Expanded Cinema

Throughout his career, New York-based experimental animator, video and performance artist Peter Burr has incorporated collaboration and collectivity into his multimedia performances. Founder of the avant-garde animation label and touring live performance show Cartune Xprez (2006-2013), Burr has commissioned works from across the new media landscape, compiling a compelling cross section of contemporary experimental animation into three DVD collections. One of his more recent expanded animation performances, Special Effect, took the remediated form of a live television show where Burr ‘hosted’ his own animated imagery which was periodically interrupted by obliquely related ‘commercials’ created by a selection of contemporary animators and video artists. Based on Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker (1979), Burr’s imagery (which makes up most of the single channel version) depicts three distorted computer-animated characters as they wander through ‘the zone’ in the form of abstract digital spaces and live-action overgrown and abandoned landscapes. In its live manifestations, Burr guided spectators through a labyrinthine experience that included the use of a fog machine, lasers, a webcam with green-screen effects, body mapping, binaural vocal performances, and video sequencing via custom software. This paper explores the multifaceted significance of Special Effect. Situating it within the broader practice of expanded cinema, it maps its curatorial relationship to the current spectrum of experimental animation and analyses the conceptual productivity of its digital distortion of Tarkovsky’s elusive film.

This essay examines the work of two major contemporary artists—Hito Steyerl and Harun Farocki—to suggest a novel framework for considering cinematic politics in general, and the politics of montage in particular, in the contemporary moment. Both artists are deeply critical of the ways in which montage, across the history of cinema, has been associated with a range of violent and militaristic images. Discussing the work of Steyerl and Farocki along these lines, this essay seeks to displace the historical analogy between cinema and war by foregrounding the ways in which cinematic politics may be grounded in a spatial and geographic language. Grounding these claims is an examination of two particular works: On Construction of Griffith’s Films (Harun Farocki, 2006) and Abstract (Hito Steyerl, 2012), with the second part of this essay reserved for a close reading of the latter. https://preview.tinyurl.com/y2ekcpxs

