Whether it involves remaking an old Hollywood movie, projecting a quiet
16mm film, or constructing a bombastic multi-screen environment, cinema
now takes place not just in the movie theatre and the home, but also in
the art gallery and the museum. The author of this engaging study takes
stock of this development, offering an in-depth inquiry into its
genesis, its defining features, and the ramifications it has for art and
cinema alike. Through the lens of contemporary art history, she
examines cinema studies’ great disciplinary obsession – namely, what
cinema was, is, and will become in a digital future. (blurb for Erika Balsom, Exhibiting Cinema in Contemporary Art [Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2013])
Thanks to the legend that is
Girish Shambu,
Film Studies For Free heard of the latest, wonderful, freely accessible book from
Amsterdam University Press: Erika Balsom's
Exhibiting Cinema in Contemporary Art. The table of contents is below. It's a valuable addition to the burgeoning field of Expanded Cinema Studies. Read it for free but
please order it for your libraries! It has been added to
FSFF's permanent and regularly updated listing of online
Open Access Film Studies e-Books
Another related resource: six
video recordings have been uploaded online of all the sessions from
the recent Mediamorphosis Symposium and Exhibition at the University of Sussex at which researchers, practitioners, artists (including filmmakers), designers, scientists were invited to
submit, discuss, exchange and engage with analogue and digital
practices as mediamorphosis. You can find links to the videos here.
It's been so quiet around here that FSFF's readers probably won't even notice that it is going on holiday for two weeks (it will be taking Erika's book!). It promises to return refreshed, reinvigorated and possibly even sun-tanned after that, with LOTS of new Open Access items to link to. But, in the meantime, please check out this little video on a different kind of "expanded cinema studies" - it has one or two useful resources that you may find interesting.
Erika Balsom, Exhibiting Cinema in Contemporary Art (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2013)
Table of Contents
Introduction – The Othered Cinema
Chapter 1 – Architectures of Exhibition
The Passages of Cinema
Projection and Patrimony Black Box/White Cube The New Blockbusters
The Myth of Activity
Media at MoMA
Chapter 2 – Filmic Ruins
Post-medium Post-mortem Indexing the Past A Little History of 35mm
Ruinophilia
Analogue Aura
Chapter 3 – The Remake: Old Movies, New Narratives
Ambivalent Appropriations
The Four Operations Precursors
The False Promises of the “Utopia of Use”
Remaking Fandom “Room-for-Play”
VCR Memories
Chapter 4 – The Fiction of Truth and the Truth of Fiction
Anti-anti-illusionism
Hybrid Forms Rehabilitating Narrative
A Return of the Real
Two Images of Death
Conclusion – “Cinema and...”
