DOCSLIB.ORG

Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen: Theory and Practice, Aesthetics and Politics, 1963-1983 Nicolas Helm-Grovas Royal Holloway, University of London PhD, Media Arts 1 Declaration of Authorship I, Nicolas Helm-Grovas, hereby declare that this thesis and the work presented in it is entirely my own. Where I have consulted the work of others, this is always clearly stated. 15 January, 2018 2 Abstract This PhD is a genealogy and critical examination of the writings and films of Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen, spanning the period from the early 1960s to 1980s. Despite the prominence of their texts, there has not been a book-length study of either body of writing, nor an overview of their overlap and mutual influence, in what was their most productive period. Nor has there been an extended account of the important connection between their theory and their practice as filmmakers. My thesis undertakes these tasks. I interpret and challenge existing scholarship, while simultaneously examining in detail for the first time lesser-known works, drawing on archives and interviews. Through close readings I elucidate Mulvey’s interrogation of the patriarchal fantasies structuring cinematic and artistic forms and her feminist appropriation of classical Hollywood melodrama; I map the related issues Wollen’s texts activate, of cinematic signification and materialism, the buried potentialities of the historical avant-gardes, and their connection to the avant-garde film contemporaneous with his writings. Their moving image works, I demonstrate through detailed analyses, bring these ideas into dialogue and work them through in a more open, exploratory vein. I trace key notions like ‘counter cinema’ across films and writings by both authors. Shifting between writings and films allows me to investigate authorship and collaboration, while their designation of their films as ‘theory films’ opens the question of the interconnection of theoretical and aesthetic discourse. I track their output through the era’s pivotal intellectual movements (semiotics, structuralism, psychoanalysis and Marxism) and political currents (the New Left, May ’68 and its aftereffects, the women’s movement). In doing so I also provide a picture of the radical, experimental film culture that thrived in Britain 3 from the late 1960s to the early 1980s, and the broader left-wing counter-culture of which it was a part. 4 Acknowledgments Foremost thanks go to Mandy Merck, for her demanding yet supportive supervision (with copious gossip and anecdotes), and to Laura Mulvey, for her encouragement and warmth from the very beginning of this project, and all the time she took on many occasions to respond to countless email questions, to be interviewed in person, to show or give me books and unpublished documents, and more. Clarissa Jacob, Charlie Jeffries, Kathryn Siegel, Maddy Smith and Ed Webb- Ingall read drafts and offered constructive feedback. Matt Atkinson, Erika Balsom, Sue Clayton, Sarah Crook, Jonny Davies, Alex Fletcher, Oliver Fuke, Claire Holdsworth, Steven Marchant, Volker Pantenburg, Colin Perry, Amy Tobin and Mark Webber shared thoughts, suggested relevant texts and films and in some cases provided with me with copies of these. Ben Brewster, Elizabeth Cowie, Simon Field, Serge Guilbaut, Martin Lefebvre, Mark Nash, Geoffrey Nowell-Smith and Juliet Mitchell supplied information and responded to questions via email, with Geoffrey and Simon also generously lending their time for face-to-face interviews. Leslie Dick graciously shared her memories regarding Peter Wollen and kindly offered her apartment in New Haven as a study retreat on several occasions. Media Arts faculty and fellow students provided helpful comments at three annual postgraduate conferences at which I presented work in progress. Claire Holdsworth and Colin Perry organised the symposium ‘Writing Histories of the Moving Image’ at Central Saint Martins in 2015. The paper I presented there allowed me to reflect on my overall aims and methodology in this PhD. Oliver Fuke gave me the opportunity to interview Laura Mulvey in public on the topic of ‘Theory Films/Counter Cinema’, at the Whitechapel Gallery season ‘Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen: Beyond the Scorched Earth of Counter Cinema’ in 2016, which 5 helped me think through various ideas. Broader thoughts were shaped by the panel ‘Writing / Theory / Independence, 1970-1985’, which Mandy Merck, Mark Nash and Kathryn Siegel agreed to participate in and which I arranged and chaired as part of ‘Reactivating the 1970s: Radical Film and Video Culture in Theory and Practice’, a day of panels and screenings at