Methodological doubts (Birth of electronic space #1)

in “Origines, pionniers, généalogies”, Cinéma & Art Contemporain 3, Paris Summer School, Institut national de l'histoire de l'art, Salle Giorgio Vasari, Paris, 30.7.2010. Although fully recognizing the methodological primacy of object analysis, I will start here with a somewhat long introduction to the research context in which the specific intuition this paper deals — which regards the “birth of electronic space” in Michael Snow’s Back & Forth and La Région centrale — can make some sense. Instead of doing a descriptive zoom on these films, I suggest we first take a more sinuous path, a panoramic through some theoretical “problems” to which the cinematic “cases” the “birth of electronic space” is concerned with might depend upon, give answer to or at least throw some light. (I’m consciously not using the term “examples” here; for this important conceptual clarification, see Agustin Zarzosa’s wonderful and to be published essay «The Case of the Illustrious Example».)

The fact is that description as a method became more complicated, since its textual form is now usually accompanied by the presentation of still images and even clips of the videos themselves, which could be argued, substitute themselves to the analysis or, in some more unfortunate cases, render it irrelevant. One cannot but wonder what effects this might have on writing – critical and theoretical writing first of all concerned with giving an answer to what captivated the spectator of the film. Description is indeed full of traps and becomes problematic specially if it doesn’t provide along with it a corresponding theoretical gesture that would at least try to account for the significance of its artistic object, its singularity; a theoretical gesture that would then, surprisingly, unburden from the weight of analysis, by relating the works to the outside world and so providing connections for its intelligibility. [to be continued]