Atonement

For with earth do we see earth, with water water,
with air bright air, with fire consuming fire,
with Love do we see Love, Strife with dread Strife.

Empedocle (B 109)

Atonement (Joe Wright, 2007) – a water-based film that calls for a water-based (immersive, liquid, aquatic) spectatorship.

 

The vault and the fall

Working hard on a paper on the querelle between Theodor Lipps and Edith Stein on the relationship between the acrobat and the spectator…

Trapeze (Carol Reed, USA 1956)

Suddenly, in the core of Edith Stein’s Zum Problem der Einfühlung (1917), the figures of both the acrobat and the spectator crop out. The young phenomenologist is discussing Theodor Lipps’s notion of Einfühlung and “internal imitation” [Nachahmungtheorie] in her doctoral dissertation: Einfühlung is a kind of act in which one “gets” the Other’s Erlebniss on the basis of psycho-physical and spiritual analogy. In his Grundlegung der Aesthetik, Lipps states that when the spectator is watching an acrobat walking on a suspended wire, he or she feels him/herself so inside the acrobat [ich fühle mich so in ihm] (1903), that his/her conscious self has sunk itself completely into that of the acrobat. On the contrary, Stein argues that Einfühlung is far from being a mere projective (an absorption or a sinking) act in which the observer transfers his own subjectivity into that of the observed object/subject. The spectator subjectivity is not “one with” the acrobat subjectivity – it is only “with”: «Ich bin nicht eins mit dem Akrobaten, sondern nu „bei“ ihm, ich führe seine Bewegung nicht wirklich aus, sondern nur – quasi –». Such an “empathic spectatorship” is a “going through” of the acrobat motion internally. Just as the two bodies remain separated, so the two subjectivities involved do not or fuse with each other, they do not merge into a single entity and the relationship does not tend towards pure identification, assimilation, or even mutual annihilation. In the relationship between the acrobat and the spectator – in that quasi – lies the core of Edith Stein’s theory of Einfühlung and its relevance for film theory.

As a case in point, in the prologue of Trapeze (Carol Reed, USA 1956) the spectator follows the trapeze artist Mike Ribble (Burt Lancaster) performing a triple somersault. My ideas is that a three-step strategy (establishing, emotion-focusing, accomplishment) is used for the spectator sensorial and emotional involvement. A similar “classic” strategy is use also in the opening sequence of Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, USA 1958):

Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, USA 1958)

The analysis of the two cases will be published on the oncoming issue of the German journal montage a-v.

 

Gravity Sucks

Una collega mi segnala questa exhibition di Simon Faithfull e dei suoi Escape Vehicles alla BFI:

Gravity Sucks brings together for the first time the complete series of Simon Faithfull’s Escape Vehicles, seven quixotic artworks that utilise an assortment of balloons, insects and rockets to offer the viewer the idea of freeing themselves from the constraints of gravity. Faithfull’s works can be seen as an ongoing investigation into the incomprehensible scale of the earth as an object. The Escape Vehicles employ video cameras, transmission systems and drawing devices as measuring tools to define size, time and distance, and the experiments often involve travel either by the artist himself or by cameras sent out as surrogate, dispassionate eyes.

 

Second Annual Conference on Film and Philolosphy

I am presentig my reasearch on the relevance of Edith Stein’s theory on empathy for film theory at the Second Annual Conference on Film and Philolosphy on the 18th of July at the University of Dundee. Here is the conference program >. The keynote speakers will be Alain Badiou (Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris), Edward Branigan (University of California, Santa Barbara), Caroline Bainbridge (Roehampton University), and Martin McQuillan (University of Leeds).

 

Weightlessness cinema

I am taking part to the Université d’été de l’Université Paris 3 – Sorbonne Nouvelle on “Cinema & Art Contemporain” (June 28th-July 11th 2009, here is the full program). On the 6th of July I am presenting the paper Weightlessness cinema. Filmic bodies in zero-gravity environment in the framework of the round table “Les Écrans vécus. Expériences médiales à l’âge de la «relocation»”, coordinated by professor Ruggero Eugeni.