Open School East in 2016 that I co-organised with Clarissa Jacob and Ed Webb-Ingall, with funding from Royal Holloway. Ed Webb- Ingall also ran a series of seminars alongside the 2015 BFI season ‘Cinema Born Again: Radical Film from the 70s’, where I benefitted from discussion with Alex Ressel, Herb Shellenberger and Wilf Speller, among others. The first three years of this PhD were funded by a Reid Scholarship and fee waiver from Royal Holloway. Royal Holloway also provided funding for me to attend the ‘Regroupings’ event at the 2016 Edinburgh Film Festival. Thank you to the staff at the BFI Library and Steven Ball at the British Artists’ Film and Video Study Collection at Central Saint Martins. Thank you to my family for constant support and occasional financial first aid. Charlie Jeffries proofread the entire manuscript and was my continual interlocutor through the period of the thesis. 6 Contents Abstract 3 Acknowledgements 5 Introduction 9 1. Origins of a Collaboration 36 The Writings of ‘Lee Russell’ 36 Signs and Meaning in the Cinema and the Late 1960s 47 Mulvey Before ‘Visual Pleasure’ 77 2. Semiotics/Ideology/Counter-cinema 94 ‘Art in Revolution’ 94 ‘The Text is the Factory Where Thought is at Work’: Semiotics and 100 Modernism ‘Godard and Counter Cinema’ 115 ‘Scorched Earth’, or Film as Ideology Critique: Penthesilea, 132 Queen of the Amazons 3. Passionate Detachment 157 ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ 157 Mulvey, Sirk and Melodrama 178 ‘The Two Avant-Gardes’ 193 4. Film in the House of the Word 213 Riddles of the Sphinx 213 ‘Film, Feminism and the Avant-Garde’ 236 ‘And the words? Look’: Signification, Ontology, Material 252 5. ‘They Had Damaged the Map to Dreamland’ 273 Identification and Interpellation: AMY! 273 7 Reconsidering Visual Pleasure 288 Crystal Gazing 302 Frida Kahlo and Tina Modotti 317 The Bad Sister 326 Conclusion – On the Passage of a Few People Through a Rather Brief 337 Moment in Time Appendix – Figures 342 Bibliography 365 8 Introduction Godard’s not a dialectician. What counts with him isn’t two or three or however many, it’s AND, the conjunction AND. The key thing is Godard’s use of AND. - Gilles Deleuze1 In 1981, picking up a term used previously by Noel Carroll,2 the US journal October published a special issue on ‘The New Talkies’. In the introduction, the editors state that the collected texts ‘proceed from the radical critique of representation, through methods of textual analysis and deconstruction at work within the disciplines of psychoanalysis and semiotics, towards the analysis of the impact of the recent resurgence of text within film practice, specifically in its claim for a critical, discursive function within cinema itself’. Such a trend, they suggest, developed in the previous decade, though it has its roots in the 1960s. The editors define the issue’s focus in terms of five areas: 1. The convergence of European and American film practice upon the critical, discursive function. 2. The manner in which film practice thereby claims a theoretical function. 3. The social and political determinants of such developments and the question of the spectator/audience. 4. The relation of formal innovation to the discursive project. 5. The emergence of feminist film theory and practice and their consequences for the discursive project.3 The significance of this introduction is such that D. N. Rodowick also cites it at the beginning of The Crisis of Political Modernism, his study of post-1968 critical film 1 Gilles Deleuze, ‘Three Questions on Six Times Two’, Negotiations: 1972-1990, trans. Martin Joughin (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), p. 44 2 Noel Carroll and Yvonne Rainer, ‘Interview with a Woman Who…’, Millennium Film Journal 7-9 (Fall, 1980/81), p. 37 3 Editors, ‘The New Talkies: A Special Issue’, October 17 (Summer, 1981), p. 3 9 theory, in which the work of Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen is prominent.4 The themes delineated in the above passage – the ‘radical critique of representation’; the fundamental position granted to the methods of semiotics and psychoanalysis; the concept of ‘text’ as characteristic of a mode of cinematic production; the convergence of European and North American avant-garde streams; the claim that film practice may arrogate a theoretical function; the importance accorded to the spectator in these discussions; the idea that ‘formal innovation’ must in some way be connected to the discursive, critical or theoretical function that this cinema takes up; the relation of the foregoing to social and political matters; the centrality of feminist filmmaking and theory for this project – make clear that the theories and strategies