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Cinema and the Visual Arts

Bodies and Screens: Aspects for a Phenomenology of Moving Image Installations

Corps et écrans. Considérations autour d’une phénoménologie de l’installation des images en mouvement
Zsolt Gyenge

Résumés

Cet article propose une possible phénoménologie des installations d'images en mouvement en trois étapes. Tout d'abord, je présente le concept central de Vivian Sobchack du corps du film dans le contexte du dispositif cinématographique, en me concentrant plus particulièrement sur les aspects qui concernent la projection non cinématographique et les différences entre la projection de films dans les salles de cinéma et l'espace des galeries d’art. Ensuite, je développe les idées de Juhani Pallasmaa sur la phénoménologie de l'architecture pour mettre en évidence les aspects spatiaux et structurels des installations d'images en mouvement. Puis, je défends le concept d'« autoréflexivité corporelle », susceptible de décrire assez précisément l'expérience ressentie par les spectateurs d'un film exposé dans une galerie d’art ou un musée. Enfin, je propose une brève description et interprétation de deux installations vidéo panoramiques où l'autoréflexivité corporelle vécue par les spectateurs semble être au cœur de la compréhension des œuvres.

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1For several years now my research has focused on a phenomenology of the moving image installation, especially a phenomenology of the spectator experience created by such installations—an approach unavoidably based on an intermedial comparison with the cinematic experience. One of the biggest challenges of such an approach, however, is the infinite diversity of the installation format compared to the nearly identical structure of the cinematic apparatus in each theater. This is the reason why it is almost impossible to develop a universal phenomenological description of spectator experience as a starting point for the interpretation of installed video works—as has been done with the phenomenologies of cinema and film. In what follows I will outline fundamental concepts for a phenomenology of video installation. First, I will analyze Vivian Sobchack’s seminal concept of the film’s body, specifically in the context of moving image installations, and then I will discuss Juhani Pallasmaa’s ideas related to the phenomenology of architecture. Based on this, I will propose the concept of embodied self-reflectivity as a starting point for the phenomenological interpretation of moving image installations. Two famous artworks will be used to illustrate the theoretical concepts, Lisa Reihana’s in Pursuit of Venus [infected] (2017) and William Kentridge’s More Sweetly Play the Dance (2015).

Apparatus in moving image installations

  • 1 I would like to thank the editors and my reviewers for pointing out the importance and relevance o (...)

2Before I elaborate on the main arguments of this article, I need to briefly explain the reasons for using in the description of the viewer experience of moving image installations the much-discussed term of apparatus.1 In certain aspects, my approach is based on a position opposite to that elaborated by Francesco Casseti through the idea of the Lumiere Galaxy. In his 2015 book, he presented a comprehensive view of the current state of the cinema, where the ongoing developments in technology, viewing conditions, and access are not considered to be destroying cinema and the cinematic experience, rather they disperse cinema in many new forms and contexts that exist around us in myriad variants as parts of the Lumiere Galaxy. “If McLuhan was persuaded that media shape our experience—Casetti concludes—this book advances the notion that some consolidated forms of experience, such as that of cinema, can today be reenacted in different contexts, which are compelled to ‘adapt’ themselves to the experience.” (Casetti, 16) Though Casetti’s metaphor of the cinema dispersed in a thousand new forms is appealing in many respects, by advancing the idea of a common cinematic experience it seems unable to precisely describe the differences between the different environments where moving images are being experienced. Thus I argue—if you wish, from a McLuhanian perspective—that moving image installations for instance change the experience of moving images so radically that the experience one can get of films in exhibition spaces (of course with the exception of black box installations) cannot be considered cinematic.

3Casetti identifies four factors that play an important role in the experience of films, the first being “environmental factors”, that is being in front of the screen (Casetti 6). In what follows when using the term apparatus I actually refer to those elements that are described by Casetti as environmental: in my view, it is precisely the way we are being directed to exist in one or another way in front of the screen that crucially defines the viewer’s experience.

4Casetti dismisses the term apparatus by arguing that “the cinematic dispositive no longer appears to be a predetermined, closed and binding structure, but rather an open and flexible set of elements; it is no longer an apparatus, but rather an assemblage.” (Casetti 69). Though I agree with his statement, that the cinematic dispositive has changed radically, my conclusion is different. It is precisely this radical change that would become blurred if we opened so wide the term of cinematic experience, a definition that might result in losing its descriptive and explanatory power. This is the reason why I will use in this paper the term “apparatus” to describe the technologically defined cinematic environment composed by the projector-screen-theater, and to point out the consequences of the modifications brought into this structure by the film installations in exhibition spaces.

