Moving Image

The moving image has long established its exceptional ability to reflect upon the representation of space and its self-reflexive gaze, whether as a background or a narrative in itself. Focusing on the depiction of landscape, particularly, and on its cinematic aspects (embedded as spatial, visual, aural and narrative layers) allows us to explore it as a broader concept ever so interchangeable and transmedial, which ultimately pertains to an understanding of «space» as a document, a fabrication, a metaphor, a synesthetic rendering and/or an emotional projection.
In this sense, when considering the work of Anton Corbijn as a music video director, we regard his visual narratives as «staged atmospheres» derived from a photographic and cinematic experience, defined by a very particular vocabulary and aesthetic codes. Corbijn conceptualizes space through the notions of silence and the inhabited void, where the presence or absence of the human figure acts both as a mirror of intimacy and a scale that accentuates the dimension and bareness of the place.
This paper aims to exert an exploratory exercise focused on the staging and the perception of space through an audio-visual deconstruction and analysis of Corbijn’s videography. Moreover, it explores the symbiotic affinities established between music and the moving image, as well as the formal and iconographic references displayed throughout the music videos directed for the band Depeche Mode, more specifically.


DIOGO, Andréa M. 2019. "Enjoy the Silence: Anton Corbijn and the synesthetic representation of space. Readings on landscape aesthetic and staged atmospheres from selected music videos". In REVELAR (4), «Placeless Places. Photography & Cinema: (im)probable, verisimilar and impossible dialogues», 7-34. DOI: 10.21747/17775302/rev4a1

This article deals with the fundamental question of movement in the work of Marcel Duchamp. It attempts to show that far from being a passing phase, it was present throughout his career, adopting different perspectives and explanations. Taking into account the actual words, notes and comments of the artist, it sets to establish a continuum, a link from one work to another. This helps to affirm that however revolutionary Duchamp might have been, his research about movement, optics and cinema lies solidly on painting.
Keywords: retinal art, precision painting, crono¬photography, optics, ready made, fourth dimension, image, movement.

Este artículo aborda el tema del movi¬miento, crucial en la obra de Marcel Duchamp. Inten¬ta mostrar que lejos de ser una fase temporal, estuvo presente a lo largo de su carrera, ya que empleó dife¬rentes perspectivas y explicaciones para investigarlo. Tomando en cuenta las declaraciones, notas, apun¬tes y comentarios propios del artista, se busca en este texto establecer un hilo conductor, una suerte de enlace entre una obra y otra, lo cual ayuda a afir¬mar que por muy revolucionario que Duchamp haya sido, su investigación sobre el movimiento, la óptica y el cine se asienta de manera sólida en la pintura.
Palabras clave: arte retiniano, cronofotografía, pin¬tura de precisión, óptica, ready made, cuarta dimen¬sión, imagen y movimiento.

Anti-Projection does not attempt to present a retrospective of artworks that address the historyical development of this subject, rather it aims to explore the logic and specific strategies the artists have adopted in the early stage of practicing video art. For instance, how were visuality and materiality allocated in proportion to each other in the complex processes of the production of meaning, and how effective connections amongst images, installation designs, and viewing were established are the questions this exhibition attempts to address. Admittedly, the "traditions" of video art before projection have been forgotten gradually. Nevertheless, as an important phase of media art, it remains archaeological relevant- just as this exhibition would present to its audiences: one can instantly get a sense of how the moving image—from the era of scarce materials and exuberant inspirations and creatity, to our current overly-mediated age—has always been the most significant channel through which we have established connections with the world.

In The City in Time, Pamela N. Corey provides new ways of understanding contemporary artistic practices in a region that continues to linger in international perceptions as perpetually “postwar.” Focusing on art from the last two decades, Corey connects artistic developments with social transformations as reflected through the urban landscapes of Ho Chi Minh City and Phnom Penh. As she argues, artists’ engagements with urban space and form reveal ways of grasping multiple and layered senses and concepts of time, whether aligned with colonialism, postcolonial modernity, communism, or postsocialism.

