Même si les végétaux ont longtemps été considérés comme des êtres moins vivants que les animaux, ... more Même si les végétaux ont longtemps été considérés comme des êtres moins vivants que les animaux, leur capacité à produire des formes complexes et des couleurs variées en fait des objets privilégiés d'admiration et d'expérimentation. De nombreuses sociétés mettent d'ailleurs en scène, souvent dans des contextes rituels, des processus vitaux tels que la croissance et la floraison des plantes ou la longévité des arbres. Dans le prolongement de ce désir d'exposer des qualités visuelles et morphologiques, la photographie et le cinéma, par les effets de magnification et d'accélération qu'ils rendent possibles, aident les humains à mieux voir, concevoir et imaginer la vitalité à l'œuvre dans le monde végétal. Fruit d'un dialogue pluridisciplinaire engagé entre des anthropologues, des philosophes et des spécialistes en études visuelles et cinématographiques, cet ouvrage explore la capacité des images à découvrir l'animation qui parcourt les végétaux et à faire apparaître de nouvelles formes d'animisme dans les sociétés modernes.
Re-Imagining African Independence. Film, Visual Arts and the Fall of the Portuguese Empire., 2017
The fortieth anniversary of the independence of the African countries colonized by Portugal prese... more The fortieth anniversary of the independence of the African countries colonized by Portugal presents a valuable opportunity to reassess how colonialism has been «imagined» through the medium of the moving image. The essays collected in this volume investigate Portuguese colonialism and its filmic and audio-visual imaginaries both during and after the Estado Novo regime, examining political propaganda films shot during the liberation wars and exploring the questions and debates these generate. The book also highlights common aspects in the emergence of a national cinema in Angola, Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau. By reanimating (and decolonizing) the archive, it represents an important contribution to Portuguese colonial history, as well as to the history of cinema and the visual arts
Publié originellement en 2004, Le Film qui me reste en mémoire apparaît aujourd'hui à la lectrice... more Publié originellement en 2004, Le Film qui me reste en mémoire apparaît aujourd'hui à la lectrice et au lecteur francophones qui le découvrent pour la première fois comme une réflexion profondément originale sur les rapports que les sujets-spectateurs que nous sommes entretiennent avec les films de cinéma. Il s'agit dans cet ouvrage, qui constitue alors la somme logique de différentes préoccupations traversant la vaste production théorique de Victor Burgin - le souvenir et la mémoire, l'articulation entre psychanalyse et idéologie, le questionne-ment de l'opposition entre image fixe et image en mouvement, etc.-, d'interroger la façon dont les films investissent sous forme de fragments non seulement notre environnement visuel, mais aussi notre espace psychique.
This article explores the connections between film and ruderal plants: plants that grow spontaneo... more This article explores the connections between film and ruderal plants: plants that grow spontaneously in anthropized environments and that we often call “weeds”. Thriving across damaged lands, ruderals are not only exceptional companions for thinking with at a time of ecological rupture, but also a way of engaging with less anthropocentric histories. As argued in this paper, such histories also pertain to film. Despite its timid representational interest in ruderals and “weeds”, cinema is concerned with the stories of collaborative survival, companionship and contaminated diversity raised by such turbulent creatures. Framed by a reflection on our ruderal condition, a discussion around some recent artists’ films allows us to explore some of these problems, while putting an accent on the idea of affective ecologies and involutionary modes of perception.
In the early 1970s, a general plant craze caught on in visual and popular culture alike. Against ... more In the early 1970s, a general plant craze caught on in visual and popular culture alike. Against the background of New Age spirituality and the flourishing of ecological thinking, the 1970s plant mania came as an eccentric blow to the belief that sentience and intelligence are a human prerogative. It also relied massively on the cybernetic paradigm: envisaged as self-regulating biological systems, plants were recognized as communication systems in themselves. In this essay, I sketch a brief portrait of this complex cultural moment, as visual culture, and in particular film, came to be permeated by references to plant communication, plant sentience and plant intelligence.
Gazing at witches is a dangerous thing, as Medusa’s myth reminds us: didn’t the mere sight of the... more Gazing at witches is a dangerous thing, as Medusa’s myth reminds us: didn’t the mere sight of the snake-haired Gorgon turn men into stone? Don’t witches have hurtful eyes, bewitching people and animals with their malevolent glances? Weren’t they carried into courts backwards, so as not to cast spells on wary judges with their cunning eyes? There is power in looking, as witchcraft, psychoanalysis and critical theory all argue, and looking is (or can be) a power exercise, as the onlooker turns the subject into the object of his look. Nowhere is this more evident than in film, where the gaze is always at stake. What about the way film has gazed at the witch? Not simply the way in which it has imagined the witch, but gazed at it, i.e. confined it to ideological power structures that are as much about cultural stereotypes and sexual politics as they are about narrative and formal devices? This is the general question I would like to ask, in order to explore the multifaceted politics of female witches on screen. I will focus on one political potentiality of the female witch: the way in which she hinges upon the gendered reason/nature dualism at the heart of modernity and western patriarchal culture.