5My perspective on the issue is in fact closest to the one expressed by Raymond Bellour in La querelle des dispositifs, where he argued—partially admitting being wrong before —that there is a sharp and clear difference between the experience of cinema and that of film installations, the difference being essentially due to the different viewing environments. Based on this he reaches the conclusion that “against all the graspable formal connections uniting the art of the films and that of the museums, in the case of the latter the essential is related to their modes of exhibition, especially to their installation that imposes a ‘spatialization of the idea’.” (Bellour, La querelle, 32 - My translation) I consider that using the term apparatus instead of dispositive will allow me to clearly point out the crucial consequences of the combined technological elements (theater-screen-projector) on the viewer/visitor experience. It seems also important to clarify that when discussing the radical shift in the filmic apparatus observable in a museum or gallery context, I do not specifically refer to differences between analog or digital support, nor am I taking part in the often-nostalgic discussion about the loss of certain aspects of classical or original cinematic experience.

6Finally, the extent of the difference between the cinematic and the museum apparatus needs to be briefly discussed. As mentioned above, I exclude from the discussion that follows those black box installations that replicate the theatrical viewing experience in the space of a museum or gallery. However, one must take into consideration that, apart from very rare exceptions, even in the case of these black box installations, visitors are allowed to enter and leave whenever they please, thus altering substantially the reception of the (linear) narrative structure, one of the main components of mainstream cinema. Moreover, as only a small number of museum/gallery film projections are organized in the form of black box installations, even in these cases the visitors still need to bodily (re)discover the theatrical form of presentation, a process that contributes to the embodied reflexivity to be discussed later.

Sobchack and the film’s body

  • 2 For the sake of the clarity of the argument this article deliberately narrows down its focus to di (...)

7In his famous lecture-article “The Film and the New Psychology” (1964), Maurice Merleau-Ponty commented that “movies are peculiarly suited to mak[ing] manifest the union of mind and body, mind and world, and the expression of one in the other” because contemporary philosophy consists in describing the involvement of consciousness in a body, and “because this is movie material par excellence” (Merleau-Ponty 58–59). However, he reached the conclusion that the coexistence of this type of philosophy and movie technology is not the result of one springing from the other but is only due to the fact that the philosopher and the filmmaker “share a certain way of being, a certain view of the world which belongs to a generation” (Merleau-Ponty 59). This could be taken to mean there is almost nothing essential or substantial linking cinematic technology to phenomenology besides the sensibility of a generation to certain types of problems. However, in her book The Address of the Eye (1992), Vivian Sobchack argues that Merleau-Ponty’s approach reveals a close connection between (new) modes of production and (new) modalities of consciousness insofar as it suggests a view of the cinematic apparatus as an intentional technology (Sobchack 165–66). Sobchack adds that “new modes of production constitute not only ‘new age’ but also new modalities of consciousness and, most significantly, self-consciousness,” and she explicitly points out that the relationship between computers and consciousness should be similarly analyzed (Sobchack 166). In what follows, I propose to analyze the migration of moving images from film theaters to art gallery installations within the frame phenomenology of film provided for the description of cinematic experience. How do these new forms of the “cinematic” apparatus affect intentionality and consciousness? What are the differences compared to cinema projection? And, can we use Sobchack’s concept of the film’s body to describe and understand moving image installations?2

8When defining her seminal term “the film’s body” Sobchack argues that the film is to cinematic technology what “human perception and expression is to human physiology,” since in both cases perception is dependent upon and enabled by the behavior “of an instrumentality that synoptically accomplishes and expresses in the world a perceptive and perceptible intention, that is a lived-body” (Sobchack 166). Thus, because the lived-body “is not merely the objective instrument of intentional consciousness but also the instrumental subject of intentional consciousness,” the same can be said of cinematic technology, which Sobchack calls “the film’s body” (Sobchack 166–67). The intentional structure of vision is situated in a body-subject that is always an objective body in relation to the vision of others. Sobchack concludes that a radical phenomenological reflection on film involves both an objective (if generally visible) body (“an instrumentality through which the visible behavior of an intending consciousness is expressed”) and “a visual body-subject, an agent who autonomously, introceptively, and visibly perceives the visual behavior of others” (Sobchack 167). As the oft-quoted sentence declares: “The film is not, therefore, merely an object for perception and expression; it is also the subject of perception and expression.”

  • 3 Describing the “instrumental base” of films, Baudry differentiates between the operations performe (...)

9Such a train of thought would necessarily lead to the discussion of cinematic technology or what Baudry has termed the cinematic apparatus.3 However, Sobchack warns early on that this is not her intention.

  • 4 This emphasis on the invisibility of technology is closely linked to Sobchack’s conviction that fi (...)

