Tina Kendall is Principal Lecturer in Film & Media at Anglia Ruskin University. Her current research addresses questions of negative affect (including disgust and boredom) in contemporary film & media ecologies. She is particularly interested in questions of speed, temporality, and contemporary chronopolitics.
She is co-editor of The New Extremism in Cinema: From France to Europe (Edinburgh University Press, 2011) and co-author of 'The New Extremisms: Re-Thinking Extreme Cinema' (Cinephile 8.2). She has also edited a special issue of Film-Philosophy on disgust (15.2, September 2011) and the Cinema Journal In Focus dossier on Speed (55.2, February 2016). She has published articles on cinema, waste, and new materialist theory (New Review of Film & Television Studies 8.2; New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film 10.1).
Her current project focuses on boredom and the attention and affect ecologies of contemporary media.
This article seeks to theorise boredom in the wake of the new technological modes of capture and ... more This article seeks to theorise boredom in the wake of the new technological modes of capture and commodification that have emerged in a digital network culture, by focusing on the popular 'What to do When You're Bored' sub-genre of YouTube video tutorials that are addressed largely to female teenage audiences. Situating itself in relation to the fields of boredom studies, critical attention studies and feminist media studies, the article reads these videos as performing a variety of affective labour that is increasingly required of gendered subjects in the so-called 'attention economy' of twenty-first century media. As I will argue, platforms such as YouTube construct users above all as boredom managers-agents who are responsible for, and capable of coordinating, the affective texture of their own experience as it unfolds in real time. And yet, as I will suggest, this discursive construction of boredom overlooks the significant role that such media play, not only in producing and intensifying new cultural forms of tedium, but also in capturing and modulating the subject's affective experience before she becomes aware of it. Reflecting on the blatant gendering of affect in these YouTube tutorials through the figure of the teenage girl, I go on to ask why this work of boredom management should fall so resoundingly to young women to perform. Why has the figure of the teenage girl been rendered so excessively visible in these YouTube tutorials as an ideal conduit for the monitoring and self-management of twenty-first century boredom?
Nyan Cat (2011) allows us to broaden our understanding of how we gauge the notion of speed, parti... more Nyan Cat (2011) allows us to broaden our understanding of how we gauge the notion of speed, particularly in relation to networked media whose success is dictated by how rapidly it is circulated.
This article considers questions of affect and ethics in relation to three films about waste: Agn... more This article considers questions of affect and ethics in relation to three films about waste: Agnès Varda’s The Gleaners and I (1999), Lucy Walker’s Waste Land (2010), and Harmony Korine’s Trash Humpers (2009). Drawing from new materialist models, the article situates the ethical import of these very different films in relation to the way that they present waste as a vibrant and affectively charged medium through which we might rethink relations between people and things. It argues that a careful evaluation of the way these films generate and manage affect is crucial to an understanding of the kinds of ethical work each might be said to perform. While The Gleaners and I and Waste Land emphasize the uplifting feelings that can be generated from trash if we learn to see it differently, Trash Humpers rejects the activist, humanist ethos of Varda’s and Walker’s films in favour of an avant-garde impulse to degrade and defile. However, despite its nihilistic approach to its subject matter, this article argues that Trash Humpers’ feel-bad aesthetic does not rule out the possibility of ethical engagement. Rather, it offers important insights about the role of negative affect within an ethics of waste.
This essay approaches the theme of crossings, frictions, and fusions in relation to Bruno Dumont’... more This essay approaches the theme of crossings, frictions, and fusions in relation to Bruno Dumont’s film Hadewijch (2009). While this film has been critiqued for sensationalising religious divisions, and for catering to an Orientalist vision of Islam, this essay reads the film instead as an attempt to develop a post-theological understanding of spirituality, which would seek to transcend such divisions by locating a secular experience of the sacred within the cinematic encounter itself. It argues that Dumont’s signature brand of irruptive and shocking violence is at the heart of this attempt to map out a secular cinematic conception of the sacred.
