Flash forward: the future is now

Przebłysk jutra: przyszłość jest teraz

Author(s): Patricia Pisters / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 13 (20)/2014

Keywords: time-image; neuro-image; brain is screen; database logic; flashback; flashforward; future of the image

In The Future of the Image (2007) Jacques Rancière states that the end of images is behind us. He argues for an aesthetics of the image that acknowledges the continuing power of images as educating documentations of traces of history, as directly affecting interruptions, and as open-to-combining signs of the visible and the sayable ad infinitum. But does Rancière’s claim also concern the future of cinema?His cinematic references, in a Deleuzian sense, are mostly to modern time-images. Is the future of film indeed a form of the time-image, or has the ‘heart’ of cinema moved beyond this image-type? This paper proposes to look at a third category of cinematographic images, based in the third synthesis of time as developed by Deleuze in Difference and Repetition. This filmic image, that could be called the neuro-image, is connected to the impure regime of images typical for the database logic of the digital age. By comparing Alain Resnais’s Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959) to the television series Flash Forward (2009), I will analyse the temporal operations of the image of the time-image to these images of a new regime of images, the image of and from the future.

Gilles Deleuze’s Crystalline Cinema – the Open System

Krystaliczne kino Gilles Deleuze’a: system otwarty

Author(s): Małgorzata Jakubowska / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 13 (20)/2014

Keywords: Deleuze

Cinema as a theoretical and philosophical open system of thinking about classical, modern and postmodern movies. Deleuze proposed two different classifications and theoretical implications of cinematographic images. First of all he considered cinema as two different historical options: the movement-image and the time-image, based on Henri Bergson notion of matter and memory. The next point of view was a new theory about two regimes of the image, which can be discussed point by point; an organic regime and crystalline regime. The first point concerns description. A description which assumes the independence of its object is defined as “organic”. In contrast, what we call a “cristalline” description stands for its object, replaces it, both creates and erases it. A consequence of the first it studies the relation between the real and the imaginary. Organic images are recognizable by their continuity: relations, actual linkages, legal, causal and logical connections. The crystalline regime is completely different; the actual is cut off from its motor linkages. The second point no longer concerns description, but narration. Organic narration consists of the development of sensory-motor schema as a result of which the characters react to situations. This is a truthful narration in the sense that it claims to be true, even in fiction. Crystalline narration is quite different, since it implies a collapse of sensory-motor schema. The third point is the story, distinct from description and narration. Organic story is based on looking for the true, but crystalline story (the direct time-image) works with pure optical and sound images. New Wave deliberately broke with the form of the true to replace it by the ‘powers of the false’. In Gilles Deleuze’s theory the crystal discloses various temporal states: time as the eternal crisis of the consciousness and, on a deeper level, time as primitive matter, huge and terrific, as general becoming. According to the French philosopher what constitutes the crystal-image is the most fundamental operation of time; it has to split the present in two heterogeneous directions, one of which is launched towards the future while the other falls into the past. The article compares Deleuze’s classification modes of narration (Cinema) with David Bordwell’s proposition (Narration in the Fiction Film).The paper’s aim is to intorduce Gilles Deleuze’s

The Continual Return Journey. Revision of the Modernist Category with a Reference to the Czech Cinema.

Nieustanne błąkanie się w tę i z powrotem. Aktualizacja kategorii modernizmu w relacji do kina czeskiego

Author(s): Grażyna Świętochowska / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 13 (20)/2014

Keywords: journey; modernist category; czech cinema

Diamonds of the night dir. Jan Němec is commonly classified as modernist in Czech literature on the subject and in comprehensive publications trying to determine aesthetic, historical and temporal specificity of this artistic movement. Despite the fact that András Bálint Kovács in Screening Modernism: European Art Cinema mentioned quite impressive number of Central European artists among directors of art cinema making their films during 1950-1980, most of them are not used as an example of this universally transnational aesthetics. The main actors on this scene are always West European luminaries of cinematic art. Němec’s participation in this order is explained by some resemblance to Ingmar Bergman’s films, especially to this type of mental journey incrusted by surrealist components.Kovács notes many simultaneous paths in theory and aesthetics of cinema led by the evolutionist one. Gilles Deleuze’s thought, born outside the theory of film, is in a separate and unique position. It is hard not to see Deluzian cinematic thinking on modernist cinema in terms of succession, development and a final achievement of classical cinema. “(…) from its first appearances something different happened in what is called modern cinema: not something more beautiful, more profound or more true but something different. What has happened is that the sensory-motor schema is no longer in operation, but at the same time it is not overtaken or overcome. It is shattered from inside”. The cause does not follow the action. The acts of perception do not proceed an operation. Cinema has entered in the epoch of medium which possessed the capacity to express abstract ideas. From this perspective, modernism is no longer a style of artistic movement but it as an actualization of the cinema to be an image of thought.We may interpret Diamonds of the night from the perspective of disintegration of genre cinema to the showcase of Time-Image mechanisms focused on the crystal narrative.

