| Repeating Cinema's History
The popularity of online video-sharing sites has led to the ad hoc curation
of archives and thematic reblogs of all sort. Recently, curator Joao
Ribas
started Expanded Cinema, a blog that aggregates web-posted archival videos
from the history of avant-garde cinema, including 'experimental film,
early
video, and sound-based, durational work.' Choice finds include pieces
by
Martin Arnold, Walerian Borowczyk, Charles and Ray Eames, Harun Farocki,
Peter Kubelka, Toshio Matsumoto, and others. Ribas's comments on the
videos
often include external links to critical essays or other historical details
that help frame the work. Quite often, there is a sense of desire to
place
the work within a timeline of influences, as in the case of 'Le Vol d'Icare'
(1974), Georges Schwizgebel's 'pioneering animation,' that 'looks more
at
home today than it ever did in the early 1970s.' In many of the works,
there
seems to be a tension between the use of film or video as a means of
documentation, and as an art practice of its own. The most interesting
piece
blur the boundaries, as is the case with the Eameses' 'SX-70' (1972),
which
also meditates on the formal properties of film and video. Once again,
focused internet users are taking art history into their own hands, making
'playlists' that elevate works from the status of hiddenness or obscurity
to
central in our imaginations--which to say on our desktop. - James Petrie
http://expandedcinema.blogspot.com/ |