As a systemic ‘apparatus’ cinematic technology functions to afford the film a material instrumentality for its perceptive and expressive intention, and to exist invisibly ‘behind’ the film’s perceptive and expressive activity as the film’s ground, as its incarnate and substantial being, as the film’s body. (Sobchack 171).4

  • 5 Except for black box installations, of course. The visibility of the screen in theaters might be a (...)

10Here Sobchack emphasizes the invisible existence of technology in film, an aspect which is substantially different in the case of almost all moving image installations, where the “apparatus” is always more or less visible.5 Installation artwork has brought about the transformation of the viewer’s experience of moving images. The practice through which an installation exposes the structure to a certain extent not only conveys the perceptive/expressive function but also evinces the composition. Or to be more precise, structure and technology become an essential part of the perceptive/expressive function.

11It is important to point out that according to Sobchack’s theory, film is both an act of perception and an act of expression enabled by the transparent instrument-mediated perception of the spectator. This means that even for the most self-reflexive, materialist, or minimalist films a minimal degree of transparency is necessary, and without this “the instrument could not have been considered to have accomplished or ‘fulfilled’ the intentionality of perception as an act” (Sobchack 180). A transparent embodied relation with cinematic technology is thus “a radical and genetic necessity for the constitution of the film experience” (Sobchack 190). On this point, Sobchack’s vision of cinematic perception becomes incompatible with and untranslatable to moving image installations, mostly due to the visibility of the projecting apparatus. If we accepted Sobchack’s view of cinema, it would be impossible to argue for the existence of the “video’s body” or “installation’s body” in any way comparable to her concept of the film’s body.

12Vivian Sobchack’s description of filmic experience is centered on the idea of double instrumentality. The spectator of a film is engaged in two instrument-mediated perceptions: the first involves the projector, with which the spectator has a transparent and enabling embodiment relation, and the second involves the filmmaker’s enabling camera, with which the spectator has an opaquer hermeneutic relation (Sobchack 191). “Thus the projector enables the spectator to perceive one instrument-mediated relation as hermeneutic while transparently living another as embodied” (Sobchack 194). What further complicates this double mediation is the fact that the camera remains invisible, and its “visual activity” and derived images are only visible to the spectator “in and as the film” (Sobchack 196). Thus, although implied, the camera is not itself perceptible, which is not always the case in video installations, especially where live transmission is involved (as, for example, in the famous works of Dan Graham and Peter Campus).

  • 6 “Thus […] the film emerges as having an existential presence in its own right. As it comes into be (...)

13According to Sobchack, the camera, projector, and accompanying mechanisms (i.e., cinematic technology) are the substantial embodiment of the film, and as such are perceived as the film’s body. Motility is the principal feature of the film’s body and therefore the camera is clearly privileged among the many cinematic mechanisms. This argument is easily understood and accepted in the case of mainstream cinema, where the camera’s situated presence in continuous space is graspable, but Sobchack holds that this is also true even in the case of such experimental films as Fernand Léger’s Ballet mécanique (1924), that “present a visible but physically uninhabitable world” (209). Sobchack offers the following definition of the film’s body: “Insofar as the film is visible as the successful realization of a perceptive act in an intended perceived object, the camera and the projector and all other enabling cinematic technology are synaesthetically synopsized as the film’s body” (Sobchack 215).6

14Her argument that multiple viewpoints are collaged into the film experience can be accepted in the case of experimental films, however the whole idea of the cinematic mechanisms described as the film’s body becomes problematic in the case of abstract films, even more so in cameraless films and animations, not to mention moving image installations. In my view, in the case of installations, where the trio of camera, projector and screen is always visibly present, and where the relation of these three elements differs in almost every artwork, this setting forces the spectators to dedicate an important part of their attention to the apparatus itself and to explore its functioning.

15In Sobchack’s view, the camera is the active component in the trio, while the projector and the screen are the latent, passive presence that makes the film possible; the frame is to the camera what the screen is to the projector (Sobchack 210-11). The frame and screen are necessary “to both the existence and the limitation of the film’s visual field. […] The screen is the material substance that enables the frame its function” (Sobchack 211). When adapting these ideas to the installed moving image this precise description of the film’s body makes it clear that the function of the camera remains more or less the same in installations as in cinema, it is only the projector-screen relationship that becomes unstable, and changing. Or to be more precise, in the case of installations we need to abandon the active-passive pair of cinematic instruments, and consider all of them—camera, projector, and screen—more or less equally active.

  • 7 When I call installations post-cinematic I do not mean that they dismiss or replace cinematic expe (...)