Gradhiva. Revue d'Anthropologie et d'histoire des arts. , 2018
Publié en 1930 dans la collection « Images du monde », que Florent Fels dirige chez Firmin-Didot,... more Publié en 1930 dans la collection « Images du monde », que Florent Fels dirige chez Firmin-Didot, l’ouvrage Races du géographe Jean Brunhes constitue ce qu’on pourrait appeler un atlas de vulgarisation. Illustré par un matériel photographique hétérogène (clichés du xixe siècle, images d’agences photographiques, photographies de tournage de films hollywoodiens, etc.), le livre est le support d’un discours paradoxal sur la diversité humaine. Cet objet, fruit d’une culture visuelle à cheval entre deux disciplines (la géographie humaine et l’anthropologie) et deux sphères d’activité (la vulgarisation scientifique et l’édition artistique), produit un discours que nous analyserons ici en l’inscrivant dans le paysage scientifique et éditorial de l’époque. Une attention particulière est accordée aux liens entre Races et un autre projet auquel le géographe fut intimement lié : la collection d’images des Archives de la Planète (1912-1931) d’Albert Kahn.
Circa 1900, at the time when a number of photographic and
cinematographic collections were starti... more Circa 1900, at the time when a number of photographic and cinematographic collections were starting to take shape, the terms “atlas” and “archive” were continually crossing paths, attesting to a conceptual interaction between two distinct forms of organising knowledges. In reference to two case studies — the Archives of Speech (1912-1924) and the Archives of the Planet (1912-1931) — the author supports the hypothesis that the progressive prevalence of the paradigm of the archive on collections bringing together photographic images, animated images, and sound recordings is simultaneously connected to the consolidation of a particular regime of historicity — relying on a shared sense of an acceleration of the present and on the typically modern belief in progress — and on the development of new techniques of recording and mechanical reproduction (the phonograph, photography, and film).
Même si les végétaux ont longtemps été considérés comme des êtres moins vivants que les animaux, ... more Même si les végétaux ont longtemps été considérés comme des êtres moins vivants que les animaux, leur capacité à produire des formes complexes et des couleurs variées en fait des objets privilégiés d'admiration et d'expérimentation. De nombreuses sociétés mettent d'ailleurs en scène, souvent dans des contextes rituels, des processus vitaux tels que la croissance et la floraison des plantes ou la longévité des arbres. Dans le prolongement de ce désir d'exposer des qualités visuelles et morphologiques, la photographie et le cinéma, par les effets de magnification et d'accélération qu'ils rendent possibles, aident les humains à mieux voir, concevoir et imaginer la vitalité à l'œuvre dans le monde végétal. Fruit d'un dialogue pluridisciplinaire engagé entre des anthropologues, des philosophes et des spécialistes en études visuelles et cinématographiques, cet ouvrage explore la capacité des images à découvrir l'animation qui parcourt les végétaux et à faire apparaître de nouvelles formes d'animisme dans les sociétés modernes.
Re-Imagining African Independence. Film, Visual Arts and the Fall of the Portuguese Empire., 2017
The fortieth anniversary of the independence of the African countries colonized by Portugal prese... more The fortieth anniversary of the independence of the African countries colonized by Portugal presents a valuable opportunity to reassess how colonialism has been «imagined» through the medium of the moving image. The essays collected in this volume investigate Portuguese colonialism and its filmic and audio-visual imaginaries both during and after the Estado Novo regime, examining political propaganda films shot during the liberation wars and exploring the questions and debates these generate. The book also highlights common aspects in the emergence of a national cinema in Angola, Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau. By reanimating (and decolonizing) the archive, it represents an important contribution to Portuguese colonial history, as well as to the history of cinema and the visual arts
Publié originellement en 2004, Le Film qui me reste en mémoire apparaît aujourd'hui à la lectrice... more Publié originellement en 2004, Le Film qui me reste en mémoire apparaît aujourd'hui à la lectrice et au lecteur francophones qui le découvrent pour la première fois comme une réflexion profondément originale sur les rapports que les sujets-spectateurs que nous sommes entretiennent avec les films de cinéma. Il s'agit dans cet ouvrage, qui constitue alors la somme logique de différentes préoccupations traversant la vaste production théorique de Victor Burgin - le souvenir et la mémoire, l'articulation entre psychanalyse et idéologie, le questionne-ment de l'opposition entre image fixe et image en mouvement, etc.-, d'interroger la façon dont les films investissent sous forme de fragments non seulement notre environnement visuel, mais aussi notre espace psychique.