 

I am presentig a paper on the relevance of aesthetic and phenomenological empathies for film theory in the session on Neuroaesthetic at the Codisco 2009 conference on the 9th of June in Noto (Sicily). Here is the conference program >

 

Danza, neuroscienze, transmedialità

Il Dipartimento di scienze sociali, cognitive e quantitative dell’Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia ospita una giornata di studi sul tema Danza, neuroscienze, transmedialità, lunedì 25 maggio 2009 (a Reggio Emilia presso l’Ex Caserma Zucchi, viale Allegri 9 – Aula 5b, primo piano). L’ospite principale è Sarah Rubidge (docente di “Choreography and New Media” alla University of Chichester, UK) e interverrà sul tema Practicing Arts using Understanding through the body a partire dalle ore 10.15. Discuterà l’intervento la professoressa Anna Borghi (Università di Bologna e Istituto di Scienze e Tecnologie della Cognizione, CNR, Roma). Il  sito web Sense of digital raccoglie i lavori e le riflessioni di Sarah Rubidge. Nel pomeriggio (ore 14.30-16.30) si svolgerà un workshop moderato da Nicola Dusi (Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia) con i seguenti interventi previsti:

Anna Borghi (Università di Bologna): Perspectives on embodied and grounded cognition, Cristina Righi (Università di Bologna): Choreographic Sense and Transmedia Practice, Claudia Gianelli (Università di Bologna): Neurotic semisciences? How to keep semiotics and neurosciences together without going schizoid, Adriano D’Aloia (Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milano): Screen neurons. Cinema, corporeality, empathy.
Discussants: Sarah Rubidge (University of Chichester), Federico Montanari (Università di Bologna), Alessandro Sarti (Università di Bologna)

PDF programma

 

Falling Girl

Oggi m’imbatto per caso in questo video di Scott Snibbe:

 

“Falling Girl is an immersive interactive narrative installation that allows the viewer to participate in the story of a young girl falling from a skyscraper. During her miraculously slow descent, the girl reacts to the people and events in each window. Daylight fades, night falls and passes, and at dawn, when the falling girl finally lands on the sidewalk, she is an aged woman who bears no resemblance to the young girl who started her fall a few minutes before.

Cameras situated in the room and connected to computer incorporate images of viewers themselves that appear in the apartments that the falling girl passes. These are juxtaposed with the ever present central image of the girl in silhouette falling slowly along the skyscraper’s side as she gets older and older. In this way, viewers participate in this tale about the shortness of our lives and the petty concerns that often occupy us.

The project is a collaboration between interactive media artist Scott Snibbe and choreographer/filmmaker Annie Loui.”

 

Empathic kiss

— Professor Flostre is the greatest living philosopher, and father of empathicalism.
— Oh? What’s empathicalism?
— The most sensible approach to true understanding and peace of mind.
— Sounds great, but what is it?
— It’s based on empathy. Do you know what the word “empathy” means?
— No, I’ll have to have the beginner’s course on that one. Empathy. Is it something like sympathy?
— Oh, it goes beyond sympathy. Sympathy is to understand what someone feels. Empathy is to project your imagination so that you actually feel what the other person is feeling. You put yourself in the other person’s place. Do I make myself clear?

— Why did you do that?
— Empathy. I put myself in your place and I felt that you wanted to be kissed.
— You put yourself in the wrong place. I have no desire to be kissed by you, or anyone else.
— Don’t be silly. Everybody wants to be kissed, even philosophers.

Funny Face, 1957

 

Edith Stein to the movies

I am presentig a paper on the relevance of Edith Stein’s theory on empathy for film theory at the XVI Udine conference on the 25th of March.