16Discussing the above issues from the perspective of gallery cinema, the question of self-reflexivity arises. First, we should understand to what extent the film’s body is observable in or during cinema projection. Sobchack considers the film’s body as invisible to itself as we are to ourselves. Similarly to the way “reflecting on our own body, living our own bodies from without” is a form of alienation often called hypochondria, reflecting on its own mechanism is not the primary goal of film (Sobchack 218). Even if we accept this rather problematic claim, moving image installation does precisely this, that is it valorizes self-reflexivity. Even in those cases where an immersive experience is intended, we are forced to bodily explore the space and the functioning of the projection to literally find our way in the post-cinematic mechanism created by the moving image installation.7 Because all projections installed in galleries or museums differ to a certain degree from each other, we always need to do this work of exploration and recognition, and thus a state of embodied self-reflexivity is always induced.

17Except for black box installations that replicate a cinematic environment, exhibited moving images substantially alter the viewer’s experience of the film’s body as such. This is mostly achieved through three strategies that are often combined: full exposure of the cinematic technology, multiplication of images in the case of multichannel installations, and ambulation of the viewer in front of the projected artwork. In my view, this happens because the film’s body does not exist by itself but only in the film-viewer interaction, so when this relation is altered, the film stops functioning as the perceptive/expressive body of an intentional subject. The main difference, in this case, lies in the fact that the perceptive/expressive activity of the film is no longer closely linked to the spectator’s visual attention, so the film is not experienced anymore as an instrument-mediated perception. In a gallery or museum, the projected film exists, perceives, and expresses independently of my perception: I can hear it from a neighboring room or notice it in my peripheral vision. In the case of panoramic installations such as those of Reihana or Kentridge, the experience of this independent existence is present even when we focus entirely on the artwork in question. Due to their large size, we are simply unable to fully grasp their images or audio tracks from one single point in the space.

18All this means that the embodied nature of the instrument-mediated film experience seems to be destroyed by the mobility of the spectator, activated either by the structure and inherent characteristics of every exhibition space displaying several artworks, or by the size of the installation itself that deliberately exceeds the boundaries of human perception. If that is the case, then the experience of such installations might seem more comparable to that of architecture than that of cinema.

Pallasmaa’s phenomenology of architecture

19Finnish architect Juhani Pallasmaa’s main argument in his seminal book The Eyes of the Skin (2012) is twofold. Firstly, he advances the primacy of touch over vision, holding that “all the senses, including vision, are extensions of the tactile sense; the senses are specializations of skin tissue, and all sensory experiences are modes of touching, and thus, related to tactility” (Pallasmaa, The Eyes 12). Secondly, he argues that vision itself should be re-evaluated in the sense that “the role of peripheral and unfocused vision in our lived experience of the worlds” should be emphasized, and the importance of “unconscious haptic imagery and unfocused peripheral vision” should be acknowledged (Pallasmaa, The Eyes 14).

20The latter argument seems especially relevant in the case of moving image installations, as Pallasmaa believes that it is precisely the peripheral vision that “integrates us with space, while focused vision pushes us out of the space making us mere spectators” (Pallasmaa, The Eyes 15). As an architect, Pallasmaa of course refers to visitors becoming spectators of the same (architectural) space they should inhabit, but if we translate this to the situation of moving image installations, I suggest that visitors’ attention can be divided into two directions: focused vision, which is directed towards the screen(s), and peripheral vision, which helps us perceive the spatial qualities of the installation. Thus, after having explored the space and the setting of an installation, it is the peripheral vision that continuously contributes to our embodied presence and perception of the space surrounding us while we watch and focus on the moving images presented on the screen(s).

21Pallasmaa rather violently attacks the exclusively “intellectual” nature of contemporary art: “contemporary culture at large drifts towards a distancing, a kind of chilling de-sensuali[z]ation and de-erotici[z]ation of the human relation to reality” (Pallasmaa, The Eyes 35). Basically, he criticizes conceptualism in art, towards which video art of course often tends. There is no question that the conceptual attitude is essential to many video works, however, I think it is precisely through the spatial-architectural installation of moving images that conceptual video triggers the multisensorial embodied perception of visitors, an experience that Pallasmaa values highly, and one that is largely absent from the experience that the cinematic apparatus is able to provide.