The City in Time traces the process through which collective memory and aspiration are mapped onto landscape and built space to shed light on how these vibrant Southeast Asian cities shape artistic practices as the art simultaneously consolidates the city as image and imaginary. Featuring a dynamic array of creative productions that include staged and documentary photography, the moving image, and public performance and installation, The City in Time illustrates how artists from Vietnam and Cambodia have envisioned their rapidly changing worlds.

My second research-based exhibition in NCAF as guest researcher. What “Embodied Mirror" attempts to explore is the intimate exchange between video art and performance in the history of Chinese contemporary art. At its inception, video art in China was integral to performance art. In the development of video art in China, many artists have adopted strategic approaches to extend the mediums of video art and performance for one another. This exhibition presents five themes, "Autobiography," "Event," "Dancer," "Speaker," and "Theater." Each topic will address an independent clue in combing through the diverse and complex phenomenon of this overlapping domain.

The traumatic experiences make me begin to create artworks and pay attention to the people who might have experienced the same traumas around me. I try to sublimate the traumatic emotions into creation. In my artworks, traumatic emotions are part of the trauma, but not the whole of it. Chapter One is “The Effect of Time on Me”, explaining my motives and background of creation, plus my literature review. This chapter also includes what I care in my works by using Moving Images as materials. The feature of diseases and disappearance in traumas are the main subject of my creative theme. To express the sense of time of the traumatized, I use the characteristics of Moving Image clip to distort the objective time. Artistic creations help me face the traumatic experience again. Through deconstructing and reorganizing traumas, they can be transformed. As it becomes a kind of “Rites of Passage”, it also makes me see the ability to enhance mental strength from the fragility of human beings. Repeated looping is a trait that can be seen in most of my artworks. It has the similar characteristic to the “Flashback” in traumatic experience, which means experiencing bad memories repeatedly. However, it is also the repeated viewing that helps viewers be able to appreciate my works more actively and more in detail. Chapter Two is “Creation as Rites of Passage”, introducing my artworks, analyzing the characteristics of the works and explaining the techniques of creation. In addition, it compares the similarities and differences to other artists. In the “Drug Series”, I present the changes in images of used drug packages and medicines after shooting and screening under lens. The accumulation of medicines also reveals the anxiety and insecurity of modern people's physical and mental conditions. In the “Burning Series”, I associate the characteristics of “paper” burning into “ash”, with the idea of “disappearance” to explore the essence of life. The element of fire has a deep connection with my life rituals experiences. Fire is a transformation medium after the end of life. The image of the paper birds implies the yearning to fly in subconscious, reflecting the desire to break away from the trauma and reborn through fire. Chapter Three is “When Moving Images Enter the Space”. Viewers must spend time watching the artworks together so as to complete the whole exhibition. There are two different ways when presenting Moving Images. One is the combination of the installation and the other is the essence of Moving Image.
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Besides, I have read the theory of “Borderspace”, which relates to the viewers and the artworks “co-emerge” in the exhibition and thus become mutual companions. I transform the theory into my imagination of space. It is a private and safe space where people will feel wrapped, and thus they are able to share the fragility of trauma in their lives. In the practice of technical aesthetics, it is necessary to consider the choice of planning space and equipment, and find out the best way to present the work when I plan an exhibition. Chapter Four is “Time Moves Forward”. By creating art works, the traumatic emotions are able to be transformed, and it becomes the proof of my post-traumatic growth. In the exhibition, the viewers and the artworks participate in the “Rites of Passage” I created. People can stay with traumas in a safe way, feel the healing through my works, and be able to get through the looping hurts in the trauma.
Keyword: Moving Image, Video Installation, Trauma, Rites of Passage, Art Therapy

The haptic turn in fi lm studies, which has been growing in currency since the late1990s, is gaining support from recent studies in cognitive neuro-science. This article draws on this convergence, as a productive route to investigating experimental cinema. Phil Solomon's concept of " the physical anxiety of form itself " is taken up as a point of departure for close analysis of three fi lms: The Secret Garden (1988), The Snowman (1995), and Walking Distance (1999). The article investigates the artist's optical, chemical, and manual working processes, as well as the specifi c choice of found footage. Relying primarily on Embodied Simulation theory, the focal argument pivots on Solomon's " physical anxiety " as it is instantiated in somatosensory arousal. Solomon's fi lms are analyzed as effective mediators of intersubjective engagement, of the particular " haptic " type. Experimental cinema is thus approached from outside the discursive frame of avant-garde poetics, drawing attention to new perspectives that are currently opening up for moving image studies.