Media są awangardą naszego społeczeństwa. Awangarda nie istnieje już w malarstwie, muzyce, poezji, są nią same media. Marshall McLuhan W koncepcji Marshalla McLuhana-wszechstronnego myśliciela, wizjonera, badacza i twórcy, na którego wykłady uczęszczali m.in. Buckminster Fuller i John Cage-sztuka i uprawiający ją artyści pełnią określoną rolę w życiu społecznym. Dostarczają bowiem informacji o otaczającym świecie, są "siłą przewidującą", wychwytują zwiastuny nadchodzących zmian w obszarze tech-niki. Będąc "radarami rodzaju ludzkiego", współtworzą "system wczesnego ostrzegania". Prawdziwa, wizjonerska Sztuka sięga swoimi antenami w przy-szłość. Artyści trzydzieści lat wcześniej powiedzą wam, co się stanie. [...] Sztuka jest systemem alarmowym w obrazach. To SOS, błysk światła, który ona nam przesyła. Artyści widzą bardziej intensywnie niż inni 1. W ujęciu McLuhana twórczość nie jest więc wyłącznie przestrzenią autokreacji. Uwidacznia bowiem to, co jest dla innych niewidzialne, a także trenuje percepcję odbiorców, przygotowując ich do zmierzenia się z nadchodzącymi zmianami. Przyglądając się dziejom ludzkości, kanadyjski badacz zauważył, iż kształtują je dominujące sposoby komunikacji. Na tej podstawie wyodrębnił cztery etapy rozwoju-epokę ple-mienną i kulturę oralną, epokę alfabetu fonetycznego i kulturę pisma, epokę Gutenberga i kulturę druku oraz epokę elektryczności i kulturę mediów elek-tronicznych. Z perspektywy interesującego mnie XX wieku, przyjrzę się temu, 1 Cyt. za: Kalina Kukiełko-Rogozińska-Miejsce sztuki w teorii mediów Marshalla McLuhana w: eadem-"Między nauką a sztuką. Teoria i praktyka artystyczna w ujęciu Marshalla McLuhana", 2014, s. 122. w jaki sposób dwaj artyści-Laszlo Moholy-Nagy i Jerzy Krechowicz, którzy bez wątpienia pełnili rolę radarów-antycypowali nowy typ kultury i oswajali percepcję widzów z nadchodzącą multimedialnością planety. Węgierski artysta i wizjoner-podobnie jak McLuhan-nie był apologetą mass-mediów. Uważał jednak, że sztuka współczesna musi się wobec nich określić. Łączenie nowej technologii z praktyką artystyczną było więc postępo-waniem zgodnym z duchem dynamicznych i zmiennych czasów, pozwalającym lepiej przygotować organy receptywne ludzi do życia we współczesnej cywili-zacji. W dziele Malarstwo, fotografia, film Moholy-Nagy deklarował: […] wyda-je mi się nieodzowne, aby uczestniczyć w kształtowaniu własnej epoki, posługując się środkami tej epoce właściwymi. Dostępna wówczas nowoczesna technika (aparatura optyczna, rzutniki, reflektory) przyczyniła się do powstania nowych form w kształtowaniu optycznym. Ich materiałem totalnym było światło, które, jak diagnozował w 1927 r., miało zdominować wiek XX i uczynić go swoją epoką 2. Tradycyjne malarstwo sztalugowe, poprzez rzemieślniczość procesu kształtowania pigmentowego, nie było w stanie oddać symultaniczności nowego widzenia czy utrwalić istoty ruchu. Stało się więc anachroniczne i wymagało intensywnych przemian. Ich zwiastun dostrzegł Moholy-Nagy w obrazie Biały kwadrat na białym tle (1918) Kazimierza Malewicza, w którym następowała we-dług niego transformacja płótna w ekran projekcyjny. Symptomy zapoczątkowa-nego odwrotu od tradycyjnego malowania obrazu […] ujawniają się już w decydu-jących momentach dziejów ducha(,) jak choćby w rozwoju suprematysty Malewicza. Jego ostatni obraz: biały kwadrat na kwadratowym białym płótnie jest widomym symbolem ekranu projekcyjnego do projekcji obrazów świetlnych i filmów, symbo-lem przechodzenia malarstwa pigmentowego w kształtowanie światła: na białą płaszczyznę można rzutować światło także w ruchu 3. Nowy malarz miałby być twórcą relacji luminescencyjnych, w których światło miało być używane nie tyle do wyświetlania materiału wizualnego, ale istnieć autonomicznie, w czy-stej postaci jako przekaźnik będący przekazem według terminologii McLuhana. Diagnoza ta miała swoje odzwierciedlenie w praktyce artystycznej, w której zaczął on stosować celuloid, pleksiglas, galiat czy aluminium. Były to two-rzywa, które umożliwiały właśnie bezpośrednią grę światłem. Także kształt ekranu projekcyjnego znajdował się w polu zainteresowań twórcy, który w tra-2 Por. Laszlo Moholy-Nagy-Bezprzykładna fotografia (1927), przekł. Lech Lechowicz w: "Obscura" 1985, nr 1-2, s. 39. 3 Laszlo Moholy-Nagy-Problemy nowego filmu, przekł. Andrzej Gwóźdź w: "Iluzjon" 1986, nr 1, s. 41.

Surface and Projection is an investigation of the cinema event, defined as image, projection, space and audience. The project interrogates the place where cinema occurs for the viewer, starting with the special viewing conditions for film watching and the accepted roles they create for the film maker, the exhibitor and the spectator.

The artworks in Surface and Projection have been a series of reassemblages of the elements of the cinematic event. The film installation Moving Still Life is the key work.

The report starts by defining the event of cinema, drawing on French film theorist Jean-Louis Baudry’s 1970 essay Ideological Effects of the Basic Cinematic Apparatus. As Moving Still Life took shape, identifying its art and film historical contexts became part of the wider investigation of the cinematic event. Section 2 teases out resonances with Italian Arte Povera and outlines a brief history of super 8 art film making in Australia. It links these to the specific material grounds of Moving Still Life. Art in the public domain is discussed as the art work was initially conceived as an installation for outdoor public spaces.