22Not only does Pallasmaa refer to film in his books and essays on architecture, but he also wrote a book dedicated to the relation between architecture and cinema, in which he argued that the shared ground of architecture and cinema consists in the fact that they both construct “the lived existential space” (Pallasmaa, The Architecture 9). What makes Pallasmaa’s approach relevant here is that he is not interested in the depiction of architectural spaces in cinema, but in the architecture of imagery expressed in films, in how cinema constructs spaces in the mind. It is in this regard that he evokes Walter Benjamin’s provocative metaphor of the painter being the magician and the cameraman the surgeon (Benjamin 233-234). Likewise, Pallasmaa argues that the film director is the magician and the architect the surgeon: “The director operates through the distance of mental suggestion, whereas the architect takes hold, touches our bodily constitution, and conditions our actual being in the world” (Pallasmaa, The Architecture 20). Pallasmaa also evokes Benjamin’s contention that cinema is a tactile art because a “film is viewed with the muscles and skin as much as by the eyes.” (Pallasmaa, The Architecture 18) We can draw two conclusions from this approach. First, that Pallasmaa takes the transparency of the cinematic image for granted and necessary in the spectator experience in the same way as Sobchack did (as pointed out above). Secondly—and for my argument this is even more important—in the case of moving image installations, the film is viewed literally with the muscles and the skin, as the space of the installation always needs our permanent and active bodily cooperation. Following this train of Pallasmaa’s thought, I argue that moving image installations should be considered as situated midway between architecture and cinema, as they both operate from a distance and define our bodily condition up close.

23Referring to architectural structures appearing in paintings or in films, Pallasmaa argues that what makes architectural constructions made by artists so valuable compared to professional architecture is that they are not bound by functional and technical requirements. Thus, the architecture designed by an artist is “a direct reflection of mental images, memories, and dreams; the artist creates an architecture of the mind” (Pallasmaa, The Architecture 22). Consequently, moving image installations stand midway between professional and “artist” architecture as they are not directed by specific technical restraints that are necessary to actual buildings, but these spaces still need to fulfill some functional requirements. Above all, they need to be able to provide a space of spectatorship for moving images. Thus, when imagining these spaces artists do not design buildings; they design spectator experience, as the space of a moving image installation must enable a specific form of spectator experience that is necessarily embodied. What makes Pallasmaa’s argument even more relevant is the fact that video art or artists’ cinema is to be found at this intermediary position also from the perspective of the construction of the moving image itself. The video artist is neither an amateur with a movie camera, nor a professional filmmaker bound by the institutional, financial, and narrative constraints of cinema.

Embodied self-reflexivity

24Enlisting the many ideas around the comparison of cinematic and gallery film experience, Anne Rutherford tries to find a way to define the differences between the embodied cinema spectatorship and the experience of moving image installations. She identifies Giuliana Bruno’s approach, for whom cinematic embodiment is virtual, while the embodiment of the gallery spectator is actual: the imaginative path taken by the cinema spectator with the help of film editing is actualized in the space of the moving image installation (Rutherford 226). Though such a description seems accurate, it does not consider that gallery films often make use of editing as well and that the wandering through an installation connects the ontologically different on-screen and off-screen spaces (of the gallery, of other artworks). Besides and in my view, Vivian Sobchack would never accept the idea that the embodied cinema experience should be considered virtual. However, what is being suggested here is an attempt to provide an answer to the question formulated by Rutherford when she wonders if the heightened experience of embodiment in cinema might be linked to “the relative immobility of the body in the auditorium” (Rutherford 236). The concept of embodied self-reflectivity that I propose in this paper is an attempt to explain precisely what active embodied participation spectators experience in gallery spaces.

  • 8 The whole Sobchackian concept is based on the assumption that the film’s body is a lived body “dis (...)

25Self-reflexivity in cinema is always representational and intellectual in the sense that we see and understand that it is the cinematic apparatus that is—partially or in its entirety—represented on screen. As Sobchack puts it, “a film must be successfully—that is transparently— projected in an unruptured and embodied instrument-mediated perception for it to represent the rupture of the very mechanisms that make the perception of it possible” (Sobchack 189).8 Later on, she presents several instances where the visibility of the film’s body is questionable, as she accepts that in most cases the film’s actual body is disguised through the sutures of continuous editing. One form of self-reflexivity, however, is when the actual recording camera appears on the image, for example, reflected in a mirror, but Sobchack argues that in such instances “the camera seeing itself and visible in the perception is only a partial revelation of the film’s body” because the camera is only visible as a dissected part of the film’s body, “only as a representation of the film’s visual body” (Sobchack 222).

26Conversely, in installations, the artwork itself induces a state of embodied self-reflexivity no matter what is represented on the screen. Bellour clearly delineates cinema and contemporary video installations based on the fact that the former is based on a dispositif that is a priori singular, whilst the latter “invents, in each of its manifestations, its own specific dispositif.” “This dispositif—he continues—must therefore above all, be designated on each occasion, to the extent that it induces an experience that is invariably unexpected, comparable to no other, thereby giving rise to new forms of behaviour” (Bellour, The Quarrel of the Dispositifs: Reprise). This is why we need to explore the projection space through bodily movements from the start: we need to find the position from where the projection is best visible; we need to observe how many people are around us; decide whether we can sit on a bench or on the floor; how we can accommodate ourselves and have the best viewing conditions without being in the way of other visitors. Thus, we begin to interpret and comprehend the moving installation without even glancing at the screen(s).