Mulvey and Wollen had previously developed and which had reached a kind of maturity by the mid- to late 1970s had by the beginning of the 1980s become highly influential for a certain avant-garde film practice and its surrounding discourse. One of the starting points for this thesis is the assumption that Mulvey and Wollen are a privileged optic for viewing a larger social, political, cultural and artistic trajectory. Their work intersects with and exemplifies the key intellectual movements (semiotics, structuralism, psychoanalysis, Marxism) and political currents (the New Left, the women’s movement and the aftereffects of May ’68) of their era. Mulvey and Wollen’s films can be framed in a cinematic history taking in structural film in North America and Europe, and the European radical cinema of Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub, Chantal Akerman and Jean-Luc Godard.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Cinephilia Or the Uses of Disenchantment 2005
    Repositorium für die Medienwissenschaft Thomas Elsaesser Cinephilia or the Uses of Disenchantment 2005 https://doi.org/10.25969/mediarep/11988 Veröffentlichungsversion / published version Sammelbandbeitrag / collection article Empfohlene Zitierung / Suggested Citation: Elsaesser, Thomas: Cinephilia or the Uses of Disenchantment. In: Marijke de Valck, Malte Hagener (Hg.): Cinephilia. Movies, Love and Memory. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2005, S. 27– 43. DOI: https://doi.org/10.25969/mediarep/11988. Nutzungsbedingungen: Terms of use: Dieser Text wird unter einer Creative Commons - This document is made available under a creative commons - Namensnennung - Nicht kommerziell 3.0 Lizenz zur Verfügung Attribution - Non Commercial 3.0 License. For more information gestellt. Nähere Auskünfte zu dieser Lizenz finden Sie hier: see: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0 Cinephilia or the Uses of Disenchantment Thomas Elsaesser The Meaning and Memory of a Word It is hard to ignore that the word “cinephile” is a French coinage. Used as a noun in English, it designates someone who as easily emanates cachet as pre- tension, of the sort often associated with style items or fashion habits imported from France. As an adjective, however, “cinéphile” describes a state of mind and an emotion that, one the whole, has been seductive to a happy few while proving beneficial to film culture in general. The term “cinephilia,” finally, re- verberates with nostalgia and dedication, with longings and discrimination, and it evokes, at least to my generation, more than a passion for going to the movies, and only a little less than an entire attitude toward life.
    [Show full text]
  • Tate Report 08-09
    Tate Report 08–09 Report Tate Tate Report 08–09 It is the Itexceptional is the exceptional generosity generosity and and If you wouldIf you like would to find like toout find more out about more about PublishedPublished 2009 by 2009 by vision ofvision individuals, of individuals, corporations, corporations, how youhow can youbecome can becomeinvolved involved and help and help order of orderthe Tate of the Trustees Tate Trustees by Tate by Tate numerousnumerous private foundationsprivate foundations support supportTate, please Tate, contact please contactus at: us at: Publishing,Publishing, a division a divisionof Tate Enterprisesof Tate Enterprises and public-sectorand public-sector bodies that bodies has that has Ltd, Millbank,Ltd, Millbank, London LondonSW1P 4RG SW1P 4RG helped Tatehelped to becomeTate to becomewhat it iswhat it is DevelopmentDevelopment Office Office www.tate.org.uk/publishingwww.tate.org.uk/publishing today andtoday enabled and enabled us to: us to: Tate Tate MillbankMillbank © Tate 2009© Tate 2009 Offer innovative,Offer innovative, landmark landmark exhibitions exhibitions London LondonSW1P 4RG SW1P 4RG ISBN 978ISBN 1 85437 978 1916 85437 0 916 0 and Collectionand Collection displays displays Tel 020 7887Tel 020 4900 7887 4900 A catalogue record for this book is Fax 020 Fax7887 020 8738 7887 8738 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. DevelopDevelop imaginative imaginative education education and and available from the British Library. interpretationinterpretation programmes programmes AmericanAmerican Patrons Patronsof Tate of Tate Every effortEvery has effort been has made been to made locate to the locate the 520 West520 27 West Street 27 Unit Street 404 Unit 404 copyrightcopyright owners ownersof images of includedimages included in in StrengthenStrengthen and extend and theextend range the of range our of our New York,New NY York, 10001 NY 10001 this reportthis and report to meet and totheir meet requirements.