 

Enwaterment

I am presenting a draft of the first step of my investigation on drowning bodies and cinematic experience at the Emergent Encounters in Film Theory. Intersections between Psychoanalysis and Philosophy international film studies conference, hosted by the King’s College Film Studies Deparment in London on the 21st of March.

Keynote Speakers: Steven Shaviro (Wayne State University), Vicky Lebeau (University of Sussex)

Interdisciplinary approaches to the theoretical discussion of the cinematic medium have often engaged with philosophical or psychoanalytic perspectives. While philosophy and psychoanalysis are by no means opposed schools of thought, the potential to develop new ways of understanding film remains an opportunity to be explored. In seeking out further lines of enquiry, the study of intersections between cinema/philosophy/psychoanalysis, seems most pertinent to our generation of ‘film thinking’, to invoke Daniel Frampton’s concept of the ‘film mind’, whose future still stands, to some extent, in the shadow of psychoanalysis. Recent philosophical models of thought offered by film theorists such as Frampton and D.N Rodowick embrace a new ontological grasp of the cinema, but what then are the implications of this shift for psychoanalysis? The question, therefore, remains whether philosophy and psychoanalysis are indeed irreconcilable, or if the specific philosophical turn sets up boundaries that unjustly seal off the possibility of dialogue between the two methodologies.

 

Drowning bodies

And what about drowning? Cinema has immediately recognized that water could visually represent the substance of human dreams and desires. Water can connect or separate conscious and onyric worlds, arousing the spectators’ actual response (lack of breath, sense of choking, menace…). I’d like to figure out if and how the representation of drowning body in contemporary cinema could be a strategy to engage a corporeal relation with the spectator’s psychic dimension, in terms of 1) depth: from the reflective and narcisist surface to the dark profundity; 2) consistency: from the transparent swimming-pool to the opaque and cloudy lake; 3) expressive forces: from the quite, though threatening, ocean to the impetuous river. Here you have a collection of snapeshots captured from “water-based” movie (What Lies Beneath, The Sphere, Jaws, Minority Report, The Hours…).

Altra “figura esperienziale” interessante: l’annegamento, il corpo sommerso… Il cinema ha da subito riconosciuto come l’acqua posso rappresentare visivamente la sostanza dei sogni e dei desideri umani. Essa connette e separa dimensione del conscio e dell’incoscio, sollecitando risposte fisiologiche nello spettatore (mancanza del respiro, senso di soffocamento minaccia…). Un passo ulteriore potrebbe essere capire se e in che modo la rappresentazione dei corpi in annegamento nel cinema contemporaneo è una strategia di “ingaggio” di una relazione corporea fra la dimensione psichica dello spettatore in termini di 1) profondità: dalla riflettente e narcisistica superficie, alla profonda oscurità; 2) consistenza: dalla trasparenza di una piscina, all’opacità delle acque torbide di un lago; 3) forza espressiva: dalle placide, per quanto minacciose, acque dell’oceano, al moto impetuoso del fiume. Ecco una piccola lista per immagini di film che mostrano corpi immersi o in annegamento (Le verità nascoste, Sfera, Lo squalo, Minority Report, The Hours…).

 

Genealogy of fall

My hypothesis is that along the history of images a series of specific and recurrent “experiential figures” have arisen that have proved to be a functional way to set up the psychological relation between images and observers. In order to study the perceptual-emotional-cognitive relationship between the spectator and the images, we can take into account the fall of human body since it is particularly interesting for its philosophical significance and its capability to engage a corporeal relation with the spectator. I wonder if a good way of studying the nature of this double corpor(e)ality – the representational and the spectatorial one – should be investigating its historical origin, that is its genealogy in the history of visual culture. In the history of art, the genealogy of the figure of fall probably starts with the visual representation of the fall of Lucifero (the fallen angel) and Icaro (the fallen God).

