Exhibiting cinema in contemporary art

261 Pages·2013·2.177 MB·English

by  Balsom, Erika

FFIILLMM
CCUULLTTUURREE
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 collaborativein-
itiativetodevelopandimplementasustainableOpenAccesspublicationmodel
foracademicbooksintheHumanitiesandSocialSciences.TheOAPENLibrary
aimstoimprovethevisibilityandusabilityofhighqualityacademicresearchby
aggregatingpeerreviewedOpenAccesspublicationsfromacrossEurope.
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
intheGallery,ACinemainRuins,”Screen:(December),-.
Coverillustration(front):PierreBismuth,FollowingtheRightHandofLouise
BrooksinBeautyContest,.MarkerpenonPlexiglaswithc-print,x
inches.CourtesyoftheartistandTeamGallery,NewYork.
Coverillustration(back):SimonStarling,WilhelmNoackoHG,.Installation
viewatneugerriemschneider,Berlin,.Photo:JensZiehe,courtesyofthe
artist,neugerriemschneider,Berlin,andCaseyKaplan,NewYork.
Coverdesign:KokKorpershoek,Amsterdam
Lay-out:JAPES,Amsterdam
isbn 
e-isbn (pdf)
e-isbn (ePub)
nur /
©E.Balsom/AmsterdamUniversityPress,Amsterdam
Allrightsreserved.Withoutlimitingtherightsundercopyrightreservedabove,
nopartofthisbookmaybereproduced,storedinorintroducedintoaretrieval
system,ortransmitted,inanyformorbyanymeans(electronic,mechanical,
photocopying,recordingorotherwise)withoutthewrittenpermissionofboth
thecopyrightownerandtheauthorofthebook.
Everyefforthasbeenmadetoobtainpermissiontouseallcopyrightedillustra-
tionsreproducedinthisbook.Nonetheless,whosoeverbelievestohaverights
tothismaterialisadvisedtocontactthepublisher.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements 
Introduction– The Othered Cinema 
Chapter 1–ArchitecturesofExhibition 
ThePassagesofCinema 
ProjectionandPatrimony 
BlackBox/WhiteCube 
TheNewBlockbusters 
TheMythofActivity 
MediaatMoMA 
Chapter 2–Filmic Ruins 
Post-mediumPost-mortem 
IndexingthePast 
ALittleHistoryofmm 
Ruinophilia 
AnalogueAura 
Chapter 3–TheRemake:Old Movies, New Narratives 
AmbivalentAppropriations 
TheFourOperations 
Precursors 
TheFalsePromisesofthe“UtopiaofUse” 
RemakingFandom 
“Room-for-Play” 
VCRMemories 
Chapter 4–TheFiction ofTruth and theTruth ofFiction 
Anti-anti-illusionism 
HybridForms 
RehabilitatingNarrative 
AReturnoftheReal 
TwoImagesofDeath 
Conclusion – “Cinema and...” 
6 ExhibitingCinemainContemporaryArt
Notes 
Bibliography 
Illustration Credits 
Index 
Acknowledgements
Thisbookwouldnothavebeenpossiblewithoutthekindcooperationofmany
individualswhoassistedintheprocessofviewingworkthatoftencirculatesin
only a limited manner: Andrew Beccone, Bram Bots, and Rose Lord at Marian
GoodmanGallery;JaniceGuyandFabianaVisoatMurrayGuy;RosalieBenitez
andAnnaFisheratBarbaraGladstoneGallery;JamesWoodwardatMetroPic-
tures;TanyaBrodskyatRegenProjects;KatherineBrinson,ArnaudGerspacher,
and Sandhini Poddar at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; Monika Flores
at Artpace San Antonio; John Kelsey at Reena Spaulings Fine Art; Magdalena
SawonatPostmastersGallery;SilviaKolbowski;MikePlunkettatDavidZwir-
ner Gallery; Jessica Lin Cox and James Cohan Gallery; Christoph Draeger;
Catherine Clark at Catherine Clark Gallery; Matthias Müller and Christoph
Girardet;ThomasErbenGallery;GarethLong; ChrisMoukarbel; Colby Birdat
Frederic Petzel Gallery; Kathryn Hillier and Bruce Hackney at Yvon Lambert
Gallery; Nick Lesley at Electronic Arts Intermix; Alex Galloway/Radical Soft-
wareGroup;JessicaBradleyArt+Projects;BoshkoBoskovicatSeanKellyGal-
lery; Johan Grimonprez; Sarah D’Hanens atZapomatik; and Christopher Moss
atPeterFreeman,Inc.
Anadditionalthanksgoestothemanyindividualswhohelpedmetosecure
permissiontoreproduceimagesoftheartworksdiscussedinthisbook.
ThisprojectbeganasadissertationinthetrulyspecialdepartmentofModern
Culture and Media at Brown University. Infinite thanks to my advisor, Mary
