Vidi Vici: Narrative and the death of desire

Directed by Tony Conrad

If the intersection of desire and authority is phallus, the intersection of absence and vigilance is vagina. The tape’s laconic title (I saw, I conquered—but I didn’t come) encodes its vaginal pretense. In effect, Vidi Vici is a male artist exploring a vaginal posture. By interleafing different gender characterizations with various narrative impulses, it circumvents linearity while emptying our gaze into the interstices between action and incapacity. —Tony Conrad