    [Show full text]
  • Interview with Laura Mulvey Gender, Gaze and Technology in Film Culture
    See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/258192310 Interview With Laura Mulvey: Gender, Gaze and Technology in Film Culture Article in Theory Culture & Society · September 2011 DOI: 10.1177/0263276411398278 CITATIONS READS 32 8,223 1 author: Roberta Sassatelli University of Milan 62 PUBLICATIONS 1,704 CITATIONS SEE PROFILE Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects: Sharing economy, Home making and Hospitality. AirBnb among the Middle-Classes in Milan View project Food Consumption, Hospitality and Gender Among Italian Middle Classed View project All content following this page was uploaded by Roberta Sassatelli on 26 January 2016. The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file. Interview with Laura Mulvey Gender, Gaze and Technology in Film Culture Roberta Sassatelli Abstract This conversation between Laura Mulvey and Roberta Sassatelli offers a his- torical reconstruction of Mulvey’s work, from her famous essay ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ to her most recent reflections on male gaze, film technology and visual culture. The conversation initially deals with the socio-cultural context in which the ‘Visual Pleasure ...’ essay was produced by outlining a number of possible theoretical parallelisms with other scholars, from Foucault to Barthes to Goffman. Then, on the basis of Mulvey’s latest book, Death 24Â a Second, and of a variety of contemporary examples, the emphasis is on the relative shift in Mulvey’s work from gender to time and visual technology. Finally, the conversation focuses on the con- cept of ‘gendered scopic regime’ and the potential re-articulation of the male gaze through the technological re-direction and control of the visual.
    [Show full text]
  • Feminisms 1..277
    Feminisms The Key Debates Mutations and Appropriations in European Film Studies Series Editors Ian Christie, Dominique Chateau, Annie van den Oever Feminisms Diversity, Difference, and Multiplicity in Contemporary Film Cultures Edited by Laura Mulvey and Anna Backman Rogers Amsterdam University Press The publication of this book is made possible by grants from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO). Cover design: Neon, design and communications | Sabine Mannel Lay-out: japes, Amsterdam Amsterdam University Press English-language titles are distributed in the US and Canada by the University of Chicago Press. isbn 978 90 8964 676 7 e-isbn 978 90 4852 363 4 doi 10.5117/9789089646767 nur 670 © L. Mulvey, A. Backman Rogers / Amsterdam University Press B.V., Amsterdam 2015 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book. Contents Editorial 9 Preface 10 Acknowledgments 15 Introduction: 1970s Feminist Film Theory and the Obsolescent Object 17 Laura Mulvey PART I New Perspectives: Images and the Female Body Disconnected Heroines, Icy Intelligence: Reframing Feminism(s) and Feminist Identities at the Borders Involving the Isolated Female TV Detective in Scandinavian-Noir 29 Janet McCabe Lena Dunham’s Girls: Can-Do Girls,
    [Show full text]
  • Bibliography
    BIbLIOGRAPHY 3er salón Swift de grabado. 1970. Exhibition catalogue, September 9–27. Buenos Aires: The Museum of Modern Art. Adorno, Theodor. 1975 [1967]. Culture industry reconsidered. New German Critique 6: 12–19. AdSII. 1972a. Arte e ideología en CAYC al aire libre. Exhibition brochure. Buenos Aires: Centro de Arte y Comunicación. International Center for the Arts of the Americas at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (ICAA) Documents no. 761671. AdSII. 1972b. Glusberg, Jorge. Arte e ideología en CAYC al aire libre. Exhibition brochure. Buenos Aires: Centro de Arte y Comunicación. International Center for the Arts of the Americas at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (ICAA) Documents no. 747360. AdSII. 1972c. Ficha de obra de los artistas de la exhibición arte de sistemas II del Centro de Arte y Comunicación (CAYC). Exhibition catalogue. Buenos Aires: CAyC, September. International Center for the Arts of the Americas at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (ICAA) Documents no. 761701. Althusser, Louis. 1971 [1970]. Ideology and ideological state apparatuses. In Lenin and philosophy and other essays, 121–176. Trans. Ben Brewster. London: NLB. Arnatt, Keith. 1989. “Keith Arnatt transport to another world”. Interview with Michael Craig-Smith. Creative Camera 6: 18–28. Arnatt, Keith. 1997. Interview with John Roberts. In The impossible document: Photography and conceptual art in Britain 1966–1976, ed. John Roberts, 47–53. London: Camerawork. Art & Language. 1991. Hostages XXV–LXXVI, exhibition catalogue, March 15– April 12. London: Lisson Gallery. © The Author(s) 2016 235 E. Kalyva, Image and Text in Conceptual Art, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-45086-5 236 BibliOgraPhY Art & Language.