This article explores the connections between film and ruderal plants: plants that grow spontaneo... more This article explores the connections between film and ruderal plants: plants that grow spontaneously in anthropized environments and that we often call “weeds”. Thriving across damaged lands, ruderals are not only exceptional companions for thinking with at a time of ecological rupture, but also a way of engaging with less anthropocentric histories. As argued in this paper, such histories also pertain to film. Despite its timid representational interest in ruderals and “weeds”, cinema is concerned with the stories of collaborative survival, companionship and contaminated diversity raised by such turbulent creatures. Framed by a reflection on our ruderal condition, a discussion around some recent artists’ films allows us to explore some of these problems, while putting an accent on the idea of affective ecologies and involutionary modes of perception.
In the early 1970s, a general plant craze caught on in visual and popular culture alike. Against ... more In the early 1970s, a general plant craze caught on in visual and popular culture alike. Against the background of New Age spirituality and the flourishing of ecological thinking, the 1970s plant mania came as an eccentric blow to the belief that sentience and intelligence are a human prerogative. It also relied massively on the cybernetic paradigm: envisaged as self-regulating biological systems, plants were recognized as communication systems in themselves. In this essay, I sketch a brief portrait of this complex cultural moment, as visual culture, and in particular film, came to be permeated by references to plant communication, plant sentience and plant intelligence.
Gazing at witches is a dangerous thing, as Medusa’s myth reminds us: didn’t the mere sight of the... more Gazing at witches is a dangerous thing, as Medusa’s myth reminds us: didn’t the mere sight of the snake-haired Gorgon turn men into stone? Don’t witches have hurtful eyes, bewitching people and animals with their malevolent glances? Weren’t they carried into courts backwards, so as not to cast spells on wary judges with their cunning eyes? There is power in looking, as witchcraft, psychoanalysis and critical theory all argue, and looking is (or can be) a power exercise, as the onlooker turns the subject into the object of his look. Nowhere is this more evident than in film, where the gaze is always at stake. What about the way film has gazed at the witch? Not simply the way in which it has imagined the witch, but gazed at it, i.e. confined it to ideological power structures that are as much about cultural stereotypes and sexual politics as they are about narrative and formal devices? This is the general question I would like to ask, in order to explore the multifaceted politics of female witches on screen. I will focus on one political potentiality of the female witch: the way in which she hinges upon the gendered reason/nature dualism at the heart of modernity and western patriarchal culture.
Gradhiva. Revue d'Anthropologie et d'histoire des arts. , 2018
Publié en 1930 dans la collection « Images du monde », que Florent Fels dirige chez Firmin-Didot,... more Publié en 1930 dans la collection « Images du monde », que Florent Fels dirige chez Firmin-Didot, l’ouvrage Races du géographe Jean Brunhes constitue ce qu’on pourrait appeler un atlas de vulgarisation. Illustré par un matériel photographique hétérogène (clichés du xixe siècle, images d’agences photographiques, photographies de tournage de films hollywoodiens, etc.), le livre est le support d’un discours paradoxal sur la diversité humaine. Cet objet, fruit d’une culture visuelle à cheval entre deux disciplines (la géographie humaine et l’anthropologie) et deux sphères d’activité (la vulgarisation scientifique et l’édition artistique), produit un discours que nous analyserons ici en l’inscrivant dans le paysage scientifique et éditorial de l’époque. Une attention particulière est accordée aux liens entre Races et un autre projet auquel le géographe fut intimement lié : la collection d’images des Archives de la Planète (1912-1931) d’Albert Kahn.
Circa 1900, at the time when a number of photographic and
cinematographic collections were starti... more Circa 1900, at the time when a number of photographic and cinematographic collections were starting to take shape, the terms “atlas” and “archive” were continually crossing paths, attesting to a conceptual interaction between two distinct forms of organising knowledges. In reference to two case studies — the Archives of Speech (1912-1924) and the Archives of the Planet (1912-1931) — the author supports the hypothesis that the progressive prevalence of the paradigm of the archive on collections bringing together photographic images, animated images, and sound recordings is simultaneously connected to the consolidation of a particular regime of historicity — relying on a shared sense of an acceleration of the present and on the typically modern belief in progress — and on the development of new techniques of recording and mechanical reproduction (the phonograph, photography, and film).