La mia idea è che lungo la storia della rappresentazione per immagini si è conformata una serie di precise e ricorrenti “figure esperienziali” e che tali figure abbiano funzionato e funzionino come modalità funzionale di predisposizione della relazione psicologica fra immagini e osservatori. Per studiare la relazione percettiva-cognitiva-emotiva fra spettatore e immagini, possiamo considerare la caduta del corpo umano come una particolare forma esperienziale di ingaggio corporeo dello spettatore, resa peraltro più interessante dalla sua valenza filosofica. Mi chiedo se un buon modo per studiare la natura di questa doppia corporalità – quella rappresentazionale e quella spettatoriale – non debba essere un’indagine sulle sue origini storiche, la sua genealogia nella storia del visuale. Nella storia dell’arte, la genealogia della figura della caduta si origina probabilmente con la rappresentazione della caduta di Lucifero (l’angelo caduto) e Icaro (il dio caduto).

La caduta di Icaro (Jacob Peter Gowy, 1636-7)

La caduta di Lucifero (Gustave Doré, 1886)

La caduta di Icaro (Marc Chagall, 1975)

 

Maybe Not

While my clip shows only the final part of the fall (proving that the fatal impact is a censored circumstance – at least in Western culture), this poetic found-footage video by Oliver Pietsch, entitled Maybe Not, will provide you with a “full-fall” experience:

Mentre il mio video mostra sono la fase finale della caduta (dimostrando che l’impatto fatale con il suolo è un evento censurato – perlomeno nella cultura occidentale), questo poetico video found-footage di Oliver Pietsch, intitolato Maybe Not, ci consente di osservare scene di caduta nelle sue varie fasi:

Here is a contest for you. Can you tell the movies from which these scenes are cutted out? So far I have been able to identify only six or seven of them. Do you know any other movie that shows a falling bodies? I’d like to arrange a “catalogue” and I need everybody’s help.

Many thanks to Michael Goddard to  have signalled me the video.

Ed ecco un test per voi. Riuscite a riconoscere i film da cui sono estratte le sequenze montate nel video? Sinora sono riuscito a riconoscerne sei o sette. Vi viene in mente qualche altro film con significative cadute umane? Mi piacerebbe mettere insieme un “catalogo” e ho bisogno dell’aiuto di tutti.

Molte grazie a Michael Goddard per avermi segnalato questo video.

 

Falling bodies in cinema

In the latest months I have been trying to figure out how cinema represents the falling of human bodies. My idea is that the representation of fall leads to a peculiar kind of relation between images and spectators. On the basis of neural specularity (mirror neurons), we are able to directly feel an empathetic relation with falling bodies, as if we were those very bodies that are falling. The spectator’s corporality is involed in viewing of such images. But how? – that’s the question. Probably the spectator is involved in a wide range of engagements, concerning perceptual, cognitive and emotional patterns. Just to give you an overlook on the topic, I edited this short (and funny) video:

In questi mesi sto cercando di studiare quali sono le modalità con cui il cinema rappresenta la caduta del corpo umano. La mia ipotesi è che la rappresentazione della caduta porti a una particolare forma di relazione fra le immagini e gli spettatori. Sulla base della specularità motoria (neuroni specchio), siamo in grado di sentire direttamente una corrispondenza empatica con il corpo in caduta, come se fossimo noi stessi a cadere. La corporeità dello spettatore è coinvolta nella visione di questo tipo di immagini. Ma come? Probabilmente il coinvolgimento dello spettatore si può realizzare lungo un ampia gradazione di possibilità, a seconda dei pattern percettivi, cognitivi ed emotivi attivati. Solo per dare un’occhiata generale sull’argomento, ho montato questo breve (e divertente) video:

What do you think about physical and emotional involvement in your filmic experience of falling? Post your comments.

Qual è la vostra esperienza a riguardo. Cosa ne pensate delle forme di coinvolgimento fisico ed emotivo durante l’esperienza filmica della caduta. Postate i vostri commenti.