Section 3 discusses expanded cinema, a primary art historical context. There is a general survey of this early intermedia form as it developed in the US and Europe and its presence in Australia.

While I make a case for the four elements that comprise the cinematic event, I expand upon the development of the artwork, where image became a dominant strand of its own. A specific form of film making evolved, focusing on the layered image. The final sections of the report, ‘Image’ and ‘Sequence’,  focus on this image work, drawing on Umberto Eco’s 1960 essay The Open Work and American art writer Rosalind Krauss’ writing on installation and post-medium artwork. The deconstructive ethos of the project leads to an analysis of the frame within the sequence and the attacks on the frame made by Moving Still Life and my image work in general. The analysis of sequence within moving images, draws on a seminal 1945 essay by American writer Joseph Frank, Spatial Form in Literature. This builds to a discussion of new media, interrogating its claim for interactivity in moving images, an impossibility while the frame remains the primary unit.

To mark the 50th anniversary of Expo 67, the Musée d’art contemporain de Montreal (MACM) presented last summer In Search of Expo 67, a major exhibition of new works by Canadian Artists, inspired by Expo 67. With this archaeological and historical perspective of the exhibition’s fate in other places, it’s necessary to question the traces of remains and erasures in Expo 67. This fair was considered as an heterotopy feeding a post-modern world from a futuristic inspiration.  Starting from the “Space Frame” concept, a focus will be established around architectural screens and their relationship to the urban setting. We could evoke the presence of a computer-tinted screens – to regulate the temperature of the structure – in the geostatic dome of the “United States Pavilion” (fig. 1) as assumed the transparency of a world affected by a constant displacement (sometimes open, sometimes closed on itself). The various films which projected on the principle of fragmented screen, invite a reflection concerning a possible (re)sedimentation of space – necessarily heterogeneous – within Canada as a unifying nation. For example, the multiple-screen panorama at the “Pavilion du Havre” through Roman Kroitor’s film In the Labyrinth, or the maze of concave screens that surrounds the viewer at the “Bell Pavilion.” Other pavilions-installations may be covered such as the “Canadian-Pacific Pavilion” and its kaleidoscope of curved screens that those invite the viewer to play with his five senses in the film We Are Young or the “Canadian-National Pavilion” explores the movement and time theme in Vincent Vaitiekunas’s film Motion – a 70mm film curved on a big screen. The interaction between the screen display and the architectural structure of the pavilions will find extension with their contemporary reinventions. Marie-Claire Blais and Pascal Grandmainson investigates Expo 67’s traces by shooting some images on the original event location (fig. 2). More precisely, Jean-Pierre Aubé echoes the “Kaleidoscope Pavilion” in a time-lapse video full of psychedelic effects (fig. 3). Finally, Charles Stankievech proposes to interact with the impressive architecture of Buckminster Fuller’s dome (“United States Pavilion”) in his installation (fig. 4). Beyond the diachronic time and how did they architectural screens contributed to changing our relationship to the moving image, how does Expo 67 and its audiovisual text become an extension of the city’s physical space under construction? How did some pavilion’s architecture was connected to the screen structure of the films inside (like an echo between the contents and container)? In what sense can they have been said that the contemporary update of some pavilions inside the museum’s white cube was working a displacement’s heterotopy? In this case, the pavilion’s architecture becomes screen as much as a material point of view than a metaphoric one which acting a diaphanous effect.

O curso pretende abordar teoricamente a constituição do espaço possibiltado pelas diferentes usos da montagens no cinema experimental e expandido partindo do corpo de obra de cineastas-artistas: Jonas Mekas (1922-2019), Rose Lowder(1941-), Steina Vasulka (1940-) Helio Oiticica (1937-1980), Stan Brakhage (1933-2003),Paul Sharits (1943-1993), Peter Kubelka (1934-), Anthony McCall(1946-), Gordon Matta Clark (1943-1978),  Malcom Le Grice (1940-) e yann beauvais (1953-) Os filmes serão o corpus sob o qual nos debruçaremos a fim de perceber a condição de possibilidade criada pelos procedimento de montagem/articulação não narrativa.

