Mallarmé´), painting (Matisse, Hogarth´), psychoanalysis and semiology. While the film work attempted to "gather" the film into one sequence or even one image, the work on video rose up against the threat of freezing. In 1983, he produced a television essay with Philippe Grandrieux and Jérôme Prieur, making "a shady magazine which navigates through television history from its origins to the future[...]" [4] for the INA under the generic name Pleine Lune. After this first phase producing videos, Thierry Kuntzel mainly produced installations. By offering the viewer a physical and mental journey, he took up again where he had left off with his exhibitions Trans 1 & 2, in which his works could already not be taken in at a single glance. In 1984, the Centre Georges Pompidou produced and presented Nostos II, an installation made up of nine video monitors. In 1989, leaving his job as an "improbable researcher" at the INA, he made the first part of his Quatre Saisons [Four Seasons]. Eté (Double Vue) [Summer (Double View)] was exhibited in Paris at the end of 1989. Hiver (La Mort de Robert Walser) [Winter (The Death of Robert Walser)] was shown in Madrid at the "Bienal de la Imagen en Movimiento 90". In 1993, Anne-Marie Duguet organized a retrospective of all his work at the Galerie National du Jeu de Paume. This included the Quatre Saisons moins une [Four Seasons Minus One], notably Printemps (pas de Printemps) [Spring (No Spring)] (1993) with Ken Moody and Irina Dalle. This retrospective also presented Tampico (Non-Lieu) [Tampico (Case Dismissed/Non-Place) - there is a pun in the French) (1993), a work made for La Sept in the series "Live" produced by Philippe Grandrieux, with whom he had already collaborated in 1981 when making La Peinture cubiste. In Rotterdam, for an exhibition designed by Daniel Buren, he presented Le Tombeau de Henri James [The Tomb of Henry James] and Le Tombeau de Herman Melville [The Tomb of Herman Melville] (1994). These two works, along with Le Tombeau de Edgar Allan Poe [The Tomb of Edgar Allan Poe] (1994), were exhibited the same year at the Galerie René Blouin in Montreal. At the end of 1994, at the Musée de Rochechouart, he exhibited Tu (1994). In 1995, he made Venises [Venices], produced by Le Fresnoy and by the Venice Biennale where he presented it. In 1995, the Fondation Cartier pour l'Art Contemporain produced Nostos III. The work completed the Nostos trilogy. In 1997, the Galerie René Blouin in Montreal continued to back Thierry Kuntzel's work by showing notably Le Tombeau de Michael Powell [The Tomb of Michael Powell] (1997) and Manifestes [Manifestos] (1997), which returned to the artist's conceptual interests: literature, cinema and psychoanalysis. At the Fondation Cartier, in the exhibition Amour, he presented Abandon (Ne me quitte pas) [Abandon (Don't Leave Me)], 1997, a triptych of three portraits close to ecstasy.

Dominique Garrigues

[1] Raymond Bellour, "Ce que l'image abandonne", catalogue of the exhibition Thierry Kuntzel, Paris, éd. du Jeu de Paume / Réunion des musées nationaux, 1993, p. 39.
[2] Liliane Albertazzi, "Prendre le temps" (interview), Art Press, Paris, number 131, 1988, p. 30.
[3] Anne-Marie Duguet, "Les vitesses de l'immobile", catalogue of the exhibition Thierry Kuntzel, op. cit., p. 13, note 9.
[4] Gérard Lefort, "Coup de Lune", Libération, Paris, 22nd August 1983, p. 34.