L’objectif de ce texte est de revisiter la pratique du coloriage des films à la lumière de la not... more L’objectif de ce texte est de revisiter la pratique du coloriage des films à la lumière de la notion d’ornement. Dans ces films des débuts, les couleurs peintes à la main et au pochoir constituent littéralement un supplément, un ajout ornemental sur la surface de la pellicule. L’ornement(ation) est ici à entendre dans plusieurs sens : tout d’abord, en tant que pratique renvoyant à un débat esthétique et socioéconomique très présent dans le contexte européen au tournant du XIXe siècle ; ensuite, en tant que procédure à la fois formelle et discursive ; enfin, en tant que valeur esthétique à part entière. Il s’agit, par là même, d’inscrire le cinéma dans une histoire longue de l’ornementation et d’aller au-delà d’une conception péjorative de l’ornement.
The purpose of this paper is to think the application of colour to films in relation to the notion of ornament. In early films, hand-painted and stencilled colours literally constitute a supplement, an ornamental addition to the film’s surface. The ornament(ation) is here to be understood in several different ways: firstly, as a practice linked to an aesthetic and socio-economic debate in the turn-of-the-century European context; secondly, as a formal and discursive procedure; and, finally, as an aesthetics in itself. Our aim is to inscribe film and the moving image in the long and complex history of ornamentation and to go beyond a negative conception of the ornament.
The intriguing title of this paper is meant to fuel the imagination of its reader: if animism is ... more The intriguing title of this paper is meant to fuel the imagination of its reader: if animism is commonly accepted as a system of belief that imputes life to inanimate objects, what does it mean to conceive of an animistic history of the camera? Does that imply admitting the apparently nonsensical idea that the camera is alive? Surely, the “camera” - whatever we understand that to be, from the singular, technical object used to make shots, to the more abstract, idealized entity that disconcertingly pervades film theory – is not a living being. Drawing on a number of contemporary references from anthropology, image theory and science, and technology studies, I would like to suggest that we can think about the camera - undeniably a non-human entity - as an animated, autonomous agent capable of acting upon others, similar to a subject and even manifesting what I will call, after Jean Epstein, a “machinic subjectivity”. An “animistic history of the camera” is, therefore, more than (just) an intellectual history of cinema and of the different theoretical approaches that have, among others, chosen to anthropomorphize the camera and to endow it with such “evidently” human capacities like “seeing”, “gazing”, “peeping”, “feeling” and even “thinking”. In addition to this valuable theoretical account, an animistic history of the camera is a history of how certain filmic forms, engaging with concepts and representing ideas, came to shape the camera as an autonomous subject, materializing, in addition and in strictly filmic terms, the manifold expressions of cinema’s animistic powers.
In 1932, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) started the most popular series of Tarzan films with Tarzan, t... more In 1932, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) started the most popular series of Tarzan films with Tarzan, the Ape Man. Directed by W. S. Van Dyke, the film was not the first big-screen adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ incredibly popular book, but it was the first sound film in the series and it popularized the hero’s famous yell. Tarzan, the Ape Man also features one of the rare sequences in the series with images of “real” African tribes: a succession of shots made by Van Dyke a year earlier in East Africa and integrated in the film by means of back projection. In this particular context, the manifest use of back, or rear projection—the projection of a moving image onto the back of a translucent screen in front of which actors are filmed performing—is especially interesting, since it not only evokes a concrete objectivation of the ethnographic “Other” as an image, but also a real politics of space and time. This essay, a close analysis of the sequence using both mapping and archaeology as paradigms, will allow us to explore the discursive nature of these images, introduce the anthropological notion of “allochronism” (denying the ethnographic “Other” coevalness with the anthropologist and interlocutor, rejecting the fact that they exist in the same time), and think about the multi-layered temporality of film.
This paper explores the links between cinema and cartography, focusing on the notion of a 'mappin... more This paper explores the links between cinema and cartography, focusing on the notion of a 'mapping impulse'. The 'mapping impulse' is less about the presence of maps in a certain visual landscape and more about the processes that underlie the understanding of space. In our analysis, we will therefore pay less attention to the symptomatic presence of maps in films, focusing instead on what we call 'cartographic shapes': panoramas, atlases and aerial views. The point of the matter is that a strong visual and rhetorical connection between cinema and cartography is not as surprising as it might initially appear.
1895. Revue de l’association française de recherche sur l’histoire du cinéma, Feb 2008
The Archives de la Planète, held by the Albert Kahn Museum, remain, despite their uniqueness, a r... more The Archives de la Planète, held by the Albert Kahn Museum, remain, despite their uniqueness, a relatively little known collection. Founded in 1912 by the French banker and philanthropist Albert Kahn (1860-1940), they were run from their beginnings and until their abrupt end by the geographer Jean Brunhes (1869-1930). Gathering 4 000 stereoscopic plaques, 72 0000 autochromes and 183 000 meters of film, they represent a unique documentary collection and an extremely important source for the study of non-fiction film. A close analysis of some films will allow us to insist upon the extraordinary value of this collection, whose distinctive formal austerity seems to correspond, not to an unfortunate “primitivism” of forms, but to the deployment of a descriptive mode, intimately linked to a scientific rationality.
