The one person who had reappeared in the present was the only one of the 16 adolescents who had eluded their fictional death. I had to change the focus of my piece completely. Her avoidance of a ‘death’ on celluloid in 1975 seemed to be both the worst and best possible answer to my search. The worst? Because it suggested that the ‘deaths’ were actually deaths. The best? Because it suggested that perhaps through going through the symbolic performance of being killed within that fiction, a form of play, was completed. Their roles could be forgotten. These participants had therefore moved on. But it remained unresolved for one of the performers who had not completed this form of ritual. She was therefore still able to haunt the present suspended through the traces of her character from 1975.
Of course, Reunion; Salò also emerges from Pasolini’s own tragic murder shortly after the filming of Salò or 120 days of Sodom was completed.”
Adam Chodzko, from the catalogue notes for Le Voyage Interieur, Espace EDF-Electra, Paris, 2005, curated by Alex Farquharson and Alexis Vaillant.
