Since the last decades of the 20th century, the growing ubiquity of digital technologies and the convergence between them and the cinema, have allowed the reinvention into new formats, aesthetics and approaches of the artistic creations constituted by the moving image. Through a dynamic and not always conventional dialogue with other arts and media, the cinema has reconfigured, opened up even more to experimentation and expanded itself to less traditional exhibition spaces, transforming into what Gene Youngblood designates as “expanded cinema” (1970), also called post-cinema or transcinema.
But whilst these disruptive works allow the observation of the vitality of cinema as artistic expression they also raise questions of a practical, conceptual and philosophical nature. Not only do these forms of post-cinema transform the creation strategies and approaches, but they also alter the place of the artist/filmmaker in the exhibition circuits. Also, the work’s reception suffers significant alterations, allowing the audience a new relation with the space of exhibition, with the very cinematographic apparatus and, inherently, with the work.
It becomes, therefore, pressing to reflect on, and discuss, these new forms of cultural creation and expression in the domains of media theory and aesthetics, from three simultaneously pertinent and complementary perspectives: the creation, the curation and the theoretical reflection.
To present disruptive works that question and rupture the boundaries between the visual arts and that operate on the concept of “expanded cinema”; ↝ To think and propose new strategies of creation, exhibition and reception; ↝ To stimulate the discussion of artistic and curatorial practice in the creation and exhibition of post-cinema works, as elements of scientific research; ↝ To investigate this “new cinema”, its spaces and relations on different plateaus of expression, allowing for an enlargement of borders and a multiplicity of new formats; ↝ To discuss and evaluate the effect of these new forms of cinema in the scope of contemporary art; ↝ To stimulate the contact between authors, curators, researchers and national and international academics, promoting partnerships in future research projects.
Marie Rebecchi teaches at the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris 3 and Université d'Amiens as Lecturer (chargée de cours). She holds a PhD in “Aesthetics and Art Theory” from the University of Palermo, Italy. She spent research periods as Post-Doctoral Researcher at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris (EHESS). She specializes in the aesthetics of cinema, with a special focus on avant-garde cinema and abstract cinema of the 1920s and 1930s. She edited with Elena Vogman a book (NERO, 2017) and curated an exhibition at NOMAS Foundation (Rome, 2017-18), both entitled Sergei Eisenstein. The Anthropology of Rhythm. Her book, Paris 1929. Eisenstein, Bataille, Buñuel is now published in the collection "Images, médiums" of the publishing house Mimésis (2018). It focuses on Eisenstein’s stay in Paris in 1929-30 and on the relationship between the Surrealist movement and the theories of montage of the 1920’s.
Sergei Eisenstein. The Anthropology of Rhythm. The Research-based exhibition as curatorial engagement
Sergei Eisenstein. The Anthropology of Rhythm (2017-18), the research-based exhibition curated by Marie Rebecchi and Elena Vogman, in collaboration with Till Gathmann, for Nomas Foundation (Rome) and Espace Diaphanes (Berlin, with the title Eccentric Values after Eisenstein) developed an original approach to the different media of Eisenstein’s work – photography, film, drawing, diaries, text – seen as the components of an intricate visual anthropology, in which faces and bodies are fragmented and recomposed in a new morphological perspective. This exhibition on Eisenstein’s 1930s unfinished film projects, presented a remontage of reproductions from the director’s archives in Moscow, opening their potential relations to the present. I will discuss the work of archival remontage, drawing particular attention towards the role of copies as a curatorial strategy to re-open and re-produce Eisenstein’s archive. In such a way, I will try to show the cinematic rhythm disclosed in the material Eisenstein provided, in an attempt to actualize and interpret the concept of “technological reproducibility” within the exhibition space.
Miriam De Rosa is Senior Lecturer in Media and Communications at Coventry University, where she currently directs the BA with the same name. Before joining CU, she worked at the Catholic University of Milan, where she also received her PhD in 2011. Since 2010 she has been the coordinator of IMACS (International Master of Audiovisual and Cinema Studies), a network of high education institutions comprising universities from Europe and Canada, and in 2014 she founded the NECS CCVA (Cinema & Contemporary Visual Arts work group) which she currently co-leads with Patrícia Nogueira.