This article examines the relation between Art History as a discipline and maps, charts and diagr... more This article examines the relation between Art History as a discipline and maps, charts and diagrams, i.e. graphic representations that contribute to a spatial understanding of things, concepts, conditions, processes, or events. Throughout the analysis of three very different examples – the maps and comparative views in H. W. Janson’s History of Art; Aby Warburg’s Mnemosyne project; and George Maciunas’ charts and diagrams – our essay hopes to demonstrate how “mapping” has played an essential role in the configuration of the discipline’s discursive practices, namely with regards to the visualisation and spatialisation of temporal schemes. We suggest that far from being a recent phenomenon, the influence of this “cartographic reason” can be traced to Art History’s disciplinary origins; recent discursive changes, have only come to make it more evident.
Pandemic Media: Preliminary Notes Toward an Inventory, 2020
As coronavirus lockdowns left the world’s cities deserted, drone footage of empty towns made its ... more As coronavirus lockdowns left the world’s cities deserted, drone footage of empty towns made its appearance on video-sharing platforms. Across the globe, observers insisted on the melancholic feelings that such “post-apocalyptic” images aroused. This essay proposes to read these images against the background of our current ecological crisis, highlighting their connections to drone footage of recent anti-racist protests and as footage of wild animals taking over lockdown cities around the world. Attention will be drawn to their problematic aestheticization of politics, in particular when it comes to ecological thinking.
Pandemic Media: Preliminary Notes Toward an Inventory, 2020
No momento em que os confinamentos impostos pelo coronavírus deixaram as cidades do mundo deserta... more No momento em que os confinamentos impostos pelo coronavírus deixaram as cidades do mundo desertas, filmagens de drones de vilas vazias surgiram nas plataformas de compartilhamento de vídeos. Por todo o globo, comentadores insistiram em apontar a melancolia que tais imagens “pós-apocalípticas” suscitavam. Este ensaio propõe-se a uma leitura dessas imagens diante do cenário de nossa crise ecológica atual, enfatizando suas conexões com filmagens de drones de protestos antirracistas e com filmagens de animais selvagens ocupando as cidades confinadas ao redor do mundo. Uma atenção especial será dada à sua problemática estetização da política, particularmente no que diz respeito ao pensamento ecológico.
In recent years, a growing number of Portuguese artists and filmmakers have been undertaking what... more In recent years, a growing number of Portuguese artists and filmmakers have been undertaking what can be described as more or less detailed explorations of some very specific aspects of Portugal’s recent colonial past. Despite their different strategies and results, all these films seem symptomatic of a peculiar situation, concerning both the memory and the history of Portugal’s recent colonial past and with it, the memory and the history of that deeply traumatic event which was the long liberation war opposing, between 1961 and 1974, the oldest Western European dictatorship to its African colonies - Angola, Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau. Neglected, for a long time, by the national collective memory – and confined to some well-known, albeit exceptional, literary and cinematographic examples -, these events have slowly been returning to the public eye in Portugal. This “return of the repressed” often relies on documentary explorations, based on the rediscovery and/or the (re)constitution of forgotten photographic and filmic archives. In this particular context, I discuss both the figure of the “artist-as-researcher” and the way in which the rediscovery of colonial archival images evokes Freud’s psychoanalytic concept of “afterwardness”. Artists discussed: Manuel Santos Maia; Filipa César; Daniel Barroca; Andreia Sobreira.
Among the strategies that distinguish cinema’s visual mapping of urban space one can count the de... more Among the strategies that distinguish cinema’s visual mapping of urban space one can count the development, at an early stage of film history, of a more or less rigid filmic grammar engaging composition, camera shots, camera movements and camera angles. Many travelogues and other filmic portrayals of urban environments became an almost scientific way of depicting urban space, their seemingly descriptive motivation made evident by such camera movements as the panning shot or the travelling shot, and by such camera angles as the aerial view. In this essay, I focus on the apparently paradoxical correlation between description and spectacle in aerial urban views. As we will see, the aerial point of view encapsulates these two tendencies, showing and unveiling, but also creating powerful sensations. Such urban aerial cinematic views are symptomatic of a close, strong link between film form and urban form, as the metropolis of the beginning of the 20th century was made to be seen and experienced from above.