Relationships between the topical decline of class, on the one hand, and the increasing rise of the moving image, on the other, in contemporary art; the digital turn of the experience economy, and how it plays into contemporary impressions of labor by obscuring expressions of class; the historical role of the filmic medium in the management of labor; and attempts at toying with how these relationships are upheld in a highly self-centered image of the status quo.

For abstract in Eng scroll down:

Metateoretická diplomová práce prostřednictvím komparativní analýzy a kritického přístupu postihuje základní omezení a možnosti sémiotické analýzy při rozboru hudebních videoklipů.
Vycházíme z předpokladu, že rozličné přístupy, rozličná badatelská východiska a národní (myšlenkové) tradice zakládají rozličná pole zájmu sémiotické analýzy a využití rozdílných přístupů při její aplikaci. To zakládá specifické limity, ale též možnosti individuálních analýz.
V první sekci práce jsou identifikovány a charakterizovány tři hlavní proudy uvažování o hudebním videoklipu a specifikovány jejich možnosti a limity, ve druhé sekci je pak kritickému srovnání podrobeno šest vybraných přístupů konkrétních badatelů, čímž jsou možnosti a limity nastolené v první sekci práce demonstrovány a dále konkretizovány. Jde o první tuzemskou teoretickou práci věnovanou specificky sémiotickým pohledům na hudební videoklip.


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Using critical approach and comparative analysis, this meta theoretical thesis concentrates on the basic possibilities and limitations of semiotic analysis of music videos. It is assumed that various theoretical approaches and national (or intellectual) traditions do establish diverse fields of interest within the semiotic analysis, as well as they lead to the use of different approaches in its application, thus leading to specific limitations but also possibilities of individual analyzes.In the first section of this theses are identified and described three main streams of thinking on music video, and their limitations and possibilities are specified. Within the second section are under critical comparison six individual approaches of chosen theoreticians, thus demonstrating and further specifying the possibilities and limitations posed in the first section. This thesis is the first Czech theoretical work devoted to semiotic approaches to music video specifically.

As part of our inquiry about the practice of architectural film and animation and where it might go, this paper presents the results of interviews with architects on space, and on animation. We present their rich sense of space, and explain how they structure architectural film and animation. We found that architects wish to convey the subjective impact of design, but don’t know how to connect film editing techniques to architectural ends. Computational design could fill this gap with, for example, drag-and-drop editing patterns.

This thesis focuses on my work media and performance work, “Sinawi -Time Consoles Me”, which was shown in 2012 and 2013. I want to unveil my producing processes and propose possibilities of integrating image art and performance. The theme of the work was to visualize the concept of time and space behind media art. Exploring the relationship among space, human bodies and vision, I used a range of media including video, sound and performance. Especially, I repeated many experiments to find the right balance of image art and dance based on Korean traditional dance and Talchum (Korean traditional mask dance). This study pursues the best possible use of formative elements of physical expressions, images, sounds, space, lights, properties, etc.

Exploring the spatial and temporal issues of grief, this presentation will consist of a screening of ‘Look Up’ , my short film (2012, 5.04 min) and a paper that explores the processes of interdisciplinary research with a focus on the visualization in film of space, time and the body. The paper will suggest that during times of grief our relationship with space and time shifts – sometimes quite radically, but often rather imperceptibly - and we experience a different type of embodiment within the everyday. During this suspended state memories mix with dreamtime to create a less linear temporality, allowing us space for grieving and – on occasion - spiritual uplift. Taking a phenomenological approach, I argue this experience is not purely mental, but is felt, sensed and ‘interactive’. The film attempts to demonstrate this ‘being’. The film is not only a visual and aural interpretation of the grief experience, but also the outcome of a period of study on the representation of a particular landscape. Through a reflection on the very making of the film, I will look at how landscape with its potentiality for evoking nostalgia and specific moments of recall can serve as a mirror for the process of grieving.  Deconstructing the image and narrative form, I will discuss my choice of aesthetic, mis-en-scene and installation space with the overall aim of immersing the audience in the temporal dimension of loss and grief.