Miriam has a wealth of experience as a member of the editorial staff of various international journals, among which NECSUS and Cinergie - for both of them she is in charge of the cinema/art related sections.
Her research interests include film theories, artistic moving images, experimental cinema, digital screen media and media archaeology. Her most recent publications are A Poetics of Care (2017) and the co-edited special issue of Cinéma et Cie Post-what? Post-when? Thinking moving images beyond the postcinema condition (2017).
Miriam is also active as independent film curator; her most recent projects are Desktop Cinema (MMC Luka, Zagreb, Croatia, July 2017) and Don’t believe in subversion (with Greg de Cuir Jr, Belgrade, Serbia, December 2017).
i2ADS – Research Institute of Art, Design and Society was established in 2011. It is a research unit based at Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Porto (FBAUP), having as its partner the School of Music and Performing Arts (ESMAE). i2ADS develops its activities in the scope of Art and Design, Artistic and Musical Development.
The team is composed of 26 integrated doctorate researchers, 11 integrated non-doctorate researchers and 102 collaborating researchers.
Following the Plan for Restructuring R&D Units (funded by FCT in 2016-2018), i2ADS has reorganized itself, betting on collaborative work, organized in research hubs that interweave in the thematic areas of the R&D unit. i2ADS insures the systematic articulation of the research through projects, action and diffusion of the research processes and results.
In the 2013-2017 period, i2ADS affirmed itself, nationally, as one of the research units in the artistic field with the highest research productivity. Its actual integrated researchers published 81 articles, of which 46 with an international scope, 75 book chapters, 24 edited books/journals, 225 participations in conferences, 207 exhibitions/concerts, 150 Master and 59 PhD theses were completed under the supervision of i2ADS’ integrated researchers. Also, i2ADS organized 27 international conferences. Its strategic priorities are 5 and established around the: i) consolidation of research in arts and design; ii) consolidation of the policy of internationalization; iii) development of collaborative research practices; iv) articulation between postgraduate training and research; v) transference of knowledge and technology, with an open science policy and the appropriation and impact of research in society.
i2ADS has as its mission the promotion of theoretical, experimental and artistic practice research, in the areas of Fine Art, Design, Drawing, Artistic Studies, Arts Education, Music and Performance Arts. In the work produced, and in its future projection, i2ADS intends to contribute to the clarification of the research field in the arts and design and in the quest for appropriate research indicators. In that sense, it has been inscribing itself in the international discussion about research in the arts, through the presence of its researchers in the relevant research forums, the development of projects, and the organization of publications and events that promote that debate and development.
Research group created in 2013 under NECS – European Network for Cinema and Media Studies. With 123 members, such as researchers, artists and curators coming from several European countries as well as from other parts of the world, the group intends to provide a platform devoted to the exploration of the relationship between cinema and contemporary visual arts in terms of both representation and exhibition strategies; it also aims at offering a room for theoretical and practice-based discussion.
Among the topics we wish to focus are:
• gallery films, video installations, exhibited cinema
• new/screen media, cinema & visual arts
• aesthetical, conceptual, technical exchanges and encounters among visual arts
• analog/digital in visual arts
• moving images & curation
The workgroup counts on the contribution of NECS members working in these areas, artists, curators, and on anyone interested in the field. It is meant as an open, inclusive platform to share information, foster collaboration, engage in mutual research and creative interests.
↝ Patrícia Nogueira CCVA - NECS
↝ Catarina Martins i2ADS/FBAUP
↝ Catarina Martins i2ADS/FBAUP
↝ Daniel Ribas CCVA - NECS
↝ João Leal CCVA - NECS
↝ Juliana Froehlich (ViDi / University of Antwerp)
↝ Miriam de Rosa (CCVA)
↝ Patrícia Nogueira CCVA - NECS
↝ Vitor Almeida i2ADS/FBAUP