27The French theorist of video art Philippe Dubois coined the term “cinema effect” to describe the phenomenon of the emphasized presence of cinematic works in galleries and museums that has been noticeable since the 1990s. What seems most important to him is that “this emergence of ‘exhibition cinema’ has also taken place over the background of changing apparatuses” (Dubois 314). He concludes that the shift from the movie theater to the museum resulted mostly in the dilution of the effect of absorption, and the transformation of the hypnotized spectator to a certain degree into a distanced flâneur (Dubois 315). It is precisely this diluted effect of absorption that I wish to describe with the term embodied self-reflexivity. It seems clear that galleries rarely offer the level of immersiveness achievable in a theater, and it is precisely the embodied acknowledgment of the situated perception, of the bodily limitations and possibilities of spectatorship that is able to open up the works for interpretation. In what follows, Dubois, discussing the re-use in galleries of films made for theaters, seems to refer to the very same process I have presented here: “Each piece working towards a version of a film that may be exhibited proves a meta-perceptive analytical experience when the act of seeing images is itself questioned” (Dubois 319). It seems that the physical characteristics of the re-visioning offered by the exhibition and the embodied perceptual experience created through it are at the center of these essential works of gallery cinema (he chiefly refers to famous pieces by Douglas Gordon). Curiously enough, Dubois later considers multichannel video to have merely spatialized the cinematic succession of shots: the artists split the sequences edited one after another into the simultaneity of a spatial arrangement on multiple screens. This statement is only true if we do not take into consideration the embodied experience of the visitor, who does not necessarily try to (re)construct the temporal relationship between the scenes projected onto separate screens. The embodied exploration of an installation in many cases choreographs the visitors’ movements in such a way that it forces the spectators to acknowledge the possibilities and the limits of their own movement and perception and base their interpretation on this self-reflective embodiment. Shirin Neshat’s famous Rapture (1999) with the two screens facing each other makes it impossible to observe the images simultaneously and thus the installation apparatus itself makes the viewer conscious of the radical, insurmountable difference of perspectives of women and men in the Iranian society depicted and reflected upon by Neshat.

  • 9 As I see it, this spectatorial activity is similar to the attitude described by Heidegger as readi (...)

28Having, for several years now, researched and taught the embodied perceptual experience of moving image installations, one of the problems I regularly come across is the difficulty to present a generally valid description of it, since—contrary to the cinema—it is always different. This is also observable in the academic studies on video art and film installations, where theoretical concepts are almost always closely linked to individual artworks or to an artist’s regular practice. As installations vary from case to case, one cannot provide a description of the effect of the apparatus on the projected image that could be valid for all or most works. However, this might equally be the very characteristic that triggers an active embodied perception that is able to influence a work’s interpretation. Each time we need to bodily and physically adapt to the installation we encounter (while finding our place, exploring its structure, understanding its functionality), we never take the projection of video work—contrary to the cinema—for granted.9 And this is why, as I see it, embodied self-reflexivity could become a general concept that is able to provide a common ground for the different descriptions of many moving image installations.

29The reason I am advocating the term “embodied self-reflexivity” is because I think it is crucial to emphasize the difference between the two typical forms of self-reflexive stances. The first is the representation of the cinematic mechanism through the image of the camera or through the highlighting of the materiality of the film by exposing its physical vulnerability. The second—observable mostly in museums or galleries—is the exhibition of the projection apparatus itself alongside the projected film. Embodied self-reflexivity refers to an almost unconscious process when the spectator is forced almost against his/her will to explore through a bodily interaction the possibilities of spectatorship available in an installation. And it is precisely this embodied exploration that gives the spectator the possibility to reflect on the enabling mechanisms of the projection he/she is experiencing.

The panoramic installations of Lisa Reihana and William Kentridge

30To illustrate my argument, I have chosen two multi-channel video installations that create an immense horizontal flow of images, constructing the illusion of an almost endless widescreen. William Kentridge’s More Sweetly Play the Dance has been shown with slightly different installation settings in many places around the world, I have seen it in Berlin, at Martin-Gropius-Bau, and at ZKM, in Karlsruhe. In this work, the large-scale panoramic projection shows a procession of shadowy figures, accompanied by the sounds of a brass band, that simultaneously reminds the viewer of a medieval death dance, a political demonstration, and a religious procession. The experience of the projection in both places was impressive and immersive, in Karlsruhe it also made use of the spectacular glass cube—the architectural icon of the institution—a decision that made the projection visible also from outside, even when the gallery was closed at night. Lisa Reihana’s somewhat similarly designed installation titled in Pursuit of Venus [infected] has been presented in the New Zealand Pavilion at the 2017 Venice Biennale. The work is a cinematic reimagining of a French scenic wallpaper from the early 19th century—two hundred years later Reihana recasts and reconsiders the wallpaper from a Pacific perspective. Enlivened with the sights and sounds of a performance, cultural ceremonies and encounters, the expansive video panorama is populated by known and invented narratives of encounters between British navigators and astronomers as well as people drawn from across New Zealand and the Pacific.