Cinema as Imagination Machine - Gilles Deleuze’s Film Theory in the Context of the Theory of Imagination of Immanuel Kant

Kino jako machina wyobraźni – teoria kina Gillesa Deleuze’a w kontekście teorii wyobraźni Immanuela Kanta

Author(s): Katarzyna Wejman / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 13 (20)/2014

Keywords: Gilles Deleuze; Imagination Machine; cinema

The aim of this paper is to show that the film theory of Gilles Deleuze Could be thought of as a new theory of imagination. Cinema is a space of imaginative work that is not limited by subject, or transcendental or cognitive requirements. Cinematographic movement and time connect, diversify and open the images for the duration.This peculiar imaginative move happens firstly by framing, which apprehends the diversity of the view. Secondly, by moving shots that show, through synthetic movement, the changes of aspects and sets. Thirdly, through montage, which creates a whole in the temporal ordering of images and also opens these images to other images, to what is beyond them and to their entirety.This move produces the represented world in the same way as Kantian imagination produces content according to the empirical experience, to cause-effect and sensory-motor relations. The movement-image appears, in which the movement determines the time ordered in sequence, as in the case of the inner sense. This allows the tracking of the history of actions, perceptions and feelings.Cinematographic movement can, however, go beyond the schema of actions and the linear order of time to simultaneity and ambiguity. The optical and sound images (the time-images) create mental states, affects and also the experience the beauty and the sublime.

The Aesthetic Regime of Cinema – Rancière’s Film Fables

Estetyczny reżim kina – filmowe bajki Jacques’a Rancière’a

Author(s): Jakub Morawski / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 13 (20)/2014

Keywords: Aesthetic Regime; Cinema; Rancière’s Film Fables

In my paper I am introducing philosophical film thought by Jacques Rancière, presented in his book Film Fables (2006). Before proceeding with the analysis. I am tracking theoretical pathways and points of reference that have brought the author to his interests in cinema. I am delineating two main areas that I believe played a fundamental role in the way Rancière defines his cinematic thoughts. The first one is his general philosophical project that is programmatically organised around a list of concepts, key in all of his works – „politics of aesthetics”, „distribution of the sensible”, „aesthetic regime of art”, „dissensus vs consensus”. By reconstructing their specific meanings and role my argument progresses from the general overview of Rancière’s philosophy towards his aesthetical writings, definition of art, status of images and finally to his thoughts on cinema. The main reason the philosopher took up film studies was his general approach towards aesthetics and analyzing its particular examples in political context. The second reason was a direct inspiration by the works of French theoreticians – Jean Epstein and Gilles Deleuze. I am confronting and juxtaposing their theories with the thought contained in Film Fables and The Future of the Image to illustrate both existing similarities and differences that have resulted in the creative redefinition of the status of cinema and its productive potential that, however, is yet to come.

The Sounds of the Past – Tradition and History in Icelandic Rocumentaries

„Dźwięki przeszłości” – tradycja i historia w islandzkich dokumentach muzycznych

Author(s): Jakub Sebastian Konefał / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 13 (20)/2014

Keywords: Icelandic Rocumentaries; Sounds of the Past

Icelandic music documentaries represent an intriguing evolution of approach to the issues related to the expression of respect for tradition, history and collective memory. National identity for the characters of Friðrik Þór Friðriksson’s Rock in Reykjavik (1981) is a relic of the past and incomprehensible obsession of the older generation. Directed by Ari Magnússon Screaming Masterpiece (2005) presents Icelanders as a nation which is proud of its past and highly inspired by the history and traditions of their homeland. Another rockumentary, Heima (2007), emphasizes the social aspects of everyday re-creation of the national community, focusing on the small cultural differences and promoting the idea of local patriotism. Viking heritage, the originality and uniqueness of the Icelandic language and of its nature no longer interest the authors of the latest non-fictional productions that are created after the financial crisis of the year 2008.

