The Exquisite Corpse of History. Radu Jude and the Intermedial Collage

Abstract The article argues for the relevance of intermediality in the interpretation of Radu Jude’s films made after 2016: The Dead Nation (Ţara moartă, 2017), I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians (Îmi este indiferent dacă în istorie vom intra ca barbari, 2018), The Marshal’s Two Executions (Cele două execuţii ale Mareşalului, 2018), To Punish, to Discipline (A pedepsi, a supraveghea, 2019), The Exit of the Trains (Ieşirea trenurilor din gară, 2020), Uppercase Print (Tipografic majuscul, 2020), Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn (Babardeală cu bucluc sau porno balamuc, 2021). Instead of framing Jude’s aesthetic in terms of the Eisensteinian montage, as many reviewers have done, the article addresses the way in which these films insist on the tensions between media, on creating an ontological collage, not only a cinematic montage. The collage effect of the films materializes in sensuously and intellectually layered permutations that connect different media and shares some traits with the Surrealist play of the cadavre exquis. The mixture of heterogeneous materials becomes a strategy (informed by the ideas of Walter Benjamin) to reflect on history in the conditions of postmemory as well as a way to explore the relationship between media and reality through various positions of spectatorial engagement and the affective metalepsis between reflexivity and immersion.1