Images Never Again Witnessed/Concepts Never Again Thought: (nostalgia) and Utopia in the Aporia of Aesthetic Theory Matthew D. Noble-Olson Art History and Communication Studies McGill University, Montreal June 2008 A thesis submitted to McGill University in partial fulfillment of the degree of Master of Arts. © Matthew D. Noble-Olson 2008 Table of Contents Abstract-3 Acknowledgements-4 Aufheben das Denkbild-7 Catastrophic Enigmas-19 Damaged in Absence-42 The Critique of Utopian Reason-64 Haunting the Dialectical Imagination-81 Bibliography-84 2 Abstract Using Hollis Frampton’s 1971 film (nostalgia), this thesis works to negate the dominance of the concept over the artwork. This will be accomplished by thinking through (nostalgia), rather than about it. In other words, (nostalgia) will be the logical grounds upon which the concepts must prove themselves. The very form of the film will determine the manner in which the concepts develop. This thesis strives to understand (nostalgia) not so much by analyzing it from outside of its own immanent purpose, but through an imitative analysis. Using this method, texts by Theodor Adorno, Roland Barthes, and Ernst Bloch will be interpreted. Therefore, the concepts of these thinkers will act according to the objective demands of the film itself. This is an analysis that does not focus on the artwork as a topic, but as an epistemic model for analyzing aesthetic concepts. En se fondant sur le 1971 filme (nostalgia) de Hollis Frampton, cette thèse s'emploie à nier la domination de concepts au-dessus de l'œuvre d'art. Ce sera fait en pensant avec (nostalgia), plutôt que d’y penser comme objet. En d'autres mots, (nostalgia) sera une logique motif pour lesquels les concepts doivent prouver eux-mêmes. La forme même du film permettra de déterminer la manière dont les concepts se développe. Cette thèse cherche à comprendre (nostalgia) non pas par l'analyse de l'extérieur de son propre but immanent, mais à travers une analyse imitatif. En utilisant cette méthode, les textes de Theodor Adorno, Roland Barthes, et Ernst Bloch va être interprété. Par conséquent, les concepts de ces penseurs agira selon les exigences objectives du film lui-même. Il s'agit d'une analyse qui ne se concentre pas sur l'œuvre d'art comme un sujet, mais comme un modèle épistémique pour l'analyse de concepts esthétiques. 3 Acknowledgements This thesis developed throughout my time as a student in the Department of Art History and Communication Studies at McGill University. The ideas that are presented here have evolved out of discussion with students and faculty in both seminars and less formal settings. In particular, I would like to thank Romy Poletti, Jackie Reid, Tara Rodgers, Paul Sutton, Jessica Santone, Sylvie Simonds, Trevor Stark, and Justina Spencer. tobias van Veen deserves a special thanks as a fellow traveler through Detroit Techno and its environs. Tim Hecker has always shared many of my concerns and interests and is a valued friend and colleague. Neal Thomas has occupied the role of friend, roommate, translator, as well as numerous others as the situation has demanded. Darin Barney has forced me to take the thinking of Heidegger and others much more seriously, which I have very much appreciated. I consider myself fortunate to have had the opportunity to take a seminar with Bronwen Wilson before she left the department. I thank her and all of the participants in her “Things and Paths” seminar for an extraordinary semester. I have been extraordinarily lucky to have Jonathan Sterne as my thesis supervisor. Jonathan knows precisely where to push me further in my thinking without leading me directly toward anything in particular. He has given 4 my work all of the attention that I could have hoped for. This thesis would certainly not be what it is without his advice and assistance. My parents and grandparents deserve a tremendous thank you for their countless hours over the years assisting me with copyediting and any number of other things. Finally, my partner, Maura has been supportive and patient with my choice to pursue an academic career. I could not possibly thank her enough for that and so much else in the space here. This thesis could only be dedicated to her. 5 [A]ny memory-image that is capable of interpreting our actual perception inserts itself so thoroughly into it that we are no longer able to discern what is perception and what is memory.1 Authentic philosophic interpretation does not meet up with a fixed meaning which already lies behind the question, but lights it up suddenly and momentarily, and consumes it at the same time.2 1 Henri Bergson, Matter and Memory, Translated by N. M. Paul and W. S. Palmer. (New York: Zone, 1991), 103. 2 Theodor W. Adorno, “The Actuality of Philosophy,” Telos 31(Spring 1977): 127. 