Apparently. Under the Scopic Regime

Najwidoczniej. Pod przymusem skopicznym

Author(s): Filip Szałasek / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 13 (20)/2014

Keywords: Scopic Regime

The essay is an attempt to understand what happened to Gulliver during his stay in Brobdingnag, the land of giants described by Jonathan Swift in his famous work. The author puts emphasis on the scopic experience that leads to an extremely meaningful deformation of sight. What Pierre Klossowski is calling a „Gulliverian vision”, the perversive movement of an artist’s primal instinct, was depicted also by Borges in the story of Funes And His Memory. „Scopic duress” means that there is no other way of looking – one has to embrace and comprehend delusional sight in the means of survival. The question remains: if one will be able to come back to that wchich is named by common ense as a „normal vision”.

New Technology in Performing Arts on Ars Electronica 2014

Nowe technologie w sztukach performatywnych na Ars Electronica 2014

Author(s): Jakub Kłeczek / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 13 (20)/2014

Keywords: Ars Electronica; new technology

Article describes selected works of artist who use digital technologies in performative contexts. In 2014 curators of Ars Electronica festival invited artists which shown creative using of video game controllers (like Oculus Rift or Kinect) and more advanced technology to express their artistic concepts. Author describes performace of japan group Grinder-Man called Mirage and solo dance Anatta performed by polish dancer Joanna Gruberska, directed by Viktor Delev. Analysis of other works (interactive documental movie Clouds by James George and Jonathan Minard, Take a Number, Leave Your Head by Klaus Obermaier and Ars Electronica Futurelab, Gender Swap by BeAnotherLab) show new perspectives of using digital media in performing arts.

On the Macho Category. Man’s Crisis and the Masculinity Crisis in Carlos Reygadas’ Battle in Heaven

Wokół kategorii macho. O kryzysie mężczyzny i kryzysie męskości w Bitwie w niebie Carlosa Reygadasa

Author(s): Iga Łomanowska / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 14 (21)/2015

Keywords: masculinity crisis; male identity; Carlos Reydagas

The aim of this article is to analyze the main character of the Carlos Reygadas’ movie Battle in Heaven contextualizing it in a critical reflection on the image of masculinity in Latin America. The author is placing Marcos’ character in three contexts. First is the machismo ideology, which the author links with the sociological reflection by Erving Goffman about the meaning of appearance and forms of expression in social life. Second is an intersexual relation of domination-subordination. The author juxtaposes behavior and bodies of Marcos and his lover Ana to show that traditional women and men roles are reversed here. The third context refers to the problem of banalization of life, which the main character suddenly started to feel. In reference to this three phenomena unfolds existential crisis of Reygadas’ character. But it can be read both as an individual perspective of a moment of recognition of one’s condition and also in larger perspective as a metaphor of collapse of the paradigm of masculinity which was in force until recently in Latin American culture.The author recounts opinions of researchers of this area about the crisis of the male identity and shows that Marcos’ existential situation can be interpreted as a metaphor of men’s situation in Latin America. Masculinity and the category of machismo are there in a process of redefinition mainly because of the women’s emancipation and transformations of feminine identity. This situation causes imbalance in social-cultural life and the model of reaction frequently chosen by men is passivity. But then it causes decomposition of social order, because inactivity is traditionally assigned to women. Not able to take action Marcos can be seen as a figure of male identity in contemporary Latin America.

Male Images in Cinematic Adaptations of Hallgrimur Helgason’s Prose

Wizerunki mężczyzn w kinowych adaptacjach prozy Hallgrímura Helgasona

Author(s): Jakub Sebastian Konefał / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 14 (21)/2015

Keywords: Hallgrímur Helgason; Icelandic national identity

Icelandic feature films shot in the Twenty-First century often contain an ironic critique of postmodern models of masculinity. The fictional figures that appear in those movies are often at odds with the traditional perception of national identity and suffer so-called “Peter Pan syndrome”. Moreover, many images created in Iceland after the year 2000 also include a witty reinterpretations of the media’s “generation X” model and suggestive commentaries on life in the liquid modernity. All these features of the male film figures can be seen as the personification of the changes taking place in Icelandic culture and the local community. These issues are associated with the processes of the collision of traditional values, linked with the older generation of Icelanders, with the globalized perception of the younger generations who are open to “pop-cultural outlook” on their country and identity.

