CHARTING FILM TERRITORY
The courtyard or surrounding environment for this work is I believe the development of the moving image, film as a developing medium and its relationship to the more resent evolution of digital video. From the steps of still photography via ‘Magic Lanterns’ to the first films of the Lumière brothers[1] the impact of the moving image brought with it movement, time and the replication of life – ‘The moving image overcame the death of the still image’[2] This ability to mimic life or perhaps more accurately ‘experience’ places the moving image from the outset clearly within the field of spatial / haptic understanding. Haptic – that is “enabling contact” as Bruno underlines in her introduction to ‘Atlas of Emotion’, is a realm that is ‘shown to play a tangible role in our communicative ‘sense’ of spatiality and motility, thus shaping the texture of habitable space and, ultimately, mapping our ways of being in touch with the environment.’[3]
The early panoramic films like “Leaving Jerusalem by Railway”[4] were grounded in this concept of ‘giving the experience of…’ laying the basis for what was to become the Documentary Film genre which has since interestingly largely left the environs of the ‘Picture House’ or Cinema and moved into domestic space via the TV. This early tendency to document urban space as experienced by the urban dweller means that ‘early film became an imaginary form of flanerie’[5] offering the possibility of strolling the streets of a distant metropolis to viewers from the security of the socially acceptable cinema, and acted as a powerful force for the increased mobilisation of 19 century westerners, particularly women. A balance to this was perhaps the strong colonialist drive to ‘capture’ and ‘shoot’ a number of ‘takes’ of exciting otherness, which was of course taken back and displayed in a privileged environment.
This largely haptic view of film is in contrast to the position of much current film theory ‘that has tended to conceive of film space as a direct heir of Renaissance perspective.’ [6] a visual theory constructed on the basis of a constricted single viewpoint. The increasing pre-eminence of this linier view coincided with the rise of narrative within film and the demise of the travelogue, cinema and feature films shifting their allegiance to linier story telling becoming a close relative of the novel. This shift may be partly explained by the physical nature of the medium - long strips of set images, which are cut and ordered to follow each other in a controlled sequence, much like words in a sentence. So although a number of narratives might be told within one film, or the end of the ‘story’ may be shown at the beginning as in Pulp Fiction, the play with the audience is still based around the notion of ‘an authentic account of events’ – the story rather than the spatial experience. Exceptions to prove this rule are most often provided tellingly by non European auteur’s , although Rossellini’s classic “Voyage in Italy” provides a rare example.
Despite the dominance of this linier approach in both film practice and theory, there remained a strong thread linking the spatial nature of film, Flanerie, and the spatial practice of Architecture. Sergei Eisenstein in his essay: “Montage and Architecture’ illustrates this through a taking the reader on a walk around the Acropolis of Athens, which he refers to as “the perfect example of one of the most ancient films.” [7] This relationship between the tactile experience of walking, film and Architecture has however born more fruit in architectural practice and perhaps even the practice of walking than has so far informed film with a haptic sensibility.
Art film it would appear took up where mainstream cinema’s preoccupation with the narrative of ‘recording’ left off. Even the experimental films of the Nexus group in the early 60s produced work that was in reaction to mainstream Hollywood and toyed with cinematic expectation for example: “No 1” by Yoko Ono [8] although sparse in action still features the narrative of a slow burning match. With the introduction of the Sony Portapak video camera, art films moved from being a team operation to an individual activity. As Barbara London notes in the catalogue of “Video Acts” exhibiting at the ICA: “ Artists … found they could carry on their solitary routine with the new video equipment… the artist was producer, cameraman, and performer rolled into one”[9] This however did nothing to deflect the drive to use the video camera as a means of recording artistic expression via performance. Although there is an interesting relationship between ‘video as document of performance’ and ‘performance for video’ – with video acting as the desired end medium, there was still little exploration of the medium itself. The added function that video brought to art practice was primarilary that of the mirror. As Christopher Eamon pointes out in his article “Visibility and the Electronic Mirror”: ‘Nauman’s use of video in many of his fourteen performance videos point to how the medium simultaneously shows live that which is being recorded. This capacity is one of the ways that the medium transcends documentation.’[10] And as Klaus Biesenbach clearly identifies in his introduction to the Catalogue: ’The reflective image of a mirror – which had been a point of reference for self identity – is replaced by the reflective image of the monitor.’[11] This has relationship has largely determined and still influences the bulk of fine art video practice. The introduction of digital video and increasingly smaller cameras has done nothing to alter the route or the terrain that contemporary video practice has inherited and seems strangely committed to.
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[1] For a concise history of early film development see Rush Michael‘New Media in Late 20th –Century art’ Thames & Hudson London reprint 2001
[2] Bruno Giuliana ‘Atlas of Emotion – journeys in art, architecture, and film’ p 25 Verso, New York 2002 For a thorough and entertaining exploration of the spatial implications of the beginning of moving images see chapter 2.
[3] Ibid page 6
[4]‘Lumière 1896 “Early Cinema - Primitives and Pioneers”. VHS BFIV 015 British Film Institute.
[5] Bruno Giuliana ‘Atlas of Emotion – journeys in art, architecture, and film’ p 25 Verso, New York 2002 P 17
[6] Ibid p16
[7] Eisenstein Sergei M “Montage and Architecture” c 1937 Assemblage no 10 1989.
[8] Ono Yoko “No 1 – lighting piece” Fluxfilm No. 14. 1955/1966.
[9] London Barbara ‘For the love of scan lines’ p20 in “Video Acts” P.S.I. Contemporary Art Centre New York 2003.
[10] Eamon Christopher “Visability and the Electronic Mirror” p 23 in ‘Video Acts’ P.S.I. Contemporary Art Centre New York 2003.
[11] Biesenbach Klaus “Video Acts” p12 Video Acts’ P.S.I. Contemporary Art Centre New York 2003.