A construção/emergência de espacialidades serão pensadas por meio das técnicas e procedimentos de montagem utilizados, notando as potencialidades e rupturas operadas pela superação da articulação invisível de espaços-tempo (raccord).

As espacialidades a serem pensadas portanto emergem de uma dinâmica temporal na qual  “o tempo não é a medida do movimento, mas o movimento é a perspectiva do tempo”.  Portanto a montagem de estruturas visiveis/aparentes desse (s) cinema (s)– análoga a de arquitetura- será o código-chave, o eixo de reflexão sobre as quais estruturaremos a reflexão no curso.

O curso pretende abordar teoricamente a constituição do espaço possibiltado pelas diferentes usos da montagens no cinema experimental e expandido partindo do corpo de obra de cineastas-artistas: Jonas Mekas (1922-2019), Rose Lowder(1941-), Steina Vasulka (1940-) Helio Oiticica(1937-1980), Stan Brakhage(1933-2003),Paul Sharits(1943-1993), Peter Kubelka(1934-), Anthony McCall(1946-), Gordon Matta Clark(1943-1978), Malcom Le Grice(1940-) e yann beauvais (1953-)
Os filmes serão o corpus sob o qual nos debruçaremos a fim de perceber a condição de possibilidade criada pelos procedimento de montagem/articulação não narrativa.
A construção/emergência de espacialidades serão pensadas por meio das técnicas e procedimentos de montagem utilizados, notando as potencialidades e rupturas operadas pela superação da articulação invisível de espaços-tempo (raccord). As espacialidades a serem pensadas portanto emergem de uma dinâmica temporal na qual “o tempo não é a medida do movimento, mas o movimento é a perspectiva do tempo”. Portanto a montagem de estruturas visiveis/aparentes desse (s) cinema (s)– análoga a de arquitetura- será o código-chave, o eixo de reflexão sobre as quais estruturaremos a reflexão no curso.

This article analyzes Toronto's Yonge-Dundas Square and Montreal's Quartier des spectacles as contemporary examples of expanded cinema-what the author refers to as territorial expanded cinema. Similarly redeveloped and governed by the regulatory powers of Public-Private Partnerships, the two city-ordained organizations that manage these sites have codified multimedia and multiscreen environments through the rubrics of the neo-liberal city. Whereas the Yonge-Dundas Square Board of Management has aimed to highlight a commercial-centric version of the city, Le Partenariat du Quartier des spectacles has been striving to promote an urbanism focused on a celebration of "Culture and the Arts. " Such differences in mandates manifest not only in the contents being displayed in each locale, but also in the organization of the screens and spaces, as well as the kinds of technologies being employed. In contrast to the nationalist and inter-nationalist discourses that shape expanded cinemas in other locales, territorial expanded cinema is categorized by the privatization of urban spaces.

This research will look at four of Sharits films, Ray Gun Virus (1966), Piece Mandala/End War (1966), T,O,U,C,H,I,N,G (1968) and N:O:T:H:I:N:G (1968).  A phenomenological and semiotic theoretical framework will be applied in order to argue that Sharits’ films reveal and make manifest an invisible aspect of cinema that is common to the entirety of film but very rarely seen.  It will be argued how this invisible aspect of cinema is a constituent of all film experiences, revealed by Sharits’ deconstruction of dominant, narrative traditions.  A further argument will be how the revelation of this invisible aspect of cinema exposes new modes of meaning and therefore new articulations within film.

"Marshall McLuhan once said that any work of art is a trap for our attention. At the Digital Museum of Digital Art this is quite true as one agrees to be strapped into an Oculus headset. The thing is so heavy it must be wiped clean of sweat. And its discomfort never quite exits consciousness even as the field of vision gives way to 3D. One can swivel one’s head to gain new perspectives but real locomotion is not recommended—you would step outside the sensors that make all this possible. Instead, game-like controllers slip over the hands to allow one to navigate the Museum’s exterior."

contact: sethwatter@gmail.com