The Breakdown and the Lasting of Community. Four Films on Male Friendship in the Age of Early Capitalism in Poland

Rozpad i trwanie wspólnoty. Cztery filmy o męskiej przyjaźni w czasach rodzenia się w Polsce kapitalizmu

Author(s): Michał Piepiórka / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 14 (21)/2015

Keywords: Films on Male Friendship

In four Polish movies – Dogs by Władysław Pasikowski, Private City by Jacek Skalski, Amok by Natalia Koryncka-Gruz and First Million by Waldemar Dziki – male friendship and its crisis was used to describe early phase of Polish capitalism. Each time the solidarity of men was valued positively and was confronted with threats connected with new, capitalist reality. Pasikowski’s movie criticizes new determinants of social prestige, Skalski’s movie expresses the disappointment of new, post-Solidarity political elite, Amok shows how young people lose out in the race for easy money, while First Million treats male community as a great support for getting rich. Free market economy promotes new ideal of citizen – enterpreising individual, who is interested in accumulation of capital and maximization of his profit. This new view of citizen is in conflict with values of Solidarity, which were rather close to ideas of socialism, like being in community. This four films comment on the new reality of Polish economia and ways of impact of free market on lifestyle, state transformation, business and the sphere of axiology.

The Avant-Garde Visions of Masculinity. James Broughton’s Adventures of Body

Awangardowe wizje męskości. Jamesa Broughtona przygody z ciałem

Author(s): Aleksandra Idczak / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 14 (21)/2015

Keywords: the representations of masculinity; avant-garde filmmaker; James Broughton

The aim of the paper is to describe the representations of masculinity in the works of James Broughton, an American avant-garde filmmaker and a poet, connected to the San Francisco Renaissance group. He has also played an active role in a gay movement since the ‘50s and became one of its icons. While analyzing Broughton’s movies the paper refers to Laura Mulvey’s concept of breaking the visual pleasure. The main goal of the paper is to trace changes occurring in the creation of a hero and narrator’s view in relation to their hetero- or non-heteronormativity. The author concentrates on the selected films from different periods of Broughton’s career, e.g.: The Adventures of Jimmy, The Bed, The Golden Positions, Song of the Godbody, Hermes Bird, Devotions. The paper argues that in Broughton’s works a viewer can find a shift from the creation of a male body as a constructed object of desire, through an attempt to deal with the theme of androgyny, to the affirmation of a non-canonical male body, which becomes the basis of the gay community.

Between Oppression and Subversion. Fashion as the Potential Branch to Express Non-Normative Corporeality

Między opresją a subwersją – moda jako potencjalna przestrzeń wyrazu nienormatywnej cielesności

Author(s): Monika Rawska / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 14 (21)/2015

Keywords: Non-Normative Corporeality; fashion studies

The author analyses the presence of androgyny and transsexuality mainly in fashion industry which fashion journalists and commentators like to see as a milestone in the fight for equality, stressing the ambivalence of marketing techniques and arguing that – similarly to Erving Goffman’s category of stigma – apart from having subversive potential it can also have an oppresive downside.

Representations of Masculinity in Advertising in Poland and China

Representations of Masculinity in Advertising in Poland and China

Author(s): Ewelina Kamasz,Rita Frieske / Language(s): English / Issue: 14 (21)/2015

Keywords: represantations of masculinity; Poland and Eastern Asian Culture popular culture; media and commercials

The below article explores how the physical attributes of the ideal man vary between Western culture (Poland) and Eastern Asian Culture (China). We have analyzed how popular culture, media and commercials have changed our views on the ideal male beauty. The study also briefly shows men’s reactions to the representation of male bodies in advertising, particularly when men are portrayed in a sexual, objectified, exploitative manner. In this work we have focused on Polish and Chinese representations of men and male bodies in commercials that hold common features of Western and Eastern Asian cultures as well as distinctive characteristics of these two countries.

Rhythm of Human and Rhythm of Nature in the Media Art Festival Cynetart

Rytmy ludzkie i rytmy świata na festiwalu sztuki mediów Cynetart

Author(s): Jakub Kłeczek / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 14 (21)/2015

Keywords: Media Art Festival Cynetart; Rhythm of Human; Rhythm of Nature

The article describes the festival of computer-based art Cynetart as a place of artistic experiments with ‚rhythm of nature’. Artists which took part in the festival in 2015 were using matter of nature as an instrument of artistic expression. According to the author, performances and interactive installation which were presented in the festival are specific form of a continuation of Émile Jaques-Dalcroze’s and Adolphe Appia’s artistic experiments. Eurythmics and performance practice (which started in 1910 in the same place – Festspielhaus in Hellrau) invoke to eurythmics of Dalcroze and Appia’s conception of light in performing arts. Performances: Jymming by Tom Fritz, Eternal Cave by Gil Delindro and Plectrum by Kuai Shen, were also interpreted as a form of posthuman and ecological aesthetics.