    [Show full text]
  • Miss World 1970 by Jennifer Hosten, Coming Spring 2020 About Sutherland House
    MISS WORLD 1970 BY JENNIFER HOSTEN, COMING SPRING 2020 ABOUT SUTHERLAND HOUSE Founded in 2017 by Canadian author and publishing executive Kenneth Whyte, Sutherland House is a new Toronto-based publisher of non-fiction books for global English-language audiences. Sutherland House specializes in narrative works of biography, memoir, history, business, culture, and current affairs. Aiming for high-quality and broad appeal, it published eight books in 2019 and will deliver nine in 2020. Each volume will be commissioned and edited by Mr. Whyte. All of our publications will bear the unique aesthetic of the Sutherland House brand, and be subjected to rigorous market testing from conception to launch. By maintaining a low overhead, the company is dedicating an unusually high portion of its resources to the promotion and mar- keting of its titles, which will be managed by our international network of service providers. Our Sutherland Classics series, which began in 2019 with the republication of Bernard Crick’s definitive George Orwell: A Life, is indicative of our commitment to quality non-fiction. We will reprint one or two masterpieces of biography, memoir, or character-driven history every year under the Sutherland Classics imprint. CONTACT INFORMATION CONTACT PUBLICITY SPRING 2020 THE SUTHERLAND HOUSE INC. [email protected] 416 Moore Ave, Suite 205 Toronto, ON M4G 109 RIGHTS INQUIRIES [email protected] MATTHEW BUCEMI [email protected] ORDERING INFORMATION CANADA WORLD UNIVERSITY OF BAKER AND TAYLOR TORONTO PRESS PUBLISHING SERVICES 5201 Dufferin Street 30 Amberwood Parkway Toronto, ON M3H 5T8 Ashland, OH 44805 Email: utpbooks@utpress. Tel: (888) 814-0208 utoronto.ca Email: [email protected] Misbehaviour, a major motion picture based on To be the luckiest kid in America, he first had to the author’s life and starring Keira Knightley and be the unluckiest.
    [Show full text]
  • Download/ Nwp File/2013/Notes on a Working Hypothesis.Pdf?X-R=Pcfile D
    Psychosemiotics: communication as psychological action Marko Mili Doctor of Philosophy (Psychology) University of Western Sydney November 2008 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my gratitude to my wife Juliana Payne for her patience, accessibility for debate on all issues, practical assistance, and help in avoiding clichés like the plague. My parents Petar and Nediljka Mili shared their enthusiasm for learning and balanced their encouragement with flexibility about the direction that their influence took. My sister, Angela Mili, provided moral and practical support. To my extended family—Ante, Maria, Mirko, Lina, Kristina, Anthony, and Nikolas Mili; and Steve and Veronica Harwood—thank you for your support for this project. Thanks to Megan McDonald for helpful grammatical-stylistic suggestions and to Domagoj Veli, who has been an enthusiastic supporter of this project from the beginning. Professor Philip Bell, Professor Theo van Leeuwen, Dr Scott Mann and Dr Phillip Staines provided me with valuable opportunities to assist in teaching their courses in mass media, semiotics, social theory and the philosophy of language. This experience has significantly enhanced the present work. My supervisor, Dr Agnes Petocz, consistently provided detailed and incisive feedback throughout the conception and execution of this work. Her vision of a richer science of psychology has been inspirational for me. As co-supervisor, Professor Philip Bell has been an exemplary mentor and model for post- disciplinary research. ii STATEMENT OF AUTHENTICATION The work presented in this thesis is, to the best of my knowledge and belief, original except as acknowledged in the text. I hereby declare that I have not submitted this material, either in whole or in part, for a degree at this or any other institution.
