A Cinema Exploded: Notes on the Development of Some Post-Cinematic Forms. by Matthew Clayfield
In his 2003 Variety Cinema Militans Lecture, 'Toward a re-invention of cinema,' Peter Greenaway suggested that the cinema died almost twenty-five years ago, in 1983, with the introduction of the remote control "to the living rooms of the world" [1], a sentiment that, while delightfully provocative in and of itself, I'm not sure I completely agree with. Insofar as I can see it, the remote control, far from killing cinema in one fell swoop, merely marked the first real tolling of its proverbial bell and the beginning of its slow but steady trek towards, while not the grave, a new landscape in which it would be but one of many audiovisual media, lighting a twenty-five year fuse, which is at present shorter than it has ever been before. As Greenaway suggested in his lecture, the history of art has shown us that the "throwing away [of established cinematic language] in anticipation of a new cycle" of "aesthetic-technologies" is ultimately inevitable. The key word here seems to me to be 'anticipation,' and, along with the funeral procession and bomb fuse analogies, we might also like to apply to the period of innovation that has followed the introduction of the remote control the more biological analogy of foetal gestation, which is perhaps more appropriate given its positive focus on birth as opposed to a negative one on death. This is not a 'death of cinema' essay, and I firmly believe that cinema and post-cinema can and should coexist. As we shall see, this gestation is taking place all around us: in the mainstream, with DVDs for films like Memento (d. Christopher Nolan, 2001) [2]; in the independent sector, with projects like Bodysong (d. Simon Pummell, 2003) [3]; in the art world, with video art; and in the academy, with praxis-based research projects like those of Lev Manovich and Adrian Miles. These are the true harbingers of post-cinematic forms and often bring together, to greater or lesser extent, two of what I consider to be the most important and exciting aspects of the post-cinematic landscape: non-linear granularity and the possibility for interactive audience participation. Essentially, we can look at a film in one of two ways: holistically, as a more or less cohesive formal system or emotional experience; i.e., as a sole discursive entity (the film); or atomistically, as a series of smaller constituent elements; i.e., as a collection of potentially discursive entities (sequences, scenes, shots, and frames). The primary difference between the two approaches, to put it rather simplistically, is ultimately a matter where one chooses to place the emphasis in the clause "A film is the sum of its parts." Does one privilege the sum or the parts? The whole or its constituents? more... http://www.braintrustdv.com/essays/cinema-exploded.html _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list [email protected] http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