31It is important to note that both works are related to issues of identity. This becomes important when one realizes that the visual format chosen by the artists is, in fact, a revival of historical painted panoramas, called cycloramas—a link, that was first pointed out by Giuliana Bruno in her article on Jesper Just’s installation This Nameless Spectacle (Bruno 2015). These cycloramas were quite popular in the 19th century and were most often produced as part of the construction of a national identity. Thus, through their installations, the two contemporary video works mentioned above, beyond their ironic and sometimes unrealistic approach, both emphasize the spectacular spatial and architectural effect and the institutionalized tradition of their historical predecessors.

32In both installations, what strikes the viewer is the fragmented nature of the experience, the fact that one can find no privileged place or position in the space of the installation from where the whole projection, the entire screen, could be perceived. What is important from the perspective of this argument is that this lack of a comprehensive view is realized through an embodied process of perception, by using our muscles and skin (Pallasmaa) when walking around and unsuccessfully trying to find such a position. Moreover, these installations also prove that a transparent and unruptured projection (Sobchack) is not by all means necessary for reflexivity, that is to represent the very rupture of the mediating mechanisms. This is precisely what I call embodied self-reflexivity: the embodied interaction of the spectator together with the active realization of the limitations of the experience that generates interpretive meaning. The above-mentioned works convey their decolonial message not only through the images projected but even more so through the projection environment and the spectator experience they create. The impossibility of a comprehensive-totalizing view—so characteristic of the colonizing perspective—is corporeally experienced by each visitor.

Conclusion

33The latest installment of Kentridge’s video in Budapest (NEO Gallery, 2022) with the circular display of the screens in a relatively small room, offering chairs in the middle, made it possible for viewers to observe the whole film from one position. Installed in this way More Sweetly Play the Dance had a strikingly different effect, as we could watch the whole procession from the beginning to the end, and thus a previously unobservable narrative and temporal linearity became evident. Moreover, instead of a critical decolonial perspective partially induced by the above-described unstable and disoriented viewer position, a highly immersive experience of a historically and ontologically distant universe came to the fore.

34The goal of this article was to introduce the concept of embodied self-reflexivity to describe some aspects of the embodied viewer experience of moving image installations and to position it in relation to Vivian Sobchack’s term of the film’s body and Juhani Pallasmaa’s phenomenological description of architecture. Based on that I have argued that the bodily participation constructed individually by each moving image installation and describable with the help of the term embodied self-reflexivity might have an important effect on the interpretative meaning of the work—as the latest exhibition of Kentridge’s piece demonstrated so clearly.

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Bibliographie

Works Cited

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BELLOUR, Raymond. "The Quarrel of the Dispositifs: Reprise.” Translated by Daniel Fairfax. Senses of Cinema 86. 2018. https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2018/cinema-and-the-museum/the-quarrel-of-the-dispositifs/. Accessed November 20, 2022.

BENJAMIN, Walter. "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” Illuminations, edited by Hannah Arendt, translated by Harry Zohn, New York: Schocken Books. 1986. 217–52.

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HEIDEGGER, Martin. Being and Time. Translated by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. Malden (MA): Blackwell, 2007.

JUST, Jesper. This Nameless Spectacle. 2011. Perrotin, Paris. Jesper Just and Dorit Chrysler: This nameless spectacle on Vimeo. Accessed July 6, 2022.

KENTRIDGE, William. More Sweetly Play the Dance. Video installation. 2015. ZKM Karlsruhe, 2016.

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MCQUEEN, Steve. Ashes. Video Installation. 2015. Venice Biennial.

MERLEAU-PONTY, Maurice. Sense and Non-Sense. Trans. Hubert L. Dreyfus and Patricia Allen Dreyfus. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964.

NESHAT, Shirin. Rapture. Video Installation. 1999. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

PALLASMAA, Juhani. The Architecture of Image: Existential Space in Cinema. Helsinki: Rakennustieto, 2001.

PALLASMAA, Juhani. The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses. 3. ed. Chichester: Wiley, 2012.

REIHANA, Lisa. in Pursuit of Venus [infected]. Video installation. 2017. Venice Biennial, New Zealand Pavilion.

RUTHERFORD, Anne. "Moving Image Installation, the Embodied Spectator of Cinema and Amar Kanwar: Learning from Intermediality.” New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film 12. 3 (2014): 225–238. Accessed May 20, 2022.