    [Show full text]
  • The Commutation Test and Chris Bacon's Score for Source Code As
    The Commutation Test and Chris Bacon’s Score for Source Code as a Framework for Film Music Pedagogy Aaron Ziegel, Towson University he cinema, whether experienced at the neighborhood multiplex or streamed at home, is arguably the medium through which today’s col- lege-age Americans are most likely to encounter newly composed sym- Tphonic music. Given the ubiquity of the film-viewing experience, students are often eager to learn the tools and methodologies that can equip them to criti- cally assess and more fully comprehend the function of music in movies. The filmSource Code (2011), directed by Duncan Jones and scored by Chris Bacon, provides a particularly effective starting point through which this process can begin.1 This article will discuss the pedagogical potential found in the film’s main titles and the impact of applying a commutation test to this sequence. Although here I address one specific example, the methodology of the commu- tation test is easily adaptable to other circumstances, as the theoretical foun- dation will make clear. While variations on the commutation test are a regular occurrence in many film music classrooms, this essay aims to present an intro- ductory primer that may be of use to instructors interested in an entry point for incorporating film music studies into their teaching. With that in mind, the appendix presents one suggestion for how to create film clips for classroom use. The value of this classroom activity extends beyond providing students with an engaging and memorable learning experience. By situating this analysis I wish to express my gratitude to the many students at Towson University whose feedback and enthusiastic classroom participation, along with suggestions from the anonymous reviewers, helped me to refine the pedagogical approach described in this essay.
    [Show full text]
  • 9564.Ch01.Pdf
    one · Gender and the Problem of Prehistory IMAGINING PREHISTORY To examine the contested issue of gender in ancient Near Eastern prehistory, I be- gin with a definition of the period. Prehistory is the time before the invention of writing (which took place around 3500 bce in the ancient Near East). This period is divided into several major eras of human development in eastern Europe and the ancient Near East: late Paleolithic (c. 30,000–9000 bce), proto-Neolithic and Neo- lithic (c. 9000–5600 bce), and Calcolithic (5600–3500 bce). In the European late Paleolithic, we begin to have some evidence of human creative consciousness in the form of cave paintings, figurines, and tools decorated with designs or with figures of animals or humans. The Neolithic is divided from the Paleolithic by the move- ment from food gathering (hunting and collecting fruits, nuts, and plants) to food growing and domestication of animals. The Calcolithic describes a time of more developed agriculture (including the use of the plow and irrigation) as well as trade and early urbanization. The Neolithic revolution took place gradually in the ancient Near East between 9000 and 7000 bce. At first, herds of wild animals or areas of wild grains were cor- doned oª and controlled by more settled human groups; later, with full domestica- tion, animals were bred for food, milk, or skins, and seeds were conserved for plant- ing grains. These innovations developed along parallel lines in several places in the ancient Near East and spread to other nearby areas. There was not a uniform, straightforward pattern of development.
    [Show full text]
  • Internationale Situationniste 79 a Special Issue Guesteditor, Thomas F Mcdonough
    Art Theory Criticism Politics OCTOBER Guy Debord and the Internationale situationniste 79 A Special Issue Guesteditor, Thomas F McDonough Thomas F. McDonough RereadingDebord, Rereading the Situationists T.J. Clark and WhyArt Can't Kill the Donald Nicholson-Smith Situationist International Claire Gilman AsgerJorn'sAvant-Garde Archives Vincent Kaufmann Angels of Purity Kristin Ross Lefebvreon the Situationists: An Interview Situationist Textson Visual Culture and Urbanism:A Selection $10.00 / Winter 1997 Publishedby theMIT Press 79 Thomas F. McDonough Rereading Debord, Rereading the Situationists 3 T.J. Clark and WhyArt Can't Kill the Donald Nicholson-Smith Situationist International 15 Claire Gilman AsgerJorn's Avant-Garde Archives 33 Vincent Kaufmann Angels of Purity 49 Kristin Ross Lefebvreon the Situationists: An Interview 69 Situationist Texts on Visual Culture and Urbanism: A Selection 85 Cover photo: AsgerJorn. The Avant-Garde Doesn't Give Up. 1962. Rereading Debord, Rereading the Situationists* THOMAS F McDONOUGH "He must be read and reread, for the same phrases are always cited. He is reduced to a few formulas, at best out of nostalgia but more often in a negative sense, as if to say: look at where thinking like that gets you!"' So cautioned Philippe Sollers one week after Guy Debord's suicide on November 30, 1994. It is advice well taken, if recent glosses on the life and work of this founding member of the Situationist International are any indication. When, twenty-odd years after the publication of his Societedu spectacle(1967), Debord circulated his Commentaires on this book (1988), it was greeted with general skepticism. The reviewer for Le Mondeconceded the verity of its characterizations: Can we decide against him, when he emphasizes the generalized secrecy predominant in this gray world? The more we speak of transparency, the less we know who controls what, who manipulates whom, and to what end.