Transformation chic. Contribution to semiotics of fashion in the era of transition

Transformation chic. Przyczynek do semiotyki mody okresu przełomu

Author(s): Joanna Łuniewicz / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 15 (22)/2016

Keywords: Polish fashion; modern woman of the 90s

The subject of reflection in present article was Polish fashion in the era of transformation, examined as testimony to cultural and social changes as well as a proof of crystallization of new social, class and gender transformations. The first characteristic figure is “ the modern woman of the 90s” – thus defined by economic advancement and also emancipatory attitude expressed among others in the formula of the era’s guidebooks. Media created another ideal: a model reader of “Burda” magazine; she was able to combine pining for European chic with economic thrift. Jolanta Kwaśniewska is confronted with these ideals herein. Clothes, that were chosen by the changing society, were divided into two groups: “elitist” and “plebeian”. “Burda” belonged to the former. The “plebeian” current is represented in the transition period by the king of bazaar and the chav. The former exemplifies the carnival spirit and eclecticism of the `90s; the latter, the most characteristic class habitus of the decade within the meaning of Pierre Bourdieu. Equally crucial is combining the new inspirations with national traditions – most of all: longing for fantasy, independence and sumptuousness of the Sarmatians with longing for mythical America. The paper is concluded with a reflection on sartorial minimalism as a way to counter esthetic chaos of the transition period.

Boxes, dishes and the country’s transformation. The early days of satellite television in Poland

Skrzynki, talerze i transformacja. Młodzieńcze lata telewizji satelitarnej nad Wisłą

Author(s): Krzysztof Jajko / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 15 (22)/2016

This article describes the expansion of satellite television within the context of the socialist system. In the first part of the study, the broader technical and political background of the process have been characterized. In the second part, which is mainly based on interviews conducted with satellite TV equipment dealers and satellite dish manufacturers, the author explores the ways in which the medium was adopted by Poles in the 1980s.

Young TV viewers in Poland after 1989 and their participation in the audiovisual media culture

Wszystko jest dla ludzi. Młodzi widzowie w Polsce w okresie transformacji systemowej i ich pierwsze doświadczenia z kulturą audiowizualną

Author(s): Natalia Szeligowska / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 15 (22)/2016

Keywords: Young TV viewers in Poland

This article is an attempt to capture the reality of young TV viewers and the complexity of their participation in audiovisual media culture during the political transformation in Poland after 1989. Qualitative research (interviews and spoken stories) conducted on a group of thirty-year-old men whose period of early adolescence occurred in the nineties is the base for these deliberations. Respondents asked about their participation in the audiovisual media culture in the first half of the nineties talked about their first experiences with VHS cassettes, cinema and the so-called culture fansite. The aim is to identify what impact the aesthetics of the nineties – as well as an attempt to “catch up with the world” after 1989 – had on the daily lives of the subjects.

Elgaz and the Polish VHS market

Elgaz na tle polskiego rynku wideo

Author(s): Grzegorz Fortuna Jr. / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 15 (22)/2016

Keywords: Elgaz; Polish VHS market

Elgaz was one of the biggest companies that distributed films in the times of Polish transformation and its boss – Janusz Leksztoń – was one of the richest Polish businessmen of the period. For several years Elgaz was the synonym of success, but the history of the company is complex and reflects all paradoxes of the Polish market of early 1990s. The article is an attempt to use Elgaz as a synecdoche of the Polish VHS market. The author tries to achieve that goal by identifying movies distributed by the company, describing esthetics of VHS covers and Elgaz commercials and constructing a portrait of Janusz Leksztoń on the background of the Polish VHS market and culture.

Post-? Notes on Ars Electronica 2015

Post-? Uwagi o Ars Electronica 2015

Author(s): Dagmara Rode / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 15 (22)/2016

Keywords: Ars Electronica

This article discusses selected threads that were taken into consideration during 2015 edition of Ars Electronica Festival. The initiating point of the event was "Post City. Habitats for the 21st Century". It was reflected in problems raised by collected productions that oscillated between following issues: mobility of people, things, data, work, inhabitants, the possibility of resistance, dissilusion with ever expanding technology and the unobvious political aspect of civic technologies. The works that were presented within the remaining exhibitions enriched issues around questions such as the complex between art and science. The intersection of these two disciplines brought into existence works in the range of hybrid art. Constantly prevalent are questions around the body, identity, memory and narration, tensions arising from the reworking of the history of art and history of media in the contemporary, post-media landscape and many others important issues concerning current art.