This paper approaches Lynne Ramsay’s Ratcatcher through the rubric of Siegfried Kracauer’s materi... more This paper approaches Lynne Ramsay’s Ratcatcher through the rubric of Siegfried Kracauer’s materialist film theory, which suggests that film is interested in the ‘refuse’ of existence, drawn to ‘what is just there’ in reality. It will be suggested here that Ratcatcher’s multi-sensory investment in a ‘lowplane
reality’ works to reclaim some of the possibilities that Kracauer and other modern film theorists conferred upon the medium of cinema. However, in contrast to Kracauer’s insistence on the ‘redemptive’ mission of cinema, it draws from the recent body of ‘new materialist’ theory in order to reframe cinema’s relations with things. Through attentiveness to what Elizabeth Grosz calls the ‘in-between of things’, this paper develops an argument about the
materiality of things that also accounts for the materiality of the cinema as a thing, and for the immanent relations it establishes with other media forms. The paper draws from the concept of intermediality, to suggest that this heightened awareness of materiality emerges most powerfully in Ratcatcher’s creation of an interstitial space between film, art and the real. In turn, the paper
suggests that it is ultimately in privileging the still life of things that Ratcatcher most powerfully foregrounds cinema’s affective and aesthetic potential.
on the law, justice, and morality, or Macadam (1946), by Marcel Blistène, which replays pre-war p... more on the law, justice, and morality, or Macadam (1946), by Marcel Blistène, which replays pre-war poetic realism by presenting a working-class world on the margins of the underworld, complete with a good-hearted prostitute and a criminal on the run holed up in a hotel. It is a minor quibble, but each volume would have benefited from a set of framing chapters to map more clearly the formal innovations and technical leaps that were taking place almost annually. Crisp’s historiographical setting is limited to twelve and twenty pages respectively; enough to offer very broad contextual brushstrokes, but nowhere near sufficient to fully explore, for example, the transition from Occupation to postLiberation filmmaking praxis or the emergence of Poetic Realism in the second half of the 1930s. Needless to say, readers requiring this level of in-depth background need simply to turn to Crisp’s previous work. A third volume, covering the period from 1958 to 1974, is forthcoming. One can only pres...
Critical discussions of Lynne Ramsay’s Ratcatcher have often noted the film’s tendency to suspend... more Critical discussions of Lynne Ramsay’s Ratcatcher have often noted the film’s tendency to suspend narrative movement in moments of tableau vivant, and its frequent mise-en-abime framings, both of which self-consciously mimic the look of paintings and photographs. Such techniques confirm film’s profound affinities with the so-called ‘static’ media of painting and photography, but also foreground what Laura Mulvey calls the ‘fundamental, and irreconcilable, opposition between stillness and movement’ that defines filmic materiality and distinguishes it from other visual arts (2006: 67). This chapter engages with some of these questions in relation to Ratcatcher’s DVD format, to look in particular at the stills gallery feature. The DVD format brings another form of visibility to the film’s wider narrative and aesthetic interest in stillness as the still-moving binary inherent in celluloid is displaced onto, and remediated by, the electronic screen. Drawing from debates about intermedial...
This article seeks to theorise boredom in the wake of the new technological modes of capture and ... more This article seeks to theorise boredom in the wake of the new technological modes of capture and commodification that have emerged in a digital network culture, by focusing on the popular 'What to do When You're Bored' sub-genre of YouTube video tutorials that are addressed largely to female teenage audiences. Situating itself in relation to the fields of boredom studies, critical attention studies and feminist media studies, the article reads these videos as performing a variety of affective labour that is increasingly required of gendered subjects in the so-called 'attention economy' of twenty-first century media. As I will argue, platforms such as YouTube construct users above all as boredom managers-agents who are responsible for, and capable of coordinating, the affective texture of their own experience as it unfolds in real time. And yet, as I will suggest, this discursive construction of boredom overlooks the significant role that such media play, not only in producing and intensifying new cultural forms of tedium, but also in capturing and modulating the subject's affective experience before she becomes aware of it. Reflecting on the blatant gendering of affect in these YouTube tutorials through the figure of the teenage girl, I go on to ask why this work of boredom management should fall so resoundingly to young women to perform. Why has the figure of the teenage girl been rendered so excessively visible in these YouTube tutorials as an ideal conduit for the monitoring and self-management of twenty-first century boredom?
Nyan Cat (2011) allows us to broaden our understanding of how we gauge the notion of speed, parti... more Nyan Cat (2011) allows us to broaden our understanding of how we gauge the notion of speed, particularly in relation to networked media whose success is dictated by how rapidly it is circulated.