Key Words: Landscape, grief, time, space and place, experimental filmmaking, video installation.

Resumen

El presente ejercicio teórico toma como objeto de su estudio la risa dentro de la narración cinema-tográfica a partir de un fragmento escogido del filme de Pasolini, La ricotta (1963).
Para ello articularemos nuestro análisis en dos episodios: el primero dirigido al repaso teórico e histórico de la risa; el segundo, a la aplicación de las directrices metodológicas rescatadas del primero al análisis cinematográfico de nuestro caso de estudio.
Se trata de analizar el comporta-miento de la risa a partir de los elementos que componen la historia cinematográfica: los narrativos y los estilísticos. La finalidad del texto será la de estudiar la disyunción entre imagen fija e imagen movimiento tomando la risa como el punto de inflexión entre ambas.

Abstract:
This essay is based on the study of laughter in cinematic storytelling from a chosen fragment of Pasolini’s film, La ricotta (1963). This paper will be structured in two stages: the first one related to theoretical and historical overview of laughter, and the second one on film analysis taking in consideration the previous concepts underlined at the first stage.
That means to analyse the behaviour of laughter through the elements that are involved in the construction of a film story: narratives elements and stylistic elements. The aim of this essay is to study the relationship between still image and moving image, taking laughter as the turning point between those types of images.

Dr Lee Campbell shares his journey of using the ‘rip’ as a way of re-engaging with past work and past selves during the pandemic.
What may it mean to remediate, excavate and bring back to life a personal archive of paintings and drawings and mobile phone recordings made over the span of 25 years through the medium of moving image?
Beginning a perpetual process of making and remaking, constantly recycling myself, constantly requoting myself to create a density, beginning in late 2019 and then again at the start of lockdown March 2020 I made several short films which reused/recycled bodies of my past artwork. These films used the rip as both metaphor, symbol and structure to build upon existing work, create new forms out of ‘old’ practice and indeed show new versions of ‘old’ me. Collage became a major tool in this recent film practice, reinvigorating paintings and drawings that I produced nearly twenty years ago which are juxtaposed throughout my films with current photographic and performance for camera work. Things insist, in a spiral, nothing’s wasted. In this exciting new phase of my practice, I used all my capacities, from theatre to drawing, to painting, to language, to the comic, to the affective, to the relational, to painting and performance and film. Excavating (fine art) work I made long ago and resuscitating it, I brought these back to life through the medium of film.1 Integrating my fine artwork into my film work, my films created an arresting palimpsest effect by recycling pieces from previous bodies of work and placing them within my current context to see how their meanings may now differ from when they were first conceived.

Kevin Brownlow has been described by Martin Scorsese as “a giant among film historians and preservationists.” Operating outside academia, Brownlow has made astonishing contributions to increasing greater cultural understanding and public appreciation of silent cinema. He has made seventeen films—many of them screened at festivals and on television—and written many books, including The Parade’s Gone By, published in 1968, a classic account of Hollywood that was based on interviews with many of the stars of silent cinema. With David Gill, he was responsible in the 1980s for the screening with musical accompaniment of restored silent films in London (Thames Silents) and on television. His most ambitious project for film restoration has been locating and assembling the most complete version of Abel Gance’s Napoleon (1927). Brownlow’s championing of this masterpiece eventually succeeded, and the restored, rescored version was shown in London and New York in 1980 and 1981, with director Gance just living to see the acclaim for his restored film. The latest restoration was shown in London in November 2013 and in Amsterdam in June 2014. Brownlow was awarded an honorary Academy Award in 2010, the first time such an award has ever been given to a film historian. He has also received a Distinguished Career Award from the Society for Cinema and Media Studies and an honorary doctorate from the American Film Institute. In 2014 we interviewed Kevin Brownlow in connection with our research for the Leverhulme Trust–funded project “Colour in the 1920s: Cinema and Its Intermedial Contexts” (project team: Victoria Jackson, Bregt Lameris, Sarah Street, Joshua Yumibe). His knowledge of and experience with silent films were invaluable, contributing to our understanding of the complexities of film color and its pervasiveness and variety throughout the silent era. We reproduce in what follows selections from our interview transcripts, focusing on some interesting cases of silent film coloring Brownlow has encountered during his career. To clarify some of the points raised in the interview, we have added further notes and references.

