(Re) Enacting Velazquez's Las Meninas Re-framed from an Intermedial Perspective

The theoretical framework of the present essay springs from the media-philological field, in a brief attempt to compare two different approaches of the same artefact, (Diego Velazquez's Las Meninas), both pertaining to the newly-fashioned orbit of intermedial phenomena. The method proposed is the case study and the units of analysis we shall directly reference are: Eve Sussman's 89 Seconds at Alcazar (2004), a single channel looped video, narrating the scene behind the pictorial space in the painting, apposed to Daniel Arasse's essay dedicated to the same artefact in his On n'y voit rien. Descriptions (2000). The purpose of this explorative undertaking is to analyse the actuality of a backstage narrative that results in a variety of interpretations, and at the same time to reconsider the two main force fields ensuing from the descriptive approach of a work of art: on the one hand the apparent faithful transcribing of the artefact and on the other, the tendency to prescribe a new interpretation of the visual field, with the direct intent to alter its scope.