This article considers questions of affect and ethics in relation to three films about waste: Agn... more This article considers questions of affect and ethics in relation to three films about waste: Agnès Varda’s The Gleaners and I (1999), Lucy Walker’s Waste Land (2010), and Harmony Korine’s Trash Humpers (2009). Drawing from new materialist models, the article situates the ethical import of these very different films in relation to the way that they present waste as a vibrant and affectively charged medium through which we might rethink relations between people and things. It argues that a careful evaluation of the way these films generate and manage affect is crucial to an understanding of the kinds of ethical work each might be said to perform. While The Gleaners and I and Waste Land emphasize the uplifting feelings that can be generated from trash if we learn to see it differently, Trash Humpers rejects the activist, humanist ethos of Varda’s and Walker’s films in favour of an avant-garde impulse to degrade and defile. However, despite its nihilistic approach to its subject matter, this article argues that Trash Humpers’ feel-bad aesthetic does not rule out the possibility of ethical engagement. Rather, it offers important insights about the role of negative affect within an ethics of waste.
This essay approaches the theme of crossings, frictions, and fusions in relation to Bruno Dumont’... more This essay approaches the theme of crossings, frictions, and fusions in relation to Bruno Dumont’s film Hadewijch (2009). While this film has been critiqued for sensationalising religious divisions, and for catering to an Orientalist vision of Islam, this essay reads the film instead as an attempt to develop a post-theological understanding of spirituality, which would seek to transcend such divisions by locating a secular experience of the sacred within the cinematic encounter itself. It argues that Dumont’s signature brand of irruptive and shocking violence is at the heart of this attempt to map out a secular cinematic conception of the sacred.
This paper approaches Lynne Ramsay’s Ratcatcher through the rubric of Siegfried Kracauer’s materi... more This paper approaches Lynne Ramsay’s Ratcatcher through the rubric of Siegfried Kracauer’s materialist film theory, which suggests that film is interested in the ‘refuse’ of existence, drawn to ‘what is just there’ in reality. It will be suggested here that Ratcatcher’s multi-sensory investment in a ‘lowplane
reality’ works to reclaim some of the possibilities that Kracauer and other modern film theorists conferred upon the medium of cinema. However, in contrast to Kracauer’s insistence on the ‘redemptive’ mission of cinema, it draws from the recent body of ‘new materialist’ theory in order to reframe cinema’s relations with things. Through attentiveness to what Elizabeth Grosz calls the ‘in-between of things’, this paper develops an argument about the
materiality of things that also accounts for the materiality of the cinema as a thing, and for the immanent relations it establishes with other media forms. The paper draws from the concept of intermediality, to suggest that this heightened awareness of materiality emerges most powerfully in Ratcatcher’s creation of an interstitial space between film, art and the real. In turn, the paper
suggests that it is ultimately in privileging the still life of things that Ratcatcher most powerfully foregrounds cinema’s affective and aesthetic potential.
on the law, justice, and morality, or Macadam (1946), by Marcel Blistène, which replays pre-war p... more on the law, justice, and morality, or Macadam (1946), by Marcel Blistène, which replays pre-war poetic realism by presenting a working-class world on the margins of the underworld, complete with a good-hearted prostitute and a criminal on the run holed up in a hotel. It is a minor quibble, but each volume would have benefited from a set of framing chapters to map more clearly the formal innovations and technical leaps that were taking place almost annually. Crisp’s historiographical setting is limited to twelve and twenty pages respectively; enough to offer very broad contextual brushstrokes, but nowhere near sufficient to fully explore, for example, the transition from Occupation to postLiberation filmmaking praxis or the emergence of Poetic Realism in the second half of the 1930s. Needless to say, readers requiring this level of in-depth background need simply to turn to Crisp’s previous work. A third volume, covering the period from 1958 to 1974, is forthcoming. One can only pres...
Critical discussions of Lynne Ramsay’s Ratcatcher have often noted the film’s tendency to suspend... more Critical discussions of Lynne Ramsay’s Ratcatcher have often noted the film’s tendency to suspend narrative movement in moments of tableau vivant, and its frequent mise-en-abime framings, both of which self-consciously mimic the look of paintings and photographs. Such techniques confirm film’s profound affinities with the so-called ‘static’ media of painting and photography, but also foreground what Laura Mulvey calls the ‘fundamental, and irreconcilable, opposition between stillness and movement’ that defines filmic materiality and distinguishes it from other visual arts (2006: 67). This chapter engages with some of these questions in relation to Ratcatcher’s DVD format, to look in particular at the stills gallery feature. The DVD format brings another form of visibility to the film’s wider narrative and aesthetic interest in stillness as the still-moving binary inherent in celluloid is displaced onto, and remediated by, the electronic screen. Drawing from debates about intermedial...
