Phd
The multiple as such. Here’s a set undefined by elements or boundaries. Locally, it is not individuated; globally it is not summed up. So it’s neither a flock, nor a school, nor a heap, nor a swarm, nor a herd, nor a pack. It is not an aggregate; it is not discrete. It’s a bit viscous perhaps. A lake under the mist, the sea, a white plain, background noise, the murmur of a crowd, time.
Michel Serres, Genesis, pp. 4-5
Exploring the multiple in a ‘cinema of attractions’
Multiplicity is a fundamental and constituent component of the phenomenological infrastructure of contemporary multifaceted society (Crocker, 2008).
In my doctoral research project, I will use multiple instances of specific interventions in search of a contemporary iteration of the concept ‘cinema of attractions’ (Gunning, 1990).
In addition to being a historical time indication in early cinema theory, ‘cinema of attractions’ also “defines a mode of representation by establishing an opposition between attraction and narrative” (Kessler, 2006). In this second meaning the concept ‘cinema of attractions’ provides the theoretical framework for my research; as an everpresent undercurrent it surges to the surface in the form of ‘Expanded Cinema’ exploits (Youngblood, 1970) or in more contemporary materializations catalogued under the denominator ‘Future Cinema’ (Shaw & Weibel, 2003).
What is central in such a ‘cinema of attractions’ is generating curiosity with the observer, and doing so not by concentrating on the narrative message conveyed, but by trying to expand the code of the medium itself.
To reach this goal I will set up a number of experiments using a methodology of deconstruction and subversion of the perfected apparatus that video has become, a methodology inspired by the media-archeological origins and evolution of that machinery.