AnnDoane,tomycommitteemembers,WendyChunandPhilipRosen,andto
Michael Silverman, who was a thoughtful and encouraging voice in the early
stages of this project. I am deeply grateful for the friendship and support of-
fered at Brown and since by my fellow PhD students, the always-wonderful
trio of Susan McNeil, Liza Hebert, and Richard Manning, and especially the
gangatCharlesfield.
DuringapostdoctoralfellowshipatUCBerkeley,thedepartmentofFilmand
Media warmly welcomed me and helped me to negotiate the transitions from
grad student to faculty member and from dissertation to book. Thank you in
particular to Jonathan Haynes, Erica Levin, Kristen Whissel, Linda Williams,
8 ExhibitingCinemainContemporaryArt
Federico Windhausen, and the students of my “Art and the Moving Image”
seminar.
ManythankstomycolleaguesinFilmStudiesatCarletonUniversity,particu-
larlyMalini Guha,andtoJohnOsborne,dean oftheFacultyofArts andSocial
Sciences,forhissupportofthisproject.
Bart Testa, Kevin Wynter, and anonymous readers at Screen and Public pro-
vided me with very helpful feedback on particular sections of the book. I am
especiallygratefulfortheencouragementandcriticismofMiekeBalandUrsula
Frohne.
Thisprojectwouldnothavebeenpossiblewithoutfinancialsupportreceived
fromBrownUniversity,theSocialSciencesandHumanitiesResearchCouncilof
Canada,theAndrewW.MellonFoundation,andCarletonUniversity.
Mostofall,thankyoutoCatherineBalsomandMichaelGallagher.
–
Introduction The Othered Cinema
[T]heneedistoproposenewanswerstothequestionthatisnowraisedinallinstitu-
tions dedicated to modern and contemporary art: How is film to be exhibited and
howisfilmtoattainthestatusofanartwork?
–BrunoRacine, president, CentreGeorges Pompidou, 
To open, an Overture. In , Stan Douglas produced a mm workthat re-
cycledsomeofcinema’searliestimagesandoneofitsearliestgenres,thephan-
tom ride. Douglas paired recycled footage from two Edison films shot in the
Canadian Rockies, Kicking Horse Canyon () and White Pass, British
Columbia (), with a soundtrack of passages excerpted from Marcel
Proust’s In Search of Lost Time. Overture consists of three image sections, each
separatedbyblackleader,andsixpassagesoftext.Thesepassagesarereadbya
male voice-over through two repetitions of the image track, resulting in the
same image being accompanied by different text in the second iteration of the
seven-minute loop. The phantom ride celebrates technologized perception,
bringing together two of its most powerful incarnations: the speed of the loco-
motiveandthemechanicaleyeofcinema.Atatimewhenitwasnotpossibleto
move the camera, the genre functioned as one way of enabling a mobile gaze.
The iconography of the train, meanwhile, is inextricably linked to the birth of
cinemathroughtheinauguralrushoftheLumières’L’Arrivéed’untrainàla
Ciotat().
In Overture, the train winds around the mountains, supplies views of the
landscape, and travels through tunnels of darkness, offering the spectator a
glimpseofhowtraintravelwouldappearfromthefrontwindowoftheconduc-
tor’s car. On the soundtrack, a monologue unfolds that is drawn from those
fragile momentsbetweensleeping andwaking. Seeminglyopposed tothe fast-
movingviewsoffarawaylandsseenontheimagetrack,thevoiceoverspeaksof
private, internal experience. And yet, as memories rush in and surround the
narrator, he describes theexperience in distinctly cinematic terms:“Everything
revolvedaroundmethroughthedarkness:things,places,years.”Hethengoes
ontodiscusstheinabilitytoseparateonesensationfromanotherwithreference
to the illusion of movement achieved by the proto-cinematic device of the Bio-
scope. Overture thus brings together two conceptions of time that are central
to late nineteenth-century modernity: the public, standardized time that is
closely linked to the development of the railway and the subjective time of in-