SOBCHACK, Vivian Carol. The Address of the Eye: A Phenomenology of Film Experience. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992.

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Notes

1 I would like to thank the editors and my reviewers for pointing out the importance and relevance of this section.

2 For the sake of the clarity of the argument this article deliberately narrows down its focus to discuss exclusively Vivian Sobchack’s phenomenology of film and especially her seminal concept”the film’s body”—though film phenomenology of course is a much wider field. Without going into details, as a definition, I tend to agree with the so-called narrow approach proposed by Ferencz-Flatz and Hanich, when they argue that film phenomenology is “an attempt that describes invariant structures of the film viewer’s lived experience when watching moving images in a cinema or elsewhere.” (Ferencz-Flatz and Hanich 13) The only addition to this definition concerns the invariant structures that in the case of installations—and in contrary to the cinema—are invariant only for the viewers of a specific installation and will necessarily be different when entering the next one. This paper thus tries to understand the theoretical possibilities and implications of applying Sobchack’s concept to a phenomenological investigation of moving image installations.

3 Describing the “instrumental base” of films, Baudry differentiates between the operations performed by the camera (“site of the inscription”) and the operation of projection that effectively produces the illusion of continuity, and names the former optical apparatus, the latter mechanical apparatus. (40–43)

4 This emphasis on the invisibility of technology is closely linked to Sobchack’s conviction that film cannot be reduced to its technology: “the discrete mechanisms of the cinema are necessary but insufficient to account for the film as it appears as a particular and significant phenomenon in our experience” (Sobchack 169).

5 Except for black box installations, of course. The visibility of the screen in theaters might be a counterargument to this, however, it is important to point out that the screen is visible and thus perceptually present in the viewer experience only when the projector is off. Whereas in the case of many installations the visitors have to go around the screens hanging in the middle of the room whilst the film is being projected (like in the case of Steve McQueen’s Ashes from 2015).

6 “Thus […] the film emerges as having an existential presence in its own right. As it comes into being through projection, the film becomes. As it has being on the screen, the film behaves” (Sobchack 216).

7 When I call installations post-cinematic I do not mean that they dismiss or replace cinematic experience. The term is based on the chronological order that first made us aware of the cinematic apparatus.

8 The whole Sobchackian concept is based on the assumption that the film’s body is a lived body “discovered through the functions that make its existence in the world analogous to our own” (Sobchack 219). After analyzing in detail several aspects of the nature of the film’s body, she concludes: “The film’s body, like our own, is a subjective object. It is an intentional instrument able to perceive and express perception, to have sense and make sense. […] If we allow that we are our bodies and their visibly intentional conduct in the world, if we reflect upon our existence and understand that we are the subjects of our visual experience as well as visual objects for other visual subjects, then we cannot but recognize that the film’s body and its visibly intentional conduct enjoy the same existential privilege” (Sobchack 247-48).

9 As I see it, this spectatorial activity is similar to the attitude described by Heidegger as readiness-to-hand through the example of the hammer. “The peculiarity of what is proximally ready-to-hand is that, in its readiness-to-hand, it must, as it were, withdraw [zurückzuziehen] in order to be ready-to-hand quite authentically. That with which our everyday dealings proximally dwell is not the tools themselves [die Werkzeugeselbst]. On the contrary, that with which we concern ourselves primarily is the work—that which is to be produced at the time; and this is accordingly ready-to-hand too” (Heidegger 70). Thus, if it works properly, the hammer is invisible: the tool needs to be broken, to lose its functionality in order to be observed by us. Something similar takes place in the case of installations, which—compared to the cinematic projection—need to be out of place in order to make us bodily observe them and adapt ourselves to them—in the same way, that we adapt the position of our hand to the broken handle of a hammer.

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Référence électronique

Zsolt Gyenge, « Bodies and Screens: Aspects for a Phenomenology of Moving Image Installations »Interfaces [En ligne], 48 | 2022, mis en ligne le 21 décembre 2022, consulté le 23 mars 2025. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/interfaces/6218 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/interfaces.6218

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Auteur

Zsolt Gyenge

Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design (Budapest, Hungary)

Zsolt Gyenge is an Associate Professor at the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design (Budapest, Hungary), where he teaches courses in avant-garde cinema, film theory, film analysis, film history, academic writing, and visual communication theory. His fields of research include interpretation theories (phenomenology, hermeneutics), moving image installations (video art), and Romanian Cinema. He is the author of the book Image, Moving Image, Interpretation: A Theory of Phenomenological Film Analysis (published in Hungarian). He is currently working on a research project titled Expanded Screens: New Spectatorship and Subversion in Contemporary Moving Image Installations. He is the editor of the scholarly journal on design and visual culture Disegno and is also active as a freelance film critic.

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