Actaeon, surrounded by his pack of hounds, is hunting deer in the forest. By chance, in taking one of those small pathways that leads no-where, or perhaps because he chose to drop the substance for the shadow, he discovers by moving back a few branches the goddess Diana bathing naked in the water. She too has been hunting in this same area, and before returning to Olympus where the cyclopes (and probably Hercule) will nourrish themselves on the beasts she has slaughtered, she washes herself, purifying herself of her earthly activities. Actaeon sees her and contemplates her. The water slides down the goddess's body (but is it her body or the one that Actaeon sees ?) bringing with it the sweat, the blood and the mire that tells of battle and of death. The memory of her earthly actes return to earth and nature - but Diana is nature. Soon, in the water's reflection, Diana notices Actaeon. She sees in his contemplating eyes her nakedness, and throws water in his face; or does she just make a simple gest of modesty that in its hastiness "splashes" the unfortunate hunter? Immediately, Actaeon is changed into a stag, hunted and finally torn to pieces by his own pack of hounds.
What does Actaeon see ? Has he chosen to see the goddess naked ? And does he accept his metamorphose as the ultimate mo-ment of sacrilegeous ecstasy ? Is he a victim of the goddess's desire to see herself through his eyes ? And her punishing him in the form of a stag, the stag being the animal by excellance consecrated to Diana, does it not offer to Actaeon the savage possession of her divinity? Does he simply desire to see the naked body of the impossible woman (voyeurism) in a "death desire" ? Or does his gaze look for knowledge of the divine (contem-plation) that will end by "natu-rally" disappearing in him ?
Erotic desire and iron will power, here, in Actaeon's eyes, cross and mingle; balancing the bodies hidden thoughts, the glorious bodies of thought. Perver-sion and Theology vibrate together for what Deleuze called a superior pornology. Where is the balance today ? Is it true that, our beliefs devouered by their pack, regress our look ? And if this is so, what's the transgression ? In a time where Science has long since replaced Theology, and where a new mystical being without base or memory, what can be a divinity (god-vision) ? And when Science discovers the principle of uncer-tainty, this observation admits its limits, meeting imprecision and chance, when it becomes impos-sible to say «I see» to mean «I know», should not all contempla-tion be desperated ?
If what we see is deprived of a superior aspect, drowned in a mass of apparitions, two and three dimensional images, giving only a calming desire, sinking slowly into a lifeless voyeurism, it therefore means that it is Diana and not Actaeon who should fear the pack and the hunter's eyes, who, un-punished and without real desir, rapes her.
Voyeurism and contempla-tion, pornography and Heisen-berg's principle, appearances and apparitions, Shooting Parties proposes to track, through these concepts, a visual identity.
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