This article offers the first scholarly study of Chantal Akerman’s installation Maniac Shadows (2013). It argues that the deviating sensory strategies at work in this installation form part of a process of ‘queering’ that allows for the expression of queer forms of embodiment and pleasure. These queer tactics include sonic excess and spatial disintegration, skewed framing, haptic auditory perception and an emphasis on indeterminacy and ambiguity, primarily through the figure of the shadow. Drawing on Sara Ahmed’s phenomenological approach to queerness, the article explores the sensuous queer effects arising from instances of audio-visual disorientation in Akerman’s installation. It suggests that the centrality of shadows, combined with the amorphous soundscape and the presence of opaque images and oblique angles, produce jarring moments of strangeness that undermine notions of a stable unified subject and disrupt heteronormative space. Offering an alternative perspective on the autobiographical accounts of the installation that have emerged so far, the article suggests that Akerman’s experimentation with spatial ambiguity is tied to a queerly inflected unravelling that pervades Maniac Shadows, as the artist fashions a less constricting and more subversive relational space for herself and her audience to grow into.

According to Nietzsche: each person has only one life to live and that which occurs in life occurs only once and never again – thus the "lightness" of being. For him, the eternal recurrence imposes a "heaviness" on life, it gives them "weight". Nietzsche believed this heaviness could be either a tremendous burden or great benefit depending on the individual's perspective. How can we see this metaphor in real life? A review of a unique and difficult relationship -between Kundera and his film adaptations- is a great way to look at it. The "unbearable lightness" in the title of this essay and in Kundera’s original novel, also refers to the lightness of love and sex in the author’s own life, which are also recurrent themes of his prose.

The African Diaspora, the Afro-Question and the Moving Image in the Americas: From the Cuban Revolution & the Civil Rights Movement to Barack Obama / a film retrospective-project
(in coordination with UCL Americas, UCL Film &TV Society, BFI, ICAIC & AMPAS - Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences)
Now by the Cuban Santiago Alvarez is another example of Agit-prop Cuban Style, Using mostly photographs clipped from American magazines such as Life, Álvarez creates a dynamic montage of images in juxtaposition with the lyrics of “Now” sung by Lena Horne to the tune of the Jewish folksong, “Hava Nagila.” The resulting film, Now, which is the exact length of the recorded song, is a remarkable precursor to the music video format, 20 years ahead of its time. Indeed, in presenting a vivid critique of racism in the U.S. and as a call for action, Now stands as a model of the form, far superior to most self aggrandizing music videos.

This study is a trans-disciplinary reflection on contingent problems related to moving and unstable territories and the most appropriate compositional techniques to map them. The main research question focuses on the possibility of defining the musicality of their irregular rhythm. Embracing an idea of a pulviscular architecture of inner forces and exchanging potentials (Formaggio in Estetica Tempo Progetto. Città Studio, Milano, 1990), immersive maps and audio-guide are organized following three stages of analysis and filtering. Recognition, nomination, and synchronization are the steps presented for the design process to manage the pace of the elements involved in the composition, contributing in the construction of an inhabitable and commutative geographical skin.

In Schrodinger’s film a tree falls in the forest and it may or may not make a sound of a clapperboard.  Are there correlations between the ‘spooky action at a distance’ quantum world and moving image and sound?  Who is the ‘agent-viewer’?  Is the ‘chronon’ a viable philosophical tool?