Dans ses écrits, Jean Epstein accorde au cinéma une étonnante puissance animiste, en lui supposan... more Dans ses écrits, Jean Epstein accorde au cinéma une étonnante puissance animiste, en lui supposant la capacité de prêter une apparence de vie à tous les objets qu’il désigne. Il s’agit d’un topos commun de la théorie et de la critique de l’époque, qu’Epstein développera, en définissant le cinéma lui-même comme un cerveau mécanique et intelligent, possédant une âme à l’image de celle de l’homme. En ligne avec d’autres formulations, développées notamment par d’autres cinéastes-théoriciens de la même époque, comme Serguei Eisenstein ou encore Charles Dekeukeleire, Epstein suggère ainsi que le cinéma est à la fois une machine qui voit et qui pense, une machine qui rend les choses vivantes et qui est elle-même vivante. L’« animisme » concerne ici l’imputation au cinéma d’une « vitalité », voire même d’une « intériorité », que celle-ci soit déclinée en termes d’une vision et d’un regard « autonomes », d’un « œil en dehors de l’œil », d’un cerveau « qui pense », ou encore d’une « âme », d’une « intelligence » ou d’un « esprit ». En somme, selon ces différentes formulations critiques et/ou théoriques, le cinéma est un « je », un « je » doté d’un point de vue singulier sur le monde et donc renvoyant à cette aporie d’une vision à la fois machinique et subjective – ou subjectivée. Dans ce texte, j'explore à la fois l’animisme théorique et pratique de Jean Epstein (moins explicitement endettée envers l’anthropologie et la notion d’une pensée primitive et/ou magique que ceux d’Eisenstein ou Dekeukeleire, par exemple) et je considère son actualité pour interroger quelques films de l’artiste anglaise Emily Richardson.
O Império da visão: fotografia no contexto colonial português (1860-1969) , Dec 2014
A partir de alguns exemplos formados por álbuns fotográficos e livros ilustrados que podem ser ab... more A partir de alguns exemplos formados por álbuns fotográficos e livros ilustrados que podem ser abordados enquanto atlas científicos (Mapa geográfico de Miguel Ciera; Álbum da expedição ao Muatiânvua, Manuel Sertório de Almeida Aguiar; Africa Occidental - Album Photographico e Descriptivo, Cunha Moraes; Álbum fotográfico da Comissão de Delimitação de Fronteira de Lourenço Marques; Álbuns fotográficos e descritivos da colónia de Moçambique, José dos Santos Rufino), este artigo explora a ideia de que a fotografia em contexto colonial funciona não só como forma de documentação e recolha, mas também como cartografia visual, isto é, como uma forma de preencher, através das imagens, espaços ainda vazios de representação e significação. Tanto as fotografias de paisagem como os habituais retratos de “typos” pretendem dar a ver o que para a esmagadora maioria dos portugueses da metrópole constitui ainda um espaço branco (ou cor-de-rosa) num mapa. Trata-se de se apropriar simbolicamente esses mesmos espaços e de construir um imaginário geográfico e antropológico sobre os mesmos. O mundo e os outros homens que o habitam são assim encarado “como imagem”, isto é, e entre outros, como algo de fundamentalmente distinto do observador.
L'Emprise du vol. De l'invention à la massification: histoire d'une culture moderne., 2013
This article explores an extraordinary film shot from a dirigible shortly after the First World W... more This article explores an extraordinary film shot from a dirigible shortly after the First World War. Surveying the combat zones of Flanders and northern France, En dirigeable sur les champs de bataille (1919) was made by the Cinematographic Service of the French Army with the help of the Archives de la Planète, constituting a unique record of the state of destruction caused by four years of conflict. The film’s bird’s eye views of ruined cities and villages, as well as its aerial shots of moonscape-like battlefields, reveal the full extent of the devastation. Revealing a deeply wounded country, the analogy between the territory and the body quickly imposes upon the viewer’s imagination. The film belongs to a larger documentary project, including the undertaking of an extensive photographic and cartographic campaign.
If this is not the first time that aerial shots make an appearance in film, what this exceptional aerial travelling fully explores, most likely for the first time, are the unique possibilities allowed by the combination of the eye of the camera with the aerial motion of the airship. The striking documentary and archival value of aerial images goes hand in hand with a spectacular stirring of emotions. If the camera angle exposes the dimension of the devastation, the smoothness and fluidity of its aerial movement represent an unquestionable source of emotion: emotion attached to the sudden, voyeuristic, revelation of the territory as yet another injured body ; emotion linked to the visual pleasure of discovering the earth’s surface from a new and exciting angle of vision; and “e-motion”, finally, of being able to move freely in the space-time continuum. Attention should be drawn to two elements: firstly, the cinematographic specificity of these aerial images and their importance to film history; and secondly, the way they seem to embody a particular historical look.