    [Show full text]
  • Film Culture in Transition
    FILM CULTURE IN TRANSITION Exhibiting Cinema in Contemporary Art ERIKA BALSOM Amsterdam University Press Exhibiting Cinema in Contemporary Art Exhibiting Cinema in Contemporary Art Erika Balsom This book is published in print and online through the online OAPEN library (www.oapen.org) OAPEN (Open Access Publishing in European Networks) is a collaborative in- itiative to develop and implement a sustainable Open Access publication model for academic books in the Humanities and Social Sciences. The OAPEN Library aims to improve the visibility and usability of high quality academic research by aggregating peer reviewed Open Access publications from across Europe. Sections of chapter one have previously appeared as a part of “Screening Rooms: The Movie Theatre in/and the Gallery,” in Public: Art/Culture/Ideas (), -. Sections of chapter two have previously appeared as “A Cinema in the Gallery, A Cinema in Ruins,” Screen : (December ), -. Cover illustration (front): Pierre Bismuth, Following the Right Hand of Louise Brooks in Beauty Contest, . Marker pen on Plexiglas with c-print, x inches. Courtesy of the artist and Team Gallery, New York. Cover illustration (back): Simon Starling, Wilhelm Noack oHG, . Installation view at neugerriemschneider, Berlin, . Photo: Jens Ziehe, courtesy of the artist, neugerriemschneider, Berlin, and Casey Kaplan, New York. Cover design: Kok Korpershoek, Amsterdam Lay-out: JAPES, Amsterdam isbn e-isbn (pdf) e-isbn (ePub) nur / © E. Balsom / Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book.
    [Show full text]
  • Camera Stylo 2021 Web
    Don’t Gaze Now: The Male Gaze and Self-Refexivity in Don’t Look Now EDDY WANG Eddy Wang was born a philosopher. At some point in his life, he discovered cinema. Hypnotized by the images he saw, he felt his conception of himself as a philosopher disintegrate. Eddy decided the only way to maintain a consistent ego was to think philosophy through cinema and cinema through philosophy. 33 3 DON’T LOOK NOW (1973) directed by Nicolas Roeg positions a straight, white, cismale, John Baxter, as the protagonist of its diegesis. However, looks can be deceiving. Don’t Look Now is a work of counter cinema that employs the male gaze, as theorized by Laura Mulvey, only to critique and negate it. The film ofers an example of alternative cinema Mulvey postulates at the start of her seminal essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” In other words, Don’t Look Now “conceive[s] a new language of desire” by “leaving the past behind without rejecting it, transcending outworn or oppressive forms” (Mulvey 8). Surprisingly, the film denies voyeuristic scopophilia and complicates narcissistic scopophilia, particularly through its self-reflexive representation of temporality displayed in the photographs of the church and John’s dead body. Through its rejection of voyeuristic and narcissistic scopophilia, the film eschews the sadistic and fetishistic paradigms of female representation to thereby provide a new way of imagining the world (Polan 670). In addition to Mulvey’s insights on the male gaze, Dana Polan’s “A Brechtian Cinema? Towards A Politics of Self-Reflexive Film” provides insight into how self-reflexivity in Don’t Look Now succeeds in imagining the alternative cinema Mulvey contemplates.
    [Show full text]