In the current debate about restitution, which primarily evolves around archaeological and ethnographical collections in Europe, the question of the audiovisual heritage of the Global South opens up the next frontier. This question has three aspects, which we want to discuss taking sub-Saharan Africa and Nigeria as our focus. First, if we stipulate, as is now common in anthropology, an “ethical imperative for digital return of collections of field recordings to their communities of origin", then how does this imperative apply to historical films held in the Global North, and how can we think of audiovisual heritage in the context of a broader push to decolonize the archive? Second, if we understand that those parts of the audiovisual heritage that are not stored away in the Global North are scattered about in public and private archives across the region, where they are under threat from decay, particularly celluloid-native films from the period between the end of colonial occupation and the millennium, then how can we secure the long-term survival of these cultural and historically important films? And third, if we consider that countries like Ghana, Nigeria, and India are now major producers and poles in a “new world order of cultural production,” with the various regional Nigerian film industries alone producing more than one thousand feature-length video-and digital-native films per year, how can this new and accumulating film heritage be preserved? In this article, we want to argue that to answer these questions requires practical solutions and policy initiatives but also a radical rethinking of the conceptual frameworks of audiovisual heritage policy and practice in the Global North as well as the Global South.

The haptic turn in film studies, which has been growing in currency since the late 1990s, is gaining support from recent studies in cognitive neuroscience. This article draws on this convergence, as a productive route to investigating experimental cinema. Phil Solomon’s concept of “the physical anxiety of form itself” is taken up as a point of departure for close analysis of three films: The Secret Garden (1988), The Snowman (1995), and Walking Distance (1999). The article investigates the artist’s optical, chemical, and manual working processes, as well as the specific choice of found footage. Relying primarily on Embodied Simulation theory, the focal argument pivots on Solomon’s “physical anxiety” as it is instantiated in somatosensory arousal. Solomon’s films are analyzed as effective mediators of intersubjective engagement, of the particular “haptic” type. Experimental cinema is thus approached from outside the discursive frame of avant-garde poetics, drawing attention to new perspectives that are currently opening up for moving image studies.

While the cinematograph instituted the illusion produced from immobility as the way to produce moving image, historically this one has been produced in other ways, with the laser in the mechanical-analog era and with code plus algorithms in digital age. To give back motion to the image is necessary to rethink the process of capture and playback established by the cinematograph, considering philosophical perspectives that comprehend the world in a different way, where we could reconsider the continuous light as the inspiring and unique source of the moving image, which must be able to capture and play with the exploration of photochemistry, photobiology and analysis of the transformations of light in three-dimensional environments.

"STALKSCAPES. Cinematic experiments in Landscape Architecture and beyond". Lecture & Film (100 photograms / 1 hour) by Eunate Torres-Modrego, Keynote Speaker (IAUG University of Geneva, Switzerland) in ATMOSPHERE SYMPOSIUM 2011. University of Manitoba, Faculty of Architecture, CANADA, February 2011.

Stalkscapes Lecture in Vimeo:  https://vimeo.com/240546852/settings

Atmosphere Symposium was created in 2009 by Dr. Marcella Eaton, B.E.S. (Manitoba), Ph.D. (Edinburgh Coll. of Art, Heriot Watt), Associate Dean (Academic), Chair, Environmental Design Program, Associate Professor, Department of Landscape Architecture, University of Manitoba, CANADA.

"Every year the University of Manitoba's Faculty of Architecture hosts a symposium in the series Atmosphere.

The Atmosphere symposia explore the intangible and overlooked dimensions of architecture and the city: those difficult to pin down, document, record with conventional instruments and methodologies.

Atmosphere 2011 will focus on MEDIATED CITIES, the image of architecture, space, and place in cinema and other media. There is a long history of "city films" which have portrayed the experience of urban life, exploring through that experience the qualities and conundrums of modern life. Today that history is updated as cinema is supplemented by new forms of media including video, internet, and portable media. These new forms of media emerge from and articulate shifts and developments in architecture, landscape and cities as well as global geographies, technologies and politics. They include imaginary as well as documentary narratives, and works that blur the two. They are also being incorporated, rapidly, into the practice of all design disciplines.

The conference will build bridges between disciplines, between research and creation, between the academy and the community – contributing to the production of a truly mediated city."