This important and first-of-its-kind collection addresses the emerging challenges in the field of... more This important and first-of-its-kind collection addresses the emerging challenges in the field of media art preservation and exhibition, providing an outline for the training of professionals in this field. Since the emergence of time-based media such as film, video and digital technology, artists have used them to experiment with their potential. The resulting artworks, with their basis in rapidly developing technologies that cross over into other domains such as broadcasting and social media, have challenged the traditional infrastructures for the collection, preservation and exhibition of art. Addressing these challenges, the authors provide a historical and theoretical survey of the field, and introduce students to the challenges and difficulties of preserving and exhibiting media art through a series of first-hand case studies. Situated at the threshold between archival practices and film and media theory, it also makes a strong contribution to the growing literature on archive theory and archival practices.
Les Roberts et Richard Koeck (ed), The City and the Moving Image, London, Palgrave Macmillan, , 2010
In recent years, the idea of ‘mapping’ has become the object of much critical attention, graduall... more In recent years, the idea of ‘mapping’ has become the object of much critical attention, gradually turning into a fashionable notion that found its way well beyond the field of cartography. Responding to a widely acknowledged ‘spatial turn’ in the social sciences and the humanities, this interest has both focused on the map as a meaningful artefact and on the process of mapping itself. The latter is understood to cover much more than the conventional techniques and operations deployed in order to produce traditional cartographic objects. In this new critical context, mapping refers to a multitude of processes, from the cognitive operations implied in the structuring of any kind of spatial knowledge to the discursive implications of a particular visual regime. Following this general ‘spatial turn’, as well as some recent works looking into film’s cartographic dimensions, I would like to examine the idea that cinema’s exploration of urban space is sometimes akin to a form of visual mapping.
The rich, complex work of German filmmaker Claudia von Alemann offers fascinating insights into f... more The rich, complex work of German filmmaker Claudia von Alemann offers fascinating insights into feminist histories
Les publications examinées ici contribuent, de façon différente, à faire avancer un chantier de r... more Les publications examinées ici contribuent, de façon différente, à faire avancer un chantier de recherche très particulier, à la croisée de l’histoire des sciences, de l’art et des images, mais aussi de l’histoire du livre et des mises en scène du savoir. Il s’agit d’interroger la notion même d’atlas comme forme spécifiquement visuelle du savoir.
Perspective - Actualité en histoire de l'art, 2021
Un débat entre Teresa Castro, Nuno Domingos, Carolin Overhoff Ferreira, Maria do Carmo Piçarra, R... more Un débat entre Teresa Castro, Nuno Domingos, Carolin Overhoff Ferreira, Maria do Carmo Piçarra, Raquel Schefer et Manuel Deniz Silva, mené par Maria-Benedita Basto et Agnès Pellerin
(English below)
Cet entretien avec le photographe Roberto Huarcaya a été réalisé en marge d’une e... more (English below) Cet entretien avec le photographe Roberto Huarcaya a été réalisé en marge d’une exposition réunissant trois séries photographiques, Amazogrammes, Andinogrammes et Océanogrammes, présentées aux Rencontres d’Arles à l’été 2023. Figure de proue de la photographie péruvienne contemporaine, Roberto Huarcaya y conviait le public à une immersion sensible dans des formes parfois reconnaissables, souvent indistinctes, fixées sur des photogrammes de plusieurs mètres de long représentant la forêt amazonienne, l’océan, ou encore des danses. Dans cet entretien, il revient sur les limites de l’appareil photographique face au foisonnement du vivant, sur l’extrême diversité des regards possibles sur l’Amazonie, ou encore sur le rôle de l’image dans notre monde post-colonial. // Decolonising Our Vision of Nature. Roberto Huarcaya, Teresa Castro, Estelle Sohier This interview with photographer Roberto Huarcaya was conducted in conjunction with an exhibition that brought together three photographic series – Amazogrammes, Andinogrammes and Océanogrammes – presented at the Rencontres d’Arles in summer 2023. A key figure in contemporary Peruvian photography, Roberto Huarcaya gave the public the opportunity to immerse themselves in images of forms - sometimes recognisable and often indistinct–which were captured on photograms several metres long that depict the Amazon rainforest, the ocean, and even dances. In this interview, he discusses the limitations of the camera when faced with the profusion of Amazonian life, the extreme diversity of the ways to understand the region, and the role of the image in our post-colonial world.