6 Aufheben das Denkbild Hollis Frampton’s 1971 film (nostalgia) is concerned with a constantly shifting relation between past and present, image and description, thing and concept, and ultimately subject and object. The structure of the film itself is remarkably simple, comprising only a static camera and a simple voice-over narration. With these simple elements Frampton manages to develop an artwork of considerable depth and complexity. (nostalgia) presents the physical destruction of a series of Frampton’s own photographs by placing them on a hotplate and allowing them to burn. The entire visual experience of the film is in observing the photographs—through a series of static shots— slowly ignite, incinerate, and crumple until they are reduced to a scrap of carbon. Once the photograph has passed into ash the film cuts to the next photograph. While the photographs burn a voice (that of the filmmaker Michael Snow) narrates what initially seems to be the images as they are presented. Intuition would suggest that the description would match the photograph with which it is temporally linked. However, while looking at the photographs and listening to the narrative it becomes apparent that this initial intuition was wrong and that the voice does not describe the image that is currently burning. As it becomes obvious that the narration and the images are mismatched, it is 7 subsequently revealed that the narration is actually describing the image that is to follow the one that is at that moment burning and on display. This continues through twelve photographs, and it lasts for just over thirty minutes. This pattern that could seemingly be played out into infinity breaks down at the beginning and the end of the film. At the beginning of the film, there is a photograph that we never hear described. The description that hovers over it is actually of the second photograph, and so this photograph remains as a pure image, uncontaminated by language. The end of the film runs into a similar difficulty. As Frampton describes the final photograph that he produced, the last photograph that is visually displayed in the film burns, but it is not the image that he describes. The viewer is never shown the final image that Frampton describes, even though its description is by the far the most compelling of the film. The final image remains as the imagined future yet to be realized and yet to be destroyed. This sentiment, however, provides little comfort because of the terror that Frampton describes in looking at the image that is captured in this photograph. Frampton’s film work has received a fair amount of critical attention since it was first released, though possibly less than might be expected considering the high regard for 8 Frampton and his films within academic and artistic circles. Much of this criticism has come from leading figures in avant- garde cinema scholarship such as P. Adams Sitney and Annette Michelson. The journal October (of which Michelson is a founding editor) has published two issues dedicated to Frampton since his death in 1984. More recently, Rachel Moore has written a book that deals specifically with (nostalgia). Moore’s text analyzes (nostalgia) along one thematic similar to what I plan for my thesis in that it deals extensively with a relationship between Walter Benjamin’s concept of the dialectical image and Frampton’s film. However, Moore has other concerns as well. Much of Moore’s text is concerned with the internal structure of (nostalgia) and its place within the New York City art world of the late-1960s and early-1970s, both in textual analysis and biographical detail. Moore traces the film’s initial reception and covers an in-depth analysis of the development of the film, analyzing in detail many of the photographs on display and their relationship to the mismatched narrative as well as the significance of the title of the film. Like Moore’s text, my thesis will deal with (nostalgia) in a highly intimate manner. However, it will differ from her text in significant ways. This difference is primarily in the way that the film will act within the text. Rather than focusing upon the film 9 itself as a topic to be dissected, historicized, and contextualized, the primary purpose of the film in this thesis will, in a manner of speaking, act as the hotplate does in the film itself: burning, damaging, and disintegrating that which it comes into contact with as a manner of conceptual elucidation. (nostalgia) will be the focus of the thesis, organizing three concepts that are brought to bear against it into a significant constellation; it will serve as a prism through which to read aesthetic philosophy. Through this means of disintegration as explication, my thesis will attempt an immanent analysis of (nostalgia) through its engagement with aesthetic philosophy.