This article approaches the paradigm of binge-watching from within a wider ecology of networked m... more This article approaches the paradigm of binge-watching from within a wider ecology of networked media forms and practices, which have collectively reinforced a relationship between staying home, staying connected, and staying safe during the pandemic. It explores how the short form video platform TikTok has strategically tapped into the pleasures associated with the binge model, in order to construct the nascent concept of binge-scrolling as one means of addressing the thorny problem of lockdown boredom. The piece suggests that the paradigm of bingeing now exists across a spectrum of media forms and practices, operating as one specific means of organizing time and attention in an age of digital psychopolitics.
Communication, Film and Media, Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, UK This paper approaches Lynn... more Communication, Film and Media, Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, UK This paper approaches Lynne Ramsay's Ratcatcher through the rubric of Siegfried Kracauer's materialist film theory, which suggests that film is interested in the 'refuse' of existence, drawn to 'what is just ...
Abstract This essay approaches the theme of crossings, frictions, and fusions in relation to Brun... more Abstract This essay approaches the theme of crossings, frictions, and fusions in relation to Bruno Dumont's film Hadewijch (2009). While this film has been critiqued for sensationalizing religious divisions, and for catering to an Orientalist vision of Islam, this essay reads the film instead as an attempt to develop a post-theological understanding of spirituality, which would seek to transcend such divisions by locating a secular experience of the sacred within the cinematic encounter itself. It argues that Dumont's signature brand of irruptive and shocking violence is at the heart of this attempt to map out a secular cinematic conception of the sacred.
Critical discussions of Lynne Ramsay's Ratcatcher have often noted the film's tendency ... more Critical discussions of Lynne Ramsay's Ratcatcher have often noted the film's tendency to suspend narrative movement in moments of tableau vivant, and its frequent mise-en-abime framings, both of which self-consciously mimic the look of paintings and photographs. Such techniques ...
This article considers the salience of extreme art cinema across a range of different cultural, h... more This article considers the salience of extreme art cinema across a range of different cultural, historical, and socio-economic contexts. It asks what happens to the specificity of the notion of a 'new extremism in cinema' when the net is cast a bit wider, to include more global and mainstream instances of cinematic violence and provocation.
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Publications by Tina Kendall
reality’ works to reclaim some of the possibilities that Kracauer and other modern film theorists conferred upon the medium of cinema. However, in contrast to Kracauer’s insistence on the ‘redemptive’ mission of cinema, it draws from the recent body of ‘new materialist’ theory in order to reframe cinema’s relations with things. Through attentiveness to what Elizabeth Grosz calls the ‘in-between of things’, this paper develops an argument about the
materiality of things that also accounts for the materiality of the cinema as a thing, and for the immanent relations it establishes with other media forms. The paper draws from the concept of intermediality, to suggest that this heightened awareness of materiality emerges most powerfully in Ratcatcher’s creation of an interstitial space between film, art and the real. In turn, the paper
suggests that it is ultimately in privileging the still life of things that Ratcatcher most powerfully foregrounds cinema’s affective and aesthetic potential.
Papers by Tina Kendall
reality’ works to reclaim some of the possibilities that Kracauer and other modern film theorists conferred upon the medium of cinema. However, in contrast to Kracauer’s insistence on the ‘redemptive’ mission of cinema, it draws from the recent body of ‘new materialist’ theory in order to reframe cinema’s relations with things. Through attentiveness to what Elizabeth Grosz calls the ‘in-between of things’, this paper develops an argument about the
materiality of things that also accounts for the materiality of the cinema as a thing, and for the immanent relations it establishes with other media forms. The paper draws from the concept of intermediality, to suggest that this heightened awareness of materiality emerges most powerfully in Ratcatcher’s creation of an interstitial space between film, art and the real. In turn, the paper
suggests that it is ultimately in privileging the still life of things that Ratcatcher most powerfully foregrounds cinema’s affective and aesthetic potential.