On the particularities of experience and spectatorship in Véréna Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor’s Commensal as experience and Caniba as story

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article examines the potential of the art-installation as a space for experiential and sensory mediation of non-fiction film. Using the installation Commensal (2017) by Véréna Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor as a case study, I discuss the contribution of contemporary art to discourses on spectatorship and audience experience in non-fiction film. Taking Commensal as a starting point, I will examine how the experience of the visitor to the art installation might differ from that of the audience member at a cinema. How does the space, institutional context and institutional mediation of a non-fiction film installation contribute to the contamination of boundaries between fictional storytelling and objective truth? By comparing Commensal and Caniba (2017), the feature-length theatrical version of the same subject by the same filmmakers, I will propose that presentation and screening in the context of the installation space offers new forms of mediation for some non-fiction film works that are experiential as opposed to spectatorial.