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Fruit d'un dialogue pluridisciplinaire engagé entre des anthropologues, des philosophes et des spécialistes en études visuelles et cinématographiques, cet ouvrage explore la capacité des images à découvrir l'animation qui parcourt les végétaux et à faire apparaître de nouvelles formes d'animisme dans les sociétés modernes.
cinematographic collections were starting to take shape, the
terms “atlas” and “archive” were continually crossing paths,
attesting to a conceptual interaction between two distinct
forms of organising knowledges. In reference to two case
studies — the Archives of Speech (1912-1924) and the Archives
of the Planet (1912-1931) — the author supports the
hypothesis that the progressive prevalence of the paradigm
of the archive on collections bringing together photographic
images, animated images, and sound recordings is simultaneously
connected to the consolidation of a particular regime
of historicity — relying on a shared sense of an acceleration
of the present and on the typically modern belief
in progress — and on the development of new techniques
of recording and mechanical reproduction (the phonograph,
photography, and film).
Fruit d'un dialogue pluridisciplinaire engagé entre des anthropologues, des philosophes et des spécialistes en études visuelles et cinématographiques, cet ouvrage explore la capacité des images à découvrir l'animation qui parcourt les végétaux et à faire apparaître de nouvelles formes d'animisme dans les sociétés modernes.
cinematographic collections were starting to take shape, the
terms “atlas” and “archive” were continually crossing paths,
attesting to a conceptual interaction between two distinct
forms of organising knowledges. In reference to two case
studies — the Archives of Speech (1912-1924) and the Archives
of the Planet (1912-1931) — the author supports the
hypothesis that the progressive prevalence of the paradigm
of the archive on collections bringing together photographic
images, animated images, and sound recordings is simultaneously
connected to the consolidation of a particular regime
of historicity — relying on a shared sense of an acceleration
of the present and on the typically modern belief
in progress — and on the development of new techniques
of recording and mechanical reproduction (the phonograph,
photography, and film).
The purpose of this paper is to think the application of colour to films in relation to the notion of ornament. In early films, hand-painted and stencilled colours literally constitute a supplement, an ornamental addition to the film’s surface. The ornament(ation) is here to be understood in several different ways: firstly, as a practice linked to an aesthetic and socio-economic debate in the turn-of-the-century European context; secondly, as a formal and discursive procedure; and, finally, as an aesthetics in itself. Our aim is to inscribe film and the moving image in the long and complex history of ornamentation and to go beyond a negative conception of the ornament.
If this is not the first time that aerial shots make an appearance in film, what this exceptional aerial travelling fully explores, most likely for the first time, are the unique possibilities allowed by the combination of the eye of the camera with the aerial motion of the airship. The striking documentary and archival value of aerial images goes hand in hand with a spectacular stirring of emotions. If the camera angle exposes the dimension of the devastation, the smoothness and fluidity of its aerial movement represent an unquestionable source of emotion: emotion attached to the sudden, voyeuristic, revelation of the territory as yet another injured body ; emotion linked to the visual pleasure of discovering the earth’s surface from a new and exciting angle of vision; and “e-motion”, finally, of being able to move freely in the space-time continuum. Attention should be drawn to two elements: firstly, the cinematographic specificity of these aerial images and their importance to film history; and secondly, the way they seem to embody a particular historical look.
Cet entretien avec le photographe Roberto Huarcaya a été réalisé en marge d’une exposition réunissant trois séries photographiques, Amazogrammes, Andinogrammes et Océanogrammes, présentées aux Rencontres d’Arles à l’été 2023. Figure de proue de la photographie péruvienne contemporaine, Roberto Huarcaya y conviait le public à une immersion sensible dans des formes parfois reconnaissables, souvent indistinctes, fixées sur des photogrammes de plusieurs mètres de long représentant la forêt amazonienne, l’océan, ou encore des danses. Dans cet entretien, il revient sur les limites de l’appareil photographique face au foisonnement du vivant, sur l’extrême diversité des regards possibles sur l’Amazonie, ou encore sur le rôle de l’image dans notre monde post-colonial.
//
Decolonising Our Vision of Nature. Roberto Huarcaya, Teresa Castro, Estelle Sohier
This interview with photographer Roberto Huarcaya was conducted in conjunction with an exhibition that brought together three photographic series – Amazogrammes, Andinogrammes and Océanogrammes – presented at the Rencontres d’Arles in summer 2023. A key figure in contemporary Peruvian photography, Roberto Huarcaya gave the public the opportunity to immerse themselves in images of forms - sometimes recognisable and often indistinct–which were captured on photograms several metres long that depict the Amazon rainforest, the ocean, and even dances. In this interview, he discusses the limitations of the camera when faced with the profusion of Amazonian life, the extreme diversity of the ways to understand the region, and the role of the image in our post-colonial world.