Cinema as Object II

Abstract

Chapter 5 examines works of expanded cinema that emphasize another, somewhat different “sculptural” property—cinema’s spatial dimension. Such works heighten awareness of cinema’s spatial dimension, blurring the line between temporal and spatial arts in a way similar to minimalist sculpture. The major form here is film installation, which, rather than exploding the cinematic apparatus as the object-based works of chapter 4 do, brings that apparatus out of the dark, presenting it for contemplation and analysis in a way that conventional film exhibition intentionally thwarts. The sculptural characteristics of such works often requires that they be exhibited in gallery spaces, which suggests that they are “intermedial” hybrids of cinema and sculpture. But this hybridity is only apparent; in fact, these works were asserted and understood within the context of avant-garde film culture as “cinematic.” In examining these types of expanded work, this chapter considers key historical factors during both the early-to-mid ’70s and the last two decades. During the 1960s and ’70s, the attention given to cinema’s physical properties, including the space of exhibition, was related to the anti-illusionist aims of avant-garde filmmakers for whom “materiality” included the space of cinematic exhibition and the ideological ramifications of that space. More recently, the impending obsolescence of analog film and the presumed ephemerality of digital media have resulted in the former’s physical “object”–properties taking on new meaning and importance.