Practices of Viewing II: Pause (video essay)

Pause is just a click away. The fact that on our devices we can pause a film whenever we want makes us forget how unsettling this actually is. Thinking about how dangerous it once has been when the images come to halt should help us to see this practice as subversive. The ability to pause doesn't give us more control, but exposes both us and the medium to what we cannot fathom

Practices of Viewing X: Sleep (video essay)

You are not supposed to sleep during a film. But what if sleep is recognised as not an obstruction but as an essential element of experiencing cinema? I remember those times I dozed off in the theatre and how I began to intermingle and flow together with those images I saw through my half closed, half open eyes. Maybe the ultimate a film could want to achieve is to make you fall asleep so you can wake up into its dream. The history of color cinema inspire us. Instead of replicating the norms and stereotypes we thought to be reality, the changing colors of film break away from our hegemonic views. They force us to see differently

Practices of Viewing III: Muted (video essay)

On Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter the standard setting for videos is "mute". More than 120 years after its invention silent cinema has become the default mode. Today's practice is supposed to make video consumption smoother. But it could also make us think about the frightening power silence could only attain with the advent of cinematic sound. In muting we might hear something far more unsettling than what words and images can express

Practices of Viewing IV: Screenshot (video essay)

In the background of all the films I watch there are these screenshots that keep accumulating on my hard drive. Hundreds, thousands. When I see them I think of all the difficulties we once had with trying to obtain these images hidden within a film. And how easy it is today. And it makes me dream about what this images could be doing together, without my knowledge

Practices of Viewing IX: Color (video essay)

In Henri-Georges Clouzot’s fragment L’ENFER from 1964, the main character’s jealousy, escalating to the point of psychosis, is reflected in the fact that his surroundings appear tinted in new and disturbing shades. The whole world is colored by delusion. Clouzot’s experiments points out what is true for all cinema: Color in film is never a natural given but always a construction. Even what looks realistic is not true to nature but a simulation, an effect of tinting and color grading. But then also our own perception of color is nothing fixed, but varies from person to person. Rather than physical fact color is a mental interpretation. The colors that I believe to see are most likely not exactly the same that you will experience. The history of color cinema inspire us. Instead of replicating the norms and stereotypes we thought to be reality, the changing colors of film break away from our hegemonic views. They force us to see differently

Bilder geben: Übertragungen zwischen Film und Psychiatrie

Es kann nicht verwundern, dass das Kino seit seiner Erfindung von der Psychiatrie besonders fasziniert ist. Denn der psychiatrische Imaginationsraum ist mit seiner exzessiven Bildproduktion sowohl auf Arzt- wie Patientenseite nicht nur ein ungemein reichhaltiges Sujet für den Film. Vielmehr sind die von der Psychiatrie und ihren bildgebenden Verfahren aufgeworfenen Fragen nach der Wahr- oder Wahnhaftigkeit von Bildern genau dieselben, die auch das Kino von Anfang an umtreiben

L’"informazione come scandalo”. Dall’iperrealtà dell’industria dell’informazione alle fake news del sistema mediale ibrido

L’articolo si propone di utilizzare il concetto di iperrealtà – “questo scatenarsi delle cose come se avessero un senso” – coniato da Jean Baudrillard sia per analizzare gli innumerevoli casi di falsi e bufale diffuse nel corso della storia del giornalismo moderno che l’odierna indignazione per l’irruzione delle fake news. Se, nel passato, le scelte, il linguaggio e le procedure dell’industria delle notizie potevano far comprendere le difficoltà di una professione sempre più sommersa dalle informazioni, nel nuovo sistema mediale ibrido queste stesse dimensioni sono riviste attraverso le chiavi di lettura formulate dallo studioso francese. Un “sondaggio permanente” in cui sistemi e pubblici condividono segni-notizia codificati da software o algoritmi e che sembrano riprodurre le stesse ironie, gli stessi incidenti e, soprattutto quella stessa disillusione. Dopo lo scandalo dell’informazione, c’è l’informazione come catastrofe.The article aims to use Jean Baudrillard’s concept of hyperreality–“this unleashing of things as if they had a sense”– to analyze the countless cases of fakes and hoaxes spread throughout the history of modern journalism as well as today indignation for the breaking of fake news. If, in the past, the news industry’s choices, language, and procedures could make it difficult to understand a profession that is increasingly overwhelmed by information, in the new hybrid media system, these same dimensions are revised through Baudrillard’s conception. A “Permanent Survey” in which systems and audiences share news-signs coded by software or algorithms and seem to reproduce the same irony, the same incidents and, above all, that same disillusion. After the scandal of information, there is information as a catastroph

Reti immaginate. Media, ideologia e metafore organizzative delle azioni connettive

Rete Nazionale Ricercatori Precari, Rete GAS, Rete Genitori Rainbow, Rete degli studenti medi, Rete del Caffè Sospeso, Rete della Conoscenza, Rete di Lilliput, Rete Lenford, Rete di Economia Solidale; Reti: molte organizzazioni della società civile e dei movimenti sociali adottano questo termine per definirsi. Così spesso che questa metafora appare non solo il frame per definire l’azione collettiva ma anche una sua nuova, e oramai consolidata, ideologia. Dove nasce questa pratica identitaria, questa modo di concepire e incorniciare movimenti e organizzazioni? L’articolo intende analizzare le recenti mobilitazioni collettive per proporre alcune risposte a queste ipotesi. Quale legame c’è tra la forza dell’immagine della rete come illustrazione e prefigurazione di movimenti decentrati, orizzontali, frammentati e le forme ideologiche proprie di una società costruita proprio intorno a questa metafora? Quale connessione esiste tra le tecnologie di comunicazione utilizzate per costruire le forme organizzative dei movimenti contemporanei